Hello y’all. This is the second story I work on – the first one being Alex and Sebastian. I’ll place the link for that one below.
Hope you guys enjoy!
http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/college/alex-and-sebastian/
A fellow reader made a playlist with most of the songs I’ve either used or will use in the A&S series. I’ve given him full control as to whether he wants a new channel for this story or just to continue on the original one. If y’all want to listen to the previous one while reading the chapters, the link for it is this:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJZWEUrY9KRSfQ98rYlMYix46VM0CJ7XS
Songs on YouTube:
Dive - Ed Sheeran
I will keep you posted if another link is created.
I updated my email to unfinishedthoughts013@gmail.com if you’d like to reach me!
Please don't forget to donate to nifty here, without which we wouldn't have this collection of great stories!
Every story is free on here, so please let's keep it that way and donate, guys.
http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
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The Tone Wolf
Andrew
“Look, Darren, I - I like you, like, a lot.” My cheeks turned a shade of scarlet at my honesty.
“You do?” He asked, although I was sure he already knew the answer.
“I do,” I affirmed him. “And I kind of want to ask you … I want to see if you want to be more.”
“You - you what?” He asked, his brows raised in surprise.
“I want to go out with you, dummy,” I smiled at how flustered Darren looked.
He kept looking at me with his blue eyes, incredulously.
For a few, inconceivable seconds, all I could hear was the silence between us. Thankfully, Darren broke the silence.
“Yeah,” he shrugged, and then a smile formed on his face that made my stomach flutter. “Yeah, I’d like that, Drew.”
A goofy smile broke on my face, “Hell yeah!” Without realizing it, I inched closer to Darren and planted my lips to his. Realizing how forward I was being, I blushed and pulled away from him. “Sorry about that,” I shook my head but continued to smile, “I don’t know what came over me.”
Darren stayed still for a second or two before he grabbed me by the shoulders. “Hey, Drew, you don’t have to apologize to me for anything.” Before I could process his words, he broke into another of his perfect smiles and leaned over to me, placing another drawn out kiss on my lips.
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“I still don’t know what song to do for the solo try out Monday,” I said, nonchalantly spinning a pen between my fingers. I had three days to work on a song to audition for the solo in the upcoming competition between our choirs.
“Do a ballad. Ballads are always killers.” Diana’s voice carried over to me in the night’s cool breeze.
I considered this for a moment before my phone vibrated. It had been doing so consistently for the past couple of days.
-Happy one week, Drewski :)
A small smile formed on my face reading Darren’s text. The past week had been one of the best ones for me.
“Speaking of choir,” Diana said after blowing out cigarette smoke. “I’m sensing some drama stirring up soon in both our clubs.”
I stopped the text I was typing out to Darren and looked to my right. We were both sitting outside her room’s balcony staring at a moonless night. While she chose to sit on the floor with her knees held close to her, I opted for her more comfortable chair and leaned forward on the railing. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“Well,” she took another long drag of her cigarette. For such a picture perfect girl, Diana sure smoked like someone looking for the quick numbness that cigarettes brought. But I guess we all have our layers. “Aside from the drama between me and a girl I’m talking to in my club, there’s also the fact that Michael broke up with Vanessa over the break.” She said all this without ever turning to face me. She just continued looking forward. “From what I know of her, I doubt she’d be happy about it.”
“Sure,” I said, turning to look at her. “But everyone breaks up. Not everyone stays together forever.”
If I hadn’t been staring at her, I would have missed the small upward curve her lips did - the hint of a coy smile. “Yeah, but when she finds out the real reason he broke up with her, she’d be pissed.”
“What’s the reason?” I asked, curious but somehow already putting some pieces together in the back of my head.
Finally she turned to look at me but not before taking the last drag of her cigarette and tossing the butt across the railing and two floors down. “I think he did it for Darren. I kind of admire him for doing that, too.”
Darren.
Suddenly, I found myself rereading the text I was about to send. “Why do you think that?” I asked, hiding how curious I actually was.
She shrugged and pouted her lips. “Just my gut, ya know?”
A gut feeling was nothing to go on. But then again, Diana’s gut had never been wrong about something before.
For a quick second, I thought of him: Aiden. I blinked that name away and turned back to the dark sky. “Yeah. Perfectly-perfect Vanessa probably wouldn’t like finding that out.”
“I hope it works out for them, though. I’d like to see them together but that nosey bitch Drama is nigh.”
I stayed quiet and listened to Diana take out another cigarette.
My fingers ticked quietly as I deleted the text I was so sure I’d send.
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After Friday with Diana, I had told Darren that I needed time to work on my solo. This meant that we wouldn’t be able to hang during the weekend. While this allowed me to concentrate and perfect the song I chose, it also left me alone with the thoughts Diana had raised.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, he kept popping up in my head.
Now it was Monday and I found the thoughts running through my head louder than the music in this choir room.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear my name being called to step up front. I blinked away his name again and made my way to the stage purposely avoiding looking over at where Vanessa sat.
I stood in front of my team, guitar in hand. I fixed the microphone closer to my mouth and took a deep breath.
I was nervous - fuck, I was nervous. Good reason for it, too.
Everyone in the Tone Wolves was so incredibly talented. From Vanessa to Irvin, Manny, and Ofelia, all the seniors felt the pressure that the last year of high school brought on.
College applications, finals, high school events - if that wasn’t bad enough, we are now all competing for a solo at the competition only a couple of weeks away. A solo that would look incredible in anyone's college application.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants and took another deep breath as I adjusted my guitar strap.
For this being my senior year, I was not going to let the pressure get to me. Everything had to be perfect on my final year.
Aiden.
I took another deep breath and picked a couple of strings for my intro. The classroom grew quiet as I strummed the song that had been gnawing at me since my talk with Diana.
.
“Maybe I came on too strong.
Maybe I waited too long.
Maybe I played my cards -
Oh, just a little bit wrong?
Baby, I apologize for it.”
.
Why was this song stuck in my head and why did I pick it as my audition? Well, the answer was simple: Darren.
It had only been a few months since we had bumped into each other but I hadn’t felt such a strong attraction since … well, since him - since Aiden, my first crush and my very worst heartbreak.
.
“You're a mystery.
I have travelled the world-
There's no other girl like you.
No one - what's your history?
Do you have a tendency to lead some people on?
'Cause I heard you do, hm.”
.
Despite how different Aiden and Darren were, I couldn't silence the voices in my head telling me I was being lied to.
I knew Darren was different - I saw it in the warmth of his eyes - but my gut told me something wasn’t right.
Since even before my talk with Diana, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from thinking about that Emanon guy, Michael, either.
It was stupid, I know … but that was all my nervous heart could think of. It seemed like every time we all met up someplace, Darren and Michael always ended up disappearing together. Or was that just my crazy self imagining things?
.
“So don't call me baby
Unless you mean it.
And don't tell me you need me
If you don't believe it.”
.
God, it had been four years and the memory of how it ended with Aiden still haunted me. The first guy I had let myself feel something for .. and the first guy that broke my heart. I opened myself up to him and, after sneaking some of his dad's whiskey and fooling around with him at a sleepover, he turned on me. He was so ashamed of what we did he stopped talking to me. When I tried talking to him in public, he said I had taken advantage of him using mind games to get him to let me suck his dick. He called me all matter of names until our friendship was as dead as the flowers my mom had back on her kitchen table.
The worst part was that I believed him. I believed it was my fault. I believed I had been the one that took it too far. That made it easier for me to believe the other names my “friend” called me.
The sad thing was that I actually thought he was different.
I had trusted him. And then I found myself losing a friend I guess I never had.
Now all I could think about as I sang was Darren doing the same thing to me. I had asked him to go out with me and, despite him saying yes, all I could think about was him and Michael running around together behind my back.
I wasn’t stupid - I knew Darren had feelings for Michael from everything Diana told me.
Everyone had crushes.
And why wouldn’t he? Michael was extremely talented. He was sexy, he was smart, he was president of his choir. The guy was a knock-out. Here I was fighting tooth and nail for a stupid fucking solo.
What I was coming to terms now was that maybe Michael had feelings for Darren, too.
.
“So, let me know the truth
Before I dive right into you.
I could fall, or I could fly
Here in your aeroplane.
And I could live, I could die
Hanging on the words you say.”
.
I clenched my eyes as I sang the bridge to the chorus. Damn, all the emotions I thought I had buried four years ago seemed to bubble up in my throat like bile.
The last words Aiden ever said to me as we stood, alone, outside my old house were swirling around in my crowded head.
“Fuck off, man. I don’t want anything to do with you,” he had said.
“Aiden, wait.” I had pleaded.
“No, Drew.” I remembered the way he looked at me then, the kid I had been friends with for three years was so unfamiliar to me. “Look, I was just curious. I’m not gay. Whatever you’re feeling for me - I’m not. And it’s weird." I remember the way he avoided my eyes, like I was a crumpled piece of paper on the side of the road - not his hurting friend. "I don’t want to be seen with you anymore.”
Tears in my eyes, I had looked back at him and begged him to reconsider. “Aiden, we’ve been best friends since the third grade-”
“I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Andrew! Leave me alone!”
Those were the last words he said to me before he ran off. I don’t know who he told but I was outed to the whole basketball team within the next couple of days. From there, the news spread to the football team, the band, the choir … everyone in school had found out I was gay for Aiden by the end of the week.
I found out then that kids can also be cruel.
I don’t know what the story circling around was anymore but a few kids started teasing me.
Some stopped talking to me altogether.
A number of football players whistled or catcalled me when I walked down the halls.
None of it got to me as much Aiden’s coldness had. The empty hole left where our friendship once was only grew wider and deeper with every passing day. It wasn’t salt thrown on a wound - it was a goddamn chainsaw to my neck.
I was only able to handle it for another week before I asked my parents to move me from that campus. I started the second half of my 8th grade at a different school and had shed my troubled past like a snake sheds their skin. I met Diana my freshman year and never looked back.
Now, years later, Aiden’s betrayal tormented me again.
.
“And I've been known to give my all.
Sitting back, looking at every mess that I made.
So, don't call me baby
Unless you mean it.”
.
Tears welled in my eyes as I recalled how awful my best friend had been to me. So now I knew that, despite what I felt for Darren, there would always be a part of me that I’d keep close to my chest. A part of me constantly afraid of the same betrayal. If suspicion was what it took for me not to get hurt like that again, then suspicion was my friend. That’s why it had been so easy for me to say yes to being Diana’s beard. It made it easier not to get burned when you had someone to hide behind.
.
“Don't tell me you need me
If you don't believe it.
Let me know the truth.
Before I dive right into you.
Before I dive right into you.”
.
I may have finished my song, but the dark and cynical spiral I was beginning to go down was not done yet. And from what I know about spirals is that if you follow them down long enough, they don’t end. They only get tighter and tighter, infinitely.