Chapter 10
CHARLIE
Eleven and a half years ago…
“Myles?”
The quiet sound that had woken me cuts off at my whisper.
For a moment, I’m disoriented. Why am I on my floor?
And then I remember. Myles is in my bed and I’m down here, the opposite of how we’ve always slept when he sleeps over, because yesterday, at his football practice, some tank of a kid tackled him and broke two of his ribs and gave him a concussion.
I swear I’d felt a stab of pain go right through my own chest and head when he’d told me what happened.
Myles can try to claim it’s no big deal as much as he wants, but there’s not a chance he’s sleeping on my floor in that condition. And come to think of it, why, for the past three years, has he always ended up the one sleeping on the floor while I get my comfy bed? We could have traded off or…
Traded off. Period. The end.
Myles hasn’t answered though, and suddenly, I’m scared. He told me the doctor said his concussion is mild, but he was making these weird noises just now. Like he was breathing strangely— Ohmigod, his ribs. A punctured lung?
Sitting bolt upright, I’m reaching up, fumbling in the dark for the lamp beside my bed, when he finally answers in this hoarse, croaky sounding whisper that doesn’t make me one bit less worried.
“You okay, Charlie?”
Of course he’s asking me if I’m okay. He’s the one with the head injury and actual broken bones, and he’s asking me, when I don’t have a damn thing wrong with me, if I’m okay.
My hand makes contact with my lamp, and I flick on the switch.
He’s in my bed, turned away from me, lying on his side without the broken ribs.
I don’t want him to have to move, but I have to see his face. Until I do, I’m not going to be satisfied that he’s okay, no matter what he says.
Because of how the edge of my bed is pushed up against the wall, I won’t be able to get a proper look at him without actually climbing into my bed unless he rolls over. Which, again, I’m not about to ask him to do.
Normally, the desperate crush I’ve got on my best friend would give me pause, but worry for him is overriding anything else, and so without hesitation, I circle around to the foot of my bed and climb up into it alongside him, carefully leaving enough space between us that he (hopefully) won’t think I’m being weird.
We hug all the time, but me crawling into bed with him is… different.
Myles lets out this shuddery breath as I scoot up to take the empty pillow beside him, and in the lamp light, I can see what made the noise that woke me up.
He’s been crying. Even as he tries to wipe them away on the pillowcase, I can still see the dampness of tears tracked across his cheeks.
Clinging to his thick, black eyelashes ringing his tear-reddened eyes.
“Is your head hurting?” I’m fighting down panic and my own tears at seeing him like this. Myles’s pain is my pain, but this is worse than just that, because if his head’s hurting so much he’s crying—
Swallowing hard, he shakes his head, and I can breathe again.
“Only a little.”
“Your ribs?”
“Yeah. But they’re not too bad.”
“Then why—”
He turns his head, burying his face in the pillow.
Horribly long seconds tick by before, finally— “He’s so disappointed in me, Charlie. I can’t— I’m never going to be able to be what he wants me to be.”
A gasping sob shakes him, and it breaks me. Somewhere in the back of my head, I know there must be some voice of caution still screaming that he’ll be weirded out and realize how head-over-heels in love with him I am. That what I’m about to do is something friends don’t do. Not even us.
But right now, I couldn’t care less.
Scooting carefully so I don’t hurt him worse than he’s already hurting, I wrap my arm around the back of his neck, pressing my forehead against the side of his head and my body close along the side of his.
Every muscle in me is trembling with a mix of fear and adrenaline and sheer outrage.
Beneath my hand and against my body though, Myles just feels so right that there’s a part of me that’s already calming; settling into the fiction that this is how we’ve always been meant to be…
He doesn’t push me away.
For a moment, he just lies there, shaking with his tears, and then his hand slips around my back and tangles up in my shirt, tight and desperate. Holding me there with him like he’s scared I’ll be the one to let go.
It’s probably a good thing that my heart’s beating too hard, right up in my throat, to let any words out. If I were able to say anything, it would be hateful.
I’ve always hated how Myles’s dad pushes him. How he tries to force Myles into being this second version of himself that he’ll never be and that he’s never wanted to be. Right now though, the thoughts swirling through my mind are downright murderous.
“I ruined his life, just by being born,” Myles chokes, squeezing tighter against me, and I crumble.
There’s no holding back the tears spilling from my own eyes now. No stopping the way my fingers slip into his hair, stroking through his loose curls that are every bit as thick and silky as I’ve always imagined they’d be. Warm and good and beautiful, like everything about him.
The feel of their softness brings me back from my rage at his asshole of a father to him. Myles. The only thing that really matters.
“And now I can’t even be what he wants me to be.” He clings to me, tighter than ever.
“You didn’t ruin anything,” I whisper, fighting with everything I have not to cross the final line and press my lips to the side of his cheek that’s facing me. “You make the world right, Myles, just by being in it.”
The words feel like falling. Like giving up safety and just letting go.
“You don’t have to be him or whatever anyone else wants you to be. You’re already perfect. He loves you. I promise.”
I love you.
I could probably tell him. Friends tell each other they love each other, right?
Not in the dead of night, wrapped in each other’s arms, fingers stroking through soft, thick hair, lips a whisper away from warm, tempting skin, they don’t.
This, what we’re doing right now, already pushes the limits too far.
I’m too afraid that he’ll hear how much more than friendship I mean if I let those words out.
Besides, his breathing is already calming, like what I’ve said is enough to take the edge off his pain so he can start drifting toward sleep again, even as the two of us whisper back and forth in the darkness.