13. The Quiet Things No One Ever Knows #2
He'd wait. Maybe he’d introduce Dustin to them at Thanksgiving, that was only a couple of weeks away.
Or maybe Christmas break? Two whole weeks off school seemed like a good time to ease Dustin into the idea.
Or maybe at his parents’ New Year’s party?
That way they’d be too distracted with the other guests to ask embarrassing questions.
Actually, he’d probably just wait until Prom night. That sounded like a much better plan.
“Oh no Carter, he’s overthinking again,” his mother’s overly-saccharine voice got James out of his own head, “maybe I should get my notepad, and we can move to the foyer for an impromptu session?”
James grimaced at the thought, but thankfully his dad spoke up for him.
“I don’t think you need to put your psych degree to use here Malaya,” he chuckled, “maybe he just needs some space,”
“Yes! Exactly, thanks dad,” James said, bolting up from his seat like an inmate that had been miraculously freed from death row, “he could absolutely use some space right now,”
James didn’t even wait to hear if they protested; he abandoned his salad and headed up to his room as quickly as he could, finally exhaling once the door closed and he was alone with his plants.
Having a therapist for a mother was great sometimes… until she was constantly trying to diagnose him and turning simple conversations into fucking appointments. It was like she viewed him more like a client than a son half the time; like a puzzle to be solved instead of a person to be loved.
It’d always been bad, but it had gotten considerably worse after that car accident.
He empathized with her, of course; she’d almost lost her son that night, and the noticeable shift in his behavior after his recovery was clearly some kind of trauma response.
Sure, he told himself that he was just taking life by the short hairs, refusing to waste his second chance…
but how true was that really? Was it really a zest for life, or was he just trying to distract himself so he didn’t focus on the near-death experience and go insane?
…Fuck. Now he was doing it to himself.
“Alright, relax,” he told himself, flopping down on his bed and grabbing his stash of weed from under his pillow. He just needed to get high, wait for Toonami to air so he could catch up on Naruto, and maybe text Dustin in the meantime. That always did the trick.
However, his entire body locked up with anxiety the moment he moved to grab his wraps from the dresser…
Rain started pounding against the window, even though he explicitly remembered his parents saying it wasn’t supposed to rain all week, and they’d be taking advantage of it for a hike.
His eyes drifted down to his bright green ring, and it suddenly felt a thousand times heavier now that he was burdened with the knowledge of what these freak storms were all about.
Slowly, he made his way to the window; silently hoping that if he could just look outside and see that it was just a normal rainstorm, that it would calm his nerves a bit. But of course, nothing could ever be that simple…
What he saw when he peeked around the curtain was enough to scare him completely shitless; a tall, broad-shouldered boy standing in his backyard, his hair and clothes absolutely drenched… and staring right up at James’s window.
Before his undignified shriek could find its way out of his mouth, a flash of lightning made him flinch for the briefest of moments. But in that time, the boy was gone; like he’d just been a figment of James’s over-stressed and under-stoned imagination.
“What… in the motherFUCK… was THAT?!”
PART III: CHRIS YING
Chris should’ve been in his element.
Hitting free throws in the school’s deserted gym like he was living on easy mode, with the pounding bass from 2Pac’s “Ambitionz Az A Ridah” thundering through the overhead speakers… on a normal day, he would’ve been on cloud fucking nine.
But it wasn’t a normal day. Not a single day had been normal since Sima Yao pulled them into his weird pocket dimension and thrust the literal weight of the motherfucking world on their shoulders.
The days had been even less normal since his little bisexual faux pas at James’s place a while back.
He’d been trying to figure out how to voice those feelings for so long. Sitting up in his room, rehearsing how he’d tell Dustin and Bailey about it. Bracing himself for the laughter he logically knew would never come from them… only for him to word vomit the truth like a premature ejaculation.
Sure, they accepted him. And for the most part, very little had changed about the group dynamic, especially now that Leo Chang was dead and everyone had much bigger fish to fry.
But it was deeper than that. He was supposed to be in control of the moment; that’s what all that fucking preparation was for. How the hell was he gonna lead this team if he fumbled his bisexual bomb like a god damned rookie missing a layup?
And then of course there was the pink-haired elephant in the room; Bailey.
He knew he liked her. He always had. From the moment Dustin brought her home in Freshman Year when they got paired up for a class project, Chris had been lowkey spiraling over her chaotic ass.
Her smile, the bubble-gum scent of that perfume from Claire’s she loved so much, and most of all, her absolute refusal to be something easy for him to digest. He couldn’t charm her with ease, or even really figure out what made her tick for the longest time.
At first, he was convinced she couldn’t stand him, but he’d caught the way her eyes lingered on his body when she and Dustin used to wait for him to finish practice. He’d noticed how prickly she got whenever he openly bragged about his most recent conquests; jealousy barely disguised as disgust.
He'd never pursued her before because he didn’t wanna shake up the dynamic too much. She was Dustin’s best friend, firmly in his twin’s territory; rocking the boat too much could destabilize that delicate balance.
And that was to say nothing of what his teammates would say about a girl like her.
He couldn’t give less of a fuck what they thought of her, but if one of them even breathed wrong in her direction, he’d be legally obligated to rip their head off their fucking shoulders.
So it was better to wait; at least until he could control the circumstances.
That’s what he’d told himself for years, but now that he fucked up the bisexual thing, he didn’t even know if she’d still want him at all.
Would she think he only liked her because she was a girl with a dick?
Like some fucked up “best of both genders” bullshit?
It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like that.
But now he wouldn’t have the chance to make that clear on his own terms first.
The sound of the ball bricking hard against the backboard was the only thing loud enough to tear him out of his thoughts.
“Fuck,” he practically spat. He never missed a free throw, even in the most intense games he’d ever been in.
Maybe it was a sign to pack it in and head home.
It had to be dark by now, and he didn’t need to embarrass himself in front of this invisible crowd any further.
He put the basketballs back on the rack, grabbed his gym bag, and popped his 2PAC CD out of the sound system.
As he pulled the gym key out of his bag, he smiled as the memory of how he managed to get it found its way to the forefront of his mind.