Chapter Fourteen

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'Hey,' I said, stuffing my hands into my pockets, awkward but resolute.

'Hey,' he replied, while Rachel glanced between us nervously and backed away without saying anything.

'Let's go somewhere and talk,' I suggested, and he nodded.

We walked in silence towards the pebble beach, gravitating there kind of naturally now. I was trying to fix up some sort of speech in my head that wouldn't make me sound like a total asshole, but it was pointless; whichever way you looked at it I was being a total asshole, and there was no point in pretending I wasn't. Halfway there I gave up and glanced at Jackson surreptitiously out of the corner of my eye; he was frowning slightly at the ground and seemed to be debating something in his mind as well.

We settled ourselves onto the pebbles and I braced myself, taking a breath to dive into the horrible thing I had to do, but he beat me to it.

'So, obviously, we're breaking up,' he said, looking me right in the eye.

My jaw dropped. I hadn't been expecting that. Jackson frowned and laughed simultaneously.

'Come on, Tyler. You can't be that surprised.'

I still couldn't manage to say anything, so I just shook my head slightly and continued to stare at him.

'Look, I want to say that I'm really, really sorry about what happened last night, when I kissed Sally, that was really fucked up and I'm not proud of myself at all. I drank too much, and smoked too much, and did a really stupid, childish thing. That's not who I am and I feel terrible, but only a little bit, because I'm pretty sure you and Conor have been screwing around behind my back for our entire relationship.'

If possible, my jaw dropped further. How the fuck did he know?

Jackson gave me a skeptical look. 'You're not that good at hiding it,' he told me. 'But regardless, it doesn't excuse what I did, that was never part of the plan, I took it way too far.'

I was shaking my head, trying to dislodge some of the hundreds of questions buzzing around in there. 'Wait,' I finally managed to say. 'What?'

Jackson grinned sort of sheepishly at me. 'I mean, I guess I was pretty annoyed when I first figured it out, but mostly for the past few weeks I've just been having fun with it.'

'What?' I demanded again.

'Okay, so here's the thing. This is the first time I've ever been cheated on and I know I haven't exactly handled it in a conventional way. The only reason I haven't, I dunno, shouted at you and dumped you and told you what a piece of shit you are is because I'm pretty sure you actually really do care about me as a person, you're just a really shitty boyfriend. And it's kind of plain to see that you and Conor are supposed to be together, and I know Rachel pushed you into dating me when you didn't really want to. What I'm saying is, I can empathise with your position, but I also wasn't about to let you get away with stringing me along, so I've been fucking with you for a couple of weeks. Making you feel bad for not wanting to meet my friends and straight up using me for that play thing. It was kind of gratifying to pluck on your puppet strings and watch you dance. But last night I fucked up way more than you so I think we're kind of even now?'

This was all coming as such a huge shock to me that I couldn't do much more than agree with him.

'Right. So here's the thing though. I think we can be friends. I meant what I said before, about loving you as a friend. And I think you love me as a friend as well. And I think you'll be a much better friend to me than you were a boyfriend. At least, I'm willing to try, if you are.'

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