games ▹ muke

0.9 - practice

The next day Calum kept asking me about those messages until I got really frustrated and told him it wasn’t his business. I didn’t want to tell him about Luke, and not because I was afraid he would make fun of me or something. Knowing Calum, he’d probably be the opposite and try to set me up with him, which I also didn’t need.

No, the thing was I didn’t want to tell anyone about Luke. I felt weird for being like that, but that’s just how I felt. I couldn’t imagine how I would explain having this weird connection with a random guy over a videogame on the internet. I didn’t want to have to explain it. I felt better because of it, so why would I have to tell someone?

Plus, I didn’t want to share him. I was okay with sharing pretty much everything I had with Calum – ever since we started being friends in year 7, we’d been sharing food, money, music, even phones. But this, what I had with Luke – it was special, it was only mine. And I was scared that if Calum found out how cool Luke was, he’d want to talk to him too. And after that it would be a lost cause, because that was an unspoken truth: Calum was better than me. And of course Luke wouldn’t want me if he knew Calum. I knew I sounded so fucking selfish, but I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t fucking help it.

So Calum got a little offended at school and I wasn’t going to apologize, but that was the thing with Calum: he was my only friend. We’d been through so much together and he knew me like nobody else, I couldn’t afford losing him.

And there I was, apologizing for my outbreak after the last class and making sure he was still going to my place today. He told me that he was going to get his guitar and that he’d come to my place in like an hour. I just nodded and we went our separate ways, his being to the parking lot because one of his friends of the football team offered him a ride, and mine being a lonely walk across West Sydney’s suburbs.

I got a text from Calum half an hour later, saying he was leaving his house, so I ordered a pizza and searched for All Time Low chords again, but I couldn’t help it and went to the gaming site. I knew Luke wouldn’t be on today, because last night he said he was going out of town with his parents to visit someone and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, so there was no reason for me to wait, but I did anyway. I was fucking whipped.

I heard the front door open and hurried to close the gaming site window, because a minute later Calum strolled into my room with a guitar in one hand and a pizza box in the other.

“I met your pizza guy outside,” he explained, settling the pizza box down, and got out his guitar.

We tried out different songs, and Calum got some of them right, but it still wasn’t that great. He probably realized it himself because an hour later he said, consuming the last slice of pizza:

“You know what, I suck. I should practice more, and I’ll ask someone to teach me. I want to be able to play this.”

“Yeah, you do that,” I told him, and he got up to throw out the empty box and to go pee. He left the guitar on his chair, and I kept looking at it, contemplating if I should try it or not. Finally I gave in, quickly grabbing the guitar and putting my fingers on the strings.

First of all, it hurt. I was completely unprepared for the strings to dig into my skin, leaving red marks, and I didn’t know it would take this much effort to actually play something. I tried a few chords, even though I had trouble changing them, I tried just plucking the strings and then I realized I was so, so much worse than Calum. There was no way this was going to work.

“Succeeding much?” Calum said from the doorway where he had been standing for god knows how long. I quickly put the guitar down, feeling my cheeks heat up in embarrasement.

“Nah, just goofing around.”

I was right. I was not good at anything.