Take my heart

Chapter VII

He forfeits sleep in favor of working, reading, catching up on TV series and playing video games. It's not even because he's trying to be an idiot, but he can't help it. Truth is, sleep is the one evading him since the day Ash and Caesar left for Prague.

His mother asks, one night when she's back from work, where Caesar is. When he answers, she looks for a moment like she's about to ask him 'and what are you doing here?'.  Luckily, she thinks better of it, and only pats the top of his head with a lopsided smile.

Connor is questioning everything he thought he knew. How could he not realize Caesar liked him? Had he been blind to all the signs, the little tell-tale gestures that he prides himself in knowing so well?

It's poisoning him, breathing and moving in this weird universe were Caesar could be hurt by him. It really feels like poison, one that burns its way down his throat every time his mind falls back on the subject. The texts keep haunting him, it won't take long for him to go insane.

Although he's keeping it together well enough, for now. His friends don't comment on anything weird when they meet up for lunch one day at a prestigious restaurant. He got a reservation through flirting with the chef, an endeavor for which Caesar would be proud, yet the others reprimand him.

"Fancy seeing you, bro," he tells Darren, while Adryan types away on his phone. "You've been missing in action for the past week, hanging out with Lee I guess."

Darren goes pink.

"Yeah, well. Here you have me. He'll be busy for a while now, has to take extra lessons because he failed half his classes." He finishes the statement throwing a weird finger gun gesture at Connor, who can't help but laugh.

"Ha, poor idiot," he says, grabbing his drink.

"Hey. Don't say that about my idiot boyfriend, it's rude."

That certainly is a way to make Connor choke. He almost spits out his soda, but manages to swallow it right before having a coughing fit.

"Your what?! Adryan! Did you hear that?!"

Adryan barely looks up from his phone.

"Huh? What?"

"Oh my god, leave Dawn alone for a second! Let her breathe, man, what the hell," Connor puts off Darren's situation in favor of scolding Adryan for his overbearing ways. "Pay some damn attention to your friends, asshat."

After some insisting, Adryan finally puts his phone down, and Connor shares with him the news. To his chagrin, the idiot doesn't seem half as excited.

"About time," is all he says, and fist bumps Darren before going back to texting his girlfriend.

Connor gapes at them, scandalized.

"Well- yes about time, bloody hell, but still. This is big news! Our baby! Finally got a boyfriend!" He messes Darren's hair with a wide smile. "Sure, it's a weird pick, but whatever butters your egg-roll I guess."

Darren rolls his eyes at him, though it doesn't take much pestering before he's telling them how it all went. In the end, even Adryan is paying attention, enough to complain about every single move of Darren's.

"Let's make a toast," Connor prompts, raising his glass. "For Darren finally losing his virginity."

"Oh my god!"

As it is, it's the only break from his thoughts he gets in the rest of the month.

Something unexplained drives him closer to Ali. On the excuse of being bored without his other half —a weird thing to say now— he takes her out for coffee, shopping, even to the movies. And she comes along every time, unquestioning and pliant.

He can admit she's rather pretty. It's the way she styles her long hair, maybe, soft waves framing her round face. It might also be her clothes, always warm, fluffy and in pastel colors. Or the way her lip gloss glints with the movement of her lips, or her long eyelashes batting at him when they're close, or her tiny hand in his as they walk from one place to the next. She smells like peach and strawberry, she laughs shy and quietly.

And she makes him feel nothing.

They're standing at her front door one night, after their fourth date, and she's looking at him all starry eyed, nose red from the cold. Connor takes her hand and makes to kiss her knuckles, like he's done every other time. They're close enough their white puffs of breath meet halfway; he doesn't miss the way her eyes fall to his lips. Something changes his mind, he takes a step forward and stops long enough to watch her eyelids flutter closed.

It's rather cliche, they kiss at the girl's doorstep on a snowy night, everything tastes like powdered sugar and golden syrup. It's also quite chaste, because Connor knows boundaries, and an innocent creature like Ali couldn't take any more for a first kiss. He lingers for a second, imprinting in his mind the softness of her lips and the shaking of her tiny hand in his.

She's adorable, that much he can't deny. Porcelain white and smooth, eager to take form under his fingers, unquestioning, pliant. He could settle for this. The idea falls on him with snowflake weight as Ali leans into the kiss. He could settle for this, could kiss her again, and once more, and maybe a few times after that. He doesn't hate it.

Pulling away gently, Connor feels something like disappointment pooling on his stomach. No sparks, no electricity, no fire, no butterflies. The kiss ends and it makes him feel nothing else.

He and Caesar kissed when they were thirteen, like friends do. It was a stupid idea, but it made sense in their thirteen years old reasoning, muddled with the embarrassment from awkward first kisses with other people. Without meaning to, he'd been wondering how Caesar's crooked front teeth worked around the whole ordeal, intrigued enough to be caught. 'Let's try it', was Caesar's suggestion, and they didn't need more than a glance to know they were talking about the same thing.

So they tried it—it was as comfortable as a kiss with a friend could be: without the pressure to impress or the fear to humiliate themselves, there was only warmth and the tingly sensation on their mouths. As it turned out, Caesar's teeth worked just fine into the situation, though they did cause a funny feeling when they grazed Connor's lower lip.

Which is not at all the right thing to be thinking about when he's with a girl. Connor shakes himself back to reality and finds Ali smiling at him, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Guilt shoots through his chest like an arrow.

"Goodnight," she says, turning around and going inside without a second glance.

Maybe he just likes bolder girls, Connor muses on his way home. You know, girls that will smirk at him, flick their hair, lick their red pigmented lips. Girls that will curl their arms around his neck, draw him in with a hand on his nape, open their mouths to let his tongue in, let themselves be pinned to a wall. Girls that will play, not expect love.

So why does he insist on Ali?

The ugly truth befalls him as he flops on his couch with a groan. It's not about her, not even about him or his own satisfaction. It's about the texts that said 'I might be falling for him' on his best friend's phone, and said best friend needing to take time away from him in another damn country. It's about being poisoned with the fact that he's hurting Caesar, and he has to do anything to stop it.

'I might be falling for him' is not final, not a death sentence. Instead, it implies he will if prompted, if allowed. So Connor won't allow him. He will stomp out every spark of hope and make it clear that he likes someone else, that he's not a possibility. Even if it means settling for someone that doesn't make him feel a thing. It doesn't matter what he feels, in the end. His only need is to keep Caesar safe.

That's why he takes Ali out for two more dates—rather nice, if he can say so himself, with ice skating and pet names and hand-holding—before asking her to be his girlfriend. He'll tell Caesar about it later and the message will be clear. Then he'll have the rest of his trip to Prague to get over his feelings. Ali accepts, of course she does, lowers her gaze and lets herself be kissed once or twice. Everything is child's play after that.