A Little Bit... A Little More. (Huh?)

Type: Chapter 22

The few days that followed that fateful night were arduous. It took a heavy mental and physical toll on me. It was hard to be around Tharn but I couldn't avoid him since we lived together. I cursed myself over and over again for choosing to move out early with Tharn at the thought of it. Had I not pushed to move out and listened to my father, I wouldn't have found myself in the predicament I was in. I decided to be scant around Tharn till I could exist in the same space with him without feeling the pain that assaulted my entire being every time I realised he didn't want me. I couldn't keep up my charade in front of him because I was too weak, mentally and physically.

I decided to join more club activities so I could stay at the university for as long as possible. I assisted the team captain after the football practice everyday to sort the equipment and the locker rooms till close up. Techno was miffed at me and accused me of trying to steal his position as the future captain on account of how I was buttering up the current captain, but didn't actually join me to help out after practice. I didn't know what I was to do with that boy. I could feel I had to literally lift him up on my shoulders to push him into actually becoming captain.

I couldn't tell him the reason why my interest in the club suddenly increased when I used to miss a few days of practice every week on account of not wanting to actually join the team officially. I had just joined the club to have some physical activity to do. Talking about my newly discovered feelings for my flatmate and best friend with no real solution out of it didn't seem like something I'd want to divulge to him.

I figured out within that week that I had been unconsciously looking for ways to keep my body occupied so my thoughts don't meander long before I became aware of my feelings for Tharn. I realised that had been my main motivation to stay in the football club even though I was hardly interested in inter college matches. I always ran away from figuring out my thoughts because I always found it uncomfortable. Now that reality had crashed on me like an anvil, it was no longer keeping the dam of my thoughts from bursting from the years of letting them pile up.

Since being at the club had helped me back when I didn't know I was doing it, I increased my time there further to help me run away from my thoughts, although they never really left me anymore. But being there kept me from being around Tharn so I accepted it. I even started staying after the captain left to run laps of the field till my legs were sore and my lungs cried out for air so I could tire myself out to a point where I'd just pass out as soon as I reached home.

It had worked for a good week because I'd hardly have the energy to talk to Tharn the few times he was awake when I came back. I'd just shower and pass out immediately. It was working out great.

Or so I thought.
-

Tharn went home on the weekend leaving me with my thoughts in the empty studio that we shared together which was littered with memories of us and I felt all of that repression crash on my head anew. This time a little worse because it was a rain of anvils on every sense within my body. 

Since I had already opened the floodgates of my thoughts, I didn't hold back from accepting them anymore. I figured it would be for the best to understand, accept and move on from them instead of letting them sit in the dark recesses of my mind for them to eventually cause another one of the episodes I was currently going through.

I looked at the portrait I made of him and recalled the day I discovered it. I remembered that my heart rate had picked up to see it framed and displayed but I had just assumed it was because of embarrassment. I understood now that it was because I felt special because of how Tharn treated the first thing I made for him. That was probably a turning point in my feelings for him getting deeper.

I tried to think about when it had started, to make sense of it in my head. I looked around to help me jog my memory a bit. That's when I spotted our laundry hanging in the balcony. That brought back the specific memory of the time I had discovered the pile of laundry that Tharn had washed and folded for me when I had been avoiding him after finding out he was gay. I remember how the guilt travelled down my chest, leaving icy jabs in its wake as I looked at Tharn's sleeping form on the bed. I realised that that is probably when it began. That was the first time I felt something stirring within me for him that reared its head in the form of guilt for inadvertently hurting him.