Unconditional Validation

Chapter 11

Finishing as one of the people who were done before everyone else, I gave the teacher my quiz, and then sat back down. I started scrolling through social media while waiting for everyone else to finish. However, while waiting, there was this gnawing feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn't put it into words of what that was. I brushed it off at first, but when the teacher was reading out the answers because everyone finished, it was growing more and more. Shooting my hand up, I asked if I could quickly go to the bathroom. She let me, so I quickly went to the nearest men's bathroom there was. On the way, that feeling was growing more and more.

When I reached the bathroom, I instantly knew that something was wrong. Tyler, he had tears pouring down his face, which was kind of red. My heart aches every time I see him upset. I want him to always be happy because I know how hard it is to keep a very public image, and he deserves to be happy.

"Tyler?" I asked softly, while I walked slowly over to him. He looked up quickly into the mirror so he could still see me.

"Are you doing okay?" I continued asking in a soft voice. Tyler just shook his head no slowly while his tears kept falling.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I placed my hand onto his shoulder lightly so he knew I'm still here. He shook his head no again. I felt really bad for him.

"Do you-", I paused thinking of what might happen if he reacted to what I was about to ask him. He turned around to face me because I didn't finish my sentence with a bit of confusion. I really wanted him to feel okay, it wasn't fair to see him upset.

"Do you want me to give you a hug?" I asked with a reassuring smile.

Tyler looked nervous for a second before nodding his head. I walked over to him and closed the distance between us with an embrace. After a bit of him crying into my chest, he looked at me, and I wiped away his tears from his face. I stroked his hair for a bit as well to comfort him.

"I'll be here for you man, even when you feel stressed out or hopeless, okay?" I said softly with a smile.

"O-Okay", Tyler mumbled a bit.

I hugged him for what seemed like hours. Even though I wanted to embrace him for the rest of the day, it was interrupted by footsteps coming from the bathroom corridor. Tyler and I quickly let go from each other because we didn't want to be judged, of course. While Tyler was quickly drying his eyes, I looked over to the bathroom entrance, and low and behold it was him. The guy who ousted the triplets, Killian. Tyler gasped, as did Killian as well. The bathroom became really quiet for a second because of how awkward it was.

"O-Oh, hey Tyler", Killian stumbled over his words.

I turned towards Tyler, and I saw how terrified he was. I was about to ask him if he was okay, but he just quickly darted out of the bathroom. Killian went about his business, and when he came out of the stall, he was surprised to see that I was still there. I just crossed my arms and shook my head at him in disappointment.

"What?" Killian asked me with a mixture of bluntness and confusion.

"You know what", I started to say. I needed to keep my anger from bubbling inside of me, so I slowly breathed to calm down.

"Look, I know what I did was wrong, but-" Killian was about to apologize before I cut in.

"But, what?!" I got a bit louder, "You know that Tyler's career and normal life can't be mixed! What did you do?"

"I-I did it anyway", Killian looked defeated a bit.

"Yeah, you did", I glared at him with a fire burning in my eyes.

"Justin, I-I'm sorry", Killian started fidgeting his thumbs, "It's jus-". I cut him off again.

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to. Also, I know what happened this past summer and I'm sorry that it happened, but you can't put misery onto everyone because of it! Look at what happened!" I exclaimed while still giving him a glare in my eyes. I saw that there were tears forming into his eyes, I couldn't look into his eyes.