The Delivery Boy(boyxboy)

Chapter 17: Chemistry Tests and Bad Poetry.

Call all the ladies out
They're in their finery
A hundred jewels on throats
A hundred jewels between teeth
Now bring my boys in
Their skin in craters like the moon
The moon we love like a brother, while he glows through the room

Dancin' around the lies we tell
Dancin' around big eyes as well
Even the comatose they don't dance and tell

We live in cities you'll never see on screen
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things
Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams
And you know, we're on each other's team

I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air, so there
I'm kinda older than I was when I revelled without a care, so there

-

Axel

It was harder to say sorry than I thought.

Brooke and I – we didn't do sorry's. They created issues and it wasn't like we didn't have enough of those. Sorry wasn't just a word. It was an emotion. It meant that yes, there was a problem and yes, we would try to solve it. And maybe that was what we were both so afraid of, of getting into the mess of our lives and destroying every single façade we had built - of leaving it all to the flames and starting from scratch.

When you don't know where the problem begins, you can't know where to solve it. When you don't know what's broken, you can't know what you have to fix.

And as I looked at the girl in front of me, I was speechless. I noticed all the small details about her I hadn't quite noticed before. How her hair fell over her shoulders like the waves of the sea, how the freckles on her collarbone peeked out through her shirt, how the scar she had gotten in a childhood accident still showed faintly on her left ear, how a vein popped out on the column of the throat, how her glasses seemed to be too big and to square-y for her face, how her eyes seemed to be too kind and too hollow for her body. Every minuscule detail I had unconsciously memorized about her over the years replayed in my mind and suddenly, I felt my throat close up like a fist.

"Axel," She said, in a scolding manner, "Are you listening? You need to explain this to me. You know I'm shit at Chemistry."

Snapping out of my haze, I stared at the Chemistry textbook open in front of her. I opened my mouth once and then shut it again, unprepared for everything that was rushing inside my head.

"Axel," Her voice was gentler this time; I could feel her eyes on me. "Are you alright?"

I looked at her again. There she was – my best friend sitting right there in front of me with a pencil tucked in her hair and her eyebrows knitted together. The only person who had ever chosen to stand by me despite everything. And then here I was, treating her like absolute shit. Being afraid wasn't an excuse.

"You know," I pressed my pen against my throat, almost as if forcing the words out, "I....eh.... hung out with Xavier yesterday."

Just say the words. Say sorry. Get over with it.

"Really?" She put the book down on the table, and I didn't even bother to look up. I often prided myself at the ability to look through people's expression, but Brooke was an exception. When she wanted to, she could close up like a book. "When?"

"After school," I could still visualize it so well. The way the light of the café had ghosted a warm glow on his face and the way he had handed me his jacket with a smile. It was almost all too much. "He ....eh... gave me some of his swearing therapy."