Raphael /BoyxBoy/

||Eighteen||

That was the last one.

11AM (today)

We need to talk.

I'm assuming you're avoiding me because it consisted of the truth. But you have to talk to me about it. It's fucking with my mind, Jake. I can't tell Ian about it because he'll freak but he's starting to notice something is off.

I'm worried.

Please email back.

It was that draft I'd saved a while ago.

What felt like ages ago. Years, and decades ago.

But how?

I distinctively remembered saving that email as a draft.

Panic finally settled in and I scrambled for ways to fix this. To figure it out. To try to play it off as something else, but I was tired of lying to Nate. To everyone. To myself.

I knew the right thing to do was to tell him the truth.

I clicked on "new message" and began trying to explain.

That was an accident. I'm sorry.

You weren't supposed to know. I understand that you're upset because I lied. But everything else. It's complicated. But I no longer have feelings for you.

Try to forgive me?

Jake

I pressed send before I could chicken out, and fell back against the couch with a heaving sigh of disbelief and pure frustration.

I was doing okay. I was finally feeling like I was happy. Genuinely happy and content.

And it seemed like I'd lost all of that in one night.

The doorbell rang and I stood up. Scarlet must have forgotten her keys again, something I reminded her to constantly stop doing but never seemed to register with her.

But it was Raphael who stood behind the door, and I had to stare at him for a second before acknowledging his presence.

"Don't go to him," he said, quietly. "We can forget about tonight."

"Why now?" I asked. "Just seconds ago, that seemed to all you wanted of me and now..."

A thought crossed my mind, but I pushed it away.

He dug his hands into the pockets of his worn out jeans. The ones that ripped down his knees and revealed the bony structure of his legs. Sharp corners of his body, his elbows, his collar bones. I had to look away. His skin was illuminated now under the bright lights in the hallway, so different from how pale it looked in his apartment. Far less lonely, far more inviting. "I changed my mind, all right?"

"To what? You're pushing me away. Maybe I should stay away."

He glanced behind his back, looking almost hunched over now.

"It's too late anyway," I said. In place of what should have been his pleas to have me back. He should have been begging to have me back.

"What?"

"I checked my emails. I replied back to his."

He stared at me, and that's how I knew.

"How did you do it?"

He looked away. "I need to go."

"You're not going anywhere," I said, reaching to grab his arm but he staggered away. "You're staying right here and-"

"You gave me your laptop," he said. "Your email, your password."

"Fuck," I angrily ran my fingers through my hair. "Why the fuck would you do that?"

He shrugged. "I was jealous."

A sound like a half laugh escaped between my lips. "Jealous? That isn't jealousy. That's psychotic."

He clenched his jaw. Bitterly, he said, "I know."

I clenched my fists. "That's all you're going to say?"

"It was bothering me," he said. "That you were so obsessed with him. I thought it would do you good. But then you decided not to check your emails for a week and, and I just wasn't thinking."

"Please leave," I said.

Still avoiding my gaze, Raphael nodded once before walking away.

It took a while to processes the words that left my lips, and by the time I did, the hallway was empty again.

By the time I did, Raphael was making his way down the staircase, to the main door. Sliding behind the glass, out into the open night sky just like I had. Under the orange glow just as I had been. Walking alone to his apartment. More alone than he did before.

Good, I thought.

And fuck him. Even though that felt like a dozen paper cuts along the surface of my heart.

By the time I managed to detach my thoughts from him, I had an aching headache and fingers that cramped from holding them in fists for too long.

y i k e s

Hope no one's too disappointed lol <3