Straight Boys

To Be Straight

Andrew's POV

What's this emotion called, one that rises in the pit of your stomach and bubbles up out of you through a white smile and crinkled eyes? It develops at the sight of someone you've barely known, yet somehow you feel like you've known them for far longer.

Because it sure as Hell wasn't an emotion I was too familiar with in the state I was in because of the accident.

It felt like happiness; pure, untainted joy that was a big contrast from the constant sorrow that flanked from the left side of my brain to the right side at all times. The feelings I was having weren't negative, depressing me to the point of self destructing like I did that one time. They were actually nice to feel.

And I only felt them with Zachary Rogers.

I was fucking amazed, to say the least, and I started the think, like I knew I would at some point.

Thinking is a thing to do when you find yourself in the same position that I'm sinking further and further into. Thinking was capable of pushing someone like me into a hole I couldn't ever reach myself out of.

But that was alright, I suppose because if I didn't think, then I wouldn't know a thing, wouldn't be able to know anything. Knowing how I felt was key, if I had to be honest, or it was rather the key to unlocking my pent up anxieties and releasing them.

Or feeding their starved masses into obesity.

Because that's what I was really all about. At this point anyway. I was the embodiment of anxiety because my sister may be alive, but she wasn't well, not fully at least, and my mom wasn't well. She definitely wasn't living, but not dead, so I guess there's that. Yet, I was anxious nowadays, always anxious and angry and feeling sorry for myself; and the only person that was astonishingly able to sedate those raging explosions waiting to happen was Zachary Fucking Rogers.

He unbelievably made me happy, and oh was that the scariest shit I could ever think about.

I thought about this as Zachary and I started leaving the hospital and down the steps in what seemed like a walk downtown. I was going to check on my sister, but I knew she'd be asleep and my dad was there. He hadn't left the hospital this morning, but forced me to after ungrounding me. He had said to me, "You aren't grounded anymore, so to stay like that I suggest you listen to me very carefully from now on. And I'm telling you now to go home and get some rest, come back when you've actually had a good night's rest."

I didn't fight him. I didn't want to anymore.

Besides, at that point I was just exhausted. His call had worn me out. That whole week had worn me out.

But I had a feeling these next few weeks were going to be better. Hopefully.

After we had walked a ways away from the hospital, Zachary finally decided to talk again. "So. . ." his voice was far less excited sounding now, and it was better. He may have been becoming a good friend, but that didn't mean he was any less annoying.

"So. . ." I whistled back, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. I barely felt it, but my lips stretched by themselves into a slight smile at the way he seemed to be thinking. His head was tilted and his eyes studied the ground beneath our moving feet, the irises cruising around and around in circles like they were searching for something in a beat up Pontiac across American terrain. But still, I could see nothing underneath the mud puddles that gave away those thoughts.