Elia (EDITING)

Chapter 30

"You have grown, I see... still small but better."

I follow where the voices are coming from.

"No, I think he is smaller than the last time we saw time, before your mom died." 

"Ci dispiace davvero, amico. Eravamo giovani e cosi stupidi. Venendo a pensarrci... Avremmo potuto essere buoni amici se ci provassimo." (We're really sorry man. We were young and stupid. Coming to think of it... We would have been good friends if we tried.)

 The voice seems to be closer now, so I keep walking until I see the boys or men I saw earlier. As soon as I do I feel myself boil with anger, just as I am about to jump on them I hear a familiar laugh, then I stop. One of the guys notices me making all of them to. I am so confused, Elia is standing in front of them with a smile on his face, that smile immediately fades when he sees me.

"Nathaniel?" he shifts uncomfortably, "What are you doing here?"

I look at the intimidating dudes all looking at me. I take a moment to study Elia, he doesn't seem to be scared or hurt.

"I saw you... umm... I thought they..."

"...going to hurt him? Uh, no we are done with that... we were just young and judgmental." "I'm Francesso, that over there is Matteo and Gabriele."

I just look at them awkwardly... so they did used to hurt Elia. Just that is enough to make me feel uneasy around them. Elia is chewing on his bottom lip, and that itself is making me lose it.

"Questo e strano." (This is awkward). One of the guys say. What does that mean? i mean, it is so rude to decide to speak in a foreign language around someone who has no idea what it means!

"I guess we'll leave you two alone... Guys let's go." They leave us just the two of us standing there. For some reasons I feel like I should apologize for what I said earlier, I do like Elia, but on the other hand, I am afraid to accept the fact that I might be gay. So I had to lie to him, and I want to apologize for that. I don't even like Julia, worse after she said! i don't tolerate Elia, at all!

"Elia?" he stops chewing his bottom lip and look over at me with his eyes wide. It does nothing but to make my stomach feel so uneasy. "Yeah?"

"Are we alright?" I point between him and I. He smiles and nods. I realize he doesn't have those silver balls on his teeth. When I am about to question him he shrugs, "I removed it." I nod, but I want to tell him it looks nice on him, he shouldn't have taken it off, but who am I to say that?

"It looks nice on you..." I just give up and tell him. He looks down and blushes, nodding. "I know... thanks."

I snicker at his confidence, I look around to see it's only us circled with abandoned old booths. "You know?"

Elia does the same too, he looks around us seeming to observe our surroundings. He looks back at me and rubs is palms on his sweat pants. He nods.

"So, you wanna go back there... or we can just sit here? You know... it's a bit loud back there?"

This side it's a bit better, the music is coming from a distance, making it a lot easier to hear eac other here.

"Yeah, yeah... we can sit here." Elia says in a high-pitched voice. We both sit on the cold, kind-of-wet loan, but no one says anything about it. We lean on the other booth, sitting side by side.

I think five minutes go by and we don't speak. The only thing we can hear is some funky song playing at the grounds. "I never realized I missed this place before I came here."