"Why did you break up with me?"
My voice gets completely caught in my throat and my lungs give out and I almost choke on the sudden rise of misery in my chest and I feel like someone's took a massive burning knife and stuck it in my chest and is just twisting it around the longer and longer I stay quiet—
Because it's the question I've been dreading my entire life. The question Chloe asked me, the question my moms asked, the question I asked myself.
The question I never had an answer to.
And my mind is racing miles a minute and the only thing that I can think of saying is absolutely offensively moronic.
So, I, Michael Mell, supreme moron, took the dumbass route.
"Woah. Haha, yeah, no! Let's not talk about that!" Was the only thing I managed to get out. I looked at Jeremy and he looked completely broken. It's like someone ripped all of the emotions out of him, said 'sorry' and then squeezed all of them back in, but they're all in the wrong places.
I bit my lip, thinking of a way to follow up the terrible thing I just said: "Unless you feel like, uh... a crush feeling on me or something because in that case we might have to talk about it—"
"No. I don't feel like that anymore."
My heart just kinda tears in half when I hear "anymore."
He speaks up again: "But... d-dating you gave me such an enormous self est-esteem boost, because I actually felt like maybe, somehow, some-someone actually liked me. And when you broke up with me it was obvious you never r-really did," his eyes got glassy, "I don't even think you wanted to be my friend, I-I j-just want to know why you asked me out if it was obvious you hated me from the start—"
"Woah, hey! Did you know that hippopotamus milk is pink? Like isn't that so cool? Crazy!" I say quickly, trying to change the topic, but executing said action quite poorly.
"Michael—"
"Woah, well would you look at the time? It's getting real late, probably past your bedtime, mister," I ticked him on the nose and he just looked completely devoid of any positive emotion, staring at me confused.
"It's only 2:30 and you've been here for fifteen minutes at most—"
"Oh yeah, I'm really really tired. Anyways, yeah, have fun with the cancer and stuff! I mean, like, uh, not that you can really have fun with canc—YOU KNOW WHAT, I AM GOING TO LEAVE NOW, GOODBYE. I AM DEPARTING." I close my eyes before I can see Jeremy's probably sad expression, and opened the door a bit more viciously that I expected, stepped out, and slammed it so loud that the paintings on the walls jumped.
I heard a heartbroken "Oh," from the other side of the door.
Oh my god, I am such a dick. What the fuck am I doing. I am going to have a fucking seizure. I shouldn't have listened to mama. I'm a fucking idiot.
I stared down at my hands, and my knuckles were a lot paler than usual, something they usually did when I was anxious. And oh boy was I on a near anxiety attack. I also realized that I couldn't really control my breathing, and I was hyperventilating and—
"Not go well?" I heard a voice. I almost snapped my neck from jotting my head towards them in fear.
"M-Mr. Heere?"
"Really? Call me Paul. Calling me Mr. Heere makes me feel all old," He shrugs, taking a sip of his can of beer.
"I might have made your son really sad—"
"Yeah I can tell," he lets out a short-lived chuckle, "It's alright, kiddo. Come to the living room, I'll get you something to drink, you seem really shaken up."
He's pretty calm talking to the guy that has been nothing but an unintentional dick to his child, which scared me into thinking that as soon as we got to the living room he'd unleash some kind of fresh hell onto me.
However, as I sat down on the couch, he didn't yell at me, he didn't even seem angry. He handed me a glass of water.
"So, uh, where's Mrs. Heere?"
"She left Jeremy and I a year ago."
"Oh," I'm great at unintentionally being a jerk, "Sorry."
"Nope, it's okay. It was for the best anyway."
"I'm sorry about..." I took in a deep breath, "Jeremy."
"It's okay, doctors say he has a good chance of surviving."
"Really? That's great," I force out a smile, "It must still be hard though."
"Mmh," he hummed out, "You must be Michael, right?"
I become temporarily paralyzed. Oh my god, Jeremy told him about me. If he knows who I am, why's he not yelling at me right now?
"Uhh, yeah, how'd you know?"
"Well, you look like how Jeremy described you did, but that was four years ago, so I guess things have changed, huh?"
"Jeremy talked about me?"
"Of course he did. That kid was head over heels for you."
I sighed. Great. Now I just feel one hundred times more guilty than I already did.
"Uh... I'm sorry for—"
"I don't know what you're apologizing for, but I guess I should owe you a thank you, even if it is a few years overdue," he sipped some more beer.
"Thank me? For what?"
He chuckled, "I don't know what it was about you, but the day you first asked him out he came back unbelievably happy, he started talking to me a lot more than usual. He was always a difficult kid. He never really found joy in anything besides flowers and drawing, and then suddenly you came along and he did nothing but smile for those next three years. I want to thank you for that."
I feel my heart clench. I can't believe I was such a big point in Jeremy's life, meanwhile I forgot that Jeremy even existed a few years ago. I guess I'm going to have to be the one to ask, "Did he tell you about the break up?"
"Oh yeah. Jeremy was never really vocal about things that made him upset though, so he just vaguely told me what happened, nothing more."
"Aren't you mad at me?"
"You were thirteen, Michael. No thirteen year old knows what they're doing. Don't beat yourself up over it," he gave me the typical sympathetic smile that mom always gave me.
I'm very tempted to tell him that I'm seventeen and I still don't know what I'm doing, but I don't generally think that's a very good icebreaker.
I stretched my mouth into a straight line, and realized that I probably should've shot Paul a smile, but I just couldn't muster the energy to.
"How do you talk to Jeremy? You've been his dad for seventeen years, right? How do you talk to him?"
Paul stared at me, and for the first time his smile wavered. He set down his can of beer on the coffee table and let out one last smile, "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I honestly, truly have no clue."
"But... y-you're his dad and—"
"Jeremy really is an enigma. When you talk to him, he seems like this straight forward kid, and that's always what I thought of my son: 'Honest, straight-forward, open about his life.' After he figured out he had cancer, all those walls ended up breaking down somehow. He had so many skeletons in the closet, my 'how was your day?' questions that used to be met with detail, were now just vague one-liners. It's like he wasn't even the same person anymore." He laughed, but there was no humour in it.
He continued: "I thought that because of his cancer, that was what was making him so upset, but no. All the smiles before he had cancer were fake, all the times he assured me he was really happy were lies. He just lost the energy to lie after he got cancer, I guess. So this is the real Jeremy. Everything before cancer struck him was just a facade. A hoax."
"And then it hit me, Michael. I don't know my son. I don't know this kid."
He took a deep breath, "Everything I thought I knew about him was just something my imagination created from the watered down things he told me, which all went through the Happy filter. If something wasn't happy, he wouldn't say it. He was bottled up with all of these negative emotions, Michael..."
And then Paul spoke one last time: "Pre-Cancer Jeremy wasn't Jeremy. It's what I wanted Jeremy to be."
All of his words were straight, monotone, like this was something that's been on his mind for years. Then his signature smile returned. He stood up, ruffled my hair, and went to the kitchen.
And I stood there.
And I stood there.
And I just stood there.
Because I thought over it for a minute and I asked myself the question: "Who is Jeremy Heere?"
I mean I was his technical boyfriend for three years, I must have a basic grasp on his personality right? I mean, he always said: "You can talk, I like listening." And personality is usually found out when a person talks. How do I know his personality if he barely talked?
And then it hit me.
I can't answer that question.
I don't know who Jeremy Heere is.
I don't think Jeremy knows who Jeremy Heere is.