Living In Denial

3

TW's:
-None

George's POV

Clay and I walked to our first class, but I had genuinely not felt worse in years. I figured this was how being heartbroken worked then, having your crush be homophobic and rejecting you. I had to forget about Clay, it was better if I did, although I was still in love with him. My feelings wouldn't fade that soon.

Clay seemed to be deep in thought and I thought back about how he looked down at my lips and blushed. Did he mean anything with that? Was he closeted just as me? At that point I would have loved to cup his face and kiss him, but since he just had made an homophobic comment, I would absolutely not even think about doing that.

I sighed a little as Clay and walked to our next class in an awkward and when it started, I sat down in my usual place. Clay was sitting next to me and laid his bag down on his table, looking really uninterested.

'Are you okay?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'I hate maths and I will forever hate it.'

I nodded slowly, for some reason I didn't dare to tell him that I liked maths. I just wanted him to like me, but that was stupid after he basically rejected me. I looked up as I felt Clay staring at me and he quickly looked away when I caught him staring.

'Do you want to hang out after school?' I asked. It was stupid that we hung out a lot, but it suddenly felt weird to ask him now. If I wanted to get rid of my feelings, I shouldn't invite him over.

Clay shrugged. 'We could, I'm bored anyway.'

'I had an idea for coding,' I said with a smile on my face. 'Would you like to figure it out together?'

Clay nodded and smiled too. 'That sounds like fun, is it a Minecraft coding idea?'

I nodded. 'It is, maybe it's stupid, but I'd still like to try.'

'I bet it's not stupid, we can figure it out together.'

I nodded and looked at the teacher who was glaring at me. 'Can you both shut up, especially you, Clay. You have the lowest grade in this whole class.'

'Well, fine. Call me out,' Clay said as he rolled his eyes. 'I just don't care about your stupid subject, because I don't understand anything of it anyway.'

'You can also just leave.'

'With pleasure,' Clay said and threw his books back in his bag, standing up after. 'Bye.'

'You're the one who isn't going to pass his finals.'

'Okay! See you,' Clay said as he slammed the door behind him.

I genuinely had no idea why he acted like this, he was never this rude. I worried about him, his grades were low lately and he zoned out a lot, it seemed like he was somewhere different with his head. I shook the thoughts away and focused on class again.

It lasted a long time, but finally after all that time the class ended. I stood up with Sapnap this time and he looked at me.

'Do you know if Clay is alright?'

I shrugged. 'He never acts this weird.'

'Agreed. Maybe he has a bad day or something.'

I nodded. 'Probably.'

We walked the rest of the way, talking about some video games and after a while we saw Clay sitting down on a bench. He was grinning as he was typing something to someone and looked up when we walked closer.

'What the heck, Clay,' Sapnap said. 'Why were you so rude all of the sudden?'

Clay shrugged and put his phone away. 'I didn't feel like following maths today.'

'You aren't going to pass like this, your grades are really low,' I muttered.

Clay sighed. 'Why do you care?'

'We were going to do computer science together,' I whispered and Clay nodded slowly.

'I forgot about that, well. I guess you will have to do that alone.'

I was really sad about his comment and Sapnap hit Clay's shoulder softly.

'Dude, that's mean. You have always told him that you were going to do that together. You even visited a school together.'

Clay rolled his eyes. 'It's not that big of a deal to do it alone, we will have to separate one day.'

I felt tears coming up in my eyes. 'I was just looking forward to that,' I whispered with a small voice crack.

I turned around and started walking away.

'Dude, you made him cry, dumb ass.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't know he was going to cry.'

'Why are you so insensitive? You have literally met in third grade or something and you have always stayed together. Why don't you care now?'

'Ugh, fine. I'll go after him,' I heard Clay mutter and he stood up, running to me. He grabbed my hand. 'I'm sorry, George.'

I shrugged and wiped my tears away, pulling myself out of his grasp. 'If you don't care about our friendship, then I guess that's fine. I will try and forget all our plans.'

'I've just been somewhere else with my head, I'm sorry. I'd still love to do computer science with you, my grades are just shit.'

'Well, you literally walked away from class. Of course your grades are bad then.'

'I'm sorry, I was just thinking about other stuff.'

'Such as?'

'Nothing important, I would rather not talk about it.'

I nodded slowly and Clay smiled. 'Hug?'

I rolled my eyes. 'You're so cliche.'

'No hug for you then.'

'Fine,' I giggled and Clay smiled. He gave me a tight hug and let go of me. 'I love our friendship and I don't want to lose it, okay? I'm sorry for being so insensitive and I will try to get my grades back to normal again.'

I smiled. 'Okay, I just look forward to doing computer science with you for ages now. I would be very sad if you wouldn't want to do it with me.'

'No worries, we will do it together. Come, we have English and I will pay attention this time.'

1025 words