Never Coming Home // Frerard

Chapter 14

"So you don't know how long Mikey's staying there?" Frank asked. We were sitting on my bed at midnight, drinking coffee and talking.

"Nope. The doctor said it could be anywhere from a week to a month."

"What are you gonna do while he's gone?" Frank's eyes looked around my room curiously. I shrugged.

"He made me promise to not mope around the whole time, so that plan's out of the question."

"You should skip school tomorrow, though."

"Do you wanna skip with me?" I looked at him.

"Sure," He smiled.

Damn, his smile was pretty.

Yes, I was still sporting my hopeless crush on him. It had only gotten stronger ever since we started talking. But how am I supposed to be with him if I refuse to be in love?

Was it too late?

"You've got a lot going on, don't you?" Frank asked, interrupting my thoughts. I took a drink of my coffee before answering.

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't that long ago that you were crying in the graveyard, Gerard. And now this... are you okay?"

No.

I wasn't.

But how do I tell him that?

"Well," I sighed. "You know the sinking feeling you get at a funeral or when you get bad news?" He nodded. "I've been feeling that non-stop for way longer than I would like to. I just don't know how to feel. I'm upset, I'm angry, I feel weighed down, guilty, fucked up... shit, I don't even know what I feel anymore, Frank. I just... I just want to be the happy teenager I was before. You know? Before Lindsey died, I was so content. I had a girlfriend, a great family, awesome friends, a good life. I don't know what happened, but it feels like all of that just crashed around me all at once and I'm desperately looking for surviving pieces of the damage. And now it feels like it all was slowly being built up again after I started going back to school and after I met you, but it all just fell down twice as hard as before when I saw Mikey on that bathroom floor. I honestly just feel like I'm lost in the damage." He was looking at me, a mixture of sympathy and understanding in his eyes.

"When I woke up in the hospital... the realization that I was still alive made me feel... a lot of things. I felt guilty, I felt like a failure, I felt... relieved too, though. Right before I passed out, when I was sure I was going to die, I realized that I was scared of leaving. So that hospital was one of the most terrifying things to happen to me, but also one of the greatest. It was like I was given a whole new platform to build myself off of. All I was when I left the hospital was Frank Iero, a kid who's passionate about music and wears way too much black. No more of that jaded, depressed teenager that I was before. I built my life up again, and that's what you need to do. Sure, those walls are going to crash, there's going to be times when all you want to do is give up and let the debris build up. However, one day you're gonna be able to build those walls so high and strong that they'll stay standing." He laughed a little bit. "I sound like the leader of some shitty support group, but this is one of the only things I've found truthful."

"I just kind of wish I could mean it when I tell someone I'm alright. I find myself lying about that a lot, these days. I wish I could say that I'm not falling apart, that I don't feel broken... that I'm not falling in love with a short asshole who knows way too much about life," I grinned a little bit at him, trying to pass off what I just said as a casual statement. If I was being painfully honest, I may as well just get that off my chest now.

That's what I did with Lindsey. I casually passed it off as a part of the conversation, waiting to see if she would back the conversation up to that statement or not, which she didn't. She just grabbed my scarf, pulled me closer and kissed the life out of me. When it ended, she told me she loved me too.

I sighed. "I'm not okay, am I?" I asked, partially to myself.

"Nope." He grabbed my shoulder, pulled me down slightly, and kissed me on the cheek. "Trust me."

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I have nothing to say other than MY CHAPTERS HAVE BEEN VERY SHORT RECENTLY AND I'M SORRY

*coughs and sputters*

~XoChase