The Three Lettered Word

chapter three: define in love

i know this story is literally going nowhere right now! i am so sorry! it will get better, i swear, when I get into the swing of things. please stay with it and i hope you enjoy the chapter even so~  

Chapter Three

"Samuel!" My ears pricked up and I turned, trying to pick out where my name had come from. I saw Jackson was moving through the crowd toward me, clutching his rucksack strap and dodging younger students. He was heading towards me. My heart jumped, but my stomach also dropped. Jackson waded through the students and managed to reach me, guiding me to the side of the corridor—it was the end of the day, and so the hallways were busy with students trying to escape. 

"Sam," He said, his voice and face and eyes serious, "Look, can we be friends? Or just come to a mutual agreement? Whatever that even was in the canteen...that...that was weird. We either need to get along and put the past behind us, or we need to never talk to each other ever again and keep rolling around in self pity and sorrow and sadness. Or whatever you even feel. I mean, I don't know your emotions. Not now."

People brushed against my back and sides, and Jack held out an arm to push me closer to the locker on my left, out of the way of the crowd. It was instinct for him. 

"I don't know. Honestly, I like you, you're my friend, and you are so dear and important and special to me..." I swear I saw his lip twitch, his jaw clench, "...but I don't want to talk to you. I'm still kinda stuck in a rut here. I'm just shocked that you're here and I still haven't really, er..." I said, stubbing the end of my shoe against the locker, fading away. Talking wasn't my speciality, and Jack knew this. I knew he knew this.

Jack's expression wasn't hurt; he drew his lips together and his brow knitted under his fluffy hair. He had never looked stereotypically gay—not that you could look it in the first place. He had just never had that certain accent or certain dress style you would see in a movie for teen girls who had no idea what generalising was yet. Heck, even his pale blond hair dye and they way he stood, the way he walked, didn't look gay. I wished it did, so girls wouldn't stare at him with that look, so certain teachers wouldn't raise their eyebrows in that funny oh-my-god-I-wish-that-student-wasn't-a-student type of way when he smiled, so his name wouldn't be doodled into notebooks and his last name used in secret.

But what was worse? Being admired by girls or being fought over to be the gay best friend? I figured this was why he would never really bring it up in conversation—it was just a fact about him which didn't really make that much difference. It wasn't really important in school, nobody really needed to know or make a big deal out of it. If he felt the need to tell someone, he would. But it wasn't something he announced, flaunted. It wasn't as if he was secretly kissing one of the football boys, or seeing the Physics teacher after school for some extra tutoring or whatever. 

"But snapping at each other's throats then smiling won't do much good. Someone's going to get really hurt...I know one thing, and that's how you're easy to hurt, easy to upset. And it hurt when I made you hurt. I don't want to upset you, Sam, because we can't agree on what happened, or we both just can't forgive." Jack said, stepping slightly closer. I leaned back a little. Jack smiled, but only briefly, "Trust me, I'm not going to start talking like Louie Spence and hitting on you with my leg around your shoulder or something. You don't need to look so terrified."

"He scares me a lot." 

"A lot of things scare you, Sam." 

He kept saying my name at the end of each sentence, as if he felt like had to keep reminding me of it, or keep reminding himself that I was there. That we were here. We were not in the countryside with our mothers' book club, and our mothers weren't fighting about stupid things while we watched. I wasn't picking grass nervously while picking at a page in my book, and Jackson wasn't reading his calmly, albeit with tense shoulders.