Mitch collapsed onto the futon in his studio apartment. After a long flight, not enough coffee, and a chatty taxi driver, he felt lucky to have even made it up the stairs. He succumbed to sleep like he was drowning in it.
Come back. Please.
Suddenly, Mitch was wide awake. He sat up so fast that his head fought him back with a sharp pang of a headache. He looked at the clock blinking by his bedside. 3:19 am. He had barely slept two hours before he was again awoken by Scott's voice calling to him.
He sat up, rubbing his forehead while he searched blindly with his left hand for the journal on his bedside. Mitch wrote down his recurring dream immediately, in case he wanted to refer back to it in his writing. At least, that's what he told himself.
The night continued ticking on, but instead of writing poetry, Mitch found himself making a pros-and-cons list. On the next page of his journal, he scribbled all of his thoughts about why he was having a dream about Scott, after all this time. Should he go with his gut, and go back to Texas? He knew Scott would be there.
Scott had been the one constant in that town that Mitch was actually content with. Every other repetitive, steady, monotonous thing in Texas screamed at him to leave. Except Scott.
Scott made him want to stay.
---
"Stay for a little while longer, the party's just getting started!" Scott pleaded. Mitch looked him in the eye, earnestly looking for a reason not to go home. He wouldn't admit to himself that the boy in front of him was every reason he'd ever need, and instead shook his head.
"Nah, Scott, it's okay. I should be getting to sleep anyway. I have a lot to do tomorrow..." Mitch trailed off. Scott looked lost.
"No, you don't. You said earlier your weekend was free! Come on, if you get tired you can just sleep over at my house." Mitch looked around nervously at the faces of his dancing classmates, afraid they'd heard what Scott just said. The same, awful kids who had seen him bare his soul at the talent show earlier that night just continued jumping around to the music. Close one.
Scott must have sensed his unease, because he grabbed Mitch's wrist in an attempt to calm his nerves. Scott had no idea that his touch was the exact opposite of what Mitch wanted in that moment, in clear view of his peers.
Mitch batted Scott's hand off of him, turned, and bolted out of the house, leaving a very confused Scott in his wake.
He ignored the sting of his tears as he ran across the neighborhood, up his stairs, and into his bedroom without even stopping.
---
Mitch tapped the end of his pen on his small leather-bound notebook. He had to fight to keep his eyes from welling up; thinking back to that time in his life still caused his heart to ache. Mitch was less than pleased with his classmates' reactions to his writing at the time, to put it lightly. His poems were all he held dear, all he was ever proud of, and they ridiculed him for it. They called him awful words. They would mock him in the halls, too. "I, uh, uh, w-w-wanted to dedicate that poem to Scott Hoying!" they'd jeer, whooping and whistling at him as he walked by. He wasn't even out of the closet yet. So much for that.
Mitch closed his eyes. A few rebel tears managed to fall before he wiped them away in frustration. The year following that incident was one of the loneliest of his entire life. Scott hadn't even approached Mitch anymore, not once after the year-end party. They went their separate ways for college without speaking a word to each other.
That summer spiraled down the drain and before he knew it, he was wading into freshman year. New home, new friends, new poetry club. No more Scott. No more pain, or so he told himself.
It's a wonder what a broken heart will do for your writing-- and I was writing some of the best poems of my life.
