The Chasing of Moons

Part II

Frank gets cornered into his locker near the end of the day by Mikey, which he has honestly been expecting since the blow out at lunch. Frank just grabs his backpack from his locker, takes a deep breath and tries not to burst into tears.

"Real talk, Frank," Mikey says. "I have to actually say some shit to you, and it might sound mean, it might hurt your feelings, and that doesn't matter, because you need to open your ears and hear me for real."

"Okay," Frank nods. "I'm ready. Lay it on me."

"You don't sound like you're ready."

"I'm not," Frank replies, "but it's now or never, just tell me what's on your mind."

"Mostly, you're an idiot. That's the first through twentieth thing on my mind. On a check list, my life consists of telling you you're an idiot for three solid years in a row."

"Okay, fair enough."

"Second or well, twenty first after all those proclamations of idiocy, you and Gerard are written down in history already, and yet you still fuck it up. It's like it's a game to you. It's a game to see how far you can stray from your destiny, and that game is one you're intentionally trying to lose. Why are you doing that? You know how things should end, but you're jumping over obstacles to run away from that. I don't get it. I thought you wantedGerard."

"I did! I do, I mean, I want him, of course I do. I'm crazy about him. Hell, I love the son of a bitch."

"Damn right you do, because Gerard is fantastic, and he's too good for you, but I'm choosing to look past that for now because I think, or well I was under the impression until the last few days that you would make him happy. I thought being with you would be good for the both of you, but especially him, because dude, you're not bad, and I don't dislike you or anything, I'd consider you a friend, but he's my brother. He's my brother, and he's more important to me than anyone, and I will seriously fuck you up if you hurt him, but I can't do that now because I feel like we'll lose the plot even more and no one needs that, least of all Gerard. What I need is for you to pick yourself up by whatever you need to, and you need to accept that this is real life. You cannot hit redo, or do things over if you mess this all up, you have this one chance, and if you keep pissing all over that chance, you don't just get another one willy nilly. There's no cheat code, or reset button, there's no second try; there is fact, and that's it. If you fuck things up like this and refuse to even do anything to go about fixing it then you have not just lost the game, but you have literally lost your whole future."

"I know that," Frank says, shaking his head.

"Really? Because it doesn't seem like you do. You keep pushing him away with every little thing. I don't know what you're doing, this is supposed to be a big amazing love story that's so important to the universe that the laws of time bend to make it happen. This is so emotional and important a thing and you're disrespecting how hard laws and possibilities are trying to get you and Gerard to work. I can't intervene as much as I want to, because honestly, I'm afraid you're going to drag me down with you and I really like that asshat friend of yours. You are toxic to yourself, I don't even want to begin thinking about what else you might destroy, and besides, it's not my job to make sure you don't fuck things up. Because, and I mean this in the nicest possible way I can, if you need to fall into nothingness because you can't make things work, I'm not going to kill myself trying to pull you back up. That's not my duty. That's your problem. Believe me, I don't want to see you fail, but I'm not going to take it upon myself to fix you if you do something wrong. At the end of the day, Frank, Gerard can still find someone. He isn't torn apart on the inside knowing what his future is supposed to look like, so he doesn't have that tie to you that you have to him. If you can't make it work, then this will all just be a blip in his life. A weird story he tells to his future husband who isn't you. But you, you don't have that luxury. He's always going to be the 'what if' for you, and the one who got away. So either you woman up and start taking your life seriously, or you let Gerard go now so that you can meet your ultimate destination of eternal solitude."