Heartbreak Story - Byler

XI - Couldn't Let It Go

Note: Another little time skip, Mike's "Him" is different to Will's "Him" and some underaged drinking all in the chapter.

Friday 19th December, 1986-

Clothes were strewn disorderly all over my bed as I pondered what to wear that night. It felt wrong that after everything that had happened in my life recently that I should be going to a Christmas party but I was trying to follow Nancy's advice and move on from my life without Will and that's why I accepted the invitation from Kelly Ratcliffe.

The Ratcliffes were old family friends and my parents always tried to keep in their good books as they were some of the richest people in Hawkins. They lived in a big house in Loch Nora and Kelly went to the private school up near there so my family wanted to keep up appearances of being in the Ratcliffes' inner-circle. My mother was delighted when I told her I'd be going to the party because I'm pretty sure she always hoped me and Kelly would end up falling in love and living out the rest of our lives together in an even larger house than the one she lives in now. It did surprise my mom though when I informed her I would be going because I'd lost touch with Kelly in recent years, we grew up together and spent most of our early-childhoods in each other's company but we ended up in different schools so naturally we stopped hanging out.

Nobody other than Jonathan and Joyce, not even Max, had seen Will since his week in school. I never expected him to show on the Friday - the day after I finally told him I loved him - but I was surprised to not see him at all on the Monday after. When he didn't show up to our first lesson, I immediately got on my bike and cut school to go straight to his house because I knew what he'd done to himself the last time he was alone and I'd learned my lesson about calling that I would never receive a response.

I pounded on his door and Joyce opened it and told me she'd pulled Will from school until after Christmas as he clearly hadn't been ready to go back when he did. She informed me that Will didn't want to see anyone at all for now and then shut the door in my face and that was the last I heard from her of what was going on with him. My fount of knowledge on Will's well-being therefore became solely Jonathan who, when he visited Nancy, would give me updates on how he was doing and it turned out he wasn't doing very well. Jonathan stated Will was different, he'd been acting out; would lock himself in his room and speak to nobody for hours on end; would only eat when forced to and there were times when he'd run off for the whole day to god knows where and would only return in the early hours of the next morning but Joyce was giving him freedom and allowing him to do these things for fear he'd hurt himself even more next time. She was terrified and didn't know how to cope with Will's behaviour. It broke my heart to learn of Will's new situation but he'd entirely cut ties with everyone, especially me, and there was nothing I could do about it so I learned what was new from Jonathan and had to just accept whatever it was that he told me.

Will was over me and our friendship and it was time I moved on too but it's not so simple when you're madly in love with someone. I just hoped the party would be a little distraction from everything for me for a night, I just wanted to get drunk and try to forget for as long as possible. I needed to forget Him.

A faint knock echoed from my door and drew my attention away from the clothes. I told whoever it was to come in and I watched as Nancy traipsed her way into my room. "How are you getting home tonight? Loch Nora is too far away to walk by yourself at that time." My sister asked.

"When Kelly invited me, she said I could stay over and I can come home in the morning." I responded dully.

Nancy raised an eyebrow at me and I knew she had picked up on something I really didn't want her to. "Is there a big group of you staying over or something?"

"Nope, just me."

"Mike, are you sure that this is a good idea? I know Kelly and she's always had a bit of a thing for you so, with the whole Will situation...I don't know but are you sure you want to do this?"