chalk ; tyrus {completed}

chapter 8 - avoidance

A/N: Hi! I know it's only been a day but this chapter is kinda short and I'm impatient 😆

~

The next three days passed by as normal. In fact, they were painfully normal if you asked Cyrus. TJ called him constantly, but he still couldn't find it within him to block the boy so he just settled on declining all of them.

Sometimes when he went outside he saw TJ drawing, either alone or with Amber. He couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt whenever he did.

He finished his assignments and studied for his semester tests, making sure to keep his curtains drawn at all times to avoid any TJ-related distraction.

He sat with his friends at lunch, and tried to keep his glances towards TJ minimal; even if he could see the boy gradually becoming sadder and sadder around his friends.

Buffy and Andi were practically around him at all times, so the athlete rarely had any opportunity to approach him.

The calls had stopped completely by Monday night, and Cyrus couldn't help but think that the boy had given up.

He didn't blame him; Buffy and Andi could both be scary when they wanted to be after all, and they hadn't even really become friends per se. They were just two people who had spoken a couple of times.

~

"You're standing in front of my locker."

TJ gave him a hesitant smile, but he didn't move. "I know."

"Buffy would kill you if she saw us talking."

The boy just smiled again. "I know."

"We're not friends, TJ. I've known Buffy since I was like 6, I can't-"

"I know." 

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

"Okay," Cyrus sighed. "So...why are you here?"

"I just wanted to make sure that you're okay."

The shorter boy shook his head at that, looking down at the ground with a soft smile.

Why did TJ have to be so nice to him? It really wasn't fair, considering that Cyrus was trying to avoid him at the current time.

"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

TJ quirked a disbelieving eyebrow. "The last time you said that, you didn't really mean it."

Cyrus sighed again, glancing around nervously for any sign of his friends. "You know what? I can survive one math lesson without my calculator. Bye TJ."

With that, he took off down the corridor towards his next class.

~

TJ approached him again later that afternoon while Cyrus was checking his mailbox.

"Hey-"

"God - what do I have to say to make you leave me alone?!"

He honestly didn't mean for the words to sound so harsh, but his day had been a frustrating one and he was finding it hard to reign in his anger.

He regretted them almost immediately when TJ's face fell.

"Sorry. You um...left your bracelet at my place. I think you took it off while we were making those banana pops. It looked important so I thought you'd probably want it back."

Cyrus' throat felt tight as he accepted the bracelet, looking down at it with a sad smile. It was the friendship bracelet Andi had made for the good hair crew in middle school. How could he have possibly forgotten about it?

"I'm sorry for snapping, TJ. I-"

When he looked up the boy was already headed to his front door. All Cyrus did was watch as TJ walked inside without sparing him a glance, the words to call him back stuck in his throat. After a few moments, all he was staring at was a closed door.

Cyrus lingered there for a moment, feeling this throat become even tighter. Hopelessness began to set in then.

He knew it wouldn't open again.

A few tears slipped down his face as he walked back inside and rushed up to his bedroom, but the majority of them fell when he was safely on his bed with his head buried in a pillow.

To sum the day up - Andi and Buffy were fighting for reasons he couldn't keep up with anymore and he couldn't talk to one without annoying the other, he had been set about a billion more assignments to finish by the end of the week and now he had officially lost TJ - the person who had cared enough to ask him if he was okay even when Cyrus told him they couldn't be friends.

Summer vacation was looking great already.