Alone [manxman]

eight:: when you give yourself a chance.

[Jeremy Allen White as Ernest Veda; Love Poem Medley by Rudy Fransisco]

EIGHT: when you give yourself a chance.

Maybe the difference between you and I had everything and nothing to do with how we ended. I wasn't as in love with you as the day we met, maybe it only resurrected in the aftermath of us. I loved you how the sun loves the earth, allowing it to revolve enough around, maybe you revolved around me too much. I wanted you close to keep you warm but getting close to me is dangerous. I incinerated you.

"Don't mind him, he does this a lot." I was immersed in my writing, always was. They said a good writer always had a pen in their hand, I wanted to be a great writer but all my material was about him. Everything I had to say had to do with lost love or lack of love.

Danny often asked when I'd been writing, maybe it was a false memoir, I kept my feelings journaled from the year of therapy. My therapist had made me a writer, Paul made me a writer and I figured once writing him down, I could get over him.

Why couldn't I get over him?

Closing my book, I looked up, placing it in my bag as if I could do the same to my feelings and I tried to fall back into conversation. Ernest Veda was Daniel Veda's older half-brother and also his plug and they looked absolutely nothing alike. I didn't know much about Danny, nothing more than him just being my roommate who partied about everyday, nothing more than he needed me to know.

But he knew too much about me, it seemed like everyone who knew me did too.

I tried not to remember that, tried to keep that locked away as I listened to them talking about the girl at the cash register, it was some sandwich shop around the corner from campus and I always forgot that Danny had grown up there.

"No, bro, she's so fucking into me." That was Danny, he'd been watching as he checked someone out and he was hell-bent on the idea that she was hopelessly in love with him.

"She's about as into you as Julian is."

Danny laughed, "Who says Julian's not into me?" Leaning closer to me, my roommate nudged my shoulder and wiggled his thick brows. And he was attractive, everyone could tell that but maybe Calum had traumatized me so much that even looking at a straight guy and acknowledging their attractiveness made me uncomfortable. I was all sorts of fucked up.

"I'm not." Ernest had nearly spit out his drink at that and I felt a bit accomplished at the betrayal etched onto his brother's face. Holding my hands up, I played along. "I might be gay but I do have standards."

Danny looked almost offended at that and I could've laughed. "Everyone's into me." He'd said, and then repeated almost reassuringly to himself. He almost looked shocked and I wondered if I really shot his self-confidence that badly. Still, I laughed.

"What kinda guys are you into then?" That was Ernest and Danny leaned in as if it were a secret.

And he'd been trying to get me to tell him my type for months now, convinced that if he put me on with one of the gay guys on campus, I'd stop fucking Wren to get over my ex but I didn't have the heart to tell him that my type was just tall with brown eyes and named Pablo-Luis. Danny was leaning on his elbows then, and I could see his inner-cupid dissecting me.

"I don't know, nice..." that didn't answer what he wanted it to so I tried again, "smart?" I just wanted someone who challenged me, who made me feel alive again. I never really thought about what I wanted in a person, never had the reason to, I never had a type.

Every guy I'd been interested in or... just in... was different from the last. Paul wasn't like Calum, Wren wasn't like Calum or Paul, I wasn't even experienced in more than one relationship. I didn't know what I wanted.