My Middle School Crush (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Sore Everywhere! (Name Reveal?)

Mason’s hands fell onto the handles on either side of him, letting his weight heavily rest on his hands. The treadmill was slowly coming to a stop but, in that moment, any motion other than none was already too much. That morning, Mason once again had nothing important to do.

He wasn’t planning on hanging out with his friends and he had no class so it was going to be one of his mattress potato days. However, his mom found him lying in bed with a phone in his hand for the umpteenth time and decided she would play dirty in order to get him to do something. She was going to play the guilt card.

Mason felt his chest sinking further and further into his bed as she spoke about all the times she and his father and spent money on him only for him to spend days off doing nothing productive. She even went on to talk about how he was not only wasting away his mind and body by lying in bed all day like he was, but he was wasting their investment. 

Of course, both of them knew this wasn’t necessarily true. Mason got out fairly often and his break was his reward for years of dedicated study and effort before he trained to become a nurse. But, the guilting worked and Mason wanted to know what he could do to appease his mother.

As the crafty manipulator that she was, his mother skillfully brought up the gym because it would be a “nice way to get active that morning.”

So, here Mason was, dying on the treadmill after running for nearly an hour. He was proud to have gotten to 52 minutes but his breathing was about to choke him so he decided to stop. Mason sent some self-conscious glances around the room, looking to see if the two others in the gym were staring at his tired form. They weren’t, far more focused on their own gains than the dying boy on the other side of the room.

Mason sighed—partly in relief but also because he was still trying to get his breathing in check—and slowly stepped off of the treadmill. For Mason, the worst part of the entire experience, other than feeling quite embarrassed because of his breathing, of course, was having to make the half an hour walk back home. 

He had been awoken by his mom that morning for the guilt trip and was convinced to leave the house with her so she could drop him off. But, she had only given him a ride to go there, not one back. She was likely typing her butt off and working the hours away. So Mason, being the great son he was, assumed that walking home wouldn’t be a big deal.

He had planned to just do some light workouts, maybe jog a bit, then take a peaceful walk home. He ended up pumping his biceps raw by overestimating what was easy to lift, making his abs sore by trying to outdo the older woman crunching away the fat of her three kids, then running for 52 minutes because an hour didn’t seem that long.

Mason was spent and the walk home was an incredibly specific type of hell.

The second he got home, he collapsed into bed, going to sleep in his full workout gear. His salty skin had dried during the walk so he thought his sheets would be fine. Mason knew his skin would be cursing him for doing this to it, but he didn’t really care. All he could think about was the sweet feeling of rest.

—————

Mason woke up to the sound of his phone ringing about two hours later. The first thing he noticed was the clock at the side of his bed telling him that it was 2:09 in the afternoon. Mason didn’t get much time to process what that meant because he then picked up his phone, checked the caller ID, and proceeded to have a heart attack.

He sat up abruptly in his bed, groaned at the screaming pain in his stomach, and stared at his phone again. His eyes were wide and his breathing a bit shallow, but he didn’t answer it. He had no idea what he was going to say. Then, his phone stopped ringing.