[Twice Featured Noteworthy Novel & Staff Pick on Tapas.io] ✔
[Previously featured on Tapas.io's LGBTQ+ Community collection] ✔
One night. That was all it took for Senn Reyes' life to change drastically--and permanently.
Senn Reyes is a seventeen-y...
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Friday
Something about walking back inside the house again had felt unsettling and had caused him to feel sick to his stomach. And he knew he felt that way because the entire home seemed to be remodeled in one way or another. For starters, the living room now had white walls, instead of the wallpaper with flowery print that had decorated the room ever since he was a toddler. The kitchen's floor was replaced by a lighter type of floorboards, while the walls too were now an off-color white instead of the soft pastel color that they used to have.
But most unsettling had been to walk into his own room—now belonging to Elio—and not find the baby blue walls he so desperately tried to hide with everything he could find. They were clean and white, except the wall where the bed stood against; it was a very calming warm yellow tone that reminded him of a sunset.
Elio had placed furniture in completely different places than Senn had himself, and he was kind of annoyed by it. The desk should definitely be standing in front of the big windows, so Elio could enjoy the view while doing homework. Instead, his bed stood there, while his desk was against the yellow wall while that had been the place Senn's bed had stood for years on end.
He had tried to shake it off, but he failed miserably, watching Elio place his backpack next to the desk, quickly putting on a flannel instead of his hoodie. It was all done in silence, while Senn tried to envision his old room. He stopped as soon as painful happy memories started flooding in, and he was thankful Elio seemed to notice and stopped stalling.
They went to a club that was 21+, but Senn had lost his fake ID after the accident—since they needed to ID him, and they figured it was fake. Which was why Elio took him to a pub down the street where they didn't seem to care about their age. They drank two beers, until Elio took him to the next, and so on.
By the time they had managed to enter a club they were actually too young for, Senn was drunk, but feeling enjoyed nonetheless.
The memories about his old home had faded away which each sip of beer until they were a blurry mess inside his head that couldn't affect him as much anymore. Senn wasn't an emotional drunk. No, Senn was a horny drunk; one that would get touchy, try to seduce someone and at least have a heated make out session somewhere in a corner, a private room, an alley, or for all he cared; an old treehouse.
But Julian was long history by now. Senn didn't even remember the last four to five months they spend together. But he did clearly remember how Julian would always find him in the midst of a crowd. How he only had to smile, for Senn to follow him outside, away from the party, and towards their secret spot. How every graze was enough to send chills down his spine, every laugh enough to send his stomach into a knot. He clearly remembered how much better it felt for Julian to touch him, than any of Joyce's gestures.
But again, it had been months, Julian wasn't there, and neither was Joyce. Which was why Senn did the next best thing; get even more drunk. Because the more drunk he got, the more he would forget about his past, forced to focus on his present. The here, the now, the how not to throw up and end up in a ditch.
