Dive: A TharnType Story

29

Type got out of meeting Tharn the next few weeks by making the excuse of his dates with Kemp. It wasn't even a complete lie because he had been trying to give dating Kemp a chance when he saw how supportive and understanding he was of his situation. He had indeed hung out with him over the weekends. He wouldn't go so far as to call them dates, because it just felt like they were chilling together, like they had been for a month prior to them officially dating. 

Type still felt a little guilty about not having even a little bit of a change in his feelings for him but Kemp had reassured him that he was fine and ready to wait. Even with that reassurance, the guilt was still ever present in Type. 

°°°

Type sat at his desk on a Wednesday afternoon, trying to come up with the perfect excuse to give Tharn when he texted him because he always texted him on Wednesdays to ask him to hang out on the weekend. It had been their ritual since the beginning of college.

The last time he had told Tharn that Kemp and him were going on a date to a theme park, when in actuality, they just played video-games in his house. He was a little scared of how good he was getting at lying to Tharn. Especially when Tharn didn't even question him. He never even pushed. He had been drowning in a pool of guilt because of it, but he saw no other way out. He stared at the cork board in front of his study desk, knowing he had to come up with something different this time. Something that sounded real. He searched his brain for an excuse and came up with a genius one after a moment of contemplation.

He decided he was going to tell Tharn that Kemp was taking him out for a dinner date. He figured it would be more impactful if he said that it was a romantic dinner date, but even the thought of forming those words with his mouth made him cringe. That, in turn, made him feel guilty again because Kemp had been nothing but patient with him and even calling their date romantic made Type's hackles rise in rejection of the notion. 

He sat staring at his phone and checked the time to see it was 9 PM. He knew a text would come any minute so he kept his phone unlocked as he continued to gaze at his screen. 

He watched the minutes pass as he woke his phone up every time it went to sleep. At the 9:10 PM mark, he changed the settings on his phone to remove the automatic sleep feature. He stared at his phone unblinkingly again. He started to get a little agitated at the 9:20 PM mark and checked to see if his messaging app and internet connectivity were working okay to find nothing out of place. 

He sighed and placed the phone down on the table with the screen on as he decided to stop procrastinating and finish an assignment till Tharn texted him. He figured being productive would at least keep him distracted from staring down at his screen every few seconds. 

He glanced at the phone at every minute mark to see that he had no messages so he decided to put his ringer at the maximum volume so he doesn't miss Tharn's message and went back to his assignment. He figured Tharn would eventually text him and staring at the phone over and over again wasn't letting him concentrate on his actual assignment. 

He sat clacking away at his laptop and cracked his knuckles when he finished the assignment. He was quite surprised how fast he got through it and he stared back at his phone to see if Tharn had messaged him only to be met by an empty notification bar. His eyes finally fell on the time and he was audibly surprised as he leaned back to see that it was already 2 AM. He opened his messaging app again to see if it was glitching and found nothing wrong with it again.

He had an urge to text Tharn first to ask if he was okay because this was really out of character for him. For the almost two years that they've known each other, he'd always get a text from Tharn on Wednesdays and this was the first Wednesday where he hadn't heard a thing from him.