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You don't call him.
Nor are you inclined to—even if you did, you're certain you'd be a blocked number on his cellphone anyway, so you really just shouldn't bother at all. You aren't going to call him, but every now and again you think about it, not with any particular want or desire. It lives as a mere thought helplessly rolling around in the web of your mind, cradled and embraced further and further in until there's not even a point in trying to pull it free.
There's no point in trying not to think about it, so you make do poking and prodding at its shape until it stretches into different forms, new fantasies for you to pull at until they become vapid and hollow, used up and dried and then you're on to the next. You've mingled with countless people; naturally, you've lost many of them too. But you always thought if one day even your closest friends turned their backs on you, you'd feel more passionately about it. You wouldn't let them rest for a moment until they felt the weight of their own betrayal tenfold and then some. You suppose you were wrong. You can't imagine doing anything with him or to him without feeling nausea roll over you in waves.
You overhear your peers one day talking about the Music Club's performance at their little competition. They say the two vocalists looked good together. They say they'd be such a cute couple. Did you see the way they looked at each other? Weren't they just so harmonious? Weren't their voices just perfect together? They just complement each other so fucking well, don't they?
It's not until you make it to the cafeteria and your friends turn to look at each other that you realize your mouth is still etched into a scowl.
(You hover over his name for a second. No, you click the call button without hesitation, and you do it in front of your other friends too, just so they can see how little it matters. Your phone goes to voicemail right away, and when you hear the message he's set up, he sounds lifeless. Without you, stuck with that band of freaks, he must regret everything he ever did to you. He's regretting lying to you for all these years but he knows his place. He knows he doesn't have the right to contact you ever again and that's why you're blocked.
Well, that's that. You were just calling to see if he knew his place with you. You easily smirk with a shrug, turning to your friends and mocking him as they break out into howls of laughter. They know this doesn't bother you at all because it's true and if anything, you think it serves him right that he's stuck with his little group of self-serving pathetic losers. Hearing him miserable is how you know there's still a sense of karmic justice in the world.)
You tussle your hair with a towel and finally get out of the shower. When you check your phone, thirty minutes have passed. You really need to get started on your homework.
Life goes on. You see him sometimes.
You do still go to the same school. You catch glimpses of him in hallways and courtyards and cafeterias, places where he always manages to disappear himself, turning around corners and ghosting behind walls. He's always been good at that, keeping himself in sight but just out of reach. You never realized how good he was at that until now.
Everything is still the same as always. You sleep at a normal time, you wake up, you go to school and listen to the noisy drone of your teachers and the whispering chatter from students who couldn't care less about the lecture. New episodes of your favorite TV show release. New updates for your favorite game release. Your other cohorts still remain by your side. The only thing that has changed is the absence of a blithering sycophant who lied to you for three some years. You should be delighted to be a rid of such an exceptional and traitorous friend. You repeat this to yourself like a mantra as you walk down the halls and—
Oh. There he is. Look at him, smiling a full-toothed smile, eyes wrinkled and the stretch of his dimples, effortlessly handsome as always. Look at her, a pale blush dusting her cheeks, eyes rolling and arms playfully shoving him. She opens her wretch of a mouth and must say something witty and beguiling to have him erupt into such pure and unabashed laughter. She even has the nerve to crack a smile at him, eventually slipping into a few giggles of her own.
They're just outside of the Music Club door. Why did you come to this hallway?
Their faces are so close together. The scene is too intimate. You stand there watching like a voyeur, your feet rooted to the floor and sort of hoping it just swallows you now. It doesn't.
(You walk your way over there. No, you make long and confident strides through the hall, your presence heralded by the foreboding and intimidating clack of your loafers against the vinyl flooring. You're completely unaffected by them. Just the sound alone is enough for the girl to turn towards you looking stricken. You'd relish in that. He would catch that flighty, frightened expression on her face and turn to the source, and then… then you suppose he'd be frightened too. He wouldn't be pleased to see you at all. He'd lose that smile from his face at the sight of you. It would have been you who had done that to him.)
But you find your nerve eventually to spin on your heel and flee.
On your birthday, you decide to stop by the park. The weather is getting colder now. Leaves scatter across the ground in warm shades. You think about calling him.
(In this fantasy, it rings more than once. In this fantasy, you hear the sound of his voice as you would have heard it half a year ago. He greets you and you can hear the smile in his voice, an earnest happy birthday wish falling off his tongue without reservation. There is no Music Club to speak of, just you and your other friends and him, everything in its place. When you reply, you sound like yourself.)
Self-indulgently, you think about him calling you. Aren't you allowed this much on your own birthday?
(A familiar tune plays, one that you haven't heard in a long time. He'd set that silly different ringtone for himself; of course, you let him do as he pleased. Hearing that ringtone you'd check your phone, not too quickly but not too slow, not desperate or afraid to pick up. As expected, it's him. He says he's sorry. He says he misses you. Your heart doesn't leap out of your chest at that. You do tell him to come over again. You tell him you forgive him. You can't even change your mind about telling him that.
The scene morphs. It's your bedroom now, your bed you two are sitting on top of, talking about nothing in particular.
Your faces are close. Closer than he and that girl ever got, close enough that you can smell the scent of his laundry detergent, close enough that you could count each of his eyelashes, close enough that if you tilted your head just a little forward, your lips could even brush against each other…)
Wait. Where is this thought going?
A branch snaps underneath your foot. You blink out of your stupor, looking around at your familiar surroundings. Have you already circled the entire trail?
Living in a place with seasonal weather is kind of fun. Some variety in your life every now and again is good to have. The leaves go from brown and orange and red to completely off the tree, branches stripped bare save the coat of snow powdering the tops. You like having opportunities to pull on your expensive winter coat. You have wealth; what else to do with it but flaunt it?
There's no opportunity for that right now though. You and your friends have gathered around in your house, as you all are wont to do, sitting around aimlessly and
You don't remember what you were doing around this time last year. It probably was the exact same as you're doing this year: browsing sites online looking at graphic tees and cups and posters for all his favorite games and shows. Your friends tease you thoroughly for hiding your phone from them, smug with all kinds of innuendos flying from their filthy mouths. Even though they're crude and distasteful and annoying, you can't stop the way your mouth tilts up, at least at the very normalcy of it all. At least they're still here and they're still as they always were.
Although one thing has changed. Sometimes they turn to look at each other, and even though it's away from you, you can tell it's always about you. You can tell because they always get that weird gentle look in their eye when they look back at you, just like the way they're looking at you right now, having finally managed to glimpse what you were hiding on your screen. You almost want to scream when they ask you in that cloying pitying tone what you're sure they've wanted to ask you this whole time.
You don't think so. You think it's a little different from "missing"—not far from it, but more like "mourning." Missing him would be a moment of weakness"—an admission you want him to come back. Even so, you just roll your eyes and tell them, without any heat, to fuck off. They're good at laughing things off, so they do.
He likes Christmas. He likes the extravagance and tackiness of it all, because of course he does, he's that kind of guy, and not that you ever hated it, but your heart was more fond of watching him buzz with excitement at every gift. You didn't even know how to wrap anything; you only learned on a whim when he said unwrapping a present was his favorite part. Now that you're wielding scissors and wrapping paper again this year, you think it's just a hassle. How pointless. You do a half-hearted job and don't bother to clean the mess in favor of collapsing bonelessly in the heap of blankets on your bed and pulling out your phone.
It's strange. There's no point to buying it, but you keep yourself busy on various different sites, adding anything he might have liked to your cart even knowing you won't buy it. Strange doesn't even really cover it—it's ridiculous is what it is, going in as far as putting in your credit card number and hovering over the big bold purchase button for an uncomfortably long moment. Is it that you know you won't buy it or you know you shouldn't?
The clouds move by so slowly. You've propped your cheek against your palm, staring out the window as nothing much happens out there. It was snowing earlier but not anymore. Your teacher has been uselessly expositioning for the past half an hour with occasional digressions about his divorce. There's not much happening in here, either.
It's almost tradition at this point. If you don't do it now, you'll do it later today. His face starts to creep into your head, his contact icon still the boy you remember him as. It goes like this:
(You call him and it rings more than once. You call him and he picks up. You call him and he says Hello? and nothing is the same between the two of you at all. You say something like a greeting back to him and he's quiet for a moment, making that thoughtful face you know he is. Then he says you need to stop thinking about this.)
The thought abruptly jolts you back into the real world. Your teacher is still talking about nothing at all.
You find yourself at an instrument shop of sorts because this compulsion is taking over you in the physical world too. You've never played an instrument a day in your life, but when the sales clerk asks you if there's something she can help you with today, you tell her you're looking for equipment for a vocalist. It's a Christmas gift for somebody, so you don't really know what to buy, but you want something perfect for them.
She asks if you have a budget to which there is none. She says your girlfriend is lucky to have a boyfriend willing to splurge on her. You don't correct her. She asks you if you know what kind of equipment she wants, anything she's talked about recently. You don't know. You don't know anything at all about the central passion of his life. She laughs and says not to worry, she has a few ideas, and all you can do is nod stiffly as a heavy sickness begins to pool inside your stomach.
(You call him. He picks up. You say, I miss you.)
On Christmas day, you tell yourself you aren't going to call him. It should be easy. You've been telling yourself for the past some months you aren't going to call him and it's been working out fine in spite of the fact you've been thinking about calling him every single day for the past some months. You tell yourself this almost every single hour, making a point not to look under your bed where the consequences of your disgusting overly sentimental emotions lay.
In the end, you call him. You call him because you don't know what else to do. You call him because you're not sure how much more of this you can take. You call him because it's Christmas for God's sake, and you keep thinking about that sad and pathetic little edge to his voice the last time you two spoke, and you keep thinking about that bright and brilliant boy the last time you saw him, saw him for real by the Music Club room, and there's no amount of mental gymnastics you can pull off to reconcile the two. You call him because you have to see if there's even a place for you in his life anymore, even though you already know the answer. You call him because when it comes to him, you just can't ever help yourself.
You call him. It goes to voicemail.
The phone is alight for one cursory moment, his face burned into the screen, his name in an even font underneath, a bright and brilliant thing, and then it vanishes into the night, leaving you in the dark once more. It doesn't matter; every edge of his face is burned into your mind already. You just sit there in the pitch black of your room for one long moment, helpless as your lips contort into a thin angry line, helpless to the poison that begins to spew itself from your mouth, helpless as you listen to the sound of your own bitter and angry voice laid over Jake Sterling's beautiful teasing lilt.