Chapter 14

Eli's POV

The drive home usually took fifteen to twenty minutes, but it's the weekend and the whole of the city is either out with friends or out with the intention to get laid later tonight. So it took me almost forty. I sat in traffic and I kept replaying the hotel room in my head: the feel of Marcus's mouth against mine, his hands, and the look on his face when he pulled away.

There is someone else, isn't there? The question haunted me, and I tightened my grip around the steering wheel.

There isn't. At least there shouldn't be, and even if there was, it should not be Adam Payne.

Marcus always had a way of making everything complicated. He cheated on me and I forgave him. We eventually broke up for completely different reasons, and that made it easier to remember only the good parts when I thought about him.

Maybe that was why seeing him again felt so natural. It was like slipping on an old shirt and realizing that it still fits perfectly.

But when his lips crashed into mine and his tongue swirled in my mouth, my mind had failed to remain in the hotel room. It had gone somewhere else, to a bland room that smelled of antiseptics and drugs and had the constant beeping of machines. It had gone to someone else, Adam.

I let out a frustrated breath and rubbed my hand over my face. “Jesus,” I groaned.

Why him? Why now? After everything? I stopped at a red light and stared blankly through the windshield, and suddenly I remembered the first time I had met the man who wouldn't leave my head.

I was fourteen years old. Adam had been at our school for less than a week when he sat beside me in history class.

“Is this seat taken?” a voice had asked me, and my head immediately shot up so quickly that my glasses almost fell off my nose.

“No.”

He dropped into the chair easily. “I'm Adam.”

“I know.” I said, surprised as to why he was talking to me. Not many people talked to me in school.

“You know me?”

“Everybody knows you.” I replied quietly.

He laughed. “Despite the fact that I just got here. Oh, fuck my luck.”

“You are the new transfer.”

“Exactly.” He leaned towards me, giving me an attention that I had never gotten before. “So, pretty boy…”

He touched my shoulder with his index finger, pushing me slightly. “What's your name?”

“Eli.”

“Eli.” He repeated slowly, like he was trying to get used to saying my name, and I smiled.

He looked around the class. “So what do you do around here? Where are your friends? Where's the fun? What do people do?”

I shrugged. “I really don't know.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned slightly. “Anyway, you will have to show me because I don't know many people around here.”

He smiled and I smiled back. And for the first time I thought that I had made a friend.

For the weeks that followed, Adam was everywhere. We ate lunch together. We walked to classes together. He borrowed my notes, and I helped him catch up on assignments. We rode bicycles to school together and once he had let me borrow his sweater when I caught a cold. He made me laugh. He was funny and kind, and because of him, I was being integrated into the school circle.

I remember feeling that I had gotten lucky for the first time, because a new boy who everyone thought was hot and cool wanted to show the whole class that he had chosen me.

Then he went to his first hockey practice and the hockey boys started paying attention to him. Everything changed.

It was the little things at first. He stopped sitting beside me at lunch. Then one day, he left class without waiting for me. And another day, he had seen me in the hallway and became suddenly more interested in whatever the boys around him were saying. I told myself it was normal. He was making new friends. I had to understand that, that his world in school did not revolve around me.

But then he started making jokes about me. The first one happened at lunch, when one of the boys pointed at my glasses and said. “Bro are those prescription or bulletproof?”

The hall erupted with laughter. I laughed too but it was because Adam was laughing and I didn't want to make it seem like I didn't know how to take a joke.

Then he looked at me. “Careful. If Eli takes those off, he won't be able to find his way back to the table.’

There was more laughter and I smiled, pretending it didn't hurt. But it did.

It even got worse. One afternoon, our chemistry teacher assigned us to a group project. Adam and I were paired together, and I was excited, stupidly excited, because I would get to spend time with my friend again.

I went home that afternoon and spent the entire night planning everything. I searched for pictures, I wrote down ideas, I sketched out what I thought our presentation would look like. I called Adam multiple times that night but he never picked up the phone.

The next morning I found him just before class since he had stopped riding with me to school.

“I thought we could meet after school.” I said.

“For what?” he asked flatly, barely looking at me.

“Our project.”

He looked at me and then at the boy standing behind him. And one of them snorted. “Oh shit, Payne you're actually going to work with him?”

Adam laughed. I froze because I couldn't understand what was funny.

“Yeah,” I said in reply to the boy and Adam shook his head. “Sorry, can't.”

“Why?”

“Busy,” he said coldly.

“Doing what?”

He looked towards the hockey field. “Going to play hockey.”

“But we're supposed to work on it together.” I said, my voice cracking.

“Well, you're smart, Eli.” He tapped my shoulder and walked away.

I stood there holding the folder that I had spent hours putting together. I should have let him go then. I should have understood that things had changed but instead I followed him and I found him near the field with the boys. They were laughing.

I stood at the edge of the pitch for several seconds before forcing myself forward. “Adam.”

He turned and his smile immediately disappeared. “What?”

“Can we talk?”

His friends looked at each other.

“About the project.” I added quickly and one of them laughed.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What part of I'm busy don't you understand?”

“You're my friend.”I said before I could stop the words from coming out. He looked at me and laughed. It was not a happy laughter like the one we shared during lunch or on the rides to school. It was cruel.

“I'm your friend?” he asked, pointing at himself.

“Yes.” I replied with trembling lips.

He looked around. “Why would I be friends with you?”

My face burned. “You were my first friend here. I thought…”

“You thought what?” he asked and his friends started laughing again.

He looked me up and down then his eyes landed on my glasses. “Look at you.”

My hand instinctively went to them. “Those things are thicker than Coke bottles.”

Everyone laughed and my throat tightened but Adam wasn't finished. He stepped closer, a mean expression on his face. “You really thought I wanted to hang around with you? You're weird, Eli.”

My eyes burned and I blinked back the tears. “And you're annoying.”

I shook my head. “I don't deserve this. I didn't do anything to you.”

“That's the point. You're just not one of us.”

Us? I thought. He had just arrived at school less than a month ago. He smiled but the smile never reached his eyes. “You never will be.”

Something inside me ripped violently, and I turned around before anyone could see me cry.

The first tear dropped when I was halfway across the field and I quickly wiped it away but another one followed, and then another. I kept walking faster and I did not stop until I reached the bathroom.

I locked myself inside the stall and pressed my hand against my mouth, almost shoving my fist into my mouth, so nobody could hear me crying.

That was the first time Adam made me feel like I wasn't worth being someone's friend. It wasn't the last either.

I blinked. The traffic light had turned green and someone honked impatiently behind me. I stepped on the accelerator.

My chest felt tight as I realized that the memory didn't feel like sixteen years ago. It felt like yesterday. As I pulled into my driveway and sat inside the car, long after turning off the engine, I thought about Marcus, then about Adam, then the boy on the field who once made me believe that I mattered and then turned around to make me believe that I didn't.

And suddenly I understood why Chloe was so angry. Maybe I had not forgiven him. Maybe I only wanted to believe I had because the man Adam became was easier to love than the boy who hurt me.

I closed my eyes and let Adam's apology wash over me. He had been kind to me recently and he listened. He waited when I stuttered and he looked at me like I was worth listening to. But none of that could change what had happened.

Forgiveness wasn't a switch, and it's not something I could just turn on because Adam had finally learned to be a decent man. If I was honest with myself, I was not sure that I had forgiven him at all. Maybe that's why I felt so much guilt for wanting him, because somewhere inside of me, the fourteen-year-old boy with the Coke bottle glasses was still standing on that pitch. He was still crying and desperately trying to hide the tears.