"All the thoughts you never see
You are always thinking"
.
He didn't allow himself to think about it.
Not because he felt ashamed or wrong about what he was feeling, not because he was afraid of feeling judged. But because somehow, to think of Cory in that light, to continue to have these dreams and these thoughts and these hopes? It almost felt like deception. To know that your best friend thinks of you as only that, a best friend, and to hold these hopes so dear? It felt like a betrayal.
Run. That was is first instinct, just run. Although hadn't it always been? Where, when, he'd figure that out later. Can you run from thoughts? Maybe if you get so far away they can't chase you there. He didn't know.
It was only about three blocks into his mad dash from the trailer park that he realized he had nowhere to run to. Nowhere that wasn't connected by a window to a very tall tree in the yard of a family named Matthews.
If he was honest with himself for about five seconds, which he really hadn't allowed himself to be, he'd realize it had always been there. This want for Cory, this deep need to be around him at all times. I guess when you're eight and everything you do is "mybestfriendcory" and "mybestfriendshawn", you start to forget that there was ever anything other than that.
It wasn't a constant thing. Sometimes he could even trick himself into believing that this was normal, that when you spend so much time with somebody it's natural to get it mixed up in your brain. Sometimes he could even trick himself into thinking he was imagining these feelings, that they only existed because he hadn't found the right girl to project them on to.
He's sure of one thing through all of this, though. He's sure he can't say anything. He really doesn't care about the backlash from family, from friends, from life in general. He doesn't care about the stigma, or really any of that. He just knows that no matter what, he can't lose what he has with Cory. He knows that to lose Cory would be to lose a piece of himself, and he couldn't handle that. Besides, it's not like he's gay or anything. He doesn't think. He's just Shawn. And for Shawn, it's always been just Cory, always Cory.
It sucks, he thinks. It really, really sucks that it took a girl coming in to the picture for him to get it. Not that he would have done anything if she hadn't come around, all long curly hair and weird tribal dances that fascinated Cory. He would have been fine just him and Cory, for the rest of their lives, doing nothing but being best friends. That was enough for him. He thinks.
He would have been fine forever just hanging out, playing ball and watching movies and nothing else. Nothing else.
He thinks.