Warnings: Later chapters of this story contain emotional abuse by Connor's parents (not described explicitly, but in the background), underage drinking/abuse of alcohol, and slight embarrassment squick (since we're talking party games).
Thank you to fosters-fanatic for beta-reading.
Tenth grade – present day
Why are we even friends?, Connor wondered as he watched his mouth move.
Bryce continued to talk – about a girl, about a meal, about a car (delete as appropriate; it's was always about one) – and Connor continued to ignore him, lost in thought as he watched his best friend's mouth spew words.
They were friends because of football in winter, baseball in summer. They were friends because they'd been friends since kindergarten. They were friends because.
They were not – and Connor had been thinking about this fact a lot recently – friends because they actually liked each other.
"Am I right, dude?" Bryce said as he finished up his story.
"Yeah, man," Connor replied on automatic.
Bryce was tall and broad-shouldered, his blond hair buzzed short. He was Anchor Beach's QB, which didn't really mean much, because Anchor Beach's football team sucked, but Bryce always acted like he was the number one draft pick.
As the two of them idled in the school corridor, Bryce launched into another diatribe – about pussy, steak, or alternators – and Connor allowed his gaze to wander. The corridors were emptying out, as most of the students headed for the cafeteria. But a few clusters of people remained, talking and goofing off in the lull that followed the end of class.
From ten meters away, Connor watched as Jude's face broke into a grin. Over the din of the corridor, Connor couldn't make out the low breath of laughter that must have followed, but he heard it in his head.
Jude was huddled within a mixed group of boys and girls, talking animatedly. He did not – Connor considered this fact grimly – look like the type of person who secretly hated his friends. Of course, Connor did not know for sure, because he and Jude were not friends anymore.
They simply… never made it up.
Their friendship tore that day when Jude told Connor he wouldn't be anyone's secret, and they never mended the rip. On some level, Connor still couldn't entirely comprehend it. Something good would happen and his first thought would still be, "I gotta tell Jude!" He couldn't rewire his brain.
But he'd accepted the fact. They were not. Friends.
Their falling out had revealed too much about them to each other. It had showed Connor to be spineless and Jude to be unforgiving. There was context, of course – the soft, squishy excuses: Connor was put in an impossible position; Jude had good reason not to trust people. But the point stood. Connor was spineless and Jude was unforgiving. It was hard to make it up with someone who was capable of pulling out your worst character traits. So maybe it was better to never even try.
Now, the two of them inhabited opposite ends of the social spectrum. Connor was a jock, a beer hound, a minor womanizer. Jude was a nerd – a gay nerd – vaguely artsy and mostly ignored by everyone except his small circle of similarly nerdy, similarly artsy friends.
The gulf between them was so wide that Connor could barely fathom what their friendship might look like today. If they were still friends, would Connor be standing beside Jude, talking and laughing about poetry or philosophy or whatever the hell it was those art freaks talked about? Or would Jude have been folded into Connor's group of boneheaded jocks, raising his eyebrows laconically at Connor as Bryce ranted on about car parts?
No, more probably, they would have been their own circle of two, just as they'd been in seventh grade.
Seventh grade
It was not smart to make friends with the new kid. Connor knew this.
Maybe if the new kid was super-rich, or his parents were rock stars, or he had a pet tarantula that he smuggled into school – then you could make an exception. But not if the new kid was shy and soft-spoken, pale and uninteresting, dogged by talk that his sister just got out of juvie.
It was not smart to make friends with the new kid – but Connor did it anyway.
"Hey, you're Jude, right?" Connor asked as they left math class.
"…Yeah," Jude said slowly, like he had to think about it.
"I'm Connor. I'll show you where we go to eat lunch."
"Okay," said Jude.
Connor made friends with Jude because anything was better than spending another lunch break listening to Bryce and his friends-since-kindergarten talk about nothing.
Later, Connor realized there was a little more to it than that. He also made friends with Jude because it gave him a chance to be a whole new person. Around Jude, he didn't have to be the same version of himself that he'd always been.
Tenth grade – present day
Connor was six foot, two inches now. He was handsome (his mom said), a hottie (his dates said). He was a passable athlete, a decent student. He was on track for college. But he was still in kindergarten. Without Jude, he was stuck being the same Connor Stevens he'd always been.
Connor glanced over at Jude once more. He stood close to another guy, talking intently. The other guy turned fractionally and Connor saw that it was Liam Tucker, a school choir geek that Jude had dated for a couple of months. Were they back together? Connor wondered. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe Jude was just friendly with his exes.
For his part, Connor was not friendly with his exes. When she'd seen him in the corridor yesterday, Maddie had actually turned and walked the other way. "You're weird and jealous and possessive, but at the same time, I don't even feel like you see me," Maddie had said to him once, during their doomed relationship. If that was true, he couldn't blame her for hating him.
Connor was brought back to the present moment by Bryce thumping him on the arm.
"My house after school, yeah?" Bryce said. "My mom's making fried chicken. And I'mma own your ass on Call of Duty."
"Yeah," said Connor. "I'll be there."
You home yet?
Connor tapped out the message rapidly as he climbed out of his car. His dumb, red muscle car that Bryce had insisted he spray-paint with a lightning bolt on the hood.
His phone buzzed in his hand with a new message as he walked up the path. The message read:
Upstairs.
Connor paused at the front door, but he didn't knock. He pushed it and found it unlocked. Brushing past his hesitation, he strode inside. The house was quiet. He remembered it when it had been noisy and overstuffed with kids, but today it was quiet and seemingly empty. His sneakers sounded loud against the wood floors as he walked. He took the stairs two at a time and then forced himself to slow his pace.
The door at the top of the stairs was half-open. Connor slipped across the threshold, easing the door open another inch. He saw that the boy inside the room was arranged comfortably on his bed, stretched out, his back propped up again the pillows. A leather-bound notebook – a journal, perhaps – was open in his lap and he was writing.
He looked up when Connor entered the room, acknowledging his presence. Then he looked down again and continued to write, a rapid scrawl against the page. Connor could almost see the flow of thoughts from his mind. Connor hesitated again, taking a moment to look at the boy, who was still overcome with thoughts. His brow was furrowed in concentration. He was biting his lip.
He was all angles now, Connor reflected. Sharp cheekbones and arched eyebrows and long legs. He still wasn't as tall as Connor, but a growth spurt had pushed him up to five-ten, five-eleven. The slightly awkward, ungainly quality he'd had aged 12 had been ironed smooth over the past four years. The way he held himself was now elegant – although Connor would not have used that word aloud. He was also – the boy's gaze flicked upward again to meet Connor's, briefly, revealing dark, penetrating eyes – pretty, which was another word Connor would never, ever say out loud.
He was also still writing.
Connor crossed the room in three strides. He placed his knee on the side of the bed, so that the mattress dropped. He stooped low, so that he was level with the still-writing boy. Connor reached out and pulled the pen from the boy's grasp. He tossed it matter-of-factly over his shoulder and it made a satisfying sound as it clattered against the wood floor. The boy gave him a wry smile, visibly irritated, and before Connor could toss away his journal (it was definitely a journal), the boy tucked it out of sight beneath his pillow.
Connor couldn't stand to see the sour, smiling twist of the other boy's mouth, so he leaned in and kissed him hard. The boy took a moment to react, to relax into Connor's kiss. The amusement was wiped from his expression, replaced with a look of wanting. Connor climbed onto the bed and sank down on top of him, pushing the boy down against the pillows with the weight of his body, the urgency of his need. One kiss became several kisses and Connor began to feel that he couldn't stop kissing Jude if he tried.