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I want to apologize
With an emergency call about to end of the first Monday in which I'm back in circulation I had to go back home, on Tuesday I dedicated myself to sleep all day long, without even getting a small snack, on Wednesday I was about to get off the car and again happened that I entered in a small moment of self-contempt, having to go home again.
On Thursday I just didn't wanted to attend school, on Friday was the same story. Saturday becomes in another day of leisure with The Little Prince, Carrie and Algebra from Baldor, because Bletheim insists that I can't be late in classes anymore, message sent conveniently with Madison. I would like to see her trying to solve quadratic equations with little dots, let's see if she's so brave, and I'm still wondering how mom and dad did it to find such a thing in a bookstore. It's Thursday, after a whole week, and I'm about to put an end to that.
Conclusion of that week and a half: being locked up is the worst thing that can happen in the universe, I feel like a caged lion, ready to bite the hand that feeds me and throw myself against the tamers. Second conclusion: even with the huge and surely expensive mathematical encyclopedia I will not keep studying algebra anymore, it's horrible!
Contrary to all of that, I feel I bit better, more calm and rested, just now I understand that the cruelty of Kitty has a goal, although I don't think that that's the best way to get someone to realize some things.
Someone knocks on the door of my room, I move my head in that direction and don't make the slightest effort to move. If breathing weren't an autonomous process surely I would stop doing it, the laziness that has befallen on me since Thursday refuses to leave my body.
"Come in" I say in a growl, just high enough for the person on the other side to not knock again.
"Hi honey" the sweet voice of mom says when she enters and closes the door gently. The tone of her voice, time for a pep talk. Horror.
"Hey mom" she sits next to me, I take a small jump when she caresses my right cheek with the back of the soft skin of her fingers and she also starts doing caresses in my hair. I remember her doing that when I was a little boy and she wanted to make me to fall asleep, and the same soporific effect is still there after all these years.
"You haven't come out from here in the whole day, you neither come down for lunch. Is everything alright, sweetheart?" I smile when she touches my nose.
"Yeah, everything's alright" I sigh and leave a smile on my face, "it's just that I don't have the slightest intention to get on my feet".
Immediately that I finish talking I bite the inside of my right cheek. Bad choice of words, now I don't want to imagine the kind of things that must be spinning inside her head.
"Do you think that we should call Dr. Watson for…?" she stops when she notices that I'm shaking my head no.
"No need, I just simply have extreme laziness" she stays quiet, her hand stops doing caresses in my hair and I force myself to not roll my eyes. "Mom, I mean it, I'm wonderful. Exhausted, but great".
She nods with her throat and returns to her work that causes me to get sleepy and feel that if I take a nap I'll wake up fully rested, which wouldn't be bad at all. Now she even moves her hand with a slightly slower pace, making that my eyelids starts feeling a little heavier with the passage of the time. If I were a cat then I would be purring or something like that.
"You're a very strong boy, honey" that, I was waiting for it. It has been days since the last time she talked about: "you're very brave to confront everything that happens to you right now, so far you have found ways to cope with the things and that I'm so proud for it".
My hands are clasped behind my head, so I stretch my arms and shake them a little, like if they were rattles, and I guess she knows what I mean. The bandages are no longer there because of my visit to the visit to the hospital yesterday, just for a review, supposedly I've healed very fast, but some stitches are still there to ensure that I don't make something stupid again. Would it be possible? Yeah, it would.
"I've stumbled a few times, but I think it could be worse".
"Even after your little… incident, you're still standing, and that's something remarkable".
I guess mom really wants me to believe what she's saying, but in reality I don't buy a word of it. I'm all the opposite of what she just said, I'm weak and I just have molded to all of this because it's a need, adding that I don't want to stay home all the time.
I need to be outside, even though that now I'm in a confinement that I established myself.
"But anyway, I also came to ask you why I haven't seen your friend Spencer in days, you used to get along so well".
Even when I'm lying down over all of my blankets I shrug extremely, my arms crosses over my stomach and I get to remember the color of the exterior walls of the house, how green the grass was and the steam rising from the pavement because of the rain.
"Mason?" she asks, using that scolding tone that she shares with Madison. But now it's not a scold, or so I think, but she wants an answer.
"I don't know, mom, I honestly do not know" I don't doubt that Madison said something and now she wants a long and coherently explanation. "The last thing that I heard from him was that the glazed cinnamon rolls are his favorites" «and that I'm an idiot, although the last he didn't said it directly».
"It's such a pity, you always seemed to be in very good spirits when he came to visit" there's something that she wants to tell me, I'm sure of it, but she just keeps it for herself.
I cock a smile and shrug my shoulders, doing everything that respects to him aside. Maybe I can solve anything when I return to McKinley, my goal is to do it on Monday morning, and see how things get going after that and a serious talk that I wouldn't like have to have about… other things.
Before I can do anything else I hear the rustle of a small cellophane wrapper that ends up slipping through my hands.
"Though it's contrary to the rules of candy before dinner, I think you could at least eat a chocolate for now".
I thank her about a million times, I haven't eaten one in weeks, I open it and give her the half because it's a bitter chocolate, the favorite of both of us, and we both give a big bite before she ruffles my hair, tells me that dinner will be ready at any time, and leaves my bedroom.
The only thing that moves is my right hand when it routes the chocolate to my mouth, and it's the most bitter, smooth and delicious chocolate that I've tasted so far. While I'm dedicated to fatten myself a little I start to think that the obviousness in the whole affair that involves both Spencer and me is way too much, it's overwhelming, it's killing me, and anyway I don't want to act on any of that, not now at least.
How is it that a perfect stranger can make me to doubt about myself being that earlier anything of that ever happened? Or maybe… yeah, the most probable thing is that I've always lived with false pillars, and with my sickly tendency to satisfy everyone. I guess that I'm already sick of it and I want to know who I can actually become indeed… if my reality doesn't hate me.
"Hey, Mason" I say in a whisper, like if it were someone else's speech, "you're an idiot".
I smile at my lack of self-adulation and I stand up, walking with my arms outstretched to enter the bathroom and have a well-deserved shower to after just have dinner, brush my teeth and meet myself with my blankets in another vain attempt to get some sleep.
Once inside the bathroom I take off my shirt and everything below, raising my head towards the mirror and supposedly meeting up with my threatening, arrogant and naked reflection.
"Are you willing to accept that you also have feelings for Spencer?" I ask to the reflection in a tone that the old Mason would use, who wouldn't dare to look at him naked in the mirror because he dislikes his slender body.
Instead of answering to myself I walk to the part of the bathroom that corresponds to the shower, because I wanted the bedroom with the bathtub but Madison took appropriation of it based on blackmailing, and open the right tap for the water to begin heating up by little, and once that it's adjusted to a temperature that will not scald my skin I stand under the small and constant warm jets.
I dedicate myself to do what everyone does being in the shower, I even intone a few stanzas of I Want To Break Free while I'm molding my hair with the foam of the shampoo, creating the styles that I would never be able to use in public, and making sure I'm neat everywhere.
Yeah, I'm very willing to accept whatever that lives between Spencer and me, for me it's not a problem, but unlike the courage and unimportant attitude from what people could say about him, to me it would really be somewhat strange that people say something if they see me holding hands with a boy (it already was a bit annoying when he accompanied me in the hallways to walk me towards some class) being that formerly I used to try something with a girl. I suppose that Jane would take it in a good way, but perhaps it should also be an important conversation that I should have her.
Today I decide to not comply with my policy of not more than seven minutes in the shower, because the water heater can continue to operate for a whole life and also because mom usually complains about the water bill, because I simply need a metaphorical way in which I can feel that all my troubles slides from my head and through all my body until they come to my feet and get lost down the drain.
It's weird to find that someone likes you when you don't know how to reciprocate those feelings.
I finally decide to get out and face the cold of the winter nights, I stick out my hand from the right side of the plastic shower curtain, one with a pattern of black circles and squares that used to be threatening in the store, and I find that the small hook where usually my towel with my robe are now is empty. Surely mom is washing clothes and she forgot to tell me.
"Hello?" I scream and I hit the wall in front of me, which I think connects with Madison's room, or is it the wall to the outside? Who knows, the point is to get out of here. "Someone needs a towel, can you hear me?".
I start thinking that the few things that I was wearing wouldn't be enough to dry myself, and I totally refuse to wear again both outer and under dirty clothes, but fortunately I remembered to bring one of my favorite boxer briefs, one set of soft black fabric.
"Could anyone…?".
Before I can finish begging for help someone knocks on the door and it opens after three knocks, I stretch out one of my hands from one side of the curtain and the towel finally comes to me.
When the door closes again I finish up with my routine in the bathroom, that involves deodorant, moisturizing almond cream that mom gave me because she says that my skin is too sensitive and… well, I could brush my teeth if I didn't knew that dinner will be ready at any time. I'm starving.
"What makes you to take so long?" I ask when I set a foot outside the bathroom and I talk in a playful tone, and I hope that my dear sister takes it like that.
"Madison asked me to".
I freeze and I hold on to the towel with both hands, although there's nothing to display in the unlikely event if it falls because the boxer brief is there, but it's the fact of hearing the voice of Spencer inside my room while I don't wear nothing more but a towel and boxer briefs what makes that a shiver gets down in all of the nerve endings of my body. That was that mom was hiding! Madison told her everything! Betrayal!
I'm in a crossroads between whatever that can pass if what I'm wearing disappears or if I simply force him to leave my room based in insults in such a Kitty-style, which I will not achieve in this life or in those that follows.
"What are you doing here?!" I ask, totally surprised.
"Madison is redecorating her room and she asked me to help her to move her furniture because she says that I'm the first one who hasn't tried to get a date with her, thing that will never happen" he speaks rigidly, like my position.
"I mean here, in my room".
"You wanted a towel, right? She asked me to bring it to you while she's on the phone with Kitty" he says, between serious and angry. I scratch my right forearm until I notice that I'm too close to the stitches in that area. "A simple and easy, also imagine that I'm doing quotes, 'thank you' would be enough".
It arise a desire to swallow the whole rant that pops into my head, and I do it, but the stupid part of my personality decides to opt for the hurtful words and stupid comments.
"I don't need you to tell me what happens in the world, or what you do".
"Of course you do, otherwise you would be angry, as usual" he speaks like if he were desperate and willing to not talk to me, which I would also be doing.
"I wouldn't be angry if I could see what you're doing right now".
We both stay quiet, I don't know what is he doing and I don't care at all, what happens inside of me is getting me worried. I'm regretting each and every one of my words, all of what I've said has being hurting him; he doesn't deserve to live with someone like me, I'm a pebble in the existence of people now with my new being.
"I'm going" he just take four loud stomps when I interpose in his way and I'm about to speak when I don't do anything more but start stammering. He takes me by the shoulders and he pulls me a little closer to him, but I feel that his hands are shaking with fury. "Move away".
"I'm trying to tell you s-something" I managed to gesticulate, although I'm not so sure of it, nor that I really want to talk to him again.
"I'm not interested, move away or…" he wanders and the grip of his hands gets a little loose, "I don't want to hurt you, or whatever".
"Could you do it more?" I answer, and he releases me.
That was a low blow, the kind of blows that those who practice contact sports and all of that earns a disqualification. I don't want to be like this, not anymore. If he wasn't present I would hit my forehead against a wall until it sets back on me the strange way in which I like to live.
"What is it that you want from all of this?" he asks, surely raising his arms or doing anything that could let him to shake out a little of his frustration. Fortunately it wasn't a punch on my face. "Do you want to hate me? Do it. Do you want us to being friends? Okay, we will not be friends anymore. What do you want?".
I move aside my empty look and I focus it on my feet, or at least I guess it should be centered there, taking deep breaths and fighting to not shrug my shoulders.
"Answer me!" I shrug and move back two steps, which are followed by him, I know that because he almost steps on me. However one of his fingers places under my chin and makes me to raise my head, I guess I would be staring at his blue eyes just now. "Please, tell me what do you want".
«You, I want you. I also want to see the world again, but while I have you I will not ask for anything else». I murder those thoughts right there.
"I want to apologize" says the Mason who has been at the mercy of the other Mason, the idiot that has been present all this time. I'm still struggling to overcome my own barriers. "I want to apologize for what I said, for all that I've said to you. I don't want to lose you, either way that I can be able to lose you, but it's… very difficult".
"What's difficult?" he asks, sounding not so annoyed.
"Not feeling bad about you, showing resented for it" I shake my head to stop his fingers for making contact with my skin. Immediately I want him to touch me again. "You can call it in any way that you think you can, the point is that I can't help it".
"I understand perfectly, so if you want to get some distance from me then I'll…".
"No, I don't want that" I take a deep breath and with that come a miserable pinch of clarity to my thoughts. "I want to forget what happened in the last couple of days".
One of his hands cups my cheek, causing me to startle as always, he flexes his fingers a little and the feeling is thoroughly enjoyable, so much that I almost let out the sigh that was forming in the depths of my being.
"Besides I guess it must be hard for you considering that you're in love with me".
His hand stiffens just for a second, like if he were discovered after trying to keep that as a secret for so long. I find it strange that I haven't noticed that all of the treatment that he gave me and all of those things were accurate signals to denote his feelings for me.
Clumsy new Mason, for hating you doesn't concentrate on anything else that you can perceive with your intact senses.
"I-I'm not in l-love with you" if I could sigh without him feeling offended then I definitely would, the way he's stuttering is indescribable.
"Oh come on, of course you do".
"T-that's a lie" his hand begins to shake and that does nothing but put me in the mood to continue with my sick game.
"Alright, I will not say anything because I don't think that Alistair or that Warbler want to answer awkward questions".
"I like you, Mason, not them" I listen a sound, like if one of his hands covered his mouth suddenly, something that he just did. I smirk.
"I knew it!" I exclaim in a triumphant tone, which makes him to snarl. "Those rumors run fast".
"Bah, I damn Kitty because she probably told you so" he snorts heartily and that makes me smile even more. "Anyway, it's not like if you were going to do something about it, right?".
I stay with my mouth dry and without any kind of comment, not even the new clumsy Mason has something stupid to say because he simply didn't expected that a confession of that kind were going to be made undertake so lightly, it's that or either that maybe my fascination to overdo things was expecting it to be one of those moments of the most tense and uncomfortable ones.
I caress my forearms and the thread of the stitches makes small cuts on my fingers, but I decided to ignore them and just let my arms inert at my sides, like I usually do when I don't know how to use them, and crossing them is not a feasible option now.
"Let's skip that since there's not a single answer" I was about to speak, to stutter almost like him and that we couldn't get anywhere in a while, "but… what then? Are we okay?" I should have done that question, but I'm more than happy with his initiative.
"Yes, I suppose so" Finally I walk to my drawers and put on the first tee that I find over the pile, besides that I wear it upside down the night breeze freezes me to my nerves. "We're fine".
"What follows now is completely stupid and irrational, but I'll say it anyway" he takes a deep breath and sighs in a shaky way. "Can I h-have a h-hug?" he hesitates, the most adorable act of the universe.
I stand firmly, sure that he's at a distance in which I only have to stretch my arms to have him closer again, but I'm surprised that he asked that question. It's assumed that he's against such those things, but the sweet voice that he employs and how he's willing to follow my stupid indications doesn't let me to refuse and makes me to think about him in another way, in the emotional context. I like this attitude.
"I thought that the one with a horrible existence and needed for a hug was me" I smile and hear a small laugh coming out from him.
"Then you're not going to give me a hug?" I roll my eyes and approach a few centimeters.
"Come here" I stretch out my arms and in two milliseconds I find with the warmth of his body.
His arms, the big, strong and muscular arms that that idiot Warbler had the privilege of touching first, wraps me, they put me closer to him and again the cracks of my existence begins to heal once more, now they do it so much faster because they found a source of tranquility in whatever that it can offer the proximity of a person.
His hands gets together in my lower back and they entwines there, remaining motionless while my hands moves up and down in all the length of his back, feeling the muscles that lay beneath his shirt. My head stays facing to the left side, leaning on his shoulder, and his to the right, but in a simultaneous movement the breathing of one of us hits the other's neck. I get tense in that very moment and he notices it because he starts tracing small and slow circles on my lower back. I don't want him to stop for the next five thousand years, my fool smile knows about it perfectly.
"This means that…?" he asks while for some strange reason my head starts to move a little forward, looking for his…
"Mason, mom says that dinner… oh, sorry".
When Madison's voice says the first word I depart from Spencer in a jump, almost reaching the other end of the room, a jump that neither the Cheerios could do in a championship. The comfortable warmth that was shared between us gets colder at a rate so fast that the only thing all I want to do now is to have him near me, feeling his breath against my neck and all that pleasant feeling that just woke up.
But… I don't know how she would take it, although she has shown a bit acceptable to the rarity if relationship that we have. But I don't know what mom and dad could think… later, yes, later.
"It really was so important for you to come in?" I say, being one of the few times when I hate my own twin sister.
"Now it doesn't matter, I'd better go" she responds and closes the door with a whip, but something tells me she was outlining that wicked smile she's so fond of, though not as evil like the one of her best friend.
"I suppose I should be going too, it's getting late after all" he says, letting out a heavy sigh and putting a hand on my shoulder. I look at it and he moves it away immediately, thing that I didn't wanted him to do. "Will you come back tomorrow to McKinley?".
"Maybe, I don't know" he pushes me with his shoulder and I return the gesture, both laughing a little. "Any news for the rest of the week?".
"The assignment from Kurt and Rachel, established for them of course".
"That means?" I ask, arching my right eyebrow.
"They called it 'Try something new'".
"Sounds pretty good, I have a couple of ideas in mind".
"Technically the week ends tomorrow, but as I haven't performed yet I wish you were there to…".
"Listen" «because I know you were going to say 'see' or say something like that» "of course I'll be there then".
He ruffles the hair and I smile to him, he passes by through my right side and his hand touches mine lightly, sending a wild electrical impulse through my right arm. I meditate a little the last thing that we said and I stop him before he goes with a misconception, but it doesn't seem entirely something wrong.
"Wait" he stops his walking and I just loose the things as they formulate in my head. "I'm not admitting that I have feelings for you".
"Oh, really?" the disappointment in his voice is evident, so I shake my head no and shrug my shoulders because I don't know what else to do with things that I'm not even sure they exists.
"No, no, don't get me wrong, I'm just a little confused about it, and all McKinley knowing it would be strange if I have in mind that everyone is already talking about me because they believe that something happens between Madison and me".
"I think I understand you" I roll my eyes slightly because I know he doesn't.
"Whatever, we will be friends again and just that, time will tell us if something change between us" he nods with his throat.
"I think I can make that sacrifice" he answers with all the ease and lack of meditation that he's capable of.
That word, sacrifice, makes me think like of this situation bothers him after what he just told me, it makes me think that maybe I look like a burden if I choose to be with him, and that brings back the new Mason whose tasks are being the biggest bastard that can may exist throughout the century.
"Fine, then if it is a sacrifice you can't be close to me in public, don't look at me in a special way and neither too much, don't sigh if you think about me, don't treat me differently; just don't let that show that there is… something" I say, getting frustrated with every word and with every agreement that he makes with his throat.
"Amazing, I will not do anything of that for a single second" he responds with good spirits in his voice, and that puts me on the edge.
"God, Spencer!" I raised my right hand and hold the towel with the left. I will not give him such a show when there's any. "If I'm forbidding you all of that, why the hell do you still want to keep trying to make this happen?" I make an alternating movement between us with my free hand while he makes a sound in his throat, I guess he's looking for the best answer in the world.
"Because with all of that you feel comfortable, and if that's how you want it then I will not stand in whatever that makes you feel comfortable and normal, and I should mention that I hate to use that word".
Normal. Yes, it's a word too ambivalent, and normal isn't something that many want to go along with, because it's boring following standards and all of that.
However a knot forms in my throat when he ruffles my still wet hair once more and walks out the door, down the hall I hear a lively whistle and I put one ear to the wood just to hear him saying goodbye to mom, dad and Madison.
I let out a sigh, surely Kitty would define it as one of a lovesick schoolgirl, and a smile stays on my face for the rest of the night, during dinner and even it hinders my attempts to brush my teeth. Is still there when I go to bed and when I lose consciousness to wake up tomorrow and to get back.
One reason to think of McKinley as something of my everyday has returned.