The five of them decided to have an impromptu snowball fight. The snowfall outside wasn't much, but they were smart enough to keep it from building up around their cars so they didn't have to dig them out when it was time to leave, and it sort of spiraled from there. Or that's what TJ assumed from his position on the living room couch. His bruised ribs made a great excuse to not be out there.
The TV in front of him played some movie he wasn't paying attention to. His eyes were tiredly reading though the texts he had gotten in the last few days. He typed out more advice, wondering exactly how long he could go without responding before any of them would notice.
He paused, taking a deep breath. That pain medicine worked for the most part but a dull ache remained.
TJ forced himself up and off the couch. Reaching the stairs, the others started to come inside. Right on time to avoid them.
"Hey, Teej, we're about to watch a movie," Spinelli said. "You gonna join us or are you gonna hole yourself up in your room the whole trip?"
"I'm going to hole myself up in my room the whole trip," he said. "No thanks."
He continued climbing the stairs, leaving them downstairs.
TJ had assumed that losing his friends in middle school would hurt more. They were his best friends, and how many times had heard that middle school was where friendships went to die? So he left sixth grade, hoping that the six of them would get through middle school unscathed.
But, as new clubs and new friends pulled at each of them, was it weird to say that it didn't effect him as much as he thought? Maybe he was in the midst of discovering his own budding masochism, maybe he started to mentally disconnect from the five of them without noticing, but spending less and soon no time with the five of them didn't bother him, and he didn't give it much thought when he noticed.
No fight or huge blow out like in a lot of TV shows, or what he'd hear happening to others through the grape vine.
It just happened, and he just. . .didn't care.
Hot showers were so deceiving. For 20 minutes he could be fooled into thinking that his injures were healed, his muscles weren't stiff as stone, and that maybe he could spend some quality time with his pocketknife. Effectively. That one attempt before was pathetic and left him more frustrated than before trying.
Approximately five seconds after stepping out, TJ was swiftly slapped back down to reality as the pain returned, and moving hurt. It was a small miracle when he managed to get his pajama bottoms on.
Relaxing under the covers, he ignored the sound of the others downstairs and the smell of food.