Detention 12

I’ve never been jealous over another dude - I never had a reason to be. And I didn’t wanna fucking admit it, but I was kinda jealous of that dumb-ass dude, Luke Block. B was looking at him the whole fucking time, looking at his dick and shit, getting hard and all that. Pissed me the fuck off. I shouldn’t give a fuck. I fucking broke up with B so I wouldn’t have to give a fuck. But now I realize that I do fucking care about him. I don’t know how that shit happened, but it did. I never thought I’d find myself ever liking a dude - and not just liking him, but like really fucking liking him. Now I fucked everything up and B doesn’t even want to talk to me. 

At first I thought that was what I wanted. I wanted to go back to the way things used to be when I was just chilling to myself, free to do whatever I wanted with any body I wanted - but now that I got what I wanted, I see that it’s not what I wanted. I’m such a dumb-ass. I fucked up on the only good thing I had for me - I fucked up on the only person that really gave a damn about me. And now I wanted him back.

After detention, when B walked away from me when we were talking I got in my truck and went around to as many bus stops as I could find, seeing if he was there. I didn’t know which bus Brandon took to get home, which was the real fuckin problem. Twenty minutes later, I said fuck it and gave up. Even if I had saw him, he probably wouldn’t want to say shit to me anyway. I drove around for about an hour, no place to go. I really didn’t wanna go home, `cause I didn’t wanna see my fucking dad. If he said anymore shit to me about anything - if he looked at me the wrong way, or did anything to fucking piss me off like he usually did, I was gonna knock the shit outta him. The best way not to start shit with him was to not be at home.

I thought about going to Brandon’s house. He should’ve been home by then, I guessed. I drove about halfway to his house and turned right around in the other direction. I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking. Instead I drove to the playground I took Brandon to that night when I told him that I didn’t wanna see him for a long time. I went over to that same tree where I held him and told him that I didn’t believe that love lasted forever. 

Sitting there, against that tree, I thought about all the things I said to B, the way his face looked when I said all those things - how he looked so fuckin mad and disappointed and shit. I don’t know why I said all that shit I said to him that night. I didn’t even know if I believed most of the shit I said. I told B that I didn’t want him to take us being together so seriously, cause I didn’t want him to have all these expectations of me that I wasn’t gonna be able to live up to. He wanted me to be his boyfriend, to love him...My eyes kinda stung a little, and I forced myself not to let a fuckin tear come out of my eye. I leaned the back of my head against the tree trunk, looking up at the orange sky. 

Of any of the times we’d been together, I wished B was with me right then at that moment. Part of the reason why I broke up with him was because I was afraid that if I really believed that he loved me like he said he did, then I would start to really trust him and then I’d find out that he was just fuckin with me, and that he didn’t love me at all. But I think he really did love me - and nobody’s ever loved me...well maybe my mom - but she’s dead. I never had somebody that was really into me, not just `cause of my face, or my body or bullshit like that, but just `cause they liked me. That night after I broke up with Brandon, I laid in bed that night, thinking about what he said to me on the swings: “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit for the great person you are”. 

I thought about that again so more as I sat under that big tree, watching the day slowly turn to night. I felt alone, and I had brought that loneliness on myself. B kept coming in my mind, and I kept thinking about what we would be doing if we hadn’t gotten into that stupid fight. Maybe we would’ve both been sitting under that tree together; maybe we would’ve been screwing or something. I don’t know. Just being with Brandon was better than being alone with myself. Again I thought about going over to B’s house and trying to talk to him about what I said before. Maybe he wouldn’t listen to a fucking thing I said - but then maybe he would. I thought about it for a good ten minutes and finally decided that I was gonna go over to his house. 

I was fucking nervous the whole time when I was driving over to Brandon’s house. I just kept thinking that he was gonna slam the fuckin door in my face or something when he saw me. But I still wanted to try anyway. When I pulled up to B’s house, about five minutes later, I just stayed in my car for a long-ass time, just looking at his house. I was kinda afraid `cause I didn’t know if his mom was home. I didn’t know why I was so fucking nervous to begin with though. I’m usually never nervous when it comes to talking to people or whatever. Except Brandon wasn’t just any person. He was different. 

Taking a deep breath, I got outta the truck and jogged across the street to B’s front door. I rang the doorbell and waited. Seemed like it took forever for somebody to come to the door, so I rang the doorbell again. I cracked my knuckles as I waited and held my breath. Brandon still didn’t come to the fucking door. I waited and waited, but he never came to the door.

“Fuck this shit,” I said, mad as fuck, and turned to walk away. That’s when I heard the door open up behind me and heard B’s voice:

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I turned around and all those nervousness I had before came right back. Brandon was standing halfway out the doorway. He was lookin at me with this cold-ass look in his eyes as though I was the last fucking thing that he wanted to see. 

Trying to sound all confident and shit, I said, “Came to see you.”

“I don’t wanna see you,” Brandon answered. “I told you that already today.”

“Still some more things I wanna say to you though, B. I didn’t come over to fight with you or any of that bullshit. C’mon. At least for like five minutes or something.”

I could tell that B wasn’t really all too excited about talkin to me. He was still lookin at me like I was a monster. “I don’t want to talk to you, Chris.” Brandon went back inside of his house and closed the door, leaving me outside by myself in the cold. I thought about just sayin ‘fuck it’ and go back to my truck and take my ass home. But I didn’t wanna go home and go to bed tonight without thinking that there was something I could’ve done to make shit better between me and B. I went up to his door again and knocked. 
From the other side of the door, I heard Brandon yell, “Go away, Chris. Leave me alone.”

“No. I’m not going anywhere until you come out here and fuckin talk to me.”

“What the hell do I need to talk to you about?” B screamed through the door. “Why should I go out there so you can say some more fucked up shit to me.”

“You know that’s not what I came here for, B.”

There was like a pause for a couple of seconds, and then finally Brandon jerked the door open again - hard that I thought the thing was gonna fuckin come off its hinges or something. He looked even more mad now then when he first came to the door. B still stayed inside of his house, not coming’ out to see me. “Come out here so I can talk to you.” I said. “Stop acting’ like a...” I was gonna say ‘bitch’ but I caught myself right in time. “Just come out here so I can talk to you. I told you, just for like five minutes. And then you can go back inside and never talk to me again if you don’t want to.”

B looked at me a little bit, like he was trying’ to see into my head or something. After a while, he stepped out of the house onto the porch, closing’ the door behind him. He took a seat on the porch steps in front of me. I sat right beside him. Now that I had gotten him to come outside, I really didn’t know what I wanted to say next. When I looked over at him, B was just staring’ at me, and he knew I was nervous and didn’t know what to say. His face kinda softened a little - he didn’t look so pissed off anymore which was a good thing to me. “What did you wanna say to me?” he asked.

I looked at him again. It had been a few days since I’d been that close to him; looking at his lips I thought about how long it had been since I last kissed him. He was the best kisser of any female or dude I’d ever kissed before and I missed that. “Just wanted to see you,” I guessed.

Brandon stood up. “If you don’t have anything to say to me, then I’m going back into the house.”

“No. Stay here with me.”

“What for, Chris? I thought you didn’t want to see me.”

“I thought the same thing. But I do.” 

“I’m not gonna have sex with you tonight,” B said. “So if that’s what you came over here for, you can just go home and jack off. Or find somebody else -”

“Is that what you want me to do?” I asked. “Go fuck some other dude and forget about you?”

“You don’t owe me any loyalty, Chris. You can go out and do whatever it is that you think you wanna do.”

“Is that what you’re gonna do with Blockhead?” I asked. I remembered B staring at that dude, Luke, when we were in the showers. I started to feel that same anger all over again.

“What I do and don’t do with Luke is none of your fucking business,” B said.

“Go ahead and do whatever the fuck you wanna do with him,” I said, getting mad again. “I don’t give a fuck. You can go ahead and fuck him until your brains fucking come out your ears.”

“You never fucking get it, Chris. It’s not about sex. Yeah, Luke is good-looking and he has a nice body, but that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna fly to the moon over him. If I wanted to, I could have him, but I chose not to.”

“How come?” I asked.

Again, Brandon stared at me for a few seconds. “`Cause I knew you were gonna come over here.”

“But I thought you didn’t want to see me,” I said.

“I didn’t. That doesn’t mean I knew you weren’t going to come over here.” For the second time, B came up and sat beside me on the porch. I knew I had to be careful with whatever I said so that he didn’t get up and leave me again. For a while, we just sat there without making any noise. We just looked at the houses across the street with no lights on. The whole street was dark and quiet. I was waiting for B to say something and I think B was ready for me to say something but neither one of us said anything for a long time. And then B said, real quietly. “How come you don’t ever treat me the way you really want to?”

At some point in time I knew he was gonna ask me that question. I had been trying to figure out the answer to that question for a long time. “I don’t know,” I answered.

“You do know, Chris. Tell me.”

“What do you want me to say, B?”

“I want you to say how you really feel. Stop trying to act so fuckin unaffected by everything. You always act like nothing means anything to you.”

“You mean something to me,” I said. And that was true. He really did.

“How am I supposed to know that if none of your actions show me that?” Brandon asked. “Saying you care about me, and then treatin me like shit beneath your shoe doesn’t make me feel all good inside, Chris.” 

I could feel my eyes start to sting again. I looked away from B so that he wouldn’t see the tear that might come down my eye. “It’s hard.” 

“What’s hard?” Brandon questioned.

“Everythin is hard. Just fucking being alive is hard most time. I’ve never fuckin been with someone the way I was with you. I never was interested in someone that long. Nobody’s ever been interested in me that long. Sometimes that shit is kinda scary.” I shook my head. It was starting to get cold outside. I wanted to ask B if we could go inside of his house and finish talking, but I didn’t.