Straight Boys - Chapter 41: Chapter 41

"You're right. But the problem I see with this is that you think other people are the ones to blame for everything. Don't you think that the person is also partly to blame? Because what I've gathered from all of this is that, yeah sure, other people judge someone they don't really know, but how else are they gonna come to a sound conclusion about someone? It's really also the person's fault because they choose not to help those people understand. They are the ones who let people judge them. The trick is whether they believe the people's judgement over their own because that's really what it comes down to. Realizing that this - what you're saying - doesn't matter unless we allow each other to understand. So please, help us understand. No, help me understand because I have no clue what the heck any of you weirdos are even talking about."
I didn't want to. I really fucking didn't.
I just couldn't! Jesus, this was so fucked up!
Everything in my life had just become so fucked up it was almost a joke.
Really? What did I do to deserve such a turn of events to happen to me? Why was it always happening to me?
I didn't want to help him understand. I wanted him to forever stay in the dark about what really was going on, about why I really had an anxiety attack those few days ago. It would have been so much easier for the both of us really, but when has anything ever been easy anymore? Nothing because life apparently decided it wanted to start being hard for me to handle. It suddenly was like, "Ha! Reality check you oblivious fuck!"
So, I decided that I was going to try and tell him something that wasn't exactly the truth, but not a lie either. "Zachary. . ." I started, but I didn't know how to finish what I was about to say. I didn't even know what I was going to say.
Lucky for me, Corbett decided that he was going to do all the talking. "I've got it. I've got the both of you," he violently pointed at him and me, "on tape. Kissing. I'm just wondering what I should do with it." I dug my brows together and clenched my fists in disappointment, feeling every nerve in my body shaking with propensity.
But then I let that natural panic spill over and exclaimed, "Why are you so goddamn smug? About everything! Why? Why are you even doing this, Connors? Huh?" I had glanced at Zach and saw his face screwing up in confusion. Then, like a light bulb clicked above his head, his eyes started flashing with the events of the Halloween party and then he was directing his confusion at me.
"We actually kissed at that party, then, didn't we?"
This time, I didn't want to look at Zachary. I just looked away and into the slits of Annie's eyes. She was directing her stare at Corbett. "What the hell, dude? Blackmail is illegal, isn't it? Isn't it?"
Corbett looked down at the dirty concrete as if the stained cement was suddenly so much more interesting than Annie's disappointment and questioning eyes. Then he mumbled something I just barely caught, "I just didn't know what else to do. I panicked."
"You panicked?!" I blurted. "You fucking panicked? What the fuck about any of this is making you panicked? Huh? Please - Please tell me!"
Suddenly there was a dark glint in Corbett's eyes. He shifted his weight and I could physically see his body growing with tension like he was a bristled cat. My eyes swiveled over to Annie and I could see her mimicking his stance slightly, almost replicating his sudden nervousness. Then, she spoke up for Corbett, "I don't really. . . think that that's really what matters right now. We should just - like - we should focus on trying to. . . to. . .," she shifted uncomfortably, trying to form the right words, but she couldn't find any by the way she started flopping around like a fish.
"No," and Corbett noticed, too, because he was stepping closer to Annie, laying an almost - almost - gentle hand over her bony shoulder. He sighed, whispered something in her ear, and then looked straight at me, saying, "I'll tell you."
"Wait wait wait," I whipped around to look behind me at Zachary, "Don't tell me. Let me guess." He had that joking smirk on his face that was basically his trademark and he was stalking up closer until he was standing parallel with me, his arms crossed and posture calm like he was rounding up on his prey. It reminded me of how he used to be, of how he had used to treat me.
I felt my brow twitch in curiosity at his flip in moods. He went from exhaustion, to confusion, to mocking in a matter of minutes. It was really a feat all in its own I supposed, one only Zachary Rogers would ever be able to achieve.
"Let me guess," Zachary repeated, "you were panicking because you were angry that Andrew was kissing me, right? You were angry, and I know - no we all know - how you get when you're angry. So my only question is. . . Why were you angry that Andy and I were kissing? Do you. . . Do you perhaps like one of us?"
My head whipped around to stare at Corbett again, a big question mark reflected over my face. I didn't know exactly what Zachary was doing, like what was going through his head or if anything was going through his thick skull at all, but it was unexpected to say the least.
Maybe I was just dense, but it seemed Zachary freaking Rogers knew some things that I didn't. Why wouldn't he instantly know what was going on when I had no fucking clue anymore?
It seemed like he had that ability, and for a while since I have come to really know him. I just never really took note of it, too wrapped up in everything that has happened and was happening to actually notice it clearly.
Snapping back to reality, I crossed my arms stiffly over my chest and stood taut in apprehension. The mere thought of someone like Corbett Connors ever liking someone like me, well someone like anyone with a dick seemed completely unbelievable. Corbett wasn't gay. He never seemed the type to like guys or girls. Anyone really.
Then again. . . I didn't think I liked guys either and look where that got me.
But still. Corbett liking anyone but himself was laughable. Just look at the way he treated other people, how he treated me! It was unthinkable, unreasonable even, and I was kind of starting to doubt Zachary really knew what he was guessing about when I took in Corbett's twitching eye and pulsating fists.
"You shut you're fucking mouth before I shut it for you, Rogers, I'm not even kidding. You better back the fuck up and take your twisted - your twisted little guesses some place people actually care to believe what you're shitting from your mouth!" Corbett reverbed, his whole stance unmoving, but boiling over the edges where he stood. The anger radiating off of him made me instinctively step back from him for once, but I watched as Annie O'Phanny took a step towards him.
"Annie," I hissed, "What are you doing?! You're in the punching zone, and I dont think he discriminates!"
Annie shot me a warning look, then turned back to Corbett. She was whispering inaudible words in his direction, and he looked to be only half listening as he trained his blazing glare on Zach, that angry fire trail between them back once again; but then, as she reached out and gripped his wrist - actually having the decency to seem shy about it - he finally looked solely at her. I could visibly see his shoulders slouching as he listened to her whispering, and I strained my ears trying to figure out what she was saying exactly - trying to come to terms with how she was actually taming that beast.
"Don't suppose it's a little late to notice they're sort of friends, yeah?" I jumped a mile in my skin at the hand falling to my should and Zachary suddenly speaking in my ear. I glanced back at the couple for a second before biting the inside of my cheeks.
"Fucking insane," I replied with. He shrugged.
"Like us."
I let his words rattle in my head for a few moments, jotting down the unspoken message, the insinuation behind it in the ridges of my brain. He wasn't wrong. Our friendship was a little insane, a little surprising actually because who could have ever thought? Two enemies becoming friends - hell more than friends in my eyes.
Was I judging their relationship too harshly? Maybe; but could anybody really blame me? I just never would have pinned Annie and Corbett together. It just didn't make sense that the wacky ice cream girl I could call a psuedo-girlfriend was friends with the biggest fucking poser I had ever had met and had the luck to interact with.
So, I whispered indiscreetly to Zach just my thoughts, "We're different from them. We work. I don't think Corbett can work with anyone but himself."
Zachary seemed like he was doing to reply to my little spew of words, but then Annie was swiveling on her heels to look between the two of us. Her voice was harsher than I had ever heard it as she said, "Really, Andy, I think you and your little sidekick should just get out of here. I don't want this to get anymore out of hand than it already is."
I made to disagree with the ginger, but Corbett was already shitting from his mouth before I could get a word in, "Listen to her, Andrew. This is really none of your goddamn business."
Fuck it felt like we were going in circles.
"This is my business, you giant fuckwad. That's," I pointed to Annie, "My fucking friend that's trying to calm your little bitchfit and you're harboring video blackmail of me and Zachary, so this has everything to do with me!"
It really did feel like I was getting nowhere with these two. I just wanted to know what the hell was going on; I wanted my eyes open so it wouldn't feel like I was so blind anymore, because that's how I felt. I felt like I was the one always in the dark while everyone else around knew what the fuck was happening. It was getting real old real quick. There is only so much someone could take before they reached their limit, and oh man I reached that limit fucking ages ago.
And it looked like Corbett had reached his limit, too. If I thought he had a few minutes ago, I was sourly and poorly mistaken; because I could physically see him breaking in half - swear I could hear it, too. I could see it in his eyes, that thin thread snapping and his resolve - his actual facade - falling apart and giving way to this boy I had never seen before, not even when he was beating the shit out of me. And I could hear it in the way his breath hitched, his knuckles cracked under the pressure of his clenching fist, and Annie mumbling a train of profanities.
"Corbett. . . !" She screamed hysterically.
"Oh fuck. . ." Zachary mumbled audibly next to me.
Before I knew what was really happening, Corbett had shoved his way passed Annie, literally threw his arm back and punched Zachary square in the nose, effectively moving him out of his way, and grabbed me by the collar of my hoodie. I screamed out a slur of swear words at his face, my hands coming up to try and push him away from me while Annie rushed to a groaning Zachary, who - from what I could only glimpse a look at - was trying to pick himself up while he cradled his bloody nose in his quickly reddening fingers. He was failing miserably.
It was a bigger mess than my life was.
"Are you alright, dude?" Annie was asking Zachary in the background, while he still moaned in pain and groaned in anger at the offender.
"You crazy bastard!" I was yelling. "Get your hands off me, you fucker!" And he was dragging me away from Annie and Zach. He was harshly pulling me, his grip iron strong and most likely stretching the fabric of my jacket as he pulled one way and I pulled the opposite way, my heels digging and hands stinging from my slaps to his arms. He seemed completely unfazed, however. I had never seen that on him, that blank look. It was scarier than I had liked to have admitted. Usually he was crazy. But not then. He rather looked. . . Calm like it was the serenity before a storm. He was still, unflinching as my first connected with his shoulder. If anything, with each hit his grip got strong and pull rougher, until he had dragged me out of the back alley and was throwing me up against a car at the front of Fro-Cone - his car by how expensive it looked. Annie and Zach were left in the dust to fend for themselves, or rather Annie to fend for Zachary.
I winced from the rough impact, my own shoulders feeling like they were slapped with bricks and my left elbow tingling from my funny bone hitting the car's frame. I ignored the pain, though, finding that I had better things to worry about. Setting my jaw, I held my hands palms out to push Corbett back so I could get away, but him being a literally mountain of muscle and a good few inches taller than me, the raging bull did not even move an inch back. He, instead, moved his body closer to mine, one of his hands finding my collar again to push me back against his vehicle, his move caging me in and rendering me immobile.
Nose to nose, I could finally see that seering anger simmering under his lashes. His chest heaved up and down almost in hyperventilation and he looked like he wanted to scream, but like I said before, something in him had been obliterated. His eyes looked like empty shells of anger, like that one emotion was the only thing left in him and nothing else. He didn't exactly look like himself, or what I had associated him to look like. And he didn't yell when he opened his mouth.
"You -" his voice was soft, yet rough around the edges, and so unspeakably fragile that it froze me to actually listen to what he had to say to me out of sheer curiosity. "- You don't. . . get it. Nobody really gets it, these-these feelings inside of me. You don't fucking understand, and I want you to - fuck! It's the only thing I know how to be! Just so angry all the time, and I want people to understand, but they - you just don't. I can't explain it because I'm not - fuck hell - I suck at the whole using your words bullshit, I always have. But I want, I want you to understand - understand me."
I was unwittingly smacked to attention by his tone, by the need and desperation building in each word he gritted out. I don't exactly know why I was allowing him to tell me these things. I had no utter idea, but in that moment, in that parking lot at who knows what time, as I chased my eyes between Corbett Connors' own blues, I somehow saw my own reflection peeking through his crumbling mask. His true face was coming to the spotlight, the same face I had only snagged a glimpse of in that corner last week. He wasn't putting that usually front of his back up like last time, though. No.
He kept drowning himself in these emotions he had tried so hard to swim away from, so hard to paddle against, and it seemed as if his life jacket - that mask I was only starting to see - was slipping from his fingers little by little like he couldn't control what was happening to himself any longer. I didn't know if he was intentionally allowing his true colors to show, but I found myself unable to breath from the sheer power behind them, the rawness. He was suddenly stripping his layers right before my eyes, becoming naked.
It felt like a punch in the gut.
I hadn't even seen Zachary look so emotional before. Not like this.
Not so sincerely that it was messing with my head, my mental image I had created of him.
Abruptly, Annie's rant was whispering her words between my ears; "You need to realize that you know nothing about the people around you. . . You know nothing because all you ever see is the things you want to see, and that's almost never the truth about someone."
"I -" Corbett's eyes crinkled shut as he bowed his head, his blonde hair softly tickling my chin, his shoulders moving up and down as he tried to calm his breaths. "I was. . ." He was hesitating. His hesitation was giving me a clear and obvious window of opportunity to escape his hold, but something in me - my subconscious, Annie's irritatingly rationally voice, I didn't know which - was holding my back. I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to run away or listen to his explanation. A bigger part of me, that curious George in me, wanted to know his story, his reasoning behind everything.
So I let him calm down as I leaned myself further against his car, giving my shaking legs a rest and my beating heart time to slow down.
When Corbett was looking back up at me a few intakes of air later, my breath hitched. His eyes, although dry, were red-rimmed and narrowed at the edges. Then he was whispering again, but his voice had that broken shake behind it as he started to explain to me what the hell was going on, "I was diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder a little before I turned sixteen. I can't control my anger and I end up losing all control of myself. It happens frequently, but I'm good at hiding it at school. I try not to let things get to me - shit so stupid like Mrs. Burch failing me because I accidentally knocked over a picture of her cat or Allison Reynolds picking a fight with her shitty insults. But. . . I just get so angry thinking about you, I can't stop it."
My eyebrows knitted together. "What did I ever do to you? Absolutely nothing besides see you slinging your bullshit when nobody else has."
Corbett widened his eyes and pushed his hands deeper into my shoulders. "Exactly! Nothing! You just. . . It's not you. Not really anyway. It's me. It's-it's always been me." At that, Corbett pushed himself away from and slouched away from me like he was suddenly afraid to touch me. "It's disgusting, actually. The reason why I get so angry, why I have this fucking disorder. You've heard that saying, right? The one about the boy who bullies a girl in the sandbox but actually only really likes her? Well what a fucking surprise it was that I turned out to be the bully. I never meant - I only - it's not like that, technically!" His voice bordered on anxiety after he had literally confessed to liking me.
His confession honestly made my brain stop working for half a second. Zachary's mocking voice suddenly didn't seem so mocking anymore as I warily studied the boy in front of me.
So he really did like me?
I felt my joints go stiff. Really, his explanation was not explaining anything to me.
He has anger issues, yeah, but he likes me, which is why he is always angry? What the fuck?
"Okay, dude, you're gonna have to explain this a little better to me. You have anger issues, good for you, but you get angry that you like me, so you take it out on me? What the hell?" To be honest, at this point I didn't actually care that Corbett had a stupid, little crush on me. That was honestly something I didn't really care about anymore. I really just wanted to know why.
Aggressively sighing, Corbett threw his hands out in front of him and said, "I'm not supposed to fucking like dudes, okay? I'm not supposed to like you, but I do and it's so fucking wrong! Why do I have to like you? You're not a girl. You've never liked me before we were on the same football team, so why do I like you? I can't! I just can't! And he tells me that every day. I can't, I can't, I can't!" By this point, Connors was just rambling in this other world of his as he started to pace back and forth in front of me.
But I didn't really focus on that. I could only really focus on a part of his rant that rang out louder than the rest. He tells me that every day.
So, cautiously, I asked, "Who. . . Tells you you can't like me?" It was obviously still weird that Corbett liked me, but I liked Zachary, and nobody was telling me I couldn't like him.
Except him at times.
And I hadn't exactly told anyone else, but that wasn't the point.
Corbett stopped his pace mid-step to cast his blues on me. A pained look flashed before he spoke so soft, I had barely caught what he had said, "My step-dad."
Maybe I wasn't quite as skilled in the art of reading people as Zachary Rogers was, or as skilled at figuring things out with a snap of my fingers, but suddenly the missing pieces of this imaginary puzzle I had been working on in my brain of Corbett Connors had clicked into place. All the times he had touched me in ways that were far too intimate to be platonic; the way he had flipped when I broke and said I deserved to have been beaten by him; and the anger he had at liking me.
All the psychology classes I had taken had prepared me for it - for the signs - but I was shit with my people skills.
I felt my bones growing stiff and muscles becoming painfully tensed. I had to force my mouth to move to ask the one question I had come to on my own. "Does your stepfather disapprove of you being. . . of liking guys? Does he-Does he hit you over your sexuality?" Then Corbett was raising his cotton shirt to answer my question.
Right there in front of me, on the side of his ribs, was a fading bruise the size of a basketball sprouting ghastly shades of black, yellow, and red. I stepped forward, my fingers itching to feel the bruise, to really see it, but I backed away last minute, finding my sudden change of heart sort of disconcerting. I found this whole situation disconcerting, but that's not the point.
The point is, that this boy I had associated as a bully was actually very much so just a broken kid who had been dealt his own hand by none other than a family member; and who knows for how long the beating had been going on? I didn't. But it seemed to be going on for a while.
Dropping the hem of his shirt, Corbett cleared his throat and avoided eye contact. "He quite literally tried to beat the gay out of me, so sometimes I try to do it myself, by manipulating people to the point of trying to manipulate myself. I tried to manipulate myself into being straight at one point, but. . .it doesn't work. It never works, and that makes me angry." His eyes found mine once again, a hidden meaning swirling behind his lashes. "I'm gay and I've been gay since I was fifteen, but that wasn't in the plans for my stepdad."
I pursed my lips, almost becoming overwhelmed by Corbett's confession. But, I still had questions that needed to be answered. "But why do you want to blackmail me into leaving Zachary? Why are you using me kissing a boy against me if you like boys?"
Corbett shook his head. "Because that's the only thing I could think to do to get you to notice me! You hate me - which I don't blame you - but the part of me that's so fucking gay wants you to notice me, notice that I like you. But I panicked. I was getting angry and I couldn't control what I was saying because the guy you're kissing wasn't me. And," I felt myself tense further up as he stepped back into my bubble, "I want it to be, god damnit. I want to kiss you."
My eyes widened, but I watched as Corbett took a big step back after realizing his slip up. That mask of anger was building back up right in front of me then; and, as if it was bound to happen, Corbett's fists clenched up and one went to hit his thigh as the other one connected to the pole of the streetlight a foot away from him.
He was more a mess than I was.
I never noticed.
Of course you never noticed! You never bothered!
I felt guilty at my own realization. I felt blindsided, actually, like I had suddenly found out that the villain in a movie was only evil because the world had been cruel to him, that his backstory was full of sadness instead of him actually just being a downright fucking maniac.
It feels weird to suddenly find yourself not actually hating someone you thought you knew. It felt like a bomb had explode and emotional shrapnel had embedded itself into my insides and was twisting my heart uncomfortably.
I had a new picture of Corbett Connors in my head now. A new light had been shed on the whole situation with him.
"It's just," I jumped at the sound of Corbett's voice once again sounding, "I meant to tell you I liked you a long time ago. Life just. . .got in the way. I thought you were straight, so I tried making myself straight. It never worked in the end. I could never - I never - well, let's just say my playboy reputation doesnt really precede me like yours does." I winced.
The faces of all my companions played behind my eyes at the mention of the many girls I had spent time with since I was fourteen.
"You know," I started, trying to shake the memories and my own impending anxiety, "it's okay to be gay. There's nothing wrong in liking other boys. I - well, I realize that now. It doesn't make you or me any different." Corbett's face took on a skeptical mask.
"Tell that to Mandy."
◇
Ha
Haha
Heh. . .
Um hi.
Sorry it's been a while.
If you have questions or theories of this chapter of the upcoming chapter, ask them HERE.
Please. I'm too tired to ask you guys the traditional questions, I'm really sorry.
But what did yall think of this unedited chapter? I'm trying my best to keep my shit all there and Dandy and as least confusing as possible, but it's alright I guess.
Hope this chapter didn't disappoint. Took me for fucking ever for no fucking reason.
Like always I suppose LIKE and COMMENT, at least those of you left.