ALEX
We’re in my bedroom the same as every other day that I can remember. This is our place, our refuge: it’s here we go to hide, it’s here where our friendship has grown year after year.
We’ve known each other since we were children, we’ve shared everything and now here we are sharing this pain, which is his, of course it is, but I feel it as if it were mine.
His mother isn’t here anymore and the hole in his heart is something that cannot be filled. I’d like to help him, but I don’t know how to.
We sit in silence. He tries to study for our upcoming test and I try to help him the best I can but I know he’s not really reading that book just like I’m not able to concentrate on anything else.
All my thoughts are for him.
The silence that wraps itself around us is grueling. I’m afraid he’ll break down in tears suddenly and I won’t know how to console him.
Or maybe I’ll be the first to cry. I can’t stand to see him like this.
He is my best friend, my right hand man, my guiding force and now I feel like it’s not like that—it’s that our roles have been reversed and I’m not able to help him get over all this.
I’ve got to try, for his sake, because I don’t want him to get lost, lost in himself.
Jason is happy, he’s always smiling, just like his mom. He is open and jovial, the life and soul of the party, the guy who makes you feel better after a terrible day.
His eyes are clear, and sincere; they shine and blind you with their brilliance, like two stars falling from heaven to illuminate the night.
And yet, they seem different now. They’re deeper, and they mask an uncontainable suffering and they are tinted with a shadow of a tear pushing its way to the surface but which remains repressed, held back by something that will not allow him to free them.
I’d do anything to take away his pain, so that he doesn’t feel alone and abandoned.
And then I feel him moving in the room and coming closer to me.
My heart stops for a second because something’s about to happen, something that could change our relationship and our lives definitively. I don’t know if I’m ready, but he’s Jason and I’m not afraid of what could happen. I trust him.
He sits on my bed, I know this because I can feel the mattress sink under his weight. I don’t take my eyes off my book even though by now I haven’t been reading it for a few minutes.
I’m not able to look him in the eyes.
Then he takes my face in his hands and gives me a weak smile.
I see his eyes light up again and his lips move in towards mine. I hold my breath and my heart starts beating like crazy, provoking a frantic feeling in my chest that I’m barely able to control.
And he kisses me tenderly. It’s not a kiss you give to a friend. It’s something completely different, it’s a real kiss.
My first kiss.
I’ve never kissed anyone before now, guys never approach me and now I’m starting to understand why. Jason is always around me: he holds my hand, he hugs me, and walks with me by his side every day as if...as if I werehis.
I let go of my initial discomfort and try to bring myself back to what’s happening right here right now in this room, which has witnessed us together a thousand times but has never seen beyond appearances, just like me.
My tongue brushes his and a shiver runs down my spine, giving me goosebumps. Jason pulls me into him and for the first time I feel his heat mix with mine.
He runs his hands through my hair, across my face and my shoulders. He goes down slowly along my arms and stops a moment at my waist. He takes a deep breath and lets his fingers slide under my shirt. His touch makes me shudder with embarrassment and pure emotion, but it’s something nice, something I desire.
Something right.
Suddenly however the pain in my chest becomes too much and as I try to slowly pull away from this kiss which is confusing me and taking away his friendship, I feel like I’m losing something, something important.
My vision goes hazy, I close my eyes and then there’s nothing else.
I’m losing myself.
I’m lost.
