Only to Feel This Fully [Completed]

Ch. 3: Wish I Had A Better Excuse

The whole school, if only ever so briefly, made a big deal about our win against arch-enemy Pine Wood. The principal devoted much of the morning announcement to regaling the school with an almost play-by-play of our victory. The school, both administrators and students alike, treat hockey as more of an after-thought to basketball during the winter sports season, but a rivalry win superseded all else, especially when the basketball teams were having down years.

For a moment, I allowed myself to wonder how the loss was received over at Pine Wood this morning. This lapse in thinking made me momentarily inclined to text Theo about it, but I eventually suppressed that urged, for multiple reasons. A rushed last-minute finishing off some homework for math, which was my first class of the day, consumed most of my homeroom period. Mrs. Perkins had a habit of assigning textbook questions that each had multiple sub-parts for homework, giving an initial appearance of significantly less work than there ended up being. Ten problems became thirty by some twisted alchemy.

Patrick didn't try to start a conversation at all during homeroom, so I must've visibly shown how harried I was. I just barely finished the last equation as the bell rang signaling everyone to head to their first-period class, which for Patrick and I was math. We chatted on the way there, down the hall and up a flight of stairs. The two of us had only really become friends this year when a few circumstances conspired to make our paths converge.

Most guys at St. Sebastian made friends through sports or retained old ones from their parochial schools. Patrick and I hadn't gone to the same parochial school, but we were on the football team together, albeit different levels. He was the starting wide receiver on the JV team and I was the fullback for varsity.

But, we did end up living a block away from each other when my parents moved to Pine Brook last summer. We'd take the same bus to get home every day and were the only two kids in our grade on the route, so we naturally ended up talking quite a lot. I was admittedly against it when he and Eva, my best friend since second grade, started talking, not wanting to upset my dynamic with either of them and perhaps a bit jealous, not of them in particular, but of what they were allowed to be.

I suppressed that feeling inside me and only allowed myself to show outwardly that I was happy for them and happy to be a third wheel. We'd become something of a trio in these past few months and I'd probably count Patrick as among my closest friends now. He was one of the few people in Brewer who seemed to get the whole absurdity of everything. And, as an added bonus for me, personally, he was friends with Theo, an association that brought the potential for greater access to the object of my affection, although that potential had not yet manifested itself into reality.

Patrick and I had almost identical schedules, a byproduct of being honors students at a small school, save for two periods. We had lunch together and, as we were both relatively popular athletes, sat at the same table. There was an informal but strict gender segregation in the cafeteria, where it would even be seen as outré for a couple like Patrick and Eva to sit together. So, instead, they sat at adjacent tables as close as possible to each other's orbits.

A few months ago, somehow, our lunch table's conversation turned to gay people, with a vocal few advocating that gay people showing public affection should be assaulted on the spot. The whole thing was shocking, but what was even more so was that Patrick was the only guy to object to this. I had grown up in this town and with these kids my entire life. I knew what they were like, but I never thought they'd be capable of this level of visceral hatred. I knew enough, though, to know that I shouldn't speak up myself and kept my head down through most of it.

When forced into the conversation, I hemmed and hawed about disliking all forms of PDA, but that I'd probably just ignore them. That seemed like the safest answer possible. Patrick got a lot of shit for taking a stand and was on the receiving end of a lot of gay jokes and insinuations for a few days, despite dating Eva.