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“Do we really have a shot?” I asked Cali.
“Not a chance,” he replied.
“Sorry, guys,” Nero whispered in our ears.
Once Cage returned and confirmed that Claude would be at the scrimmage, we started the games. Despite losing badly at everything we played, it was still a fun night.
The entire time I wondered why Claude wasn’t there. After a few drinks, I asked Cali.
“Claude doesn’t come to things like this,” he explained.
“We’ve invite him,” Quin volunteered overhearing us. “He never comes.”
“Why not?”
Quin shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe he can’t stand all the damn betrayal,” Nero sniped looking at his boyfriend.
Kendall replied, “Sorry, can’t hear you over all of the winning.”
“You brought this on yourself,” Lou added.
“He brought this on all of us,” Cage corrected.
“Friendly fire,” Quin said looking at his boyfriend longingly.
Watching this group interact, I realized what was missing from my relationship with Jason. He and I didn’t have fun together. I sacrificed doing fun things to be with him. It wasn’t that he was boring. We just had fun in different ways.
I would love to be a part of a group like this. So, why didn’t Claude accept Quin’s invitations? Was it because everyone here was into guys and he wasn’t?
I know he used to like group hangouts. Back at school, we went to things like this all of the time. I wouldn’t have described him as the life of the party, but he spoke more than Cali did tonight.
I missed spending time with Claude. Yeah, there was never a moment when I wasn’t attracted to him, but he was also my best friend. We had a lot of fun together. If he were here tonight, I could imagine him joining in on the teasing and then doing his best to hide his ultra-competitive side.
He liked pretending to be chill about everything, but there was a reason he could make up incredible football plays on the fly. He really wanted to win. He just acted like he didn’t care. He might have been able to hide that from everyone else, but he couldn’t from me.
Hugging everyone and thanking them for the best night I had had in a long time, I continued to think about Claude as we drove back to the bed and breakfast.
“Thanks for inviting, me,” I told Cali.
“No problem.”
“Do you think Claude will come tomorrow?”
“Maybe.”
“You think he’s gonna cancel?” I asked Cali not having considered it.
“He always shows up when people need him. But considering Cage told him it was a birthday thing, I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I thought about the first part of what Cali said. It was true. Claude had always been there when I needed him. It had made falling in love that much harder to resist.
Thinking back on it, was there any way that things couldn’t have ended how they had between us? At the time, I was so in love with him that I couldn’t see straight. After a night of being around him, I would feel drunk, no alcohol required.
Leaving him to sit in my dorm by myself, I would quickly spiral into sadness. He was a drug that I was addicted to. So after he told me that he would completely cut off my supply, I freaked out. I needed him to breath, yet, I couldn’t have him.
Seeing Claude again was bringing a lot of the old feelings back. Being older and a little wiser, I wasn’t going to let myself fall for him like I had before. Yes, I wanted him back in my life. I missed my best friend. But that was all I was looking for.
