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Considering that, was it fair to stay mad at him?
Also, if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I told him I was leaving, hoping to hurt him. For weeks before the end, he had been an asshole to me. At one point, not only did he stop texting me, but he also stopped talking to me when we were at the same events.
He even stopped looking me in my eyes. I had missed his kind, steel-gray eyes. Cut off from seeing my reflection in them, I lost a sense of who I was.
He had hurt me. I had hurt him. And then he said something he couldn’t take back. That was when I left.
And if I’m still being honest, there was a part of me that thought he was going to chase after me. After all, didn’t this all begin because of the way he was treating me? And wasn’t he the one who had taken things too far?
Yes, I hadn’t made it easy for him to apologize. But was I supposed to? I had cared about him more than anyone I had ever met, and he had crossed a line. He could see that I struggled to trust people, couldn’t he? Yet he had betrayed my trust.
Hadn’t he realized what he had done? There was a time when I thought that I needed Merri. He had been my source for friends, my source of courage, and my source for feeling good about myself.
But was that true anymore? Without his help, I was finally making a life for myself here. Cage had invited me to hang out without any involvement from Merri. Maybe I didn’t need him like I had thought.
So, no longer needing him and with an apology two years too late, where did that leave us? I wasn’t sure. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t missed my friend. My life hadn’t been the same without him.
Before things turned bad between us, we had been inseparable. We talked every day. We ate every meal we could together. And I felt better after seeing him, even if it was just to hear him complain about his girlfriends.
Speaking of that, it’s hard to believe he has been gay this entire time. The thought did something to me. I barely knew Merri without a girlfriend. Yet now he was saying it had all been an act? That he had been in love with me from the day we met? Would things between us have been different had I known that back then?
I was certainly never homophobic, but I also wasn’t as comfortable with those things as I am now. After all, both of my brothers are involved with men. Titus was dating his best friend, and Cali was with the man he would probably marry.
What if Merri was who I was supposed to be with? Would that be so crazy? He had said he was in love with me. And I had certainly loved him. But did I love him in the same way?
Putting the thought aside, I finished dressing for Cage’s scrimmage and drove over. Cage was holding it at my old high school, where he was the coach and P.E. teacher. Pulling up, I found more cars in the parking lot than I had expected. There were almost enough to make me think that there was a game being held.
Getting out and rounding the building, I saw spectators in the bleachers. Spotting Titus, I headed over to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked him, getting a questionable look back.
“I didn’t know anything about this,” he said suspiciously.
“About what?”
“You know that if I knew, I would have told you, right?”
“If you knew what?”
Titus pointed at a guy sitting in the bleachers.
“Merri!” I exclaimed, feeling my heart clench. “What’s he doing here?”
“I had nothing to do with this,” Titus said, holding up his hands defensively and walking away.
Looking past what had to be the high school football team, I saw Cage. Heading to him, everyone was looking at me like they knew something I didn’t.
“Hey, Cage,” I said hesitantly. “I thought you mentioned that there would only be a few of us?” I inquired, motioning toward the two dozen people in the stands.
“Yeah, word got out that Nero was going to be here. I guess some people don’t have anything better to do on a Saturday,” he replied with a smile.
“I guess,” I echoed, still unsure what was going on.
“Claude, you son of a bitch!” Nero exclaimed, as he came over and greeted me with a back slap. “How the hell didn’t we know?”
“Know what?”
“That all through high school, we were playing with some sort of football genius.”
