Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:02:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Lusty <lustyville@yahoo.com>
Subject: Starving For Love-Part 2. Be Careful What You Wish For

     Tom's father was the epitome of the father I desperately
craved. He talked to me as if I was his equal and he didn't focus
on my appearance. He knew all about the anorexia but he didn't
look at me differently or treat me like I might break. His
demeanor towards me never wavered. We watched the game while he
caught up with the events in my life since our last conversation
and he occasionally glanced over at me as we talked. I loved the
way he looked at me, so free of the confusion that haunted his
son's eyes, the judgment that lived in the eyes of my classmates
and the sadness that plagued my parents. I knew my parents looked
at me and wondered why I wasn't like my brother and sister; they
always looked at me that way. I swear they emanated disdain for
all that I was. I failed them as a child as much as they failed
me as parents.

     "So how are your parents?" Mr. Yeager asked.

     "They're good."

     "Have they been talking to you lately?"

     "Not really, it's basically the same as before. They ignore
me and I ignore them."

     "That's a shame. I had hoped things would get better."

     "So had I." I responded unintentionally. As much as I told
myself I both enjoyed and appreciated my lack of a relationship
with my parents, I couldn't help but be envious of the
relationship between Tom and his parents. They all loved each
other so much and it was evident in everything from the way they
talked to each other to the smiles on their faces in their family
photos. They were everything my family would be if I weren't in
the picture. I hated thinking about stuff like that because then
that meant everything wrong with my family was my fault and my
birth had ruined their lives.

     "Well you always have me," he said with a smile.

     "I know, Mr. Yeager. You've always been there for me, even
when I was busy getting Tom in trouble."

     "Tom never did anything he didn't want to do."

     That was true, but the problem was the thing he wanted to do
the most when we were younger was protect me. He spent most of
his day defending me from bullies and making sure no one hurt my
feelings. He was never violent, but he didn't tolerate anyone
pushing him or me around. You would think the kids would get the
picture and leave me alone, but that never happened. Picking on
me was too enticing and exciting for them to refuse. They usually
tried to pick on me when Tom wasn't around and things have stayed
that way since then.

     After the game, Mr. Yeager and I stayed seated while Tom
showered and put on some clean clothes. Tom came out of the
locker room and ran to us. "We won!" He announced excitedly as
though we hadn't watched the entire game.

     "We saw," I told him.

     "Did you see me give you a thumbs up?" he asked.

     "Yes, I saw it. I thought it was for your father though."

     "No, it was for you." He smiled.

     I had to remind myself not to blush, "Oh."

     "You boys are so cute sometimes," his father said.

     Tom turned crimson, "Dad!"

     "I'll take that as my cue to leave. See you boys tomorrow."
He hugged Tom and then he hugged me, "Take care of yourself."

     "We'll walk with you to the parking lot," Tom said. Tom
grabbed my hand for a brief moment as he pulled me forward. We
walked his father to the visitor parking lot and then we walked
to the student parking lot with our hands occasionally brushing
against each other. I wanted to grab his hand and squeeze it but
I knew better. Tom was treated to a lot of shouts of `good game'
as we walked to his car. We got in his car and the guilt of
knowing I was holding him back consumed me. We were five minutes
away from the school when Tom asked, "What's wrong?"

     "You would be so popular if you weren't friends with me."

     He pulled to the side of the road and grabbed my chin then
turned my face so I had to look at him. "Stop saying shit like
that. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want to
be popular! You're my best friend and I wouldn't trade you for
anything." He opened the glove compartment and took out a box.
"This was supposed to be a surprise for our special night, but
here, open it!" I didn't move. "I said open it!" He dropped the
box in my lap and I picked it up. I opened it and there were two
silver rings. I took one out and looked at it. "Read it," he told
me. Around the outside was written `Best Friends Forever.'
"There's an inscription." I looked on the inside and saw, `Tom
and Sam Forever.' "The other one says the same thing. I thought
we could each wear one. It was supposed to be a surprise for our
anniversary, but"

     "Our what?"

     "Today is the five year anniversary of the first day we
met."

     "How could you remember that?"

     "It was the most meaningful day of my life so far," he said.
He looked sad for a second then he smiled. "I planned this whole
evening with dinner and a movie and then camping. I was going to
give you the ring while we sat at the campfire and talked."

     "We never celebrated before."

     "You were either sick or institutionalized before, but now
things are looking up, aren't they?"

     "I guess so."

     He held his hand out, "Give me the rings." I put my ring
back in the box and handed it to him. He took the box and picked
up one of the rings. "Give me your hand," he said in a gentle
whisper. I gave him my hand and he slipped the ring on my finger.

     "Isn't this kind of gay?" I laughed but he didn't laugh with
me. His eyes questioned my timing and then he put the box in the
glove compartment and put his hands back on the wheel.

     "We're going to be late for our reservation." He drove us to
a local pizza parlor. I knew you didn't need reservations for a
place like that but I kept my mouth shut. We sat down at a table
and Tom asked, "Do you remember this place?"

     "A little. I know we've been here before."

     "Do you remember when?"

     "No. It was a long time ago though."

     "We were still in sixth grade. I convinced my father to drop
us off here while he went to pick up a prescription for my
mother." His facial expression told me this was a vivid memory
for him. "It was the first time we ate alone at a restaurant. You
nibbled on your slice of pizza like you were afraid to eat it and
I ate a medium pizza by myself. We had our first fight because
you wouldn't finish your slice and I knew you were hungry. Who
would have known five years later we'd still be fighting about
what you eat."

     "Not me."

     "Me neither." A waitress came to the table with a large
pepperoni pizza and two bottles of root beer. "Thanks Sarah."

     "Anything for you Babe." She looked over at me. "So he's the
one huh?"

     "Yep. Sam this is Sarah. Sarah this is Sam."

     She held out her hand. "Nice to meet you Sam. I've heard so
much about you."

     I shook her hand. "Nice to meet you too." I wanted to tell
her I had never heard about her before, but the words didn't come
out.

     "Well call me if you boys need anything." She rubbed her
fingers through Tom's hair and I wanted to bite her hand off.

      As soon as she walked away from the table I asked, "Who is
she?"

     "She's a cheerleader at our school."

     "You never mentioned her before."

     "There's a reason for that, but I'll tell you later, okay?"

     "Okay."

     "Now how many slices of pizza are you going to eat?"

     "One."

     "It's a special day. Give me two and we have a deal."

     "Two? It's practically dripping grease."

     "Do it for me. Please."

     "I thought we had a deal. No bothering me for a week." He
frowned at me. I looked at the pizza and then at the root beer
and I estimated the number of calories I would need to burn off
later. "Okay I'll eat two slices, but I'm not drinking the root
beer."

     "Will you at least drink half of the root beer?"

     "I'll take a few swallows but that's it."

     "Okay."

     My stomach churned as I thought about putting all those
calories in my system so late at night, but it meant so much to
Tom and he was the only person in my life I wanted to please.
Dinner was great. We talked about a lot of the good times we had
together and pretended like nothing bad had ever happened. Sarah
came over to check on us a few times but I managed to
successfully ignore her.

     We left the restaurant and continued to reminisce. I noticed
we were heading further out of town. "What, we're not going to
the first theater we ever went to together?" I laughed at my own
joke.

     "See, I try to be thoughtful and you make jokes."

     "Okay, I won't make any jokes. Where are we going?"

     "To see your favorite movie."

     "But that movie is old."

     "There's a theater in Greenfield that is having a marathon
of old movies and guess what's on the list."

     "No way!"

     "I know. What are the chances? I saw it in the paper a week
ago and I knew it was perfect."

     I sat and thought about how much he must love me to spend so
much time trying to plan the perfect evening. My wondering mind
led to my wandering eyes and I noticed the way Tom's headlights
lit up the highway in front of us and soon I was transfixed by
the lines on the road which seemed to quiet the voices in my
head.

     We went to the theater and it was so nice. There were a lot
of older couples there, but I didn't mind them because I was with
Tom. I even splurged and had some popcorn. After the movie, we
went back to Tom's house so we could camp out in his backyard
which was really part of a local park, but we called it his
backyard anyway and we treated it like his backyard. He lit the
campfire and we sat next to each other on a large stone. "This
day has been perfect," he told me.

     "Even though you were stuck with me?"

     "Don't do that."

     "What?"

     "Don't put yourself down. I'm not stuck with you! I want to
be with you. Why can't you accept that?"

     "Because it doesn't make sense. Why would anyone want to be
friends with me? I'm such a loser." I was thinking out loud.

     "How can you even think that after tonight? I spend a
fucking month planning one night so everything will be perfect
and"

     `That's just it, tonight was too much. I don't deserve
anyone to be so wonderful to me,' I thought. "The problem is with
me, not you."

     "I know the problem is with you and I'm tired of trying to
fix it. You're just like Isaac! No matter how much I love you,
it's not enough for you to love yourself. I'm not enough."

     "I'm sorry," I told him. "I didn't mean to upset you." I
wanted to ask him who Isaac was because his father had once
called me Isaac, but I didn't think I deserved to know.

     "You want to know the real reason why we moved here?"

     "Um."

     "We moved because of Isaac. Isaac was my older brother. I
idolized him." Tom wiped his eyes and gathered himself a little.
"He spent a lot of time with me and I never wondered why he
didn't have any friends his own age. I didn't know that kids were
picking on him when he was in school. He wasn't the smallest kid,
but he wasn't obese or anything either, but the kids always found
something to tease him about. It got worse when he went to high
school. He was kind and gentle and they pounced on him. They were
vicious and relentless in their attacks and he started retreating
from the world, even me. He wouldn't play with me and he rarely
talked to me. He would lock himself in his room and he wouldn't
let me in. It was the same thing day after day after day. He
begged my parents to let him go to another district but they told
him there were bullies everywhere. He dyed his hair blue and my
father started telling him he was giving people a reason to tease
him. Soon after that, food became his best friend. He started
gaining a lot of weight but that didn't make me love him any less
because there was nothing he could do that would make me not love
him. My parents were pretty unsympathetic though. They yelled at
him to lose weight and that just made him cry more. My father
forced him take a self-defense class, but my father didn't get
that Isaac wasn't a fighter."

     Tom slid off the stone and sat on the ground. He put his
head against my knee and continued. He sounded choked up when he
started talking again, "I'll never forget that day. Isaac came
home with his hair cut off and his clothes tattered. He was
almost hysterical. He begged my parents not to send him back to
that school and my father told him to grow up. They yelled and
screamed back and forth for at least five minutes before I cut in
and begged them not to send Isaac back to that place. They
ignored both of us and Isaac stormed upstairs and slammed his
door. He didn't come down for dinner. I remember sitting at the
table playing with my food because I couldn't eat anything. My
parents and I went to bed without speaking to each other and I
woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my mother
screaming. I jumped out of bed and got to the kitchen about the
same time as my father. My mother was staring out a window so I
looked out too and there he was, swinging from a tree in our
backyard. My father grabbed a knife and ran out to the tree to
cut Isaac down. I tried to run outside too but my mother held me
back. The worst part of that night was watching them take him
away. We found his suicide note on his bed the next morning. We
tried to stay in that house but it wasn't the same without him
and we all needed a change so we picked up and moved. They don't
talk about him at all anymore, it's like he never existed." I
could tell he was crying.

     "Why didn't you tell me about him before?"

     "They said we were leaving the past behind." I sat on the
ground next to him and put my arm around him. He looked directly
at me with the tears in his eyes glistening from the light of the
fire. "You reminded me of Isaac. That's why I stood up for you
that first day. I think I thought you could be him and I had a
second chance to protect him, but along the way I realized that
you weren't Isaac and I loved you for you. Do you hear me? I love
you for you. I don't care what's wrong with you or what you think
is wrong with you, none of that shit matters to me, but you have
to stop hating yourself because it's killing me. It's like losing
Isaac all over again, but worse because of the way I love you. I
love you so much."

     He surprised me when he kissed me on my lips. He took my
hesitation as an invitation to continue so he leaned in and
pressed his lips against mine again. I couldn't process the
situation. The moment I had secretly dreamt about for so long was
happening and I was too overwhelmed by Tom's confession to enjoy
it. I pushed him away and stood up. "I'm sorry," he said.

     "It's okay. Let's um get some rest."

     "You're not upset?"

     "No, surprised, but not upset."

     "Not even about Isaac?"

     "Why would I be upset about Isaac?"

     "It's been five years. You're my best friend and I should
have told you before."

     "I've spent enough time with Dr. Conley to know that people
don't talk about things until they're ready."

     "Well that may be part of it. I don't like to think about
what happened. It hurts to know that the world can be so cold and
cruel that it crushes a person's soul and then keeps moving like
nothing happened. We kept moving. We moved here."

     I was not used to being the strong one in our relationship,
but my mind told me that I had to pretend to know what I was
doing. I grabbed his hand and said, "Let's put out the fire and
go to bed."

     We put out the fire and crawled in the tent to go to sleep.
I tried to act normal when we woke up, but I was afraid of
everything. I was freaking out on the inside while a nervous
smile stood guard on my face. "You're freaking out, aren't you?"
Tom asked. I hated how he read my mind sometimes.

     "A little."

     "About what? Is it me? I said I was sorry. I'll never kiss
you again. I don't know what came over me."

     I should have taken the opportunity to tell him I loved him
and I loved the kiss but I didn't feel worthy of his love. The
one thing I wanted the most was the one thing I was denying
myself and I didn't understand what was wrong with me. I should
have been happy, instead I felt depressed. "I need to go."

     "Please don't leave. Let's talk about it. I want to still be
friends. I'm sorry."

     "Don't be sorry. We're still friends I just need to go and
think about some things." I was almost out of the tent when I
remembered my manners. "Thanks for yesterday, and thanks for the
ring. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." I was
tempted to add that I didn't deserve it, but I didn't want to
upset him again.

     "You're welcome." He smiled. "Call me when you get home."

     "Okay."

     I walked to the bus stop in a state of confusion. Tom was
offering me my dream and I was spitting it back in his face like
I didn't want it. I mentally chastised myself all the way home.
When I reached my bedroom I had an epiphany: I couldn't be with
Tom because there was no way he would love me forever and a break
up would devastate me because I needed him too much. I felt the
urge creeping through my veins and I tried to fight it, but it
was too strong. The pain I was feeling was a special kind of pain
that needed a special kind of relief. I got the knife out of the
drawer and went to the bathroom to clean it off. I locked my door
and got on the bed, prepared to relieve some tension. I took off
my clothes and held the knife against my thigh. I thought about
Tom's kiss as I pressed the knife in to my skin and saw the
familiar sight of my blood.

     Tom said he loved me but I knew he didn't love me, he
couldn't love me; no one could. I cut one more time as I thought
about someone loving me. The pain felt euphoric and fulfilling at
the same time and temporarily replaced the confusion with bliss.
I cleaned my wounds and the knife and put my clothes back on.
After I put the knife up and threw away the bloody evidence as if
I had committed a crime, I picked up the phone and called Tom.

     He said, "Hello."

     I said, "You can't love me."

     "I'm sorry, but I do."

     "Why?"

     "Because I do."

     "Well don't."

     "I can't help how I feel, but I promise I won't kiss you
again."

     "So things are normal now?"

     "Yes."

     "Okay." I knew things weren't normal but saying that they
were pacified both of us.

     We talked about his next game and his excitement and he
opened up and shared a few memories of Isaac. I couldn't believe
that events that happened over five years ago were still painful
for him to talk about. I remembered random things from those
times, but even my worst memories no longer caused me pain
because I was over it. I couldn't help but wonder if my siblings
would miss me half as much as Tom missed his brother.

     I was off the phone with him for about ten minutes when I
realized that I completely forgot to do a workout. I decided I
wouldn't eat anything for the rest of the day and I hit the floor
to begin working off some of the calories. I kept seeing Tom's
face in my mind and hearing his voice in my ears telling me that
he loved me. I didn't know why he had to say that. I didn't want
his love, it scared me too much. I found myself looking forward
to talking to Dr. Conley later that day, but I still wasn't sure
if I was going to tell him about the kiss.



c Lustyville 2007
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