Chapter 81 Chapter Seventy-Seven
Omniscient Narrative
\[few minutes later\]
Alex's room felt smaller than it ever had.
The door closed behind him with a quiet click, and the sound seemed louder than it should have been, echoing through the tight space like punctuation at the end of something irreversible.
His father lingered just outside for a moment, as if debating whether to say more, but decided against it and just instead left Alex alone without another word.
The silence settled immediately.
It wasn't a peaceful one, no.
Instead it was dense, thick with everything Alex had swallowed back all night.
He stood there for a long moment, back against the door, staring at nothing.
His chest still felt tight, like his lungs hadn't quite remembered how to expand properly yet.
The adrenaline from the fight had drained away, leaving behind a hollow ache that seeped into his bones.
His eyes drifted to his bed.
To the chair where Demi had once sat, legs hooked around the rungs, laughing too loudly at something stupid Alex had said.
His eyes then drifted to the corner of the room where they'd sprawled on the floor doing absolutely nothing, shoulder to shoulder, comfortable in a way Alex hadn't questioned at the time.
He shut his eyes really hard.
"Stop" he muttered to himself.
“Please stop” he sounded so vulnerable pleading with someone-something- that wasn’t even there or real.
But his brain didn't listen.
Demi's face flashed behind his eyelids, he didn’t look angry, didn’t look defensive, but instead it was the face of someone who was hurt, shocked. Like he hadn't seen the blow coming.
Alex dragged a hand through his curls and crossed the room, dropping onto the edge of the bed.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight, familiar and suddenly wrong. He hunched forward, elbows on his knees, staring down at the floor.
You're dead to me.
His stomach twisted violently, it was like his subconscious mind was trying to punish him, it keeps repeating that same sentence over and over again and it was annoying the curly headed boy.
"I didn't mean it" Alex whispered to the empty room. His voice cracked on the last word.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, breathing hard. He'd been angry, furious even, but that wasn't the truth behind the words. The truth was a lot more messier, it was louder and far more terrifying than he would like to admit.
He'd been afraid.
Afraid of how much Demi mattered to him, Alex couldn’t think of a future without Demi in it, he couldn’t even function well with his present self knowing Demi wasn’t there with him.
He was afraid of how easily Demi could unravel him, in the four years he has been friends with Demi, he didn’t think the brownskin boy would know him the way he did, it was like they had known each other since they were kids-since they were in their mothers womb-.
He was also afraid of what it meant that seeing Demi with someone else made his chest feel like it was collapsing inward.
Alex curled forward until his forehead rested against his knees.
"I don't understand," he whispered. "I don't understand why it hurts like this, why it hurts so bad."
His throat tightened again, and this time he didn't fight it.
Tears spilled silently onto the carpet, his shoulders shaking as he tried, and failed, to keep his breathing steady.
He cried into the space between his arms and knees, body folding inward like it had no other way to exist.
This cry was different from the one outside.
It was quieter.
More exhausted.
Heavy with regret instead of shock.
He thought about Demi running away from the party, disappearing into the dark without looking back. Thought about the way his own voice had sounded, sharp, cruel, final.
What if that was the last thing Demi ever heard from him?
The thought made his chest seize painfully.
"I didn't mean to hurt you Demi," Alex whispered, like Demi might hear him somehow. "I was just-"
He stopped.
Because he didn't have the words.
He lay back slowly, staring up at the ceiling, tears still slipping from the corners of his eyes.
His hands trembled as he rested them over his chest, feeling his heart race beneath his ribs.
It felt like grief.
That realization scared him more than anything else that night.
You don't grieve people who don't matter.
You don't break apart over friends you don't care about deeply.
Alex turned his head toward the window, watching shadows shift faintly outside. He knew Demi was home, he knew the other boy was hurt, surrounded by people who loved him.
Alex swallowed hard.
"I hope you're not alone right now," he whispered.
The irony burned.
Because he was.
Eventually, exhaustion crept in around the edges of the pain.
His body ached.
His eyes burned.
The emotional weight of the night pressed down on him until he felt too tired to keep fighting it.
He rolled onto his side, curling in on himself, one arm tucked under his pillow like he was trying to hold onto something that wasn't there anymore.
Sleep didn't come easily.
Every time he closed his eyes, Demi's face appeared again, hurt, distant, gone.
Alex stared into the darkness, heart heavy and confused, knowing only one thing for certain, he was going to get Demi to forgive him and they were going to go back to how they used to.