Jake went back to his room, slammed his door, and threw the first thing he put his hands on.
It happened to be his scissors. They struck the closet door and stuck there, half open. Wanting to scream, Jake could only think how nice it would be if it were him those scissors were sticking out of, rather than the unfeeling wood door.
His cheeks were wet, though he hardly felt the hot, right now angry, tears. How could this happen? Again?
Not knowing what to do with himself, Jake could only stand in the middle of the room and shake. He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the scissors, lost in the train wreck of thoughts crashing through his mind. He wanted to take the scissors and slit Frank’s throat with them. He wanted to turn them on himself and cut himself into pieces, shred his skin until he could no longer feel or think, and somehow stamp on the those bloody pieces too when he was done. He wanted to inflict the pain that he could feel creeping up his chest onto someone else. Anything else.
And the sickest part about it was that he hoped Avery was hurting just as much as he was at that second.
A moment later he sank to the floor, shaking his head. He hadn’t meant that. He hadn’t meant that! Almost without warning, the tears welled up and spilled and he clutched his knees to his chest, sobbing.
There was nothing he could do. Absolutely bloody nothing he could do. Frank would kill them both. Jake couldn’t take Avery away. He couldn’t protect him. And he couldn’t be what Avery wanted to love.
Unable to breathe through his tears, his forehead pressed to his knees, Jake wished at least that it didn’t have to be Frank.
*
Sometime later, curled on the floor in the dark room, Jake just began to wish he could have had warning. Something, anything. Didn’t Avery know that he was all Jake had? There were other boys on the football team, but. No. And there was Oliver, but Jake knew Oliver only used him to rally against Frank with.
No, once again he had to hit the cold, hard, concrete bottom with nothing and no one to cushion his fall. It seemed like he was just meant to permanently be this way. His mother had gone. Then his brother. His father had never been there to begin with. And now his best, his closest, his only friend.
Why bother? Jake thought numbly to himself and he pushed himself to his feet ad crawled into his bed. He didn’t bother to take his uniform off. Once there, the bed only served to remind him how he and Avery had slept together in it so recently. That night, Jake had thought things would be okay. Avery would leave Frank. Avery would let Jake make him happy.
Now Jake wanted to laugh at how ridiculous he had been.
Instead he found himself crying again, the tears clogging his throat and his nose so that even if there was any lingering smell of Avery on his pillow and sheets, Jake couldn’t smell it.
Somehow he fell asleep. The next morning, he couldn’t bear to go to class. Seeing Avery was out of the question. Three times was enough. He wouldn’t stand by and watch anyone walk away from him anymore. If anyone was going to be walking away, it would be him.
What Jake had to do was forget. So forget he would.