"Can you pick me up after lacrosse?" Gemma asked, and I nearly answered before I looked up to see her on the phone to Hayden, directly across from me at the table. I shot a look to Mom and she shot one back to me. Whenever Gemma was home, she was on the phone or on facetime with Hayden. It had started off cute but by now it had gotten to the point of genuinely ridiculous and annoying. As if they didn't see each other every day at school and after school.

Or maybe I was just being bitter and cynical. It was Friday, and I hadn't seen Cian at all this week. We had a few phone calls after we talked from the hospital on Tuesday and had set plans for tonight that I was desperately looking forward to. But I also knew I had a lot to do this weekend. I needed to just apply to something, anything before I missed the deadline for post-secondary applications. I also needed to hit up the rec centre and practice before soccer try outs next week, because I couldn't imagine the embarrassment of being on the team for 3 years and not making it on for my final year. Or even worse, being a sub. Then after soccer try outs would be the last week of school before the winter break, and then after the break came exams. Just thinking about it made my stomach churn in an uncomfortable way.

Cian had said we would submit my applications before we did anything else tonight, even if that took all night or all weekend. You just have to take it one day at a time, he had said.

"Were you and Dad like this?" I asked my mother, nodding towards the Rom-Com in the making across from me, and Gemma rolled her eyes and left the table, dishes spread for someone else to clean up.

"Gosh no," she laughed, grabbing Gemma's dishes before I could. "I rejected your father 5 times before we ever even went out."

My father came up from his office in the basement just then and smiled playfully at my mother.

"I wasn't even sure she liked me until we were married." He did that thing where he tucked her hair behind her ear and if this was a Rom-Com it would have been swoon-worthy but considering these were my middle-aged parents, I had to give them the obligatory:

"Gross, get a room." Though I smirked as I grabbed my dishes and placed them in the dishwasher.

"Our room is this entire house, and we have the mortgage to prove it."

"Well maybe if some people weren't taking elaborate vacations, you could have paid it off by now," I said, meaning it as a joke but knowing I was encroaching on a dangerous territory.

"You shush, don't take my Aruba plans away," my mother replied, smacking me with the dish towel she had in her hands from drying Gemma's dishes. I didn't understand what the point of the dishwasher was when it was a constant race to get it in the dishwasher before my mother just took it and washed it in the sink.

"We have the rest of our lives to pay off the mortgage, but I don't really want to bring my walker to the beach when I'm 80," my father retorted.

"Fair enough." And with that I turned the corner to the basement stairs and went down to my bedroom to change into my uniform for school. I'd learned from previous experience that when you have to wear the same thing every day it is best to change after eating. It took going to school with coffee-stained pants 3 days in one week to learn that lesson. It was the absolute mortification when Lake asked me what size pants I wear and told me that he had an extra pair in his locker for me "just in case" that made me evaluate my standards. For the record, I had only spilled coffee on myself two times that week. I had just stayed over at Miles' one of the nights, and there was no way I could wear his pants without suspicion, considering he was about 5 inches taller than me. There was a reason I played soccer and not basketball. Gemma got the height, Riley got the intelligence, and I got the perfect teeth. Which thinking about it, really wasn't anything to brag about considering both Riley and Gemma also had perfect teeth courtesy of a couple thousand dollars' worth of braces. Money couldn't buy me intelligence or height.

After changing, I sat on my bed hunched over my phone while waiting for Gemma. Her previously always-ready self who was up at 6am watching Lifetime television had quickly been replaced with an up-until-5-talking-to-Hayden-and-sleeping-in-until-the-last-second Gemma that I didn't even know had existed.

I had a single missed message from Miles, and two from Cian. I clicked on Miles' first.

Incoming Message

Meet me at the spot.

Received 8:25

I wanted to resist the urge, the curiosity. I knew to him that this was all a game, and to even engage with it was to declare myself the loser. The one who clearly still cared. But I couldn't help it.

Outgoing Message

Why?

Sent 8:25

I bit on the skin around my thumbnail, waiting for him to answer. After a minute of nothing, and realizing he was deliberately not going to answer - unless of course he sent that text and then dropped his phone into a blackhole within the same minute- I decided to open Cian's texts.

Incoming Message

Yours or mine tonight?

Received 8:10

Incoming Message

And if mine, are you driving or am I picking you up?

Received 8:11

I propped up my jaw on my hand, feely the scratch of my poorly shaved stubble and making a mental note to get a new razor.

On the one hand, my bedroom was nicely secluded from the rest of the house. But after being caught kissing Cian in the car by both my mother and Gemma, I doubted there would be any sense of privacy. I could only assume she had told my father. Everyone was still oddly quiet about it, probably because it was about as shocking as the sun rising in the morning.

But I was also not ready to meet Cian's family. I had no idea what to expect, because all I knew from him talking about them was that his mom was sick, and he was very close with both his mom and aunt. And that they knew he was gay.

I needed to think on it more, but before I had the chance, I heard my mother yelling from upstairs that Gemma and I were going to be late if we didn't leave soon. I grabbed my backpack and tried to push Miles' text out of my mind as a ran up the stairs.

"Good, at least one of my children listen," my mother said with an eyeroll when I had reached the top of the stairs, emptying into the kitchen.

"Eh, let her enjoy her puppy love. No experience will ever be like your high school sweetheart," my father replied, looking up from the newspaper while sipping his tea.

"I don't remember Riley being this annoying to watch. And Bailey," she turned her attention to me, and I started beelining for the hallway to go call Gemma.

"Bailey isn't like that either."

"They are boys. Their idea of romance is the backseat of a car," my father laughed while my mother's eyes widened, and I started yelling for Gemma before I got dragged into this somehow. At least that was one thing settled, there was no way Cian was coming here tonight.

"Gemma! Gemma, come down now or I'm leaving!" I heard the hair dryer turn off, followed by angry thumps down the stairs. I slid my shoes on and grabbed the keys off the entry table. I wasn't going to wait around for my mother to ask what I was doing in the backseat of their car when they weren't around, especially since I had just been caught kissing Cian in a car, although not her car, only last week. Plus, the conversation would be pointless because I had no plans to do anything in her car. Not that I hadn't tried in the past, but from that one attempt, just about anywhere was better than squeezed with another guy in the back of your parents' car, finding weird things in the backseat. I swear, it looked like once a month my mother just emptied her purse back there.

The air wasn't very cold, but the wind was harsh, whipping my scarf around as soon as I had stepped out. I saw Gemma make eyes as me through the screen door as our parents got louder from behind her.

I started up the car. Just after I fixed the seat and threw my backpack in the backseat, Gemma was pulling the door open.

"Thanks for just abandoning me in there," she said, crossing her arms angrily but then uncrossing them to hold her hands against the heat vents.

I reversed the car down the driveway and started heading for school.

"Hey, if you had been ready earlier, we both could have avoided it," I replied.

"All of you are being annoying lately. Which is totally uncalled for, by the way. I spend a few hours on the phone with my boyfriend and everyone is on my case, meanwhile you were regularly disappearing overnight, coming home very clearly drunk on school nights, and no one said shit to you. And you get the car!" She said, gesturing at the front of the car.

"All of that is fair, except for the car part. You can't even drive! If they didn't give me the car, we'd both be walking. Do you want to walk?"

"You get what I mean though, right? They just turned a blind eye to all of it. Because to acknowledge it would be to acknowledge that our picture-perfect family, really isn't that perfect," she said.

"Do you really think it's that deep?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows furrow. I figured that my mother just didn't want to start a fight, or maybe they just truly didn't care. Forgotten middle child and all that.

"I don't know but either way, pisses me off." And she was back to crossing her arms.

"So, boyfriend? That's the term we are using now?" I asked and she blushed in response. The red hair with the red cheeks worked better on her; I think it was because she had more freckles. When it was me, I just looked like one giant tomato.

"He's good, okay? I promise."

"Here's hoping, because I definitely can't take him. He's like 4 inches taller than me and looks like he spends way too much time in the weight room. I'd have to ask Beatle and Trick to go kick his ass. Does he call you between reps?"

"Ugh, I hate you and I hate the stupid nicknames," she whined. "Except Beatle, I'll call Beatle whatever he wants."

I rolled my eyes in response. I'm not sure what part of Beatle dating her boyfriend's older brother made her think she could ever have a chance, but I decided not to go down this path for the millionth time.

I pulled into the parking lot to the usual spot and grabbed my bag from the backseat. I popped the trunk for Gemma.

"You have all your stuff?" I asked before hitting the lock button, watching her lug her lacrosse bag out of the trunk where it had been resting since her last practice.

"Yeah, but if you see me on the field don't blink too long or you may think I forgot my skirt," she replied, joking at the nearly microscopic skirts they were forced to wear as part of the team uniform. What was even weirder to me was that they were also forced to practice in it. The soccer coach had never cared what we showed up to practice in.

I watched Gemma take off towards the right-wing entrance of the school, and I continued walking to the front one. I waited until she was out of view. I did a double take to make sure the rest of the guys weren't around, and then I did something I knew I would regret.

I went back to the car.

I threw my bag down in the passenger's seat and turned the ignition on.

"You are such a fucking idiot," I muttered to myself as I reversed back out of the spot and started making my way to the spot. I drove the whole way in silence.

When I got there, I could already see him on the bench in the distance, like usual. It was muddy and my feet were sinking into the earth with dissatisfying slop noises. If I decided to storm off, this would inevitably be a huge mess.

He turned his head towards me just as I was coming up behind the bench. Close enough to smell the smoke wafting up from his cigarette, which was almost at the filter. He had one leg hanging down and one up on the bench.

"Thought you were going to stand me up," he joked.

"What are we doing here?" I deadpanned back. I wasn't interested in his jokes or flirtation.

"Reminiscing," he said, patting the spot next to him. I reluctantly sat down.

"I'm not really in the reminiscent mood."

The water in the ravine was rushing, signs of a previous day's storm. It was brown, it was always that colour after a storm.

"Want one?" He turned the cigarette package towards me, and I shook my head.

"I'm good."

He took another cigarette from the package and lit it for himself. Cupping his hand to get the flame to stay long enough.

"The school's going to be calling my parents for this, so why don't you just tell me what you dragged me here for."

"No, they won't. Your parents already called. You were feeling sick today," he replied, putting air quotes around parents, and nodding towards his own cellphone.

"Thought you said you didn't think I would show," I said. I shivered as another gust of wind came and tugged my scarf tighter around my neck.

"Took a gamble." He took a puff in and blew it out, not in the slightest bit of a rush.

"You have the car?" He asked.

"Yeah, but I'm not going anywhere with you."

He turned his face towards me, clearly amused. "What, lover boy won't let you?"

"This isn't about him. I don't want to go anywhere with you."

His eyebrows raised briefly, reacting to my words, and then he went back to his cigarette. I was feeling frustrated and embarrassed. I didn't even know why I had come all the way out here. Was I expecting him to confess his love to me? And even if he did, what would I do? Throw Cian to the curb after all the patience he showed me?

"You have three minutes and then I'm going back to school," I stated, checking the time on my phone and turning it towards him so that he could see it too.

"Don't need three," he replied.

One minute passed in complete silence, aside from me unlocking my phone every 15 seconds to see if the minute was over yet. He continued sucking back the cigarette.

He spoke halfway through the second minute, putting his cigarette out on the bench and then brushing it off and into the muddy ground.

"You are the only one who ever knew about it. Now I'm just alone in it again," he said plainly, almost uncaringly. I felt a pit forming in the bottom of my stomach.

"I can still be there for you," I started hesitantly, "just not like I was before. I was letting you use me to escape it, and I can't do that anymore. Sex doesn't fix it." I cringed at myself as I was saying it, because it was so painful to admit it out loud. I had no idea how he would react.

"I told you I cared about you, how is that using you?" He turned towards me, intimidating me with his piercing gaze. I looked downwards at my own hands, which were tangled up in the ends of my scarf, my fingers poking holes between the yarn stitches.

"You don't care about me in that way. You made it clear." My voice was so quiet that it was almost a whisper.

"And you just get to walk away?"

What did he expect me to do? He wanted me to just push my feelings down, move on so that I could be there for him. I didn't want to be dependable Bailey who always puts himself last anymore. I was hurting myself.

I sucked in a long and quiet breath, choosing my words carefully, "I told you; we will be friends like we are friends with the rest of the guys. Friends that don't fuck on the weekends."

"But that's the whole problem. The rest of the guys don't know. Only you know."

"I don't know where the wire crossed in your brain that is connecting sex with some sort of emotional bond, but they are very separate. I wasn't showing up for you in an emotionally supportive friend way, Miles. I was showing up for you in a romantically overly attached way and I know that you know that, whether you admit it or not." I felt the tears pricking at my eyes as I said it. I hated every time he forced me to go through all of this again. The shame, the humiliation I felt with every word that confessed my feelings for him. And he just would breeze past them like they didn't matter.

"How are you showing up for me now?"

"What?"

"You're sitting here telling me about how I'm confused, as if you would have shown up had that text been from anyone else, except maybe your new flavour of the month. What's his name again?"

"Stop dragging him into this, it has nothing to do with him."

Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't. I wanted to believe I would have shown up the same for Lake or Beatle considering everything they'd done for me, but in reality, they never would have sent such a cryptic ass message.

"Whatever," he said bitterly, but then he seemed to lean back a bit and soften. He pulled his knee that was on the bench up to his chest. "It's not about sex. It's just that you were always there. I don't want to talk about this shit, but I never had to explain it to you because you just showed up for me. You saw it all, and you stayed. Now I'm alone again." His voice sounded empty and exhausted.

He leaned in closer to my face and I froze, knowing what was about to happen but feeling like I didn't have the power to stop it. He reached up to touch my face and I was fighting myself not to lean further into it.

I wanted it to be real; I wanted this to be love. But Cian was right. The love I felt for him didn't compare to the love that I could have for him if he was capable of loving me back. I couldn't love enough for the both of us. That was enough to snap me from the trance he had on me.

I took his hand in mine and leaned away from him, lowering his hand back to the bench.

"This is why I said I can't see you alone anymore," I said softly, watching the hurt in his eyes. "You can tell me what's wrong, or I'm going to go. But this," I waved a hand between myself and him, "is not an option."

He sat back for a moment, his gaze staring straight up into the grey, cloudy sky. He seemed to be considering what I had said.

"I can't."

"Well, you can call me or text me whenever you feel like you can. I'm always there to listen. Do you need a ride home?" The idea of leaving him here always made me so uneasy, especially with the water rushing as fast as it in the ravine was right now. He had never mentioned harming himself in anyway, but given everything he went through, I didn't doubt that he'd thought about it. At least once.

"Can't go home," he replied, and it made me feel stupid that I had even asked.

"Come on, I know somewhere we can go where we can talk, but we won't be alone together. And it isn't school," I said, nodding towards my car.

This was probably a terrible idea, but it was happening.