I have my super best friend back-"
"Yeah, you do."

I thought those few words from Kyle were enough to just undo years of damage and bring our dynamic back to exactly what it was before.

In retrospect, that was really stupid of me.

It's not that simple. I know that. Kyle knows that.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great start. But that's all it is: a start. A spur of the moment declaration from 2 angsty teenagers.  I don't know if either one of us are ready for this.

Regardless, it's something we clearly both want. And with Kyle's stubborn ass, we are either gonna get our friendship back to where it was or die trying.

Unless he decides to just give up on us a second time...

Even though I finally understand what he did, and forgive it, it doesn't restore a considerable amount of trust. The pain of being blindsided once was enough to change my brain chemistry, building an emotional defense so I'm never that vulnerable again.

I hear the faded creak of my bedroom and practically give myself whiplash trying to see who was coming in. Who am I kidding it had to be my mom, we are the only 2 who live in this damn house! My heart sinks as I realize she's already upset about the alcohol. I can't imagine how heartbroken she would be if she knew about the cancer sticks. I instinctively move the cigarette that rested on my lips into my lap, in a weak attempt to keep it out of eyeshot.

"Oh, Hey Kyle," I say, instantly eased. "Have you ever heard of knocking?"

Kyle rolls his eyes with his lips very slightly curled up into a grin. "Well, considering YOU were the one who invited me to come over today a few nights ago, I assumed you didn't invite any of your hoes over during the same time."

I shoot him an annoyed look, trying to hide the laughter begging to escape me. "Okay Kyle, we both know I don't have hoes. Anything else you'd like to snark about?" I ask, trying to keep up the 'annoyed' facade. Based on Kyle's relaxed expression and growing smile, I must not have been very convincing. He kicks off his shoes at the door and walks over, crawling onto the roof with me. I immediately take the cigarette back to my lips and inhale softly, embracing the tingling sensation spreading like wildfire across my chest.

While exhaling, I reignite the conversation that managed to die in the ten seconds it took for Kyle to get on the roof with me. "To be honest, I kind of lost track of time and didn't expect you to be over yet. I would have gotten the door otherwise. I haven't told my mom yet about anything. The parties, us being friends again, the group project."

I waited for something from Kyle, a question, another sarcastic remark, anything. But I was met with silence. I glance over at him and see his eyes glued on the cloud of smoke, his nose scrunched and his face full of discomfort.

"Oh shit dude, sorry I didn't think about it," I mumble hurriedly as I throw the still-lit cigarette immediately off the roof, watching it drop like a feather into the snow below us. Kyle peers over the edge and his face relaxes a little.

"Yeah, your mom seemed really surprised to see me. I tried not to talk too much, I thought that's your job and you'll tell her when the time is right." Kyle scoffs. "Why is telling people we are friends again so complicated? It's not that big of a deal, seriously."

"'Coming out' as friends," I remark sarcastically, immediately cringing. Thankfully, Kyle gives it a small laugh.

"Dude, remember when I told you I wanted to try smoking a joint with Craig when we were 14 and you threw a bitch fit? I thought you of all people wouldn't end up smoking." Kyle crawls towards the window, glancing back to make sure I was following him inside.

I shrug before following him. "Dude, I was smoking at fourteen too. I didn't care about lung cancer or any of that crap, it was the idea of smoking weed."

Kyle throws himself casually onto my bed, leaning back against the headboard with his hands behind his head. "Dude, why does it matter if it's w- oh. Oh."

This time, the dirty look I gave him was legit. My eyebrows furrowed slightly as I tilted my head and shot him a glance, without actually turning my head to face him.

"Sorry, I really didn't connect the dots..." He sheepishly stared at the blanket in front of him. "If it's any consolation, I hated the taste. Did it once and never again." he laughed weakly, trying to mend the soured energy.

"You're good dude" I smile weakly. After years of being apart, I can't blame him for forgetting that my hatred for Marijuana is more or less about my hatred for Randy.

Kyle's eyes dart around the room, presumably trying to find something else, anything else, to talk about. "Dude! You still have that?"

"Have what? The Playstation?" I raise my eyebrows, glancing back and forth between Kyle and the direction he's staring at. His eyes appear to be focused on the blank TV, or the crowded TV stand underneath.

"No dude! The Wii!" He bounces off the bed and crouches down, carefully pulling it out from under the Playstation.

"Uh- yeah." I shrug. I stay on the desk chair I have in my room, not joining him on the floor. It's a Wii from 2006, everyone and their mother has one. There's nothing revolutionary around it, and I don't know why Kyle is so surprised that I have one. I'm pretty sure we used to-

"-Didn't we used to play Guitar Hero on here? God I hope it was yours, Ike broke mine years ago." He blows the dust off the sides and starts pushing all the buttons, despite being fully aware that not a single cable was plugged in.

"Yeah, that was at my house," I say, surprised Kyle remembered just as quickly as I did. I watched him struggle with the buttons for another few seconds, before sarcastically remarking "maybe the trick to making it work is plugging it into electricity, Kyle"

He got up effortlessly, leaving the system in the middle of the floor. "We need an HDMI cord, the other cord that kind of looks like an 8-"

"-and the guitars."

"And the guitars." Kyle nods.

"Don't you think that's a lot of effort for a stupid game? It's probably way more shitty than we remember" I shrug. Honestly, I'm still not seeing the appeal of getting this Guitar game working. 'Nostalgia' is pretty gay, especially when the last time we played the game, it called us fags.

Well, it wasn't all that wrong.

Kyle glances at me, already halfway out the bedroom door. "Pfft, you're making it seem like the shit we are looking for is in a war zone. It's probably just in the attic, or the garage. We could ask your mom-"

"-No"

"Stan, don't do this again," his glance evolved into a glare as if he was ready to lean over and slap me across the face. "I mean, if it's that big of a deal we don't have to play, but then you actually need to come up with an idea on what we should do."

"We can smoke on the roof" I smile, trying to hide the taunting with an innocent expression.

He doesn't resume his little spiel, instead giving me that look. The look I can only describe as 'the Kyle look.' The same look he has given me since we were six every time I say something stupid. I catch myself beginning to smirk, yawning instead to stop it from growing. He squints his eyes and his nose scrunched a bit, before turning around and heading out of my room.

I follow him slowly, knowing that he wasn't actually on his way out the house- his stubborn ass was on the way to the attic regardless of anything I had just said. I walk to the hallway and stand at the top of the stairs and sigh. "I'm not helping bring up the ladder, it's  in the back of the garage though."

I hear a distant "okay!" Followed by the slamming of the door that leads to the garage. I wait for about 10 seconds before deciding to sit at the top of the stairs in complete silence; I'll consider that a win, it's way better than hearing crashing or screaming from the garage.

After about three minutes, my already limited patience becomes non-existent. I push myself up and slowly descend the staircase, looking around the corner towards the kitchen where the garage entrance is. "Kyle it's not that hard to find a ladder, it's like 8 feet big! How are you not finding it."

At that exact moment, Kyle steps through the door with a box in his hand. "Fuck the Ladder, I found this instead." He sounded winded, and his hair was slightly messy

"A box?" I blurt.

"A box that says Wii on it, dumbass. It's probably in there." He chuckles, still out of breath. "It was under a bunch of heavier boxes, so I had to move them first"

"Fair enough" I shrug, turning around and heading right back upstairs. I easily could have taken the with me, or at least helped him carry a bit, but instead I casually made my way to the top of the stairs and turned around, waiting for him there. A few seconds later, Kyle caught up, hair still in his face from the struggle in the garage. He kept trying to blow the strands hanging in front of his face to the side, but without fail, it kept falling back right over his right eye. I watched intently until I noticed my cheeks becoming flushed, immediately continuing back to my room after.

Kyle walks in a few seconds after me and drops the box onto the floor, creating a large thud. "Jesus, why do you need a box this big for Wii shit?"

"Because I had a lot of Wii shit," I say non-chalantly, knocking off the lid. The remotes and the 2 guitars sat on top of the stacks of game, easily adding up to 200

"Dude..." Kyle murmurs.

"It's not hoarding if it's organized" I grin, grabbing the guitar and flipping it over. "Aw dude, the batteries corroded! There's crusty shit all over the inside."

"Oh, that's just battery acid. We just gotta clean it and get new batteries, it's not a big deal." Kyle looks around the room, finally grabbing a pen off the desk. He begins poking it into the battery compartment, carving around the electrical shit to get the crust off.

I grab the other guitar and copy his lead, but my speed wasn't even comparable to his. He ended up taking over before I was halfway done, while I dug through the games to find the right ones, as well as the right cables.

A few minutes later, and surprisingly without any arguing, we had gotten it set up and working.

Well, "working" was a subjective word. The system worked fine, and the remotes worked fine, but we were clueless on how to work with them. Navigating the screen was a nightmare, becoming more like a night terror once we got the game loaded. Our high score of a million laughed at us as it watched us struggle to break a thousand on round one.

"Fuck this let's play Heroin hero."

"No." Kyle stares at me.

Was worth a try.

"Just give it a few more tries, it'll be easier when we remember the controls.  We haven't practiced in 8 or 9 years, we used to practice 8 or 9 hours daily. Of course, our score is gonna suck," Kyle pushes the start button for the next round.

I reluctantly lift the guitar again and play the round, easily doubling my score from the first time; which to be honest, wasn't that much of an accomplishment. But it was enough to get me to play a third round, and then a fourth. By the fifth round, the muscle memory from my childhood finally kicks in and I can do well.

Which doesn't mean I did well.

Although my coordination was definitely better than Kyle's, my score is consistently a hundred thousand lower than Kyle's. After about 10 seconds of each round, my eyes begin to drift, watching Kyle with his eyes narrowed, visibly biting his cheeks as he concentrated on the screen in an attempt to keep his fingers pushing the right button without a delay. I zoned out for seconds staring, until I realized that I wasn't focused on the game. I did this multiple times, and my score reflected that. Kyle rubbed it in my face after each round, his grin growing substantially with each score above mine

We played for an hour until we exhausted our two favorite songs. As I was scrolling through our options for a third one to wear out, Kyle's phone rings, drawing us both out of the trance. He looks at me confused before walking away to unplug it, while I simply shrug it off.

"Hello? Oh, hi Nicole. Yeah, I'm with Stan" he says, almost hesitantly. My head shoots in his direction. He shrugs, "why, what's up?" There's a small pause before Kyle just blinks and motions me over.

I take the phone out of his hand and push it against my head, running through every possibility mentally on why Nicole would be calling me, ranging from Tolkien needing quick advice to Wendy being pissed at me. "Uh, hello?"

"Hey Stan, it's Nicole. You know how I'm doing that internship thing at the hospital?" Nicole says in a rather hushed tone.

"Uhh, yeah?"

"I'm here with your mom, she's been trying to reach you." Stupidly and instinctively, I pull the phone away from my head and look at the screen. This has got to be a prank call, right?

"What? What happened? Is she okay?" My eyes are wide, and Kyle looks startled by the sudden change in volume. I didn't even notice until seeing his face change how I had yelled into the phone, but honestly, I don't care, and I doubt he does either. He seems confused, if anything.

"Yes, she's totally alright. I'm not allowed to disclose any patient information like that, but she may be calling you to try and tell you. She's okay though!" Nicole reiterates. "If anything, she's annoyed that you missed so many calls" she throws in, trying to lighten the mood. While I definitely appreciate the attempt, it didn't work.

I hang up without thinking to reply with a proper thanks or goodbye. Oh well, apologies can make up for it later. I couldn't care less about finding my phone right now, I start desperately pressing buttons on Kyle's phone to get it to unlock so I can call her back with what I have right now. I type in his old passcode instinctively, and it obviously fails. By the time I can look up and open my mouth to ask him to unlock it, he's already standing in front of me, silently punching in the numbers, immediately going to sit back down on the bed when it's unlocked. I shuffle through the home screen until I find where the hell I could make a phone call.

"Mom??"

"Hi, Stanley." Her voice was flat, not sickly or strained at all.

"What happened? What the fuck?"

"Well, your father is a drunk piece of shit, but that's not new. I'm fine"

"But why are you in-"

"I ran into him at whole foods. I didn't say anything, but he confronted me. He was clearly high, or drunk, or both, and pushed me. I'm fine, I've gotten worse injuries walking down the stairs. But the doctors said it would be best to check it out, just to make sure if there are any injuries it gets added to the restraining order and custody, all that."

"I'm coming now, I'll be there in fifteen."

"No, Stan. It's seriously fine. I hope to be home in an hour, maybe two. I just wanted to let you know so you didn't freak out when my grocery trip took longer than expected" she forces a small laugh "I promise, I'm alright. You don't need to come. You're hanging out with Kyle right now anyhow, I bet that's way more fun than this waiting room."

I look at Kyle, and smile weakly. "Are you sure you're good?" I wait for her to repeat her yes two more times before I hang up. I hand Kyle back his phone in silence and pinch the bridge of my nose, collapsing face-first into the mattress.

I can feel Kyle staring at me awkardly, but I couldn't care less. He's silent, which I don't necessarily mind at the moment. Honestly, I don't know if theres anything he could possibly say right now that couldn't tick me off.

"Are you alright?" Kyle asks slowly. What a stupid question

I think about replying with sarcasm, or just screaming at him for asking something so dumb, but my heartbeat takes over my chest. I can only whimper, "I uhh..." and roll over, looking at him with glassy eyes. "Yeah uhh, its fine." I say softly.

"Look, I'm not going to make you talk about it, especially if you're not comfortable doing so. But If you want to talk about it, I'm totally okay with it and ready to listen. If you'd rather distract yourself and do something completely unrelated, that's totally fine too. Honestly, that's what I normally do when my parents overwhelm me. If you wanna go take care of whatever you need to and you want me to leave, that's fine. I just need to know how to best help you, okay?" Kyle says.

God, as much as I don't trust him, he sounds so genuine, and understanding. 

I don't want to trust him.

I don't know what I want.

"Please don't leave." I stare at the floor, kicking my feet just slightly.

"I won't" Kyle says, matching my tone. "What can I do to help you right now?"

"I uhh," I nervously run my fingers against my arm, eyes darting around the room as I try to find the words, or even the ideas, that matched my needs. "Is killing Randy an option?" I ask, only half-kidding

"Your dad?" Kyle seems unsurprised.

My dad. MY dad. Hearing Randy's name associated with me, knowing that others know him as "your dad" makes me nauseated. I don't want anything to do with that embarrassment of a man.

I have no clue exactly what I said, but if it crossed my mind, it crossed my tongue. Every shitty thing Randy had done since I was in diapers that I could remember was spilled. I let Kyle hear not only what was stressing me today, but every dirty detail of the divorce I've had to live through over the past three years. After exhausting that, I moved on to every awful detail of living on the fucking farm.

I don't remember the specifics. As I was talking about one terrible memory, another five flooded my mind in detail. By the time I was finally winding down, I had scratched at my hand so much that there was raw skin showing, and my teeth hurt from clenching my jaw. The light in the sky had fully disappeared over the mountain. I made it through without tears surprisingly, probably as a lingering result of something Randy drilled into me when I was eleven. 

"Even if I'm an alcoholic, I'm not a drunk. theres a huge difference. I'm nothing like him."

Kyle stares as me as if I just confessed to killing his parents and cooking them into chili. "dude..."

I scoff and roll my eyes, "See, I knew you were gonna judge me. You think I'm crazy. You don't get it!"

"Dude no, I don't think you're crazy. I'm just a little shocked right now. I think what you went through is crazy, not you. You're right I don't get it. I mean, get why you feel the way you do. But I will never understand just how bad it all must have been." Kyle says. After a long moment where neither of us said nothing, he breaks the silence"And all that divorce stuff happened at the same time we, yknow, stopped being friends?" 

"Yeah"

"I'm so sorry. I failed you," Kyle looks at me.

I shrug, my mouth twitching into a forced smile momentarily. "I don't blame you. I took my frustration out on my friends, you all didn't deserve that either"

Kyle nodded slightly, "I mean yeah, but that was nothing compared to what you were going through. And I didn't even bother trying to figure out what was truly wrong. I was your best friend for fuck sakes!"

Before I can say anything, I hear the front door open and my mother's voice echo up the stairs. "Stanley, I got you both some KFC! Is Kyle spending the night?" She sounds exhausted, but overall decent.

Kyle looked as if he was ready to shout back an answer for me, but stopped himself first.

"Am I?" he asks me.

I think for a second, and shake my head. "I just wanna get some sleep after dinner. I'm emotionally drained right now. Maybe another time, when I'm less boring."

"That makes sense, lets just go get something to eat then" Kyle pushed himself off the bed and grabs his phone. "Oh, and thanks for trusting me, yknow, with all that.

I blink, fully caught off guard by what he said. Honestly, I hadn't even considered my hesitency to trust him ever since the first word of my rant escaped my lips. Now that the topic of trust is back, I still dont know if it was the right choice.

I hope it was- there's no changing it now.

////Just in time for a Christmas update woohoo! Thanks for your patience, leave comments, i love reading them!