Tears fell from his face, tears I promised my self I would never cause and I had not, yet. His parents can be difficult, and not normal difficult, physically mean, hard, difficult. That was out word for when something bad happened. Difficult.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“okay. Parents are being difficult.”

And just like that I was there, even if not for the reason he thinks. I mean yeah of course I am there because I care about him, but I CARE about him. We have been friends for years and I know what you are thinking; if I were really his friend I would tell someone he gets beat sometimes, but he would get taken away, and I cant live without him, but maybe I have too. Things keep getting worse as he gets older, as we get older.

“Stop it.” he suddenly said. I knew what he was talking about but I pretended otherwise.

“What am I doing?”

“You have that look that means you are thinking about telling someone, but all I have to do is survive the rest of senior year. I’ll be fine.”

Will you? I want to say. Will you really? Instead I said “ I don’t like seeing you hurt, we are too close for you to pretend like this only hurts you anymore. I care about you and it hurts me to see you like this!”

I had never exploded on him like that and his eyes were wide, mouth open, trying to respond.

“I’ll be careful, I promise, for you.” he whispered.
And that was that, we both were crying, knowing how we felt but knowing things were too fragile to act upon them.

“I have to go.” he whispered, quietly slipping out of my arms.

“Wait!” I cried out.

I kissed him and his surprise did not allow for any restraint. He kissed me back , pulling me close for a split second. Then realizing what he had done, he pulled away, tears slipping silently down his face again.

“You’re not getting hurt on my watch.” was his parting remark as my hands hit my sides.

“Goodbye.” I whispered, thinking if only he knew what that one word meant to me. A possibility of it being the last goodbye, the last thing I uttered to him, unknowingly. For the last time.

My Fathers footsteps then fell on the stairs.

“Is everything okay?” he asked when he had reached the bottom step.

“yeah, you know, just school stuff.”
“Oh, okay then. I’ll leave you to it.” he turned, walking back up the stairs.

The thing about asking “are you okay” is no one really wants to hear no. they feel its the polite thing to do, and in return expect you to let them off the hook and say everything is fine. I decided the polite thing for me to do though was to tell the truth, so I changed my mind.

“Hey dad, I have to tell you something.”

I guess if you can say I wont get hurt on your watch, I can say you wont get hurt on mine.

I owe you at least that.





THE END