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There is a small, non-definitive list of the ways you’ve told Pope Heyward you love him. Lay them bare, washed out in spotlight, wincing at brightness and the noise. You’ve never been a main player in the story, and you’re fine with that, honestly, but this is a story you want to tell, if only to yourself. If only to guide yourself deeper into an eternal spiral, to sink further into the throes of your own self-pity. An account of your own suffering is necessary, at this point. So. These are all the ways you’ve told your best friend you’re in love with him. These are a list of things that sound your death-knell.
Go to jail for him.
Okay, already kind of extreme, but you’re certain by now that there’s something wrong with you, some strange void where moderation should be. When you saw them walking him to a cop car in handcuffs you sort of blacked out and woke up in a cell, because your love is overwhelming and intoxicating and you don't think you should be held responsible for that. You don’t remember what you said to him, or the drive to the station, but you remember his face with startling clarity: he didn’t look grateful. He looked devastated, which made it better somehow. Maybe you have a terminal hero complex, or a martyr complex. Maybe you always thought you’d end up here, and acted on some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe you just really, really love him. You think of your father- dimly, honestly, these days you see him more as a form, a pulsing mass of rage rather than an actual person- and wonder whether you'll ever know a love that doesn’t sting.
Kiss him
…on the cheek. Yeah ok, whatever. This one is some real JJ-patented unthinking behaviour. He puts his arms around you, holds you so tight you convince yourself maybe this isn’t doomed to fail, doesn’t let go for long enough for it to be weird normally (although normally feels like more a distant concept these days), stares at you like you’re back from the dead and now he owes something to God. Jesus, how else were you supposed to respond? You are a collection of impulses more than anything else, and your whole body is warm and you’ve had- god, you’ve had one hell of a day, to comically play it down, which is what you do most of the time, anyway. You kiss him quickly, innocently. Platonically. Ish. You feel a little like Judas, like you’ve enacted some great betrayal but you’re not sure exactly how. Even so, about two seconds later you’re cradling his face in your hands and pulling him closer, because you are fucking crazy. And stupid. And reckless. And so forth, we all know the list by now. Your reputation as a madman precedes you, JJ. One day that lunatic is going to do something that’ll get him killed. Pope’s cheeks are warm under your touch, and his eyes never leave your face; his gaze follows you even as you walk away to deliver the message to Sarah. This might be the best day of your life, actually.
Just say it.
Casually, obviously. Almost like it's funny. You don't let emotion poison the edges of your words, let your voice falter. Love is a weighty word, too large and uncomfortable like a swollen tongue, but you’ve always been a good liar with that pesky aforementioned martyr complex, so it’s not all that hard to make your mouth bleed as you push the words out, calculatedly flippant. Most people don’t think you do that- calculate. But really you have to, nowadays. This world wasn’t built for you and it won’t bend and curve and bleed like the delicate edges of your mouth, so you need to plan every joke, every gesture, if you want to survive. And you do, most of the time. Sometimes you have to give up parts of yourself to stay alive. You're just being practical.
Get his girlfriend to actually like him.
Okay, maybe you're just bitter. Maybe Kie is actually moony-eyed and in deep unfathomable puppy love with one Pope Heyward. But you're not that stupid, not totally, and she's a shit liar. Pope can barely look at her without her wincing in response. You figure if she says or does something dismissive towards him one more time his self-esteem will probably never recover. He doesn't deserve this. Her. That's mean, even for you, but you and Kie have always been kind of contentious with each other. She might know, although it’s more likely that she doesn’t- Kie's the confrontational type. She just hates you, which is the much simpler explanation.
You're very purposefully avoiding the big thing, the huge factor in this whole mess, which is that Pope wants her, and that's all it comes down to, really. Pope doesn't want you, so what's the use blaming Kie for it? The way you see it, Pope's obsessively working on his car, and she's complaining about… something to do with her parents and boarding school (you kind of tuned out, sorry) and you have a pretty good shot at trying to make things better, which he really does deserve. Better. He always has. Right now, all three of you guys are miserable, but you can keep the misery all for yourself if you do this right. So make a quick joke- that's what you get for hanging with the wrong crowd, Kie - and then tell her why you love him, just don't be too obvious about it. Don't say the word, fucking obviously, don't get too saccharine, keep it simple. You never were good with words. Tell her things you could never tell him and hope through some fucked up osmosis she absorbs every ounce of your desire. Exorcise it out of me, Kie, and let's be done with it, eh? You guys can live in a beautiful detached house with a bright white picket fence, and I'll sleep on the couch if you'll let me. Would you let me? Would my bleeding heart shine too red for you, would you leave me out in the cold, a stranger at the door? Do I hurt to look at? I’ve stopped looking in mirrors lately.
The world is not built for you, JJ Maybank. Try and slip in through the cracks, and find a place to belong somewhere, anywhere. Try and slip in the door, woe ever so discreetly harboured in the bridal house, before she slams the door in your face. You know you can't keep everybody content forever, but now she's smiling at him and he's gazing back, and she’ll never need to know the questions you silently ask her every time you feel particularly self-pitying. You can try, and try and try again to make this work, for them. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Later, when you're pretending to sleep, boots slung across the side of the truck and your cap pulled low over your eyes, you feel it. Kie looks at you, because you're the reason she's doing this or because she doesn't want you to see, or because she does. Maybe she's revelling in the quiet grief that hangs over you nowadays. Maybe she actually hates it- she never liked change- and this is a silent apology, a pleading look, an admission of guilt. She knows, she has to know, but she's doing this anyway because that's the way it goes. What other version of the story is there? They both play their parts, dazzling stars on a miserable stage, and there is no maybe . Not really. It was always going to end like this: you, JJ Maybank, alone. You, JJ Maybank, wanting . You, you, you. It always comes back to you, just you, manufacturer of your own misery ( you did this , you wrote the script and handed Kie her part, your hands shine red with the remains of your own bleeding heart.). Loneliness lives inside of you. Kie sees it, probably, because loneliness lives inside her too. That’s what you think, anyway, but your opinion has never meant much. A part of you wishes, in that moment, that you'd looked up at Kiara, given her an opportunity you never gave yourself, made wary eye contact and let yourself listen to the questions that flicker in her eyes like candles in the wind.
Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this? Why do we hate ourselves? Why do we hate each other?
And you'd stare back and back and back without saying a word, sullen and silent and… fuck it, sad. You're sad. There's comfort in the bluntness of it. The facade could drop for a moment, you’d like to think, and it would just be you and her. She’d ask a million questions, and you would give a single, sad answer: Stranger, I wish I knew .
You turn away after it happens- it really does hurt to look at, that sacred kiss on the cheek you're starting to think doesn't mean much of anything anymore now that Kie's done it to two boys she clearly doesn't care for. Does she feel like Judas, too? Does she feel like a liar and a traitor? Does she care at all, or have you just built up all of these ideas about her because the idea of being truly, wholly alone is too much for you to bear? I wish I knew. One answer to so many questions. It’s not enough. When you fall asleep, you dream of picket fences around haunted houses and Kie in garish wedding dresses.
Physical touch.
You touch Pope a lot, because you’re tactile, you’re touch-starved , Kie tells you one time (starved is right; you’re so very, very hungry) and because Pope always responds to you. Trees and forests. Sometimes you don’t feel real until you touch someone and they touch you back. You touch Pope a lot, but never like this, wrestling on the grass like you’re twelve years old, knowing already that you're going to lose- you've already lost , a particularly melodramatic part of your brain mutters. Your body is radiating with warmth and his hands are everywhere, and you feel kind of dirty, even though this wasn’t your idea and it’s not... like that . You don’t feel the way you thought it was supposed to, some primal instinct. Rather, you feel turned on in the most literal sense of the word, like you’ve been operating at low capacity your whole life but now someone’s flipped a switch and every particle in your body is unbelievably, agonisingly alive. Your hands are intertwined. You’ve never actually held hands with someone before, you realise in the moment, and now everything anyone’s ever said about romance makes sense. Our hands were made to slot into another’s. He trips you up and pushes you to the ground and the whole time you’re making stupid comments, trying to pretend all of this is a big joke. You’re laughing when his hands press you against the damp grass, loud and brash and free for what feels like the first time in forever, so maybe it is. Perhaps, if you reframed all these scenes, added an abrasive, neverending laugh track, you could fashion it into a comedy. It's funny, it’s all a comedy of errors when it comes down to it. Pope rises up like smoke to celebrate his victory, and you touch his chest as he does but it’s not enough. Never enough. Everything is fleeting. You can't laugh forever; there's no canned laughter here. The boulder always falls back down.
God, then he fucking leaves, he’s leaving while you’re still getting up from the floor, Kie is on his tail and he might as well have punched you in the face. You’re so stupid, feeling like a scorned mistress, when you never had him in the first place. They’ve been dating the whole time or something close enough to it, and now naturally they’re spending time alone so Kiara can touch him in all the ways you didn’t. You couldn't.
She knows what the inside of Pope’s mouth feels like , you think as you sit down opposite Sarah, and even through the haze of the beer and weed and the knowledge that you stopped being normal about this a while ago, you realise that’s a weird place for your brain to go to. It’s true, though. She does. If you asked (and you wouldn’t, you do know when to keep your mouth shut sometimes) Kie would probably say something stupid like ‘wet’ or ‘warm.’ Kie isn’t much of a romantic.
That's not important to anyone else but you, apparently, because she's with him right now and you’re sat on a log, body aching, listening to Sarah and John B jab at you for failing to keep the two to the “no pogue on pogue macking” rule. You don’t tell them that you didn’t see it happening until it happened, that you thought you knew everything about Pope until he left you blindsided. It doesn’t seem worth it. A bruise is already on your forearm, small and blue-purple and you press against it while you think because you’re only human. It’s comforting. Everyone look here, you’ve been touched, hard enough to hurt; you’re here. Pope could stab you and you’d thank him, you fucking idiot. You can’t keep thinking about your best friend like this. Your love has an expiry date. God, you’re thinking so much strange shit lately, so much strange and sad shit. You somehow keep finding new ways to lose it, stuck in an unholy purgatory between lovers and strangers called friendship. The affection and the touching and the flirting was fun, honestly, before that ridiculous feeling embedded itself in your chest and bloomed like a gunshot wound. You always thought that you could walk the bridge with ease- you’d make out with John B, if he asked. You wouldn’t wrestle with him, though. And you don't think it would leave this many bruises.
Protect him.
Here's where that tricky little thing about you comes in again, that love that sits deep in the pit of your stomach and just explodes, loud and painful and uncontrollable. When Limbrey's guy puts his hands on him, you nearly black out, honest to god; white hits your periphery like a slap to the face. The rage pricks at you like knives. That really isn't healthy, but none of it is. You figure it's fine, necessary even, to care this much when he's in danger so often. And it's… it's kind of embarrassing, really, to admit this, but a part of you thinks maybe it'll really work out the way all the fairy tales describe it; that if you keep running at dragons, the innocent damsel will throw himself into your arms. God, not that Pope's a damsel, but- this is all coming out wrong. You're not good with words, you really need to stop trying.
You're sad. You want Pope to date you. That's about it. You dreamt about him last night (he's the house and you're the ghost, or the other way around, or Kie might have been haunting you both, you don’t remember anymore) and he'll never know. This shame will never come off. Maybe this protection is just compensation for the fact that you've ruined everything. You ruin everything. You can't let anyone ruin him, you really can't, not after this. You can exist in a story alone, a miserable one note character stuck in the same cycle. Don your heavy armour, grip the hilt of your sword, the only other hand you will ever hold, and slay beast after beast. The writers, they can do whatever they want to you at this point. You're already done for. But Pope is bright and vivid and more real than you can fathom, and he needs to still be standing when the storybook shuts. If you're lucky he'll tell stories of you, offhand, to his kids or nieces or nephews. I knew this kid once, he was crazy. A good friend, though. You are a good friend. You are . You'd lay there bleeding for him. You'd let him kill you. You can't stop dreaming of the nape of his neck at sunset, and the way he laughs harder than anyone else at your jokes. You are a good friend and a terrible, irredeemable not-person, JJ Maybank. You are watercolour. A bright red sloop in the harbour. A crude fairytale story. A ghost. A haunted house. You are a million useless metaphors. You love him. That's all it has ever really come down to. You love him and you'll save him for as long as you have to and it's going to kill you sometime soon, it's all going to kill you because you keep saying I love you but you’ll never really say it. You will lie bleeding in your best friend's arms, you will lie bleeding alone on a cold floor, he will watch you lie on stage with pathetic red-ribbon blood splatter all around you. He holds the knife and the bandages. If you're lucky, really lucky, he'll drop them both and kiss your forehead as you go. Grow up and tell people I knew this kid once, he was crazy .
Jesus Christ, isn't that a story?