you're too young & eager to love

This is old.

Shaine modified into Cale, and now I can't figure out what to do with him. I was trying to work out the beginnings of them though.





He leaves for a period of time that he calls indefinitely. He’s graduated, the summer is approaching, and there’s a college in Connecticut that is closer to his family. He tells you the day before when the majority of his car is already packed, and there’s little to no belongings left in his house. Someone has written books, kitchen, and junk in a black marker on the sides of the variously shaped boxes lining the house. You think the handwriting belongs to his girlfriend, but you’re not sure. You stand for a while in the middle of a wasteland, slightly amused that now, when every inch of him has been removed, the cinder box looks like a home. There is only his futon, a desk he’s intending to leave for whoever next rents the space, and a stained microwave. Cale keeps walking the perimeter of each newly emptied room, nodding and making little approving clucking noises. Like a hen.

“It’s been nice knowing you, kid.” He says, after you’ve helped lug the last few boxes to his car. You’re not such which you’ve spent the most time in – that backseat or the old mattress still inside. He leans in and ends up awkwardly kissing the side of your hair, a phantom brush of air against your temple. You step back on the curb before he can attempt anything else.

And so that’s that, you think.



There are other guys and occasionally a girl.

They are nice. They wear polo shirts, band shirts, or anything in-between. Some have hair that you like and some kiss you like they’re still practicing with a mannequin mouth. You don’t call any of them and sooner or later (usually later) they start to understand. It’s not that you’re all unbelievably particular or that your expectations are too high. You just find their perfect teeth and shaved skin boring. They don’t argue with you; they back down to your rigid stare and smirking lips, so you drum drum drum your fingers and wait for the coffee, or dinner, or movie, or car ride to be over.



Two years later, you graduate. You get a scholarship to a prestigious University in the City. You don’t have too many belongings and most of what you do have you want to leave behind. Everything seems stained, some sort of lingering Jersey scent clinging to your clothes or you skin or your hair. Your mother isn’t home when you leave, but you think that smell you can’t wash away with Tide or soap is because of her. Her and her diner waitressing job that pays minimum wage, that Blue Plate Special grease soaked into her cuticles. You leave the number to your dorm room on the kitchen counter and swear you’ll never be back. Cross your heart.

You don’t have trouble settling. The drive isn’t difficult, and there are college students roaming around the campus in obnoxiously bright red shirts, too eager to help you locate the library or point you towards the Registrar’s Office. You don’t ask anyone for help, even though it takes you four trips up and down three flights of stairs to bring in your boxes.



“You look great.”

Cale wants to come through the door you have barely cracked, so he does. Your weight budges easily beneath lean muscle and two inches of solid mahogany. He kisses you as though he never left, and you shove at his shoulders bitterly. You had wanted to say something clever, something profound, but instead you got a cold tongue in your mouth and the taste of beer and spit.

“Really, you look great.” Against your mouth, so you shove again until he relents, laughs, leans against your door in order to keep it closed.

“You don’t have to say that. I know what I look like.”

Cale moves his hair out of his eyes. He looks the same, just more tired. The anxiety you always knew still possesses him, lurked around the corners of his mouth, kept his jaw tight and his fingers moving. He shrugs, scoffs. “Fine. What do you want me to say instead? You look like shit?”

“I don’t want you to say anything.” It’s true. You don’t need to be charmed by him, tricked or fooled. You already see the strings pulling his movements, the blackness chipping away at his vitality.



“I missed you.” He breathes into your mouth, pumping his hips back and forth, the smooth length of your legs wrapped around his waist. It turns out that a dorm bed is not too different from a futon, so the rhythm is both familiar and uncannily refreshing. You keep your nails in his back and close your eyes, so close until he starts speaking.

You press a hot hand to his mouth. “Stop it.”

Cale licks your palm, tries again. “No. I really missed – “

“Stop it.” You would tear his tongue out, but you shove his face to the side instead, bury yours into his neck. “Can’t you see you’re ruining it?” Because you’re not sixteen anymore. You don’t need him to miss you. You don’t need him to lie. He never called after he left, while you spent months thinking about the shape of his eyes. You don’t like to be reminded of your youth, of him, even if he’s bearing down on you from above.

“Just fuck me.” You groan, exasperated. From the corner of your eye, you think he looks hurt, but then he grins and presses a hand to your throat, and there is no more talking. Only your ragged, feminine cries and the blackness licking at your vision.
The dysphagia you feel.