You Belong With Me...?
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by TIMOF books
Copyright © 2017 by Talitha Organ-Fletcher
Cover art and design © Ellie McBride
Proof reading by Anthony Woods
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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This is dedicated to those out there too scared to take a risk, do it.
It might be the most rewarding thing you ever do.
Inspired by the film clip to Taylor Swift's song You Belong With Me.
You Belong With Me...?
TIM O.Fletcher
Chapter One
Before I get started with my story let me first warn you that this is so full of clichés that you may want to find a bucket. Now that’s done, let me introduce myself. I’m Tyler Evans, 18 (still a junior though, I'll explain later) and I’m a nerd. I’m a band geek, member of the math club and I work part time for my schools’ IT department. Really, I’m not very interesting but maybe I can peak your curiosity with someone who is, Brad Stevenson.
Now, those clichés I told you about here’s where they come into play. He’s a senior, the quarterback, the captain of the football team, the senior class president and completely gorgeous. He’s smart, rich, popular and totally straight. So straight, in fact, he’s lived up to his stereotype as captain of the football team and is dating the head cheerleader, Tara Young.
Me? I’m just the kid everyone assumes is gay. I am, but that’s not the point! The point is, this guy is everyone I want to be and everything I want but I’m the scholarship kid that watches the football team practice every week but never seems to know anything about football.
Now traditionally in these situations I would be the bullying target of a guy like Brad Stevenson and really, that would probably be better than not existing in his universe at all. But no, I didn’t get picked on really; no one cared enough to bother. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not like I hate myself, in fact I’m pretty happy with my life but I can’t help but wish to be noticed once in a while from people who don’t care about my academic prowess.
So a few weeks ago my mom got a major promotion at her job that allowed us to move from our pretty nice two bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood to a rundown crap hole of a house in a really good neighborhood. Our new home was literally the stain on the carpet of this suburb. But nonetheless I was happy to be much closer to my school – The St. Helena Academy. (which is actually quite exclusive, I was super lucky to get a scholarship there) But what I hadn’t anticipated when I moved into this little home were the neighbors that came with it.
It took me a good two weeks to notice who lived in the mansion that sat back-to-back with our humble abode, what with the moving and all that. I was absent-mindedly staring out the window of my new room (which is really the attic) and saw the light click on in the opposing room. At first I didn’t think anything of it (after all, people usually lived in houses) but then I saw that the blinds had, for the first time, been left up and the bay window seat was occupied by a sobbing, blonde perfection.
“Fuck me dead,” I whispered aloud when I realized who it was.
You guessed it, Brad Stevenson – the embodiment of most gay teens wet dreams.
I’d always held some kind of contempt for this guy, even if I would realistically fall to my knees in a second if he asked. He was perfect on the outside which generally meant he was a total asshole.
But here he was ugly-crying in front of his window and it was breaking my heart.
The next day at school I kept a special eye out for Brad, at lunch I watched him for a good five minutes whilst my best friend Damian waffled on about some stupid horror movie that I’d refused to see with him. He didn’t notice at first that I wasn’t paying attention but stopped abruptly when he saw what had caught my eye.
“Please don’t tell me you have a thing for Brad fucking Stevenson!”
“No, of course not.” I paused deciding whether or not to tell him the whole truth of the situation, “Funny thing actually. Turns out he lives right behind me in this huge house with his room directly opposite mine.”
I decided to keep the whole crying thing to myself - none of my business anyway.
“That’s convenient” Damian sleazed with a cocked eyebrow.
“Shut your dirty mind, as if I would ever be interested in him. He’s probably a complete asshole.”
“He’s not so bad, actually,” my other best friend, Jen, chimed in as she sat down with her lunch tray.
“How would you know?” I asked suspiciously.
“He’s my biology partner – I’m not saying he’s in the running for a Nobel prize in being the greatest person in the world, but he’s nice enough and he doesn’t make me do all the work.”
“And you never mentioned this before because...?”
“What does it matter Ty? I thought you said you could never be interested in him?” Damian mocked.
“I’m not! It’s just, you know, he’s my neighbor now...I should know something about him.”
Jen frowned, “He’s your neighbor?”
“Try to keep up, Jen,” Damian said.
The rest of the week flew by in a flurry of band rehearsals, club meetings and two afternoons of work. It wasn’t until Friday night came along that I finally had a second to relax. My life was like this every week though, I needed a scholarship to go to college and this was the only way I knew how to do it.
Usually, my weekends were stress free, only homework and assignments had to be done and I usually knocked them out of the way pretty quickly in order to enjoy the netflix and chilling (by myself) that generally occupied the rest of my weekends. My phones wasn't exactly blowing up with party invites.
So here I was, alone on Friday night – my mom was on the night shift at the Hospital where she worked as a nurse – and I was bored. I had already tried Jen and Damian to see if they’d come over but Jen was working at her family’s restaurant and Damian was at his mom’s house, about an hour away in the middle of Seattle.
By 11:00pm I’d finished my homework, re-watched my favorite movie for the 31st time and masturbated, twice. There was simply nothing left to do, I mused to myself as I sat in my computer chair looking through the window that faced Brad Stevenson’s house. For the past week, this had been a new hobby, just sitting at my window hoping in abject anticipation to see if he would be crying at his window again. I knew it was a little morbid, but it was also fascinating – it was like seeing a cat walk on its hind legs.
So my staring continued, more daydreaming really, as I listened to music through earphones and thought about what I was going to do the rest of the weekend; you know other than fuck all. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the light flick on in Brad’s room, the blinds were still closed but I could see his shadow moving abou
t. The shadow came to the window and appeared to sit beside it. At first I thought he was just sitting, doing nothing but then I concentrated and saw that his upper body was heaving slightly, like he was crying again, but trying to hold it back.
I suddenly felt terrible about wanting this to happen again, and felt the need to at least try and make him feel a little better. I grabbed a sketch pad, Sharpie marker and a flashlight, on the pad I wrote in huge letters:
‘R U OK?’
I threw open my windows to let in the early autumn air and held it up. I flicked my flashlight on and off repeatedly to get his attention. It took a little while but eventually he pulled the blinds up to see what was going on outside his window. He stared for a moment at me, then at the paper I was holding. No physical reaction, nothing except curiosity and possibly a touch of mortification at the fact a complete stranger like me saw him in his moment of weakness. I was right, his brow furrowed and the next second the binds had dropped again and his shadow had disappeared from the window.
The rest of the weekend drudged by slowly, I read way too many bad fan-fiction stories and spent too much time alone in my room thinking about the boy next door. I didn’t see him again on Saturday or Sunday, not even his shadow and I had thought up a hundred and one different scenarios that would lead to a guy like him crying so forlornly twice in about a week.
It was almost a relief to go back to school Monday morning. But with the weekday return also came the recommencement of my crushingly busy school life. I’d barely taken two steps into the school gates before some kid in my AP Algebra class was asking me to help tutor him.
I’d managed to lock my bike up and get to my locker just as the warning bell rang, every morning at school was like this – a race against the clock to get to class on time and it always seemed that I was a step behind. The bell had tolled and I’d grabbed my books for my first class but I really needed to pee. I decided to risk being late to AP History, Mr. Barnes thought I was amazing anyway, I could get away with being a minute or two late.
I walked into the closest boys’ bathroom and stopped short when I saw who was standing at the urinal, back facing me. I tried to tiptoe into a stall to avoid being seen or heard but just-my-friggin' luck, my backpack snagged on the door handle and I managed to launch myself back towards the now-closed door as I was trying to sneak in, and hit my elbow on the door frame. Brad’s head immediately whipped around at the sound of my intrusion just in time to witness an embarrassing squeak fly out of my mouth. I picked my 5’ 9” body up off the floor, trundled into the nearest stall and quickly turned the lock.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more embarrassed in my life, I thought as I took a few deep breaths and heard Brad trying to suppress fits of laughter as he zipped up, washed his hands and left the bathroom.
I hope he didn’t recognize me from Friday night; I’d never be able to safely look out of my window again otherwise.
I basically couldn’t think of anything but the humiliation of falling on my butt in front of Brad Stevenson for the rest of the day, whenever I saw him around school I blushed beet red and ran the other direction.
It was past seven o’clock by the time I made it home on Tuesday night, I flicked my lights on and dumped my stuff on the floor next to my desk before toeing off my shoes. I was about to rip off my school uniform before my modesty kicked in and realized my curtains were open, I went over to close them but immediately noticed that Brad’s shadow seemed to be at his window again, definitely crying.
I chewed my lip in thought, should I try again? I didn’t know if I had the guts after my blunder the previous morning in the boys’ bathroom but I asked myself if I was crying would I want someone to care? Probably, yes.
“Fuck it,” I said aloud as I grabbed the notebook, still open to the page from Friday and held it up, repeating the same flashlight maneuver from the other day. I saw a finger pull down a single piece of the blinds and an eye peek through the gap. His shadow suddenly disappeared from the window and I was instantly dismayed again but a couple of seconds later he reappeared, pulled up the blinds and sat next to his window writing on a sketchpad with a black marker.
Relief flooded through me when I saw this, perhaps I hadn’t made a complete ass out of myself trying to show some empathy towards this guy.
I was still holding up my sign saying:
‘R U OK?’
And he finally held up his reply:
‘I’M FINE. THX THO’
I quickly scribbled back:
‘OK, FEEL BETTER.’
I winced a little at the overwhelming lameness of my last correspondence but really, what else could I have said? I may know who he is and various details about his school life but I don’t actually know him or anything deeper than the superficial crust. I can’t simply ask details about what was upsetting him, could I?
Though to my amazement he replied again, with:
‘WHO R U?’
The fact that he was continuing to talk to me proved that he didn’t know who I was in any sense of the word - didn’t know me from school or as the stupid kid that fell over in the bathroom yesterday morning. Either that or he was desperately lonely for any kind of company, because frankly, in regards to high school, I’m a loser. I’m a big boy and can admit it – I have all of two friends in the world, am a renowned geek, and a scholarship student who has NO family money to speak of. This all equates to being at the bottom of the food chain at St. Helena’s Academy.
Regardless, I penned in return:
‘TYLER, I GO 2 SCHOOL W U.’
I watched his face as he read this, he seemed surprised not to recognize me. I certainly wasn’t.
‘SO U NO WHO I AM…’ Brad wrote back quickly before flicking to a new page and writing something else.
‘WHAT GRADE?’ He also asked.
‘JUNIOR’ I returned.
I heard a knock at my door and quickly hid my sketch pad.
“Come in,” I shouted and turned to see my mom enter, comfortably rugged up in some flannel pajamas and a matching robe. She's a fairly small woman, a little over five feet and barely making 100 pounds; she looked like she was drowning in fabric.
I smiled at the sight of her. I fucking adore that woman.
“Tyler honey, what did you want for lunch tomorrow?” she asked in her mid-western drawl.
I sighed a little, a small part of me wanted to bark at her to get out of my room. But how was she to know she was interrupting one of the most interesting things to ever happen to me? (Let's not dwell on how sad that is.)
“Um, PB&J is fine thanks Mom”
“Okay then, night sweetheart.”
“Night Mom.”
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that she does little things for me like making my lunch every day but sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever let me grow up and move out of this house before I turn 40. I’m seriously worried about the commute when I go to college.
After I shut the door I rushed back over to the window.
“Damnit!” Brad was gone. However, he left the note pad on my side of the blinds saying:
‘NIGHT TYLER. C U ROUND.’
Chapter Two
The new school year was only in its third week when football try outs started, Brad of course didn’t even need to bother – he’d already been named Captain for his senior year but nonetheless it meant that he was suddenly super busy, helping coach the new kids to get them in shape for the season that started in just two weeks.
We’d managed to chat a few more times via notepad since that Tuesday night but we really only covered the normal boring stuff. Brad’s favorite color is red, he loves football, food and fast cars. I found out he wants to go pro after college and his coach thinks if he keeps his game up he has a decent chance to get picked for a good football school. I told him about how I work with the school's computers and he jokingly asked me to change all the desktop pictures to playboy centerfolds, I wanted him to like me so bad I even considered it for a
split second. Despite the seemingly shallow topics we covered in our exchanges I found it a little bit odd that he never brought up his family or his girlfriend.
I hadn’t told Jen or Damian about the fact that Brad and I were, I suppose, becoming friends? I liked the fact that it was a secret between us, it was sort of like those dorky clubs that kids start in elementary school and I didn’t want to tell anybody in case of ruining it.
During this time Brad and I never spoke at school though; occasionally we’d see each other in the halls and exchange shy smiles before running off to where ever we each had to be. But despite the fun and thrill of it all, the fact that I’d seen Brad crying like that on more than one occasion still weighed heavily on my mind.
The night before the opening football match of the school year and my first band performance I finally got up the nerve to ask about why he was so upset those first couple of times I saw him through my window.
I was nervous the whole night until our sort-of-not-really arranged time to ‘talk’.
Finally, the lights in his room came on and I rushed to my window with my already prepared note. I held it up anxiously hoping for some sort of reply.
‘Y WERE U CRYING THOSE NIGHTS A FEW WEEKS AGO?’
He seemed to spend an extraordinary long time reading the message before hurriedly replying.
‘I DON’T WANT 2 TALK ABOUT IT,’ he replied, quickly followed by
‘NIGHT.’ He pulled down his blinds and his shadow disappeared from the window.
Shit, I blew it.
I sighed, and wrote exactly what I was thinking about him, then held it up to the now, one-way window of communication.
‘UR 2 BEAUTIFUL 2 B THIS SAD.’
The next night came and after briefly performing The Star Spangled Banner I spent the rest of the evening in the stands avidly watching the game.
You Belong With Me...? Page 1