Chapter 26: Three Days!

Max looked up at the ceiling of his dorm. He lay flat on the gray bed sheets and threw his little red ball at the ceiling again. His mind kept going in circles.

It had been three days since he had seen Leo. And every day had been a battle.

He found himself wandering down to Leo's part of the building. With them both only a year apart in classes and in the same building, he knew where Leo would be. The worst part was he knew where he would be going to next without even having to check class schedules or stalk him. Which was sad because he kinda wanted to. He wanted to see him. It was driving him up the wall, ceiling and everywhere in between.

'Is it stalking if we both want to see each other? Isn't that just meeting up?'

Because they had the same base classes, and he had done them all too. So he knew the teachers he had, the work he was doing and it made him anxious. Because he had to physically stop himself from being where Leo was, especially since the juniors under him had way more of a workload than he currently did.

So now any time he started to walk and think. He would look up and his subconscious would be leading him straight towards Leo.

He wanted to slap himself.

He was so completely and thoroughly frustrated right now.

'At himself, at Leo... At the world.'

'Well, not even at Leo, just himself.'

'I need someone to talk to about this. But who am I gonna tell? Sam? Hell NO!'

'Leo was a guy!' Sam was the perfect person to talk to about this. But while Sam was nonjudgmental the teasing he would get. Max flushed at the thought of it.

He had never ever once in his life thought anything like that before for a man, not anyone. And he was surrounded by all sorts of people every day. Beautiful and attractive people, attractive both inside and out. And not once had he desired anyone so all-encompassing as he did Leo.

It wasn't just scary it was nerve-wracking.

He felt like he lost control of himself around him.

Like he couldn't think properly, act properly. Exist like a proper decent human being.

It was driving him in circles.

'And knowing Sam, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. His best friends first attraction.'

He quite literally hadn't been able to study, or eat, or even sleep properly since that night in the amusement park. His stomach was in knots. His brain frazzled. He felt like he was trying to run on a trampoline.

He was so distracted during the day and his dreams...

'Ugh, those were worse. They were hot, wet, and heavy and filled with a certain black curly-haired, golden-eyed devil. One that he did unspeakable things too. Not Leo doing them to him, well those happened too. But in the majority of them, he was doing the naughty, sensual things... To Leo!'

It turned him on, it made him hot, it made him grow hard. But it also made him feel a little bad for how he was thinking of Leo when Leo wasn't around. As if he were some sex object to be taken and ravished.

It wasn't that he felt ashamed, or that it was wrong. It was all perfectly normal. He was just so ineloquent when it came to expressing what he was feeling. Or just admitting that he liked someone. That he had fallen for someone. It was hard, it was exposing, and vulnerable.

'And he was quite frankly a little nervous about it. Love, like, attraction any of those things to anyone was just so far out of the world he lived in. So far off, that it was breaking him up inside.'

Because...

Well, It wasn't in his five-year plan for himself. For his life. His dreams. The expectations his family had set, that he had set.

And adding something he had never even thought of as a possibility into his already planned life was downright scary.

His five-year plan had always been. Keep the athletics scholarship. Pass as one of the top ten percent of the class, so you can use the base to further your studies in international studies and law. Where was a boyfriend or girlfriend going to fit in when going abroad for two to five years?

It didn't fit.

And was it right to give up his whole plan for someone else? Or make them give up their plan for him?'

And on top of all of that, there was a huge burning question. 'Was he gay?'

So now, now he couldn't stop fretting because it had been three days already!

Three days!

And he was still going in uncertain circles around career, love, sexuality and how he could have it all, juggle it all? If he could even do that, or if he was just going to throw it all out the window. Just say screw it, if I wait any longer Leo won't even be there waiting anymore.

So he had to pace himself and think.

'Was that kiss because he was a hormonal twenty-year-old stuck in a dark, enclosed place and their bodies had become entangled?'

'Was his adrenaline from being scared of haunted buildings, causing him to have misplaced anxiety?'

'Was it because it was Leo at all? Or was it something else entirely that had to do with simple animal instincts?'

'He didn't know. He wanted to know,' so he could stop being so up in the air about it.

But the thing that kept making him stop, making him hesitate from running to Leo and saying how he was feeling. Was just the fact that he had never felt anything for anyone before and he couldn't tell if this was just him finally "Awakening" As Sam used to say.

Or if he really liked Leo, and wanted Him.

Just him.

'He thought it was that. But he had only ever kissed Leo so how would he even know if he could feel this way about anyone else?'

'Truth... the truth was.'

'He had never tried to before... and if he had never tried he couldn't know for sure, and then that could mean Leo gets hurt. And that was the last thing he wanted.'

Max rolled over with a sigh and the red ball dropped to the floor uncaught, it bounced around before rolling to a gentle stop.

Max knew he needed to take better care of himself, especially when he had another race today. And he couldn't injure himself just because he was conflicted. 'Because that was stupid.'

And when it came down to it. He was a confused idiot about something complex like love, and life. Not plain stupid in general.

He sighed, "Time to stretch and warm-up and be an adult, I guess."