The next morning, Lee crumbles.

"She's a sweetheart. You'll love her," his father's saying, sounding happier than Lee's heard him sound in years, and all Lee can think is, I am not the one making him sound this happy, and it hurts like a punch to the gut. He's tried to be a good son---he really has---and it stings never hearing this kind of joy pouring from his father's lips over something he's done.

His palms feel clammy, clutching his phone so hard he's worried it'll break. The four dozen walls seem to close in on him, brick and mortar puncturing his lungs until he runs out of air. Socks pokes at his feet with a comfortingly damp nose ever so often, as if sensing the call's not a good one. (For Lee, at least. He's sure his father's over the moon.)

"Who's she?" Lee manages to get out through dry lips and the shattered rhapsody of his chest, even though he already knows the answer. Crack, crack, crack, goes the little ivory bits of his heart, like gaping fractures splintering across hard ice, snapping and popping and hitting the ground in a thousand poppyseed pellets.

Some questions don't need answers, but Lee wants one anyway. It's easier to hurt himself instead of hiding the truth, so he digs the knife deeper into his ribs, over and over again.

"Her name's Katie. She's one of my employees, and she's been a great help ever since..." His father doesn't finish the sentence, but Lee already knows what he's going to say---since your mother left. For the first time, a pinch of hatred for his mother bubbles in his chest. For leaving. For moving to Spain. For the fact that it's been four hundred and five days since she's stopped picking up his calls, and he should stop counting, but fuck, he can't help it, because she'd always taught him to hope, and he hates it hates it hates it---

Lee swallows thickly and forces as much air as he can into his straining lungs. "Congrats?" It comes out as a question. He doesn't mean it to be a question. He doesn't even mean it to be an actual congratulations. He gulps again. "Congrats!" Better. Be happy. Be happy for him. Even if he's never happy for you.

The statement stings more than it should, even if it's just in his head.

"Thank you, Leroy." His father hesitates, and Lee thinks about how much his father doesn't know about him. All the memories he'd missed, water pouring over his head as he'd drowned in the ocean of his job, his divorce, his life. It makes Lee sad, but Lee's sad more often than he'd like to be nowadays, anyway. The seconds turn into minutes, hours, days. "I hope you're not upset?"

My dad hasn't had time to eat dinner with me in years and yet somehow has time to get a new girlfriend. But of course I'm not upset. "Of course not," Lee fibs, the lie pushing the weight of the world down on his shoulders. Hanging in the threadbare web of false niceties and poised civility, the universe seems a little too fragile, ready to bend and crash and break. Ready to spew fire over the device in Lee's hand until he burns alive.

His father sighs, so tired, so old, so worn by nonexistent fatherhood and the tides of time. "Leroy, I need you to be honest with me."

"I am being honest with you." Of course I'm not. What, do you really want me to be honest with you? Want me to tell you about how Mom stopped picking up my calls, and how I'm too young for daddy issues but I have them anyway, and how my fucking classmates care about me more than my own dad does? And how it hurts so fucking much because you're still my dad and I still love you and please, please, please just fucking come home for once, and---

And I just. I just. I just miss you. And I know I shouldn't. But I do.

A pause. His dad's heavy breathing quietens, silence echoing over the line. "What's wrong, Leroy?"

Nothing. Everything. I hate you. I love you. I don't ever want to see you again. Please come home. "Nothing's wrong," he replies instead. The familiar burn of false hope fizzles out on his lips, dying a million deaths like it's done so often before. Like it does every time his father calls.

"Leroy---"

"I'm fine, Dad." And then, his voice barely betraying a hint of his true emotions, "I just want you to come home for dinner once in a while."

His father hesitates, even the slight crackling of the line fading to perfect silence. Lee can almost imagine his father in his cream-lined, gold-plated office, leaning back in his black leather chair, the slender fingers Lee had inherited from him quietly tapping against the table, nothing to signify their existence except the muffled click of his neatly-trimmed cuticles. "I'm a little busy right now, Leroy. We've got a big client this week, and I've got to take care of him first. But I'll come home soon, okay? Soon. After I finish with this client."

Soon. It's a word Lee has come to learn is synonymous with never. I'll come home soon, his father always says, and then he never does. A thousand broken promises, crashing to the ground like the fragmented porcelain shards of Lee's heart. And even when you come home, what will you bring? Lee thinks, hands clutching the phone so tightly his knuckles streak themselves with white, the thought an arrow right between his ribs. A hug and a smile for me? Or an already-written check for my latest bribe and your new girlfriend?

"Okay." Another word he doesn't really feel, slipping through the screen of his phone, the gaps between his fingers, the cracks lining his dry lips. Okay, acceptance, agreement, two syllables for someone content to run their tongue around. But Lee is not content, and even though his mother had taught him to never be---shoot for the moon, darling boy---he'd like to feel content once in a while. Feel something other than the numb chill of his shaking fingers and the empty crevices in his body where organs should be---lungs, gap, stomach, gap, heart, gap. "Okay. I'll see you...whenever, I guess. Bye, Dad. I love you."

"I'm sorry, Leroy."

"Yeah. I love you."

٩( ᐛ )و

Lee doesn't cry after he hangs up. He hasn't cried in years, not since his mother closed the door of their home for the last time and left nothing behind but a kiss on his head and her relentlessly frustrating DNA in his veins. He'd cried for hours then, sobbing into Socks' fur until all the tear ducts in his body ran dry and never filled up again.

So he sits on the floor, dry eyes and dryer lips, one hand absently buried in Socks' soft fur while she whimpers in his lap and nudges his limp palm every minute or so. He shouldn't be feeling this way---after all, his dad's entitled to move on and get a new woman on his arm, but---but it just hurts sometimes, seeing his father having time for everyone except him.

After calls like this from his father, Lee never bothers going to school---who gives a fuck about school, anyway? Not even when Jack blows up his phone with a million text messages along the lines of Where the hell are you? and If you don't get your skinny ass into class right now, I'm going to have to write your name down and report you, dumbass, and Shit, Lee, did you die?

(Lee promptly replies with, sorry pref, cmi today. too busy jerking off to the thought of you, which is quickly met with a barrage of rather unbecoming swear words from Jack's end. He can't hide his grin. He doesn't try to, either.)

"Jeez, Socks," he mutters aloud. "He's hot as fuck. Too bad he's kind of an asshole." And has zero interest in me. He thinks back to what he'd thought Jack had mumbled the day before. Definitely his imagination. Lee's always had an overactive imagination, after all. There is no way in hell Jack Sang of all people would ever actually want to take him out. Or actually want him, in the first place.

(Nowadays, no one really seems to want Lee anymore.)

Burying the thoughts in the lockbox of his mind and mentally throwing away the key, Lee stands up and stretches, gently lifting Socks off him. (She's gotten heavier. He's not sure if that's a good thing or not.) A few years back, he'd have been distraught at this kind of news---heartbroken, even. But the daddy issues are a joke now, and Lee's the court jester. He's older, after all. Less childish. Less hopeful. More numb. Too clogged up with money to give a shit.

Bzz. Another message from Jack.

Help i think i love him???: Where tf are you

Help i think i love him???: I'm calling the police mf I'm not even using punctuation rn WHERE TF ARE YOU

(Lee's changed Jack's contact name at least five times in the past week. It's not his fault that Jack's...confusing. Or maybe Lee's just a hopeless dumbass.)

hiding a body

Help i think i love him???: WHAT

jkjk

Help i think i love him???: I'm going to punch you in the nuts.

pls i already have no tits don't take away my nuts too

but i'm taking a mental health day lmao

gotta stay yassified 💅

Help i think i love him???: Oh shit okay

Help i think i love him???: Do you need an ambulance?

no i need you

Help i think i love him???: Bye

nooo don't leave me

Help i think i love him???: Mr Jay is literally. Right outside the door.

we stan Mr Jay

but still fuck English

Help i think i love him???: Fuck you

Help i think i love him???: Okay but seriously, I've got to go

Help i think i love him???: ...

Help i think i love him???: Take care of yourself, okay? I'm kind of worried about you.

It's those words that stop Lee in the midst of his downward spiral, the stairs under his feet crumbling and disintegrating and rocketing him into the clouds, the jigsaw pieces of his thoughts slotting together in a perfect puzzle. They light him up like a flame, something warm flickering in his chest and melting every part of his body to blood and ash. And---oh. Someone does care.

He wants to tell Jack everything: how he misses his father so much it hurts, and how he hates him a little more each time he hangs up the phone, and how he doesn't know why his mother stopped picking up his calls when she used to call him every day, and how Shit, I am kinda maybe sorta in love with you, and I've never felt this way for anyone before but you're so cute and so nice to me and you just confuse me and I can't even think straight when I'm around you and---

I'm fine, he types back, watching a thumbs up emoji from Jack bubble up on the screen. Lee sets his phone down, clutches Socks to his chest and hugs her tight. For a moment, he really means it. For a moment, nothing exists---not him, not his father, not his father's new girlfriend, not the mother who left him in her dreams. Just Jack Sang and the eternal multitudes of what ifs between them. And for a moment, the universe is alright.

٩( ᐛ )و

He spends the rest of the day alternating between jerking off (five times, to be exact. He quite literally beats his record, something he's not too proud of) and texting Yumeko. Yumeko's slightly-illegal texts are punctuated with plenty of short pauses, as always. She has a habit of shoving her phone in her bra whenever anyone comes near, stemming from the trauma of her Physics teacher confiscating her phone for two weeks.

Even though Lee knows Yumeko hates her boobs---bras are uncomfortable and having D-cups is exhausting. I have back problems every day, she always complains---sometimes, he does envy her. (On his more female days, he'd definitely like to have tits. Scratch that. Even on his male days, he'd still like to have tits. He'd even settle for A-cups.)

Wifey: jack has a huge crush on you def

(Yumeko types exactly like he normally does: no capital letters and definitely no punctuation. They both love how it drives Jack mad.)

lay off the romance novels Yu

Wifey: bet

Wifey: even maya ships you 2 and she hasnt even met jack yet

she'd hate him

Wifey: exactly why im not introducing him to her

you haven't gone offline for a while

no more teacher

?

Wifey: it's 8 oclock dumbass ive been at home for nearly 4 hours

Wifey: keep up with the time old man

(Yumeko likes to hold her October birthday over Lee's head a little too much. He likes to hold the fact that he can actually drive now over her head even more.)

im dead inside gimme a break

Wifey: yeah you certainly looked dead when you showed up yday

Wifey: gonna strap the baby monitor to your big ass forehead when you come back to school

Jack so happens to like this big ass forehead

Wifey: you fucking liar lmao

he said he liked it 😌

Wifey: i told you so

Wifey: you're both fucking idiots

that's a compliment

Wifey: you just proved my point

Wifey: did you eat yet

Lee jerks, caught off-guard by the sudden change in subject. He has---or at least, he's tried to, but it's so hard, thinking about his father, the only blood he's got left in his bubble, sitting at someone else's table for dinner, choosing, choosing, always choosing everyone else instead of Lee, and he knows---knows it's his own fault, because he's a splitting photocopy of his mother even with his blue-grey hair, and it's his own fault that his father can't bear to look at him because he misses her too much, but...fuck.

He wonders if it's selfish to want to scream at his father that it's not his fault that she left, that she stopped answering his calls, that he wears her face like a second skin, that he sees her in the mirror every time he looks at himself---in the slope of his nose, in the curve of his lips, in the curl of his hair, in every pore. Her, always there, never there.

yes

Wifey: why you always lyin

Wifey: why the fuck you lyin

who's old now

that meme died in like

2015

Wifey: and so will you if you dont eat

Wifey: consume the flesh of mortals and drink their spirits old man

you mean suck their dicks

Wifey: youre so gay

Wifey: ignore the fact that im gay too

Lee laughs. Nowadays, it's too easy to cheer him up---it has to be. He desperately clings on to every sweet word, every kind smile, every happy moment, even as hope slips through his fingers and falls like the silver-studded stars, their crystallised joy just out of Lee's reach. But still, he paints a smile onto his mask and wears it with pride---anything to keep his head above water.

The doorbell rings. Socks, who's settled herself on Lee's lap, immediately hops off and begins barking.

shit i gtg

Wifey: to eat?

...

sure

Wifey: leroy hiew istfg

Lee doesn't wait for her to finish her sentence. He simply slips his phone into his pocket and runs a hand over Socks' back lightly to calm her down.

Who could that be at this hour? Dad?

Yeah, sure. In my dreams, maybe. (Except his father doesn't come home in his dreams either, so that's wrong too.)

The doorbell keeps ringing, the loud ding dong echoing through the entire house. "I'm coming!" Lee yells, even though he knows the person at the door can't hear him. "Shh, honey." He scoops up Socks, who's started barking again, and runs downstairs.

(Right before he opens the door, Lee takes a second to think about how he would not survive a horror movie. He decides being murdered might be a sufficiently dramatic way to die and immediately heads for the deadbolt.)

The wind rips open the door the moment Lee unlocks it, nearly slamming hard wood into his face and sending Socks tumbling to the floor. (Fortunately, she lands on her feet with a very angry bark. He'll have to apologise for that later. Maybe sharing some of his steak will pacify her.) A puffy-eyed, very bedraggled Cory stands on his front step, rain mingling with the tears on his face until Lee can't tell what is what.

Cory jerks back, obviously startled to see Lee standing there. Lee just stares.

"Ah, mierda," Cory groans.

the chapter title is from Fromis_9's latest album (okay, it was released in January, but STILL. A BOP. EVERY SONG IS SO GOOD NGL) even tho Cory shows up at 8pm because i cannot time, just like Lee

so. things are (kinda?) picking up? like, i mean, they're still boring af, BUT!!! OPPORTUNITY!!! FOR!!! DRAMA!!! COMING!!! SOON!!! i think pls do not abandon this book i swear i'm doing my best

i am lowkey losing it with Jack and Lee but for the sake of ✨pacing✨, we'll keep doing what we've been doing so far :D i also hinted at a certain thing regarding Lee's identity that i've already talked about on my profile, so let's see if you can spot it ;) the seeds have been planted, now let them GROWWW

sorry this update is so late! i've been super busy this week and literally so exhausted. i had band practice on ⅘ days and am currently preparing for an audition for a performance! (the audition's tmr wish me luck aaaa) i'm doing a sexy concept which is something i've never done before, but it's my last year so i decided to be a bit braver. i also produced about half of my instrumental myself (the rest is sampled) and played nearly all my own instruments so i'm super proud of what i've put together!

anygays, let me know what you think of this chapter! please point out any mistakes you see as i didn't have time to edit again oop---

love y'alls sm <333

xoxo, Alex