Chapter 1 - It is love that makes the impossible possible.

Oliver, fresh-out-of highschool, has been on the receiving end of a startling amount of near-intimate moments with his best friend, Joseph. The problem: Oliver's been in love with Joseph for 14 years.

Desperation - Chapter 1 ~ It is love that makes the impossible possible.

~~~


If only. "If only" was a phrase that I was well familiar with, by this point. If only I knew what kind of of misguided false-hope found me at the top of his all-too-familiar doorstep again. The glimmering of the fading sun's once-vibrant rays now resting itself upon my back, as I nervously traced my fingers along the velvet-like rose-blooms that I had meticulously picked out for him. A cliche choice, I know, but I suppose the relationship between us just as cliche, so it was fitting. It was a little frustrating, knowing that I had tirelessly agonized over which flowers to get him, even though I knew from the second I walked in to the store that Joseph wasn't the type to care about things like that. Hell, if he made more than a passing mention of them at all, I'd consider that a pleasant surprise.

Looking back on it, I suppose the flowers were ultimately a pointless, fleeting gesture. But even so, it was still one that I felt like I needed to make, even if I wasn't planning on confessing any time soon. Besides - I felt the need to once again remind myself - it's not like he would care about the flowers.

I knew he wouldn't care, and yet here I stood anyway. This stupid bouquet in one hand, and my heart in the other.

After what seemed like an eternity of awkwardly standing and shuffling around, ringing the doorbell enough times that if the doorbell were sentient it could have had me convicted on assault-and-battery charges, it finally swung open. In those extremely few seconds it took for the door to open, it felt as if time had grinded to an almost complete halt. I saw nearly my entire life flash before my eyes, and when it had concluded, the door was still only halfway open. If eternity was a palpable concept that humans were capable of comprehending, I'm goddamn positive that this is what it would feel like.

After my perpetual purgatory had mercifully drawn itself to a close, I was surprised to see him answering the door. He held the back of his left hand to his mouth, coughing weakly into it. I couldn't help but be taken aback. Call me overprotective if you will, but I thought it stubborn to the point of asinine that he would get up to answer the door in his condition.

"Joseph," I stuttered, "what are you doing here?"

He looked at me quizzically and almost-immediately replied:

"This is my house, you idiot."
"I know, but, like, you're sick. Why you answering the door?"

He smiled, folding his arms before his closed eyes fell to the ground.

"You worry about me too much. It's just the flu. I'm fine."

As if right on cue, a violent cough escaped his mouth.

"Like hell you are! You can barely keep yourself standing!"

"I walked out here by myself just fine, thank you very much."

"I was waiting for at least three minutes. Nobody takes that long to answer the door for their best friend without a reason."

"Maybe I felt like keeping you waiting?"

I decided to stop pretending that I cared for his approval and brought myself up to his side. Then, I wrapped my left arm firmly around his waist, my other arm gently-but-firmly secured under his right arm to support him. Holding him up as best I could, I walked him almost forcefully back to his room. I bent over his bed, dropping him softly onto it. As I sat down on his favorite chair a few dozen inches away from his bed, the interrogation began.

"Where the hell is your mother?"
"She left on vacation this morning."
"What? But you're sick!"
"I know. Took me a couple days to convince her to leave. She's been planning this vacation for a month now, no sense in letting it all go to waste just because I can't go."

I sighed, and cupped my forehead with my palm in exasperation.

"Honestly, Joseph. What were you going to do if you went unconscious? What were you planning on doing when you needed someone to pick you up some medicine? For Christ's sake."

For all my annoyance, it only warranted an apparent chuckle from him.

"Oliver, you worry more than my mother did."

I was too flustered to deliver an appropriate response, so I just folded my arms and threw on my best poker face in defense against the blush that was trying to creep itself up onto my cheeks. His eyes fell to the small desk on the right-hand side of his bed, which, amongst our bickering had somehow come to holster the flowers I had forgotten I'd brought.

"What's with the flowers?"
"Oh, uh..."
"What, did you bring all those just for little-old-me?"
"Shut up. They're, um, from my sister."
"Aww, I'm disappointed. Where are my flowers from you?"

I grumpily tossed the flowers in his face and turned away, fully expecting him to toss another sarcastic quip my way, but instead I turned back to see a genuine heartfelt smile as his head dropped down to his shoulder, letting the bouquet rest comfortably on his chest.

"Tell her I said thank you." He said, almost in a singsong tone. I passed it off simply as his illness claiming more of his sanity, and accordingly shut off the lights to allow him some sleep, bringing myself up to sit against his bedside as he did. Nearly five minutes later, he was snoring, the same frustratingly cute way he always had.

As I eventually felt my own eyelids sagging, I noticed that his arm had fallen off the side of his bed. Before I could think rationally, my hand reached out slowly and gently grabbed it, our fingers intertwining as best they could, as I suddenly felt my head resting against his shoulder. His low, gentle breathing I felt brushing through my long, thick hair, as it came tumbling down over my eyes. His unbeknownst embrace somehow lulling me into a slumber along with him.


~~~


When I had finally awoken, the first thing to catch my attention was that I was currently proprietoring Joseph's bed.

The second thing that caught my attention was an undeniable lack of Joseph in it.

I jumped upright, tossing my head sleepily from the left to the right, as if I was expecting him to somehow pop into my sight out of thin air. I pulled myself off the bed, and started to walk out of Joseph's room, down the hall. As I did, the unmistakable aroma of a bacon-and-egg breakfast wafted through the air. Nearing the kitchen, I tiredly called out,

"Joseph, what the hell are you doing making breakfa-"

Before I could finish my sentence, I found myself staring at the all too familiar face of my sister. By the looks of it, she had been there a while, as there was an entire tray of food lined up for me. As usual, she looked annoyed about something, though I had long-since given up trying to figure out what.

"Vanessa?"
"Do I look like anyone else?"
"Yep, you're definitely Vanessa. But what are you doing here?"
"You left the house at six-thirty last night, and you never came back. What do you think I came here for?"
"I told you I was just coming over here."
"But you never mentioned anything about staying the night."

It then occurred to me that prior to my departure, I indeed hadn't planned to stay the whole night. I merely intended to give Joseph his flowers and check up on him for a few minutes, but I guess I'd gotten swept up in the mood somewhere along the evening. Before I try to hastily piece together an explanation, Joseph offered his own rebuttal on my behalf. 

"To be fair, the good doctor over here probably wouldn't have spend the entire night if I wasn't such a horrible patient. He spent most of his time here yelling."
"All of which was entirely justified."
"Even so, he's much more fun to cuddle than he is to argue with."

My jaw plummeted somewhere between the kitchen floor and the center of the earth.

"Oh?" Vanessa boredly replied, as if she had somehow been expecting to hear that.
"Yep. Snuggled all night long." With an infuriating emphasis on the "all".
"But I wasn't even on the bed with you!"
"You were lying on it when you woke up, weren't you?"

I'm positive that for a moment, the entire world stopped spinning.

Little had I known that he'd picked me up off the floor and laid me on the bed while I was asleep.

"Yup, better watch out, Vanessa. Oliver here just might steal me from you."

I expected Joseph's quip to create a silence so palpably awkward that it would subsequently tear a hole in the fabric of reality, but to my surprise, Vanessa replied without skipping a beat. It led me to wonder what they had been talking about prior to this.

"He can't steal what isn't mine."
"Oh well. Then I guess he'll just have to keep me all to himself."

I don't think there are frying pans large enough for the smack I was going to give him as soon as my sister left.

"He does, does he?" Vanessa asked, rhetorically. "Well, for once I actually feel bad for him."

She then directed her gaze to me, as always the timing of an older sister; at the worst time humanly possible.

"What are you doing, Oliver?"
"Oh, nothing."

Just a few more seconds, and our best patient would've been blessed with a permanent cure to his ailment at the hands of a toaster oven caving his skull in. I swiftly pulled my hands behind my back and attempted to usher in a subject change while I slipped the toaster back onto the counter behind me.

"Vanessa, aren't you supposed to be getting ready for your next piano-tutoring lesson?"
"Piano-tutoring?" Joseph repeated.
"Yes." I answered. "She makes a little money on the side by teaching some little girl how to play the piano every... every..."
"Wednesdays and Saturdays," She concluded. "and Sarah's family is off visiting some relatives in Maine, so I've got the next week off."

Out of nowhere, the silence that had somehow avoided us before had finally made that right turn passed Louetta and caught up with us. After a few minutes of nibbling on the breakfast they'd saved me, my sister walked over to the door and invited herself out. With nothing more than a "Get better soon, dork." I had hoped to follow suit, but Joseph shut the door before I could.

"Leaving so soon?"
"Joseph, I spent the entire night with you. I don't think that constitutes as 'leaving so soon'."

"Yeah, I guess so. Time flies when you're spending it with the one you love." He said, in the same exaggerated tone that he always spoke with whenever he made jokes implying anything between us.

For a moment, I froze. Everything stopped. My mind went blank, except for one question that echoed unceasingly.

Why?

Why was he toying with me so much?

"I'm coming back later today to bring you some medicine anyway."
"Oh, good. But make sure you aren't gone for too long. Who knows what I'll do if you're not here to protect me."
"Is that a threat?"
"Well, it's not not a threat." 

I sighed.

"Just go back to sleep for a while, and try not to get yourself killed."
"No promises."

I groaned and threw open the door in-front of me, only to slam it back shut again once I'd walked out. Truthfully, I really wasn't all that annoyed with him. But all of those sudden... remarks of his left me incredibly unsure how to feel, so I wanted to take any excuse I could get to leave so I could clear my head. My heart was throbbing enough as it was, lately, and I doubted I could take much more without passing out. As I slowly trudged down the sidewalk back to my house, my heart seemingly grew heavier with each step. It was bad enough that I had spent the last fourteen years pining for his affection, but now that I was actually getting it... I didn't know how to respond. A part of me wanted, desperately, in-fact, to play along, but it was obvious that he was only messing around.

It was obvious, and it still wrung my heart like a wet towel.

"Why?" I wondered aloud. "Why, why, why?"

The question repeated itself incessantly over and over, and each time it did I began to dread even more the fact that I had no answer to it.

For the last few weeks, this was how it had been. Almost every time we saw each-other, Joseph would relentlessly tease and humiliate me. "Now, he's even started sleeping with me?!" I wondered aloud, before realizing that I, absorbed in my own subconscious, had wandered past my house, and into a cross-way of over a dozen people.

I yelled, causing what felt like the entire neighborhood to look back at me. I ran back to my house, and slammed the door behind me. I slumped down in-front of the door and wrapped my arms around my legs, letting my head sink comfortingly into my lap.

"This... whatever he's doing, it doesn't feel malicious, it doesn't feel like he's doing it to spite me, it feels like he's doing this of his own agenda." I thought, pulling my arms over my head.

Suddenly, my head shot up. 

No. No, no, no. That just couldn't be it. That was blasphemous. Delirious. Not even within the realm of possibility. I was just being delusional from getting to sleep beside him last night. There wasn't another explanation.

But even so...

"Time flies when you're spending it with the one you love."

Did he really mean it?

Could the man that I love...

actually love me back?