x's and o's
chris sturniolo | angst | inspired by malcom todd
Chris called 3 times before letting it ring.
The first two he hung up before it even connected, thumb moving faster than his brain, which was probably for the best. But the third time he sat there, listened to it go to voicemail. Heard your voice say leave a message like it was nothing, as if the sound of you wasn't doing something embarrassing to his chest.
The beep caught him off guard.
"Pick up the phone, baby—" he started, then stopped. Laughed a little, but not the funny kind. "It's uh. It's me. Chris."
It's as if you didn't have his contact saved, or didn't know his voice by now.
"Your boyfriend," he said, and then regretted it immediately, the words sitting wrong in his mouth the way it always had lately. Not because it wasn't true, but because he genuinely didn't know if it was anymore.
That was the thing about you two. You never said this is what we are and you never said this isn't, and somewhere in the middle of all that ambiguity he'd built a whole life around you and now he was sitting on the edge of his bed at 1am leaving a voicemail like an idiot.
"Or honestly—" he exhaled. "I don't even know what I am to you anymore. Actually."
He hadn't meant to say that part. It came out anyway.
That was the other thing about you. He always said the actual thing when it came to you, even when he didn't want to. Even when the actual thing made him sound like this, unsteady, circling the same wound, calling again even though calling again was probably the wrong move.
He pressed his free hand flat against his knee just to have something to do with it.
"I'm calling again," he said, quieter. "And uh." A small pause, but long enough that he almost hung up. "I want you. I want you really bad."
His words weren't poetic. Or the kind of thing that would fix anything, He knew that, he'd known it before he dialed, before the first two times he'd almost dialed, probably known it for weeks now in the specific way you know something but keep moving anyway because stopping feels worse.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Just. Call me back."
He ended it before he could say anything else.
Sat there for a second with his phone face-down on the mattress and his heart doing something he didn't have a name for, and thought about how the worst part wasn't not knowing if you'd call.
The worst part was that he'd do it again tomorrow if you didn't.
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