The last official part of Watching Him Back is live, so technically I have done what I set out to do: finish the damn thing. But of course, back when Aaron and Crispin were the main characters on my mind, I wondered how they could end up together if they went to different colleges. There wasn't enough to make a full chapter about them. Too much to explain: how Aaron's parents reacted to his coming out, how he and Crispin broke up amicably, the other relationships they tried, how they each realized that their first loves were their only blah blah blah.
So, to get it out of my brain I'm releasing as much as I have. It might be hard to read; it's a lot of dialogue without the polish of filling in who is speaking. Because the whole thing is so scattered I've thrown some emoji between sections. Let me know if you can fill in those blanks.
Here it is in all its tangled glory:
Crispin and Aaron broke up after the summer because they’re in school on the opposite ends of the country. It’s harder on Aaron because of his parents’ reaction to his coming out; he practically lived with Crispin’s family for the three months after school. They’re both dating other people—Crispin is with a fellow freshman who won’t top, Aaron with an upperclassman who won’t bottom. Aaron worries that he peaked in high school, not just in achievements but in relationships. He has a friend though, a girl, who he can talk with honestly. (He has male friends, but they don’t talk about relationship stuff.) She advises him to be more vulnerable, and to actually tell Crispin how he feels instead of trying to keep up his cool kid persona.
"Everyone here calls me Crisp," he laughs. "Like they just don't have time to say my full name. And I'm like, 'Cris' is right there, and it's a real name. They'd probably call you 'Aar.'"
"Gross."
"I know. Hey, did my mom call you? She said she was going to."
"Yeah, she wanted my address so she could send me a care package."
"What? She's never sent me one!"
"That's because you have a family who still loves you."
Crispin goes silent for a moment. "Aaron, how are you, really?"
Lost without you. I don't say it aloud because it would make me sound pathetic. Plus, I should be thriving out here. Nobody from my high school to drag me into the past, away from my parents, an active LGBTQIA+ community full of hot guys; it's every gay kid's dream.
👻💩
"Have you seen Jay?" I wonder if he's still mad at me. He barely spoke to me all summer, although Carter and LeAndre both assured me that Jay's main beef was with my choice of partner, and secondly with me keeping the secret. As though I would ever have told him.
Crispin leans back to look around, and then leans really close to the camera and says, "Oh my god, Aaron, you're never going to believe this. I saw him at a party last week, and he was kissing a guy."
I shake my head; Crispin has to be making this up. "You're shitting me."
"Like full on, hands up in each other's shirt, making out."
"Come on." I make a face. "What?"
"Everybody was super drunk except me and my friend Dillon, so when we decided to play Halo in his room we walked in on them."
"Holy shit."
Crispin laughs at the memory. "It was like they didn't even realize what they were doing. Like I’m pretty sure I saw Jay trying to grab a titty, but there was nary a titty to grab. It was nasty."
"Did they see you?"
He makes a pshaw noise. "Are you kidding me? I ducked and covered as soon as I saw the back of his square head. Oh my god, and get this: Dillon's his lab partner now."
"No fucking way."
"Seriously! And Jay was super rude to him, so obviously he remembers something, and that Dillon was there."
"What about the roommate?"
"Blacked out." Crispin grins, giving me a view of his white teeth. "He can't even remember nine o'clock that night, so Dillon's pretty sure he isn't faking the whole I-don't-know-what-happened thing."
"How's your boyfriend?" I ask, cringing at the jealousy in my tone.
"He's fine. Ugh, Aaron, he still won't top. It has been months, and he won't do it."
Good. Break up with him. "Did he tell you why not?"
"We don't talk about it! I mean, it's still sex, so it's not like we aren't doing anything, but he totally ruined my jock fantasy." Crispin shakes his head woefully.
"I thought he was an artist," I laugh.
"He is, but he's also a gym freak. So he's ripped, but a useless kind of ripped."
I laugh, but I gained the Freshman Fifteen and then some since I stopped playing football. Crispin doesn't look like he's changed at all.
"Enough about me. Are you still dating that guy?"
"It's more like hooking up. I'm his booty call."
"Aw." He sounds sorry for me. I don't want that.
I say quickly, "I mean, he's nice to me in public, but we don't hang out unless we're having sex."
"Has he bottomed yet?" Is that snippishness that I detect? Is Crispin mayhap jealous?
"Nope, but at least I've learned a couple tricks for the next guy." Immediately I think, Ugh, why did I say that?
I twist locks of her hair around my fingers. "Sometimes I think I peaked in highschool."
Melanie stares up at me, slack jawed. "What a fucking stupid thing to say."
"What?" That was not the reaction I was expecting. "It's a real thing."
"You aren't even twenty, Aaron. You can't peak in high school unless you stop trying for the next eighty years."
I shrug, unconvinced. "Yeah, but I feel like I had an identity in high school, you know? Here, I'm a little…I don't know."
Patting me on the cheek, Melanie replies, "You don't do anything here. You don't know your major, you aren't in any intramurals or anything, and even your boyfriend isn't really your boyfriend. Mainly because you just want your ex back."
"Or maybe I'm sad because I got fat."
Melanie giggles. "We all got fat, Aaron. Hey, do you want to start swimming with me? I need motivation to complete my hours."
"Hey," I answer cheerfully.
"Hey," Crispin returns, but he sounds like he's about to cry.
"Are you okay?"
"No." And with that he begins to sob.
I have never hated not being there more than I do right now. "What's wrong?"
"Skyler and I broke up."
My first selfish thought is, Yay! Now date me again. "What happened?"
"He was cheating on me, like the whole time."
"With whom?"
"Mark, Dillon's boyfriend."
“Wait, what?!”
“Yeah.”
“That fucking asshole! Dirty rat bastard!”
Crispin seemed a little surprised by my vehement outburst.
"Aaron, have I peaked already?"
"What? How could you peak in high school if you hated high school?"
"I only hated getting picked on. The studying, my friends, you…"
"We didn't peak, Crispin. We aren't finished. We haven't even gone through one summer as college students. How could we have peaked?" Melanie would be proud of me.
"Yeah, but it's just like—"
"Look, I was a fucking idiot for breaking it off with you, given that I still talk to you more than anyone around here. I thought I peaked in high school, too, until someone pointed out that I was just fixating on when we were together."
Crispin chuckles a little. "Aaron, are you asking me out now?"
"I guess so, yeah. It's shitty timing, but I want you to be my boyfriend."
A long pause. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay. But we need some ground rules."
"Daily texts about dumb shit, not like a ‘how was your day text’ at midnight."
"No kissing anyone else. I’m a jealous bitch."
"Bring me into your game nights so I can meet your friends.”
“One visit to each other’s campus per semester.”
“Your parents are gonna be so happy.”
“Oh my god,” Crispin laughs, “I think they’ve literally been praying for us to get back together.”
“Yeah, your dad was like, ‘I think after uni? Mm? You can say you try again?’”
“You never told me that!”
“It was because he caught me crying about it! It was embarrassing!”
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