Chapter 5 Getting back at him.

Trevor's POV

"What are you doing?" I asked, finally cutting through the wild thoughts going through my mind. I moved closer and grabbed his hand to stop whatever madness this was supposed to be.

He burst out laughing. Just threw his head back and laughed like I had said something genuinely hilarious. "Dude, it's a joke. Okay?" He pulled his hand back in an easy and unbothered manner, like he hadn't just had me standing there with my brain completely offline for three seconds. Then he straightened up and came closer, dropping his voice as he leaned toward my ear. "But I, uh - I mean, I did see you dream about me in class. You were literally yelling my name and others saw that too."

"I did dream about you, but it's called a nightmare." I shifted him slightly away from me, putting enough space between us to breathe properly again. Because if this wasn't teasing from him, then I genuinely didn't know what to call it, and then either way I was done being the subject of it.

He wasn't letting it go that easily though. "Okay then, explain your boner, Trevor." The facial expression that came with it was something else. I mean his eyes steady and his head tilted, like he was a lawyer presenting his closing argument and he already knew the verdict. Then he reached out and touched my collar, casual as anything.

I pushed his hand off immediately and I wasn't giving him any reaction with regards to that. I knew exactly what he was doing; which was poking and prodding until something slipped out that he could use. I could bet that was the whole point of all of this.

But my mind was already running its own commentary. He's probably got the football team hiding just out of sight, ready to humiliate me the moment I fall for any of this.

"Am I a joke to you?" I finally said it straight up. Looked him dead in the eye and asked it plainly. "Just because you all think that I am a gay doesn't mean that I am desperate."

Something shifted in his face then. The easy amusement pulled back slightly and what replaced it was harder and also more direct. He pointed one finger at my chest and held it there. "Don't take my football team to fly your rainbow flag, okay?"

His tone had changed. Whatever lightness was in it before was gone now and what was left was the version of Sean that actually meant what he was saying. "Just change the budget back." He paused for a beat, letting the silence do its own work before he added, "or else..."

He didn't finish the sentence and I didn't care about all of that anyway. He just turned around, crossed to the door, unlocked it, and walked out without another word. The door slammed shut behind him and I was standing alone in an empty classroom with the echo of it still in the air.

I stayed there for a second or two.

"Do you think that I am making the football team fly my rainbow flag?" I asked myself out loud, to nobody. Just me and four walls and the specific kind of anger that builds up when someone gets the last word and you only think of the perfect response after they've already left.

The worst part was that he had come in here with the budget as his whole point and somehow still managed to make me feel like the unreasonable one. Like I was the problem, or better still, like redressing a ninety-ten funding split that had existed long before I ever ran for student body president was some kind of personal attack on Sean Pierre and his entire existence.

I picked up my bag and left.

*****

After I stepped out of that classroom, not long after Sean did, the anger didn't go anywhere...it just settled differently. Let's say, it moved from my chest into the back of my head where it sat and quietly started looking for options.

Sean had cornered me. He has also dragged me back into that classroom like I owed him something, stood there and tried to rattle me with the budget and the boner and whatever that zip thing was about, and then walked out with an "or else" hanging in the air like I was supposed to just sit with that.

But then, I wasn't sitting with that.

Since I couldn't get at him physically...and I was fully aware of the reality of that situation. The fact was that Sean Pierre had about four inches and sixty pounds of pure football muscle on me and also happened to be best friends with every person in this school who would willingly make my life difficult. So, I needed something smarter and probably something that would land without putting me directly in his line of sight.

Then it hit me.

I knew the football team had their first game of the season that evening. For sure, I knew they would be heading to the changing room to suit up before it. And I knew exactly where that changing room was.

I made it there fast, slipping in while the corridor was still clear. Having two paint spray containers in each hand which were four in total

These were colours I had grabbed from the art supply room down the hall - yellow, red, purple and blue.

I pushed the door open slowly, scanned the room, and confirmed it was empty. As it were just the benches, the lockers, the smell of old kit, and kind of deodorant fragrance here and there. And also a large basket near the far wall stacked with the team's freshly laundered match uniforms.

I crossed the room in ten steps.

"Let's see how you like this." I thought to myself, shaking the first can.

I went in on those uniforms without holding back. Yellow across the shoulders. Red down the front. Purple and blue cutting across in every direction like something that belonged in an art gallery and absolutely nowhere near a football field. By the time I stepped back to look at what I had done, it was a full 'colour riot.' It was bright, chaotic and completely unwearable for anything that was supposed to be taken seriously.

I almost smiled

I mean, I almost did, for real.

"Good job." I whispered to myself, capping the last can.

Then I heard footsteps not far away from here. I could sense that the footsteps were getting closer here. Let's say, it was coming down the corridor in the direction of this exact room and moving with the kind of easy and unhurried confidence that only came from people who belonged and owned the space.

The cans were still in my hands though.

"Oh shit." The words came out under my breath before I could stop them and my whole body went cold.

My mind jumped to every possible outcome simultaneously and none of them were good. If they walked in right now, I was finished. This wasn't just a detention situation. This was the team's first game kit, destroyed a few minutes before tip off. This was an expulsion and you know, this was every door I had worked to open at Hartwell slamming shut in one go. Which means, this was my Cambridge dream going from a plan to a fantasy. At this point, I was beginning to regret ever thinking of getting back at Sean in the first place.

My heart was going at a rate that had nothing to do with the running I hadn't even done yet.

I pressed myself back against the far wall and scanned the room for anything - a back exit, a bathroom stall, a gap between the lockers, anything at all. I had done this to get back at Sean for cornering me and dragging me around like my feelings were something he could just toy with whenever the mood hit him. And now I was standing in the middle of it with paint on my hands and footsteps closing in from the other side of that door.

What the hell had I gotten myself into.