Chapter 27 | I Mentioned Amanda and Then Amanda Happened
Jason sat alone on the bench for a minute after Ben had disappeared toward the locker room to freshen up, turning the last twenty minutes over in his head like he was checking it for cracks.
I actually told him
Not the sanitized version either, the real thing, the exact word that Amanda’s friend had used when they said it, the exact shape of what had broken in him that morning behind the tree.
He’d expected saying it out loud to feel like ripping his heart open again. Instead it had felt like setting something down he hadn’t realized he was still carrying.
Ben hadn’t flinched, hadn’t made it weird, hadn’t turned it into a joke before Jason was ready for the joke.
He’d just sat there and listened, and then said something actually useful instead of the usual noise.
I got lucky with him
Not everyone had a Ben, someone who could go from ribbing you about deadlifts and pull ups to genuinely holding space for you falling apart, all inside the same five minutes, without either version feeling fake.
Jason made a mental note, half-serious, to actually tell him that sometime, instead of just thinking it and letting it evaporate the way he usually did with things that actually mattered to him.
His phone buzzed. It was another text from Marcus
Marcus: yo Jason, I’m here. where are u at
Jason typed back the obvious reply that anyone would give
Jason: inside, by the benches
Five minutes came and went after he had sent the reply to Marcus and the young man was still nowhere to be seen.
The clock kept ticking and eight entire minutes went by without sight of him
He glanced at the door in disbelief that someone that he regarded as a friend couldn’t make it from outside the gym to inside of it in eight whole minutes
I might have made some bad decisions with my choice of friends
He then glanced towards the door again as another minute passed by, more out of boredom than actual concern, and finally muttered, mostly to himself
"Where is this man."
"Right here, obviously..."
A voice announced from somewhere behind him. A voice that sounded entirely too pleased with itself and then continued talking
"being fashionably late, which is different from just being late, thank you very much."
Jason turned. Marcus was already mid-stride toward him, his bag slung over one shoulder and he was gesturing with his free hand like someone that was in the middle of conducting an orchestra which only he could hear.
"You say here like I teleport. I had to walk. Do you know how far the bus stop is from this place? Do you know how much I suffer for this daily reunion of friendship?"
Jason sighed and fully faced in Marcus’s direction before speaking
"You live just twelve minutes away."
"Not just any twelve minutes, twelve minutes of suffering, Jason. Time is relative. Ask Einstein."
Marcus dropped onto the bench right beside Jason, already talking with his hands, elbows going wide like he needed the extra space to properly convey his outrage.
"Anyway man. You would not believe the crazy morning I’ve had. My mom made me single handedly carry three bags of rice down four flights of stairs because our elevator got broken again, and I’m standing there like, ma’am, I have a life, I have actual places to be—!"
"You had nowhere to be at that moment. Class got moved to eleven."
"You don’t get me man. That’s not the point. The principle of the thing, Jason. The principle!"
He threw both hands up, then let them drop just as fast, already pivoting
"Speaking of eleven." He adjusted his posture. " you heard that the Professor is basically threatening to fail half the class if our general attendance does not improve? Half! I did the math...well not the exact one but it turned out to be a lot of people, and I refuse to be included in that half or even worse, person number one, the example he uses forever."
"You’re not failing anything, you’ve been to every single class of his this semester."
"That’s not the point either, it’s the fear, Jason, the fear keeps me sharp—!"
Jason let most of it wash over him, nodding in the right places, occasionally cutting in with a dry "sure" or "that tracks" whenever Marcus paused for the two seconds required to breathe.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening, he was, mostly.
It was just that Marcus talked the way weather happened, constant and a little unpredictable, and the correct response wasn’t always words.
Sometimes it was just staying present and letting him orbit because no matter what you say majority of the time you’ll be presented with the "you just don’t get me" reply.
"Where’s Ben, by the way?" Marcus asked, finally landing somewhere close to a real question.
"He just got done with his workout and went to showering. He should be coming out soon."
Marcus checked an invisible watch on his wrist, the same gesture Ben had used that morning, apparently a universal language among Jason’s friend group.
"It’s almost eleven, though."
Jason checked his actual phone.
10:52.
"Huh. That’s true, yeah."
"Let’s head out then, wait outside I mean. When we see people start rushing towards class, that’s how we’ll know it’s actually happening"
Marcus was already standing, bag back over his shoulder, not remotely interested in waiting for agreement before moving towards the door
"Good plan, works for me." Jason replied and followed suite
They both pushed out through the gym’s front doors into the mid-morning light, Marcus immediately picking the conversation back up like it had never paused, something now about a professor’s grading curve and a conspiracy theory involving the seating chart.
Jason let him talk, tossing in the occasional "no way" or "that’s insane" without much real investment, comfortable in the specific way you only got with someone you’d known long enough that full engagement wasn’t required to still be enjoying yourself.
Then, out of nowhere, Marcus’s tone shifted.
"Hey, so you good? You seem kind of somewhere else today."
Jason hesitated, only for a second. He’d already done this once this morning, and it had gone better than expected.
"Nothing much really just that Amanda rejected me, couple days back."
Marcus actually stopped walking. "Wait — what? When did this happen! Nobody told me this."
"Well, I wasn’t exactly announcing it."
"Bro."
Marcus’s whole posture shifted, hands coming up like he was physically trying to hold the information.
"I did not know this. This is...! okay, this changes several things I thought I understood much about your life recently."
"It’s fine. I’m mostly fine at the moment"
"Mostly fine is not the same as fine, Jason. I know the difference, I have range—!"
Marcus cut himself off mid-sentence leaving Jason questioning why he did that.
"What’s wrong"
As Jason asked the question, Marcus head suddenly tilted forward, his gaze pointing on something over Jason’s shoulder. His whole rhythm broke.
"Speaking of the devil."
"What?"
Marcus didn’t answer right away. He just lifted his chin, slow and deliberate, nodding forward instead of pointing, his usual chaos dialing down into something quieter and far more pointed.
Jason turned to see what Marcus was looking at
And there she was, Amanda, walking toward them across the courtyard like she hadn’t spent the last several hours living rent-free in the worst corners of his memory, close enough now that there was no version of this where he could pretend he hadn’t seen her.
His stomach dropped somewhere around his shoes.
You have got to be kidding me