Everything About You

Hell, Mr. Pibbles didn’t like anyone except for the Callahans. And even that was questionable.

As soon as the couple and their orange yap rat stepped out onto the sidewalk, the man shut the mailbox and turned…

And the revolving Earth came to a complete and abrupt stop, as if someone had jerked up the emergency brake.

My heart seized. My lungs emptied. My soul decided to flee the lobby without me.

But my mind… My mind began to spin like a Tilt-A-Whirl with a drunk carny at the controls.

“Oh shit.” When my heart kick-started, I yanked my baseball cap lower to hide my face and quickly tugged my damp T-shirt over my head and torso as I hurried into the nearby stairwell.

I made sure the steel door didn’t slam behind me and for a second pressed my back to the wall next to it.

I wasn’t sure what the hell to do. I certainly wasn’t ready to face him.

This couldn’t be reality. He couldn’t live in the same building as I did.

It couldn’t be him. No fucking way!

He left Pittsburgh twelve years ago after he graduated, why the hell was he back now?

My only guess was that it wasn’t Tate. That it was someone who looked like him. A doppelgänger.

I was freaking out for nothing.

I was being a foolish idiot.

But to be sure, I slid my back from the wall to the door, flipped my baseball cap backwards, then turned, bent my knees and popped my head up enough to peek out of the little fireproof window.

I watched as he headed over to the elevator and jabbed the button ten times in quick succession. While he waited impatiently for the doors to open, he shuffled from one foot to the other.

Twelve years.

It had been twelve fucking years since I last saw him.

But it was like yesterday.

We both looked different but also the same.

Definitely older. Debatably wiser.

But he looked worn out. Beat down.

As if the easy life he was supposed to be living turned out to be not so easy.

I watched him until he stepped into the open elevator car and the doors shut behind him, whisking him away.

I continued to stare at the empty spot where he previously stood because I had a hard time pulling myself away.

I could only chalk it up to shock.

Once I finally forced my feet to move, I sat on the third step and dropped my head into my hands to try to wrap my head around who I just saw. Unsure why he was here. In Pittsburgh. In the same damn building where I lived. Unsure why any of this was happening.

For a moment in the silence, I was transported back.

To when I had hope.

Dreams.

Expectations.

And, of course, to when those were all crushed.

Ronan (Then)

I spread myself out in the seat with an arm casually hanging over the back of the empty one to my right. I might be a freshman but I came to Duquesne with the intent to not act like one. To not be seen as a boy fresh out of high school.

Instead, I wanted to feel like a man ready to seize the world.

It might not be true, but the saying “fake it until you make it” existed for a reason.

Because of that, I did my best to look confident and like I belonged, when really, deep down inside I was anything but.

I did really well in high school, which helped me earn scholarships and grants. But attending Duquesne University was a whole other world compared to high school.

It would be fan-freaking-tastic if the students here weren’t so close-minded like they were at my high school in a small town right outside of Hershey, PA. My roomie in the dorm seemed to be cool so far, but I’d only known him for less than a week and I also hadn’t told him I was gay.

Yet.

My hope was that if he got to know me first, by the time he figured it out, he’d discover I wasn’t defined solely by my sexual preference. Being gay was just a small part of who I was as a person.

This morning I arrived earlier than usual for this first class—I hadn’t been sure where the lecture hall was located—and settled myself in an empty row of seats.

I didn’t want to be quite up front, but didn’t want to hide in the back, either. There’d be no point since this was Multi-Genre Creative Writing. A class I wasn’t forced to take but was interested in because I hadn’t quite pinned down my major yet. I had no reason to hide in this class, unlike with my algebra course.

At this point I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was leaning toward a business degree, so I had signed up for a core credit course along with a mix of electives to see if anything caught my fancy.