Our Rusted Pieces || Everwell
Max lit up a cigarette and started a small conversation with the man sitting next to him. It wasn’t a particularly interesting conversation, but it was better than standing there in an awkward silence, he figured. Though, as soon as he’d seen Everett come outside, the man standing next to him might as well have been e.e. cummings for all Max cared. This, the dance he was doing to actively avoid Everett, was more than he’d done for anyone he’d slept with. Normally, he’d just give a gruff cold shoulder and be on his merry way. Everett’s persistence annoyed him and yet Max never found it in himself to truly walk away from it. He was always just one foot in the door. Almost, but not quite.
“If I had anything worth saying, then I would have,” Max shrugged. He took a long drag from his cigarette and leaned his back against the wall. “But, Porcelain,” He began. “Don’t forget that you’ve gone off the grid, too,” The last thing Max had heard about Everett was from Melanie, who had decided that Max and Everett belonged together and scolded him for letting Everett get a new boyfriend. Max, in his heart of hearts, knew that it was better that way, Everett setting his attention on some new (and if Max had to guess boring) guy who would be proud to play lapdog whenever Everett had to be Prince Everett. “Where’s the boyfriend? Too scared of the big bad wolf to come outside?” Max asked with a smug grin.
Everett resisted every urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he kept his arms crossed firmly on his chest, and quirked an eyebrow at Max. “You’re kidding,” Everett huffed. Do. Not. Start. A. Fight. “I tried, you know I tried, but sometimes, you just get too tired to do that anymore. You know that.” He uncrossed his arms and felt a lump at the base of his throat that was impossible to swallow. When they’d fallen out, after Everett gave Max everything his possibly could have like an idiot, he still found himself missing him so much that it kept him up late at night when no one should be allowed to be alone. More than anything, he decided, he missed his friend, the one who came crashing into his shell at light speed like no one else, breaking it at full force. Max scared the hell out of Everett. But that was never a bad thing.
At the mention of his boyfriend, Everett couldn’t help but let out a tiny laugh. Max was always very quick to call any boy who spoke to Everett for more than two minutes his boyfriend. He’d always found this oddly charming in a way--like he cared to know. “No, I broke up with him two days ago,” he said simply, then looked down at his shoes, feeling guilty. If someone told fifteen year old Everett that he would break it off with three boys by the time he was twenty-one he would have laughed in their face. “The big bad wolf. You are very cute,” Everett said, smiling. He leaned his shoulder against the wall that they stood at and let himself become familiar again with how Max looked in real life, not just in his head, or in messy drawings that came to him when he sat down to de-stress. “How have you been?” Everett asked lamely.
