Word Count: 1262

The next time Chris went out on a date with anyone who wasn’t Paris, he made sure it wasn’t until he knew more about the other person than what their grade was is French or when their last relationship ended.

Liam Abernathy was a cultured and excitable young man with golden blond hair (surprise surprise) and a lovely pair of baby blue eyes whose legs only scored a five (though in this case, Chris could be forgiving). He’d first been in one of Chris’s math classes nearly a year ago, and now sat two seats down in the auditorium where Chris’s Bio II class was held during the second summer semester. He, like Chris, was a sophomore, and he, like Chris, was double-majoring, but in English and Psychology instead of Architecture and Math. This didn’t prevent them from having anything in common, as Liam seemed like a pretty well-rounded individual. He liked baseball (Chris’s interest was first piqued when Liam came to class in a Boston Red Sox t-shirt) as well as more “cultured” pastimes like dance and musical theater, which left them with plenty to talk about, as Chris never grew tired of baseball and he knew a little bit more about dance and theater than he had before dating Paris.

They’d met up in the cafeteria for lunch before class a few times last year but there’d never been much of a spark there. There wasn’t a spark now that Chris was considering him, but he thought there could be one some ways down the road. He just had to work at it a little bit and try to look at Liam as someone other than “that cute guy from math who sits two seats down in Bio.” One afternoon, Liam joined Chris at the gym with a group of friends, and Chris later agreed to keep Liam company at a seminar about the homoeroticism in Shakespeare’s plays.

They got along well on each occasion, so Chris decided to give dating a shot and asked him out before class.

Their first night out was a great success. They went to dinner (which seemed innocent enough, as well as being Chris’s go-to date idea) at a nice little restaurant that was neither too fancy nor too casual. The atmosphere was homey and unromantic, the service affable but unrushed. Even though Chris’s instincts told him to cover everything (which he’d gotten into the habit of doing long ago because he could afford it and because he happened to like treating people), they eventually agreed to split the bill halfway. Then they took a walk in order to converse a little longer and discuss an upcoming test, before parting amicably and going their separate ways (Chris to his apartment and Liam back to his dorm).

Their second date passed in a similar manner—dinner again, but at one of those hokey medieval-themed restaurants that Chris had never dared set foot in with anyone for fear of embarrassing himself somehow. Once he got used to the setting and the boisterous crowd and shared a few laughs with his date, he realized it was actually sort of fun, and considering everyone else around him was experiencing the exact same thing, it wasn’t embarrassing in the least. He took the time to appropriately enjoy himself, and might have even goofed off a little more than usual (and he was very glad a certain knight of Mercury wasn’t there to witness his uncharacteristic behavior, because then he’d probably never hear the end of it and would be forced to punch him in the face again).

He and Liam split the bill a second time, and then Chris allowed himself to be walked home.

Their third date was when things started to go south, though no one else would have been able to tell because there weren’t any visible signs. They kept it simple—a matinee at one of the cheaper movie theaters (Liam insisted on paying) followed by a late lunch at a nearby café (where Chris returned the favor and covered the entire bill this time). They kept a steady stream of conversation going over the course of the day, ranging from school to their families and back to baseball again. At one point Liam switched the topic to a couple of musicals he’d seen over the years, and then transitioned to something about “ballet” and “Nutcracker” and “local kid” and Chris realized Liam had suddenly started talking about Paris.

It didn’t bother him at first because nothing Liam said was bad—in fact, he seemed pretty impressed—and he didn’t seem to have any idea that this “local kid” was also the young man Chris was still currently sort of dating in an “I-still-care-about-you-but-I’m-afraid-of-love/really-good-friends-with-benefits” sort of way, but when Chris registered the little streak of pride he felt at hearing Paris talked about in such a complimentary fashion by someone who only knew him from his performances, he realized a couple of things about his relationship with Liam as well as his relationship with Paris.

The first was that, while he might enjoy spending time with Liam as friends, there still wasn’t an emotional connection between them, and he didn’t expect one would develop the way it had with certain people in the past.

The second was that he missed Paris and wasn’t anywhere close to being over him or putting any amount of distance between them yet, because that emotional connection was far from over, and he didn’t know what the hell he thought he was doing trying to look for those sorts of feelings with other people when he’d made such a sudden escape from his previous relationship the minute things looked as if they were growing too serious.

Which only got him to start thinking about his feelings for Paris—what they were, what they meant. Somehow he’d been able to make it through this many dates trying his best not to think about him, but it wasn’t working, and now that he’d actually been brought up…

The only thing in his head for the remainder of the day was Paris.

Chris got through the rest of the date with his companion being none-the-wiser. They took another walk and discussed their latest class lectures and agreed to hold a short study session a few days later. Then they split up again and walked home separately since it was still light out, and when Chris got back to his apartment he stood at the door and took a deep breath to try and pick up the scent of Paris’s perfume.

He couldn’t smell it anymore, even though his mother hadn’t been over to clean (she insisted his sudden bid for “independence” should encompass all areas of his life, including the upkeep of his apartment). After a long, long month without him, the scent seemed to have finally faded away.

But the loneliness didn’t fade. It settled somewhere deep inside of him. He didn’t always show it (Chris was actually very good at keeping it to himself), but he felt it strongly each time he returned to his apartment to find it empty but for Anna, without any reminder of the boy who’d once shared it with him.

He and Liam went on one more date together, exchanged a couple of brief, meaningless kisses and a quick sprint from first to second base that afternoon in Liam’s dorm-room, and then decided two days later that they would each rather remain friends.

Chris never told him it was because of Paris.

He never told anyone.