If I Could Love You Again

The First Day

Day One, Garrett thought the next morning as he picked up the backpack he’d had to collect from the treehouse earlier and headed out of his room.

Move slowly. Act normal. Don’t freak out.

Garrett moved toward the stairs, his eyes glancing over the banister like they had always done before.

And then he froze, rooted to the floor.

Taylor was standing just inside Garrett’s front door, a little smile on his face as he spoke quietly to Lily, looking exactly as Garrett remembered, gorgeous beyond imagination.

Garrett shot back into his room with lightning speed and closed the door, just as he started gasping for air and the world swirled around him. His back hit the door and he leaned against it as he tried to breathe with lungs that seemed to no longer be able to take in enough air. A crushing pain in his chest made him press his fist into it and tears sprung to his eyes as he slid down to sit on the floor and covered his face with his hands.

Oh god, oh s**t, oh hell, I can’t do this, I can’t do it. “Oh, s**t,” he whispered brokenly as his tears started falling. Taylor!

It was too much too quickly. Garrett couldn’t control his rapid heartbeats and haggard breathing as the world started turning black around the edges of his vision.

He fought to keep himself conscious, forcing himself back up to his feet, grabbing the doorknob for support.

He’d somehow forgotten that they used to walk to school together, that Taylor would always come to pick him up every day. How could I have forgotten?

It had only been after Garrett had pushed Taylor away that his friend had stopped coming.

Oh god, he’s alive. He’s down there. He’s waiting. s**t. s**t. s**t. Stop it, don’t mess this up. For god’s sake, don’t mess this up.

Garrett squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in deeply and blowing out again, shuddering, trying to control his heart thudding in his ears as he wiped the tears from his face with his free hand.

Shit. You can do this. You have to do this. For his sake. You can’t let him down.

He picked his backpack back up, counted to thirty, and then counted to thirty again, and then went out to try again.

Blinking, wiggling his face to try and keep himself calm, he approached the stairs again.

“—was really weird yesterday.” Garrett caught the end of what his sister was saying to Taylor as he started heading down the stairs, holding the railing to keep himself from stumbling.

“Was he?” Taylor was saying, his smile growing, and Garrett paused, unable to stop himself from staring.

Shit, he’s so beautiful…

Heart thudding again, Garrett cursed himself and started moving again. Come on, man, keep it together. He needs his best friend, not some creep. Relax. Don’t be stupid.

Shaking off the last of his messy emotions, he managed an irate voice to say, “What are you talking to Taylor about, Lily?”

He thought his you’d-better-shut-up-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you big brother voice came off really well, in spite of his heart leaping when Taylor’s eyes came to rest on him. Thank goodness he had that voice practiced to a T. His sister had always been a big pain in the butt.

Lily spun to look up at him and smirked evilly. “Well, you were weird.”

Garrett tried to look angry in response, like he knew his seventeen-year-old self would be, but Lily just looked like a little kid to him right now, he was so used to seeing her at eighteen. So, of course he couldn’t hold back his smile and ruined the effect completely. “I was not,” he said anyway.

Lily’s eyes narrowed, clearly thinking he was up to something. “See? Weird.”

Garrett heard Taylor snort with laughter, and he couldn’t help it as his eyes leapt to see it.

Taylor had grey eyes and wavy curls of strawberry blond hair that stuck out at all ends about his face, which Taylor hated but Garrett loved. And those stormy eyes were now crinkled with mirth and staring up at him as Taylor grinned at Garrett’s expense.

There was nothing Garrett could do to keep himself from soaking in that warmth, but after an instant he forced himself to look away and say in as cheerful a tone as he could manage, “Okay, let’s go!” before he continued down the stairs towards them.

By the time he’d reached Taylor’s side, his hands were sweating and it felt like his whole body was full of pins and needles, but he gave an obligatory glare to his sister, pasted on a best-friend smile for Taylor, and then crushed Taylor to him in a hug.

As Taylor stiffened in shock, Garrett realized what his body had done without his permission…but he just wasn’t ready to let go. Tears pricked his eyes again and he hugged Taylor tighter to him, the confirmation that he was real and here and alive something Garrett hadn’t been able to go on any longer without.

The word, “WEIIIIRRRD,” stretching out behind him finally allowed him to step back, not meeting Taylor’s eyes but smiling awkwardly and saying in a rush, “See, guys can hug just fine,” before he let go and rushed out the door, hoping the fresh morning air would calm him down and make it reasonably easy to continue this risky mission of his. Because right now he wasn’t doing so well.

Moments later, Taylor closed the door and followed him, and asked the question he shouldn’t be surprised at hearing. “Garrett, are you okay?”

Garrett stopped as an idea popped into his head, maybe one that could explain why he was being so weird, why he’d just acted like a madman. He seriously hoped it worked.

He turned and managed to look Taylor in the eye again. “S-Sorry, man, it’s just that I had a… nightmare… and… you… died.” Garrett barely managed to get the last word past his lips, it hurt so much to think of it. Even if Taylor was standing in front of him right now… the Taylor he once knew, once watched from afar, the one that sat at their graduation ceremony and enjoyed the rain… that Taylor was still gone. “It … hurt a lot.”

Garrett couldn’t say anymore, overcome with the loss all over again.

A hand touched and then squeezed his shoulder and Garrett looked up from where he’d been staring at the ground. Taylor was smiling reassuringly, though a little awkwardly, and he said softly, “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m right here, aren’t I?”

Garrett tried to smile, but just nodded when he couldn’t quite do it. “Yeah. You’re right here.” His voice grew stronger. “And we’re going to keep it that way.”

Taylor chuckled and nodded, “I’m good with that.”

---

By the time they reached the high school, Garrett was feeling more confident in himself, and about his relationship with Taylor.

Taylor was just like he remembered. Quiet but quick to smile, walking with his hands forever in his pockets, music playing faintly from the headset he always wore around his neck but never wore over his ears, clearly enjoying the warmth of the sun as he walked in weird zigzags under the trees to avoid the shade just so he could bathe in the warm rays.

While Garrett had a tendency to burn and freckle under the sun, every summer Taylor’s hair would brighten into near blond and his skin would darken into a deep tan that did crazy things to Garrett’s heart whenever he saw it.

Gulping at what he’d just been thinking of, Garrett tried to focus. This was Taylor’s life at stake.

“So, Taylor… are you… happy these days?”

Taylor glanced over at him as they turned onto the street where the school resided. “Yeah, sure,” he said, shrugging. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Garrett frowned and looked down, realizing that it was an odd question to ask out of the blue. And he had no idea when things had changed for Taylor. Maybe he was happy right now. “No reason. Just curious.”

Taylor’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “You were ‘just curious’ if I was happy?”

Garrett looked away in embarrassment and nodded. “Yep. So. Good that you are.”

Damn, why do I make things so awkward! Change the subject!

“So, what class are you looking forward to today?” he tried again.

Taylor looked sideways at him. “Looking forward to? Uh…P.E., I guess. You?”

Garrett tried to keep the blush off his face as he mentally face-palmed. He seriously sucked at small talk. “Well… I wouldn’t mind Biology aga—” Garrett just stopped himself from saying “again”. “I think I’m getting the hang of Biology these days,” he said instead.

Taylor’s brows drew down. “Wasn’t it just last week where you wished the whole lab would burn to the ground?”

Garrett’s blush fully bloomed then, cursing himself inwardly for choosing the one thing his past self had talked about recently. “Y-Yeah, so? That was last week, and…now I think I’m getting it.”

Garrett fiddled with his backpack strap, trying to will away the red staining his cheeks, and Taylor just nodded slowly and shrugged, that small smile of his saying, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’ll just agree with you to make you feel comfortable… and maybe tease you about it later.

Garrett inwardly sighed. Apparently, it was going to be much harder to act like his former self than he had thought.

Hopefully Taylor didn’t think too much into it.

---

Much to Garrett’s dismay, it turned out that he and Taylor didn’t share the same classroom this year, so he had to watch Taylor say goodbye and walk away while Garrett was forced to go to his own class.

Which, he belatedly realized, he had no idea where it was. He tried really hard to recall which of the three classrooms in his grade was the one he went to this year, but it was as if he hadn’t focused at all during his later high school years and could barely remember his teachers' names, let alone which room he was supposed to start his day in.

It was a pure stroke of luck then that when he stood in front of one of the two possible rooms, since he knew he wasn’t in the one Taylor was in, a teacher came up behind him and gave him the answer he'd been looking for.

“You coming in, Garrett, or planning on having class in the hallway?” Mr. Porter asked with bemusement as he walked past Garrett and on into the classroom, folders tucked under one arm, looking back at Garrett and giving him a smile.

Garrett blinked and followed, smiling back. Memories of Mr. Porter and his classmates quickly moved through his mind and, as if he had the muscle memory of it, Garrett walked down the rows of desks and the students he was quickly starting to recognize and sat right down at the one he knew with complete certainty was his.

Cool. Thanks, brain.

He now remembered that Mr. Porter was both the principal of the school and the Math teacher that Garrett would have for this year and the next. He didn’t know how he could possibly have forgotten that but shrugged as he looked idly inside his desk at the items that quickly became familiar.

His old plastic pencil case, his notebooks, a couple textbooks that had previous students’ names written in them… It was all coming back to him.

Well, I guess, this time, school will be a breeze, he thought, smiling more confidently as he looked around at the other students while the principal was calling attendance.

Names were popping up in his mind, the relationships between the various students were reforming in his memory—Wow, those two are going to get together next year… And that guy is going to be so sad when he fails our first Chemistry exam. Garrett’s eyebrows lifted as a thought occurred to him. I nearly failed that one, too.

Well, he would do better this time.

Garrett smiled to himself. He had changed so much from that 17-year-old boy who hated nearly every subject and avoided studying like the plague.

Now, he was so used to working every day to pay bills he hadn’t imagined existed that a little bit of schoolwork seemed so trivial now.

When the first bell rang and he got up to follow everyone out the door, he was still giving that last thought some serious contemplation.

His mother was the one paying all the bills right now… It couldn’t be easy.

Would it hurt if he got a part-time job?

“Earth to Garrett…”

Garrett startled and looked up, seeing Taylor looking at him with a lopsided smile.

Taylor shook his head, letting his brows furrow and asked, “Why are you just standing here?”

Garrett glanced around and found that he was standing outside the classroom in a rapidly emptying hallway. And he had no idea which class he was supposed to go to now. “Shit.”

Taylor’s brows shot up. “And when did you start swearing?”

Garrett blanked. He’d completely forgotten he never used to swear—thanks for the smacks, Nanna—until he started working for his uncle. “Stayed too long with Uncle Trevor, I guess.” Thanks, Uncle.

“Don’t let Nanna catch you,” Taylor teased as he walked past Garrett, tapping his knuckles on Garrett’s shoulder as he passed. “And you may want to get to class like, right now. You know how livid Mrs. Rivers will be if you try to come in after she closes that door.”

“Oh, f*ck!” Garrett gasped, spinning around and taking off for the classroom he now remembered clearly. This not being able to remember where he was supposed to be until after it was too late was starting to be a pain!