He was high, which wasn't really anything new these days, but it was a decision he was already beginning to regret. It was funny, because Nate had never really dabbled in drugs before the accident...he was an athlete, top of his game, but afterwords...well, swimming hadn't been quite as fun when he didn't have a twin brother he was trying to best. He'd never really managed either...
Thinking about him never did any good. It either reminded him, vividly, of who he really was, or made the tears come. And sometimes, even after all these years, once he started crying...he couldn't stop. Missing a twin was like missing half his body...like he could still feel phantom limbs, but nothing was there. It was crushing.
Now that he wasn't an athlete, he knew the pleasures of pot. It was fantastic because it...calmed him down. As long as he was stoned, people didn't call him Twitch so much. It wasn't that he really minded the nickname...he was twitchy, and being able to laugh about that made things better somehow. It was more that he...hated the difference. Hated something else being applied to him that fit in the after Nick category.
There was a lot of stuff about to be in that category though. A lot.
He's lonely, and that's an odd feeling, if only because he normally has people around him. Not friends, exactly, because he doesn't have a lot of those...not like Nick had. But people. People who liked his upbeat spirit, even if they wondered how the hell he managed it.
Tonight, however, he's not feeling very upbeat.
His phone is in his hand, and there's a few people logged in there he can text. Reid, for sure. Except that on a night like this, his friend is probably busy. He also knows Jay is inside, and though a part of him is basically itching to be near the other boy, he can't really seem to make himself move.
He unlocks his phone, pulls his texts up, and freezes.
Yeah, he almost forgot why he was so stoned tonight.
The text is still there, taunting him, saying that whoever the sender is knows his secret. At first, he'd thought it had to be a joke. One of his friends was fucking with him...but then he'd remembered, he didn't really have friends like that anymore.
What he did have, however, was a pretty big fucking secret.
One he'd been holding onto for almost a full three years now.
Nate swallowed thickly, closed his phone, and lit up another blunt.
Lonely as he was, he thought he was probably better off by himself tonight.