The way it pulls and tugs at the fibers of your very existence with such rough abruptness, that you find yourself tripping over your feet. Fumbling for that once seemingly impenetrable security of knowing what to expect.

It’s the kind of dangerous expectation that leads to impossible standards and inevitable failure. An illusion drawn by the steel strength of our jaws, and the lines of our broad backs, and the glint in our red, sandpaper eyes. A perception of formidability that is not only misleading, but a losing game from the start.

Perhaps that’s why we hold on to it so tight—that hardness. That Herculean stoicism in the face of any great and terrible pain. Any perceived weakness. Perhaps that is why so many men feel threatened when their masculinity is tested, choosing to turn it into something ugly. Violent.

Because when that hard exterior finally cracks—when the pressure of all the generations before us, with all their “Buck up, sons,” and “Boys don’t cry,” and “Be a man,” finally becomes too much—there’s nothing to shield us from the rapidly approaching avalanche that is our own crumbling egos.

Mason doesn’t scream when it happens. Then again, not everything ends with a bang.

Sometimes, it really is just a whimper.

“I wish it was you.”

Behind me, I feel Will’s body heat closing in on me like a shark. His thirst for blood tastes like old pennies on my tongue.

Or maybe that’s just my own masculinity scrambling to hang on as something inside me cracks open. Bleeding out through the corners of my eyes.

Shawn and Jeremy are unsurprisingly quiet. They always knew it would one day come to this.

So I stare into the shell of what’s left of my best friend, and I give life to a truth of my own. “Me too.”

His eyes pool over, their frigid depths melting down his cheeks. Tracing the tracks of the tears left from before. “I wish it was me more.”

I nod. I know this already. “Sometimes I wish it was you too.”

Spilling, spilling, spilling—all these truths in so little time. What will be left of us when it’s all said and done? Will there be anything left, or will it just be two dried-up carcasses, hands forever outstretched for the girl who tied them together?

“How did we get here?” He sobs. A tear falls off his chin, and I swear his anguish hisses when it meets the cold, hard floor.

Shaking my head, my throat aches. “I don’t know, man.”

“How did this happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“H-how do you do it?”

My eyes fucking burn. “I don’t know.”

Lies, lies, lies.

All I do is lie.