by Rhys Everly
“What are you? Like a couple or something? God, keep it to yourselves, will ya? No one needs to see you suck each other’s cock,” Derek shivered in disgust.
That was it.
I’d heard enough of that asshole.
I cut the distance between us and locked my fist with his face.
A scratching sound on my back made me realize I’d torn my suit jacket.
Fucking great. Now I’d have to buy the suit jacket, too.
Sixteen
Nathan
The crack of fist on bone boomed through the gym despite the low-key music in the background.
Everyone around us gasped, although I thought I heard some cheers, too.
How dare anyone cheer, those fucking cowards. They were happy to stay on the sidelines while Derek threw abuse at us, but they had the gall to be amused when Hudson tried to put Derek in his place?
Cowards. All of them.
Derek stumbled backward but regained his senses pretty quick and aimed a fist at Hudson.
Hudson blocked the punch and pushed Derek back like he was nothing but a marionette.
He really was big. Bigger than Derek, and definitely bigger than me. And fuck me if he didn’t look hot as sin in his tight-fitting suit.
Before Hudson caused any damage that the town would blame him into the next century for, I stepped in to pull him back.
“Hudson, come on. He’s not worth it,” I said.
The irony of the situation didn’t fail to register with me.
A few years ago, Hudson would be next to Derek, entertaining himself.
But not now.
Even though I hated to admit it, he’d changed. As in polar opposites changed. As in “I’ve been abducted by aliens” changed.
And I had no idea what to make of it. What had brought that change.
Was it the whole town turning against him that did it? Was it losing his scholarship? Or had he always been like that but tried to cover it with aggression instead of embracing his feelings?
“You’re best pals now, are you? How does that work? Are you a fag, too?” Derek wiped blood off his lip and smirked.
“Just do us all a favor and go fuck yourself, Derek,” I told him and tried to pull Hudson away, but he didn’t budge.
Damn it. Why did he have to be so big?
“What? And leave everyone in this pyro’s mercy? I don’t think so. This town has already paid enough money to rebuild what he destLinced. If it weren’t for Dad’s dona—”
“Really? You wanna go there?” I asked him.
The audacity of that douchewaffle to still accuse Hudson of the fire when he knew damn well who had caused it.
“Everyone’s thinking it!” Derek said and looked around us for approval.
I caught a few nods from the corner of my eyes, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with the spectators’ pathetic asses and Derek at the same time.
“Only, some of us know the truth,” I said.
Derek laughed.
“And what truth would that be?”
I raised an eyebrow. Was he seriously challenging me?
“That you set the gym on fire?”
Derek’s laughter intensified. He looked left to right before focusing on me again.
“Oh, yeah, and why would I do that?” he asked.
“Hm,” I said putting my hand on my chin. How had I ever let this guy intimidate me? He was a fucking coward. “Because you’re an entitled psycho who always wants his way?”
“Can you believe this bullshit?” he asked Dee, one of my class’s nerds who I didn’t think I’d ever heard speak. “Go back to your little boyfriend, Ninni.”
I almost growled in frustration. That stupid nickname he thought was so clever. Just because he’d heard Summer call me Ninni once.
“Go on. Tell everyone the truth, asshole. Or are you scared? Well, bullies are fucking cowards aren’t they? Why don’t you tell everyone why you burned the gym—”
“Nathan,” Hudson murmured next to me.
I looked at him and his sad eyes, begging me to stop. I didn’t know why. Why wasn’t he standing up for himself? Why wasn’t he telling everyone the truth?
“You’ve taken the burden of this asshole’s crime long enough,” I told him, then turned to Derek. “Why don’t you tell everyone how you came into possession of Hudson’s lighter? Or how you were smoking pot outside? How you got upset because you didn’t get your scholarship, but Hudson did? Tell us, did you plant the lighter yourself, or did you have one of your lackies do it for you?”
The room had gone eerily silent, the music still playing but it almost sounded faded amongst the stillness.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Ninni? Why are you making up stories? After what Hudson did to me—”
“What did I do to you?” Hudson shouted, and it was as if the floor quaked underneath us. “I was your friend.”
I could have so easily used the same words and aimed them at Hudson because he’d done the exact same thing to me. And I still didn’t know why.
“Are we seriously gonna sit around and listen to their lies and let them ruin our party?” Derek shook his head and looked around him for support.
“The only one who’s ruining this party is you,” I told him.
“Why don’t you go die, Nathan?” Derek said, and Hudson jumped at him.
Derek took a step back and avoided Hudson’s fists.
“Tell the truth for once in your life, asshole,” Hudson said.
“What truth? That you’re deluded and made up a story so that you can sleep better at night?”
“It’s not a story,” Hudson hissed.
“It’s not. I saw Hudson go home. But you were here until the end. With Hudson’s lighter,” I said.
“Shut up,” Derek yelled, a little pitchy if you asked me. “Greg, Daniel, did you see me light a fucking fire?”
He turned to his lackeys, the ones that still had no life and would bend over backwards to get some gratification and popularity.
Greg and Daniel shook their heads with some hesitation.
“I saw you with a lighter,” said a girl whose name I couldn’t quite remember, and everyone turned to look at her. She put her hands up in surrender under everyone’s pressure and said, “I don’t know if it was Hudson’s, but you were playing with a lighter.”
I looked at Derek whose face scrunched up.
“Lying bitch,” he spat.
“I ain’t lying, douchebag. I may have been scared of you then, but you don’t scare me now, you big bully,” she said.
Go whatever-your-name-is!
“I saw you, too,” said Dee, who was standing next to her. “I was with Bea the whole night, and we saw you smoking pot with your puppets,” she said.
Bea! That was it. How could I forget Bea and Dee.
Honestly, you can’t make this shit up.
And Derek had taken full advantage of their ridiculously matching names.
“Fuck you, too,” Derek said. “What’s wrong with you people? He’s the one who did it, so why are y’all attacking me?”
“Enough with the lies, Derek,” someone said from behind the circle of people.
The crowd let him through. Scotty. One of those asshats. Although he’d never actively bullied me, he hadn’t stopped it, either.
“Come on, Derek. You know you did it. We were there when you were stewing about Hudson’s Nashville scholarship.”
Nashville? He’d gotten into Nashville? What the fuck? Why didn’t he say anything?
Oh yeah. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms.
“Playing with Hudson’s lighter. We all know you started that fire.”
Scotty! I could have kissed him right there if I wasn’t completely speechless. And so not into him.
“Who’s ‘we,’ huh? Y’all remembered I’m an arsonist almost four years after the fact?” Derek shouted.
“Yeah, because your dad was the fucking mayor, douche.”
W
e all turned to find another one of Derek’s teammates turn his back on an old friend. Jason.
“Oh, that’s rich. Now you’re gonna turn on me? Nice friends you are,” Derek said.
“I was never your friend. I was only playing nice because if I didn’t, your mom would destLinc my fucking baseball career,” Jason said.
Another guy stepped forward, and another. Soon, the whole baseball team turned on Derek until even his two most faithful puppets admitted the truth.
Derek went around the room trying to push his old friends away, punch them, kick them, who the fuck knew what he was trying to accomplish.
“I’m so sorry we never owned up to it before,” Scotty said to Hudson while Derek was having his fit.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“What? It’s not okay. Because of all of you, he lost his scholarship and didn’t get to finish high school. You should all be fucking ashamed of yourselves.”
“Nathan,” Hudson said, turning to me, “it’s fine. Really.”
He put his hand on my arm and smiled.
And Derek took notice, because he wasn’t done.
“Y’all are gonna believe those fags over me? You’re a sissy, too, Hudson, huh? Y’all are gonna believe this sissy over me?”
I was about to take a dive and give Derek a taste of my own fist when Hudson stepped in front of me and stopped me.
“So what if I am a sissy? Huh? Does that scare you? What if I’m a fag? What are you gonna do to me? What could possibly be worse than what you’ve done already? You know what?”
Hudson turned around and looked down at me with his beautiful, flaming, grey eyes, and his face softened, although his whole body inflated and deflated with tension that could cut through steel.
“What—”
My question was gonna be “what are you doing?” or “what are you talking about?” I hadn’t decided yet, and it could have gone either way, but I never got the chance.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time,” he said, and his hand reached up to my face.
I don’t know why, but at first, I thought he was going to slap me. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
The man hadn’t physically harassed me ever, so why would he start now?
His hand grabbed the back of my neck, his other arm slid down my side until his palm nestled on my shoulder blade, and his lips attacked mine.
Hudson… was kissing me?
Why was he kissing me?
Was that what he meant that first day I turned up for a lesson when he said “I am?”
Was Hudson gay?
For a moment—a moment too long—I savored the kiss, succumbing to the fantasy, although my fantasies never had an audience this size.
But I got my senses back.
“What the fuck?” I said, pushing him away. “I-what-why-you?”
I couldn’t string more than a word in a row no matter how much I tried.
There were just too many questions, too many things that needed to be said.
“I gotta go,” I managed to say after what felt like forever and then ran through the crowd that parted to let me get past, and I ran out the gym.
This was a whole lot of messed up, and I had more questions than answers. I shouldn’t have suggested we come together. I should have taken Kyle instead. Or, in fact, I should have stayed at home like the plan had always been. Instead, I told Kyle I’d go with Hudson and this was what happened.
At least everyone knew the truth about Derek now. I didn’t know if anyone would do anything about it, but hopefully the rumor mill would work its magic to absolve… Hudson.
That asshole.
If he was gay all this time, then why did he make me go through all of this?
I fiddled with my car keys trying to get the doors unlocked so I could drive as far away from this hellhole as possible.
I should have known this was gonna go pear-shaped. Nothing involving Derek could ever go right.
“Nathan, wait,” Hudson called behind me and got to me before I could open the door.
“Go away, Hudson. I’m trying to storm off,” I said and pursed my lips.
He kept his hand on the door and tilted his head with a silly grin.
“You’ve already stormed off. Now can we talk?”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
Was he for real?
“Why did you stop being my friend if you’ve been gay all this time? Why did you turn your back on me when I needed you the most? And why the hell would you kiss me in front of everyone?”
“Nathan, I—” he said and removed his hand from the door. I took this as my chance to escape.
I pushed him away and got into the car. I put the key to ignition and the gear stick into reverse, ready to put this load of bullshit behind me.
Seventeen
Hudson
I jumped to the other side of the car, and before Nathan could drive off, I got in.
“Damn it, I knew I was forgetting something,” he said and locked the doors a little too late. “Get out.”
“A bit hard with the doors locked,” I said, and he pressed the button to unlock them again. “Nathan, hear me out, please.”
“I’m way too pissed off to hear you out. Just get out,” he insisted, but his words didn’t correspond with his flustered face.
“You might as well switch the engine off, because I ain’t going nowhere,” I said, putting the seatbelt on and crossing my arms.
“Fine,” he said and reversed the car to get out of the parking space, turning up the radio.
I gave him a few minutes to recompose himself, as long as it took to get out of the parking lot, before I reached out and turned the volume down.
“I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you… but—”
Nathan turned the volume back up and checked his rearview mirror.
“Nathan,” I said over the music as I turned it down. Again. “I’m trying to tell you something. Please listen to me.”
“No, Hudson. What do you want me to hear? That you’re so deep in the closet you couldn’t tell your best friend the truth?”
“It’s been…” I started to say, but I didn’t know where to start.
What on earth did I say? How did I explain? What did I explain?
“I’ve always felt different. But I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know how to put it. How to define it. When you came out to me, it was a knee jerk reaction. You’ve heard the kinda stuff Dad shouts. I was just conforming—”
Nathan scoffed and shook his head.
“I know. It sounds stupid. It sounds stupid to me now. But Nathan, you grew up in a family that was accepting no matter what. Your uncles are gay. They paved the way for you. I grew up with Jack Bell. The biggest bigot in Cedarwood Beach,” I said.
“That’s not an excuse,” Nathan said.
“No, it’s not. But can you at least cut me some slack for not understanding who I was? When you came out, my whole world collapsed under my feet. I thought you were something you’re not; I thought you were hitting on me. I thought… I thought you’d abandon me for another guy,” I said.
My words sounded stupid, my explanation childish. But how did I put a decade or more worth of feelings in a few sentences?
How could I explain to him that I’d been jerking off thinking of him for years and feeling guilty for it? Like I’d done something wrong. Like I was doing him wrong.
How did I explain those feelings I’d always had for him that I couldn’t define. Friends weren’t supposed to miss friends. Friends’ hearts weren’t supposed to ache when you were far away from your friend. Friends weren’t supposed to hug, even if that’s all you wanted to do when you were with them.
Not guy friends, anyway.
“A best friend would try and see past that. And why would you think I’d abandon you for another guy? You’d still be my friend,” Nathan said, looking at the road with all his concentration.
“I d
idn’t understand it then, but Nathan, I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since we met. I just didn’t have the words for it back then. To understand what it was I was feeling,” I said, looking at the side of his face, hoping he could try and see my side.
“Wh-what?” He scrunched up his face.
“Those emotions, those thoughts I had were because I wanted you all for myself. I wanted more of you. But I didn’t know that then. I only realized a couple years later. You’ve been my last thought every time I go to bed and my first every time I wake up. You always have.”
Nathan looked at me for a second, as if to confirm my honesty, and then focused back on the road.
“What the fuck, Hudson? Why did you never tell me this? Why would you not come to me and tell me all this earlier?”
“Because I was scared you wouldn’t believe me. I was scared to accept that I was gay. To even say the words out loud, let alone admit I was in love with you. Didn’t you notice how I stopped bullying you since junior year?”
“You did?” Nathan laughed sarcastically. “I must have failed to notice. You didn’t stop Derek from bullying me, though.”
I sighed.
It was true. I hadn’t even forgiven myself for how I’d treated him. And Henry. And my other classmates. How could I expect them to forgive me?
“I’m sorry. I know I hurt you. I wish I could take it all back. Go back in time and never turn my back on you. I hate myself for it. But I do love you. Please believe that. It’s messed up, and I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
Nathan didn’t say anything. Instead, he switched his right turn signal on even though there was no right turn and drove on the field by the road.
“What are you doing?”
He stopped the car in the middle of the field and turned his headlights off, then readjusted himself in the seat to look at me.
“I can’t believe we could have been friends all this time, yet you chose to be a bully.”
My gaze dropped, and I bit my lips.
“You have no idea how many times I tried to find the courage to tell you—”
“And I’m guessing prom was your attempt to tell me?”
