by Jenny Wood
“No,” I lie, instead.
“Do you like anyone in a boyfriend way?” he tries again and his voice sounds strangled. It scares me to answer, so I give him a half-truth.
“Maybe?” his head pops back over the side and his eyes are wide and surprised.
“Who?” he asks loudly, making me jump.
“Shut up! Nobody, alright? Nobody, just… in general,” I lie again, straining to hear if either of his parents heard him and think about coming to see if something’s wrong. I’ve picked the worst time in the world to bring it up. I don’t want to have to leave in the middle of the night to walk back home and find who knows who in my house, or my mom’s bedroom.
“Gannon, are you saying you like guys?” Shade asks softly, but I can’t admit it out loud. I lift one shoulder in a shrug but don’t take my eyes from his, trying like hell to gauge in the dark, his reaction.
“Would you stop being my friend if I did?” My eyes are stinging, and I want to blink the wet back, but I can’t look away from my best friend. He looks pained, scared, and maybe a little angry, but he only flops back to his back on his own bed. He never answers my question or says another word about it and I stay awake all night, wondering if it is the end of our friendship. Wondering if I’ve lost him already when I know in my heart that he is supposed to be in my life, forever. Even at eleven years old, I know that he’s meant to be an important person in my life because he’s already the most important person in my life. Sure, I love my mom, but Shade’s different. I just don’t get how, yet.
By the morning, neither of us bring up our whispered conversation from the night before, and everything goes back to normal. Shade and I are inseparable; his brother still sucks, his parents still fight, and my mom is a junkie that gives herself away for a weekly fix. Oh, and I’m gay and in love with my best friend… the world goes on.
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July 2006
17 years old
Sitting on the bank of the creek, I think back over the last couple of weeks and wonder why my best friend had lied to me. Had I done something to piss him off? Was he tired of me always hanging around? He’d gotten his drivers license last year after his brother got sent to prison for “accidentally” killing someone with a bad batch of drugs he’d sold them. His parents were trying to make up for all of their hardships, so when he got his license, they’d given him a used car that Mr. Mayson had found for practically nothing. We’d both been working at Hyde’s Gym since we got our workers permit at fourteen, so I couldn’t understand why he’d lie so blatantly when he had to know that I’d be there and see.
Hyde was kind of our guardian angel over the last several years, most especially mine. We’d both been looking for summer jobs the summer we were finally old enough, and though Shade was just looking to make a few bucks to enjoy the summer, I needed the money. Things weren’t good with mom, and Old Lady Lena had long since passed. Mom often forgot to buy food or pay the light bill or buy me clothes that actually fit. I don’t think anyone really knew how bad it was, or if they’d even care if they did.
The days where I was bigger than Shade, were no more. He’d grown a foot and a half and packed on all the muscle. Where I seem to be stuck at five-eight, I’m slim and toned instead of bulked and big. Hyde took one look at us back then, begging for any type of job that required us to earn a few bucks, and he took pity on both of us. That boxing gym became my second home.
Shade is studying mixed martial arts with some of the guys who train at Hyde’s and it’s driving me crazy. I can admit that I’m looking pretty ripped, but Shade is just sexy. I can hide the definition of my body under my clothes, but Shade looks like a brick wall that could kick anybody’s ass that dares to cross him. His arms are veined and bulgy and his shirts always fit just the right side of snug. Though nobody fucks with him anymore, he sure gets lots of attention from the girls at school.
The first time I walked out of the gym and saw him with his arms around Sasha Barker, I felt sick with jealousy. His lips were attached to her neck while she giggled like a lunatic, probably over nothing. I thought I was going to hurl. Nothing in my life had hurt that much, not up until that point. Not my dad leaving, not my mom’s addiction, not getting my ass kicked by Brock – which happened on occasion over the years before he got sent up. Nothing. It was the death of a dream that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding onto. That’s what hurt the most.
We’d been through a lot over the years together, Shade and I. The day he saw my mom strung out and naked on our front lawn; his brother being sent away and the heartache and turmoil it caused his entire family, knowing that one of their own had taken the life of someone else due to his selfishness and greed. We’d weathered family problems, school drama, life drama… hell, we’d been through it all, side by side. He was the only person in my life that I knew with 100% certainty that I could not live without. I knew he had crushes on girls, sure, he’d talked about them some… but I’d never seen him with someone else, never even imagined him with anyone in the way that I dreamed of him with me. It sucked.
Then, when Sasha was gone, it was someone else, and then someone else, and then someone else. Nobody stayed long with badass and gorgeous, Shade Mayson. No one except me. I was his constant. His best friend. Had been since we were six years old. We celebrated every birthday together, rang in every new year together and spent damn near every waking minute together…. Until now.
“Hey,” I hear from behind me. I knew it was him before I even turned to see, but when I did, I see that he isn’t alone. It isn’t a Sasha or a Lilly, or a Michelle from biology class. Nope, it’s RJ Arbuckle from the Algebra class we all take together. RJ is the only “out” kid at our school. He gets picked on a lot, called out a lot, but he never seems to care. He’s comfortable in his pink glittery eye-shadow and capri pants. “You know RJ, right?” Shade asks, smiling huge at RJ.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I nod in their direction. “Thought you had to work?” I ask, wondering if he’d lie again. He looks guilty, though he gives me a nervous smile.
“Left early. I wanted to introduce you to RJ," He reaches back just slightly and pulls RJ closer. I had at first wondered if he brought him there for me. We never talked about the fact that I’m gay, but he did actually know. Color me fucking surprised when Shade steps forward a bit and brings him closer, and keeps ahold of him, clutching him to his side.
“We uh, we’ve kind of been seeing each other,” Shade says, shifting from foot to foot. “It’s kind of been in secret, so, you know… Nobody knows, but I wanted to tell you.”
My entire body goes cold at his confession. I stare at him in shock and my chest feels seized with pain. Like, physically. Could it hurt so bad that it just stopped working? I feel like it might. I sit there for several long minutes, trying like hell to understand what he’s telling me. Not only is he seeing someone seriously enough to introduce him to me, but he’s seeing a guy? He’d known for almost seven years that I too, liked guys… and we never talked about it once. It was an unspoken thing between us, like, if we didn’t speak on it, it wasn’t there. I’d watched him go through girl after girl, and he’d never once asked me about dating or who I liked. And I never brought it up either because I was so fucking afraid that it’d be weird and I’d lose him.
I sit there not knowing what to say. I don’t know how he wanted me to react. I wonder how I’m even breathing, it all hurts so bad. This person is the very best part of my life and I’d been keeping this huge part of myself a secret from not only him, but also myself because I didn’t want to fuck things up or,I don’t know… fuck things up! And all this time, he could’ve fixed it or at least made me not feel so fucking paranoid about it. And what, he just, didn’t? I’m pissed. I feel betrayed and lied to and I’ve been ashamed for so fucking long. How could he do this to me? My best fucking friend. How could he hurt me this way?
I can’t do anything but walk away.
Hou
rs later, I’m laying on the couch, my mom at the motel for a ‘night shift’, though I know she isn’t actually working. It feels as though I can’t draw a deep breath. What did all of this mean, now? Is Shade bi? Gay? Experimenting? How long has he known? How many others were there? Why didn’t he tell me? My skin feels too tight and my chest hurts. I need to stop thinking.
I know mom works during the day, so I can imagine what she is getting up to, I just try not to care. She’s a grown-ass woman, she can take care of herself, but I wish she was here, or that she was someone I could confide in. I feel sick to my stomach and numb, yet everything in my chest feels on fire and frozen at the same time. I cry. I cry for the first time in I don’t even know how long. I cry for long hours, hating life and everyone in it. The very few people who mean anything at all to me, I hate them all in those hours. I want to pack up what little shit I have and leave them all behind. I want to run until something hurts besides my chest. I want to lash out and hurt everyone the way I’m hurting now.
How dramatic, right?
I lay there for hours feeling sorry for myself, wondering why nothing seems to go right for me in this life. I’m entitled to let myself feel sorry for a little bit, right? My dad up and left for reasons unknown to me, but it was abandonment plain and simple. He abandoned mom and me and never looked back, and I’d loved him so much. Mom abandoned her job as a mother and checked out of life, living from one high to the next, with no regard for me or my wellbeing. And now Shade… is it wrong to feel abandoned by him? He technically didn’t leave me. He hurt me, but he is still here. In all likelihood, he probably always will be.
I allow myself to lay there in the dark and mourn something that I know will never be. I know that now, so, I can start to move on from it. I could learn to appreciate our friendship for what it is because in my experience, people don’t stick around, and Shade always had. That has to be good enough for me, and up until today, it always had been. Seeing him with another guy was a slap in the face, but only because for that split second, I wondered how come it couldn’t be me?
He left all the girls he hooked up with, but never me… and this thing with RJ wouldn’t last, logically I know that. We’re young, we both still have to finish high school and we’re both sticking close to go to college. I’ve been working my ass off to get scholarships because I need all the help I can get. The Mayson’s have been saving up for the restitution they have to pay for the woman Brock killed, so, Shade is counting on scholarships as well. He’s smarter than me, though, so, he’ll get them. I know he will.
It isn’t as if I’d ever even told him that I had feelings for him, right? He hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. I wish he’d have told me that he was into guys because I’d never had anyone to talk about it with… but, that’s his own personal journey, maybe he just hadn’t been ready until now. Maybe it’s a new thing. Maybe he didn’t know he liked men until he got to know RJ. Maybe I’m just not loveable, and that’s why he never considered me. Maybe our friendship is too important to him. Maybe he doesn’t want to lose me, too.
Every possible explanation hurts.
I avoid him over the next several days, but he doesn’t let it go on for too long. When he’s done letting me be a coward, he corners me against the side of my house one morning while I’m walking out to catch the bus. That had been a new thing for me because I’d always ridden with Shade. I didn’t even notice him waiting for me until he shoves me against the house and gets in my face.
“What the fuck is with you?” he snaps, hands fisted in my shirt and his face dangerously close to mine. I try to shove him off of me, but reminiscent of his brother so many years ago, when I push, he doesn’t budge.
“Get off me,” I try, my voice barely above a whisper. He looks awful, like he hasn’t slept in days. His hair and clothes are a crumpled mess, though it only serves to make him more gorgeous, at least, to me.
“Fuck you! Tell me what your problem is! You’re avoiding me, you were rude to RJ and I want to know –“
“Fuck you, Shade! And fuck RJ! Don’t come at me with that shit!” I shove again, this time knocking him off of me. His eyes go huge and I can tell that he’s surprised that I’d been able to do it.
“You’re gay? Since when?” I demand, mad all over again. If he wants to have it out, we’ll have it out, but I deserve to know.
“Not gay… but I’m bi, it looks like. I don’t know. Why are you so pissed about it? You’re gay!” He spits back, loud as hell considering nobody knew about either of us and it was broad daylight and we were shouting. I don’t have it in me to care. I snap. Pain, disappointment and white-hot anger enveloping my body until it feels like I have to explode.
“Yeah… I’m gay," I agree, pissed that this is the first time I am saying it out loud when he’s known about it for almost a fucking decade. “It would’ve been nice to know I wasn’t the only one. It would’ve been nice to be able to talk about it sometimes, or I don’t fucking know, Shade… acknowledge it in some way without being scared to fucking death that I’d lose my best friend over it. It would’ve been nice to know that almost seven years have gone by and I wasn’t alone in that! You selfish prick!”
I can’t register the hurt on his face, I am too angry and hurt myself. I bypass the bus stop and keep walking, hiding in the treeline of the forest that runs along the road to out of town. This is the first real fight I’ve had with my best friend, even after all these years. We never fought about anything; maybe a video game or a joke or something, but we’d never actually been in a fight. I hate it.
I find an old cabin about an hour back from the highway. It looks as if it’s been abandoned for decades, and though it’s tiny and dusty, it’s relatively clean. It looks as if someone just up and left it, forgetting it in time. The door is open and there are animal droppings everywhere, but I go inside anyway. I spend the day cleaning it up, looking around for any idea of who it may belong to. It’s the perfect place to get away, and I find myself wanting to stay. I pull out my phone and try to look up anything I could on the place, but I’ll need to go to the library tomorrow and find out who owned it.
I fall asleep with everything on my mind, but no answers on how to fix it. The dusty couch is no different than the lumpy, dirty couch at home… only here I have time and space to think. Things become clearer to me here and I use the night to figure out my next move. I can do anything or be anything I want, but I need to shove Shade back in the friendship box he’s been in all this time. I have to. Losing him isn’t an option for me, but apparently loving him isn’t either.
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February 2012
23 years old
“Fuck, you feel so good with your lips wrapped around me," Bright green eyes look up at me, and though they aren’t the ones I’ve always dreamed of, they’re close enough. The big body that is currently kneeling in front of me, licking and sucking my cock, is busy now stroking his own cock too. I’m relieved that I won’t have to return the favor. Selfish, I know, but, this isn’t going to be any more than this. The big man reminds me so much of Shade, and I am ashamed to say that it’s the only reason he’s in my room tonight.
Yeah, I never got over the unrequited love of my best friend, but what can you do? Life is all about happiness and heartbreaks and Shade and I had had so much happiness, I can handle a little heartbreak. I mean, it’s big for me, but, I keep it to myself. I’m good at pushing it away and hiding the part that actually aches with a physical pain throughout my body. It’s bound to get easier eventually, right? Time heals all wounds and all that…
“Ugh, you tongue me so good, Sha-“ I cut myself off around a moan, mentally berating myself for letting my little fantasy get away from me. Shade had gone on a date tonight, so I did what I always did and picked someone up for myself. It’s unhealthy and I know it, but, I’m okay with the level of denial I’m living in. I’ll be over it by morning, both this guy and the fact that
my friend is likely doing the same thing with someone else that isn’t me.
My dick starts to soften at the thought, jealousy running hot through my body like the vicious bitch it is… Then those green eyes look up at me and I’m able to pretend again.
“Suck me, harder,” he does, slicking my dick like a pro. Pulling off of me, leaving me wet and sloppy as he did, his deep voice vibrates through my entire body…
“Fuck me,” he whispers, offering himself to me. I pull him up and spin him around, pinning him to the wall of my cabin’s living room. I’m in the middle of nowhere, so he can be as loud as he wants. I’m buying it on contract, so it isn’t technically mine yet and likely won’t be for another 15 years or so, but, still… it’s mine. I spit on my fingers and spread them between his cheeks, lubing up his hole before I stretch him. I have a condom in my pocket that comes lubed, but I need to get him ready first. His body is much bigger than mine, but my dick is longer and fatter. I’ve also put on a good seventy pounds over the last six years and I’ve grown to a healthy six-foot-one. Shade is six-four and weighed about two-hundred-eighty pounds, but he’s pure muscle, not an ounce of fat. The way he wears his garage uniform every day is fantasy inducing. Those tight-ass coveralls, smeared with grease and motor oil, who would’ve thought that would be sexy? Watching his arms and shoulders flex from over or under a vehicle, makes me solid just thinking about it… This guy isn’t quite as big as Shade, but from behind he is a dead ringer.
“Reach back here and spread yourself open for me," I pull his hands from the wall and bring them back, impatient and ready to see him splayed open for me. He grabs his muscled ass and holds himself open while I pull the condom from my pocket, ripping it open and sliding it on in record time. His sexy hole is squeezing my fingers, I have two working him easily now that I swiped some of the lube from the packet. The way he growls instead of whimpers is exactly what I picture Shade doing, he sounds like a bear ready to attack. I don’t care if Shade is a top or a bottom, normally, though in my scenarios he always bottoms for me. I’d love taking his big body and making him come apart for me. I could make it so good for him.
