Chapter 15

(Unedited)

I assume it's morning when I open my eyes-the pain and throbbing in my cerebrum claw at every pathway of my brain. I try blinking the pain away but to no avail. I had no recollection of going back home and being forced to pray to whatever Saint my parents would want me to pray to.

The bedroom wasn't so obvious where I must be. A clock sat on a bedside table while a TV in the bedroom showed a black and white episode about monsters as flickering lights triggered sensations of impending horror. Before I could take any more thought of this, I heard footsteps outside the room.

Maybe I was kidnapped. If I was, I had better get my speech down to a cue now, not that kidnappers would want to hear what I had to say anyway.

"Good morning. I imagine you have a killer headache," a gentle mother-like voice spoke. Scratching my being kidnapped theory as the voice came closer to where I was still laying down, clutching the warm blanket, I realised who it was. Linda with her hair done up in a messy bun, scrubs from work, most likely from last night or early this morning, as she still wore her pyjama pants. Comfort setting in, knowing that Christian brought me here instead of returning me home after getting drunk.

"I'm never drinking again," I tell Linda. Though I was sure that I should be telling my mother that, as Linda sits down on the bed by my feet, as I assumed parents were supposed to do when they care for one of their children when they're sick.

"It's a scary new teenage experience. The words seem to freeze in my mind. "Like you are crushing on Christian," Linda says. I feel as if my veins are frozen as if a thousand butterflies had died at the same time. I haven't even told Christian, but his aunt has already figured it out.

I tell her that the two of us are just friends, convinced that he has convinced me. The line that Christian would say that we were. "I'm gay and," I added. Then reality kicked in. I had just blown the door wide open to Linda; there was no turning back now. Any second now, she'd tell me to get out of Christian's room and her house.

"I've seen the way you two act around each other. Do you think just friends look at each other that way?" Linda asks. Weighing the options between my parents and Linda, at least Linda was willing to attempt to have this conversation. My parents would be throwing the words of religion into this and most likely send me to conversion therapy.

"I still haven't even," I began to say, not knowing where in the world my words would take me. Is there a way to make her understand that I told Christian that I liked him while drunk last night? Shouldn't I be having this conversation with him? Or was that the point of having this conversation with her.

"It doesn't matter what you have and haven't done. You're a boy who likes my nephew, and I support that," Linda tells me as she hands me a bottle of water. "Being gay is something that you shouldn't have to be ashamed of," she adds as she gets up and hugs me. My body is unaccustomed to the foreign embrace, and I only hug her back when I begin to cry.

***

I stare at the ceiling while my comfortable bed takes hypnotical revenge on me during a Degrassi binge. Christian should have been my priority instead. Send him a text, take a selfie-something that will induce him to speak out and want to discuss the elephant in the room.

I started typing, but I ended up erasing what I had written. I did not want to convey my desperation in my voice, not even via text. As I remember the memorable scene where Drake gets shot on Degrassi, I get the courage to text him to come over. If I were going to break the ice, this would be the time. My parents are still not home from their shopping venture, leaving us alone.

"Christian," I find myself saying the obvious as he shows up with his messenger bag on his shoulder and holding a pizza. "I think," I tell him as he places the pizza on the island in the kitchen.

"I brought you back to my house last night," he says, clearly wanting to avoid the topic of the intended conversation, trying to figure out a way to make my thoughts go to my brain instead of my mouth causes my nervous system to go apeshit crazy. "You were laying down on the ground," he adds, as my thoughts consume me again.

"I think we need to talk about it," I tell him as I sit in one of the island seats, where my father reads the papers on Sundays, and I haven't seen him use them since then. Not used to being flattened, the mahogany-coloured cushion flattened underneath me.

"Last night, you were drunk. Why was that, anyway?" Christian spills his words at me as a person throwing a bucket of paint at a bedsheet canvas. I had forgotten what it's called, but being the only way I could describe it as he placed a spiral notebook on the island top. I'd be damned. Maybe he did want to talk about last night.

"It was stupid," I tell him. The whole façade was about to be blown. If I could tell his aunt that I was gay, I was sure I could say to him. The truth freezing up in my throat as two simple words sit there like my secret ship of Wilhelm and Simon. "I thought going would help the situation," I add as I get closer to the truth.

"You said it wasn't fake," Christian reassures me, as I recall that part of last night as if it were a cassette tape catching on a track I didn't intend it to be stuck on. Now, what would I say? I remember dropping my phone after I said it.

"I was also drunk, and I think I dropped my phone," I tell Christian honestly. If my parents were home, this conversation would never happen unless it were in my room; I wasn't sure it would be safe even then.

"You didn't answer my question, damn it," Christian tells me with a chuckle as he grabs a piece of pizza. "I'm trying to be fuckin' serious here," he adds. I was used to the demanding language with Dryden, adding an epitome of Christian I wasn't used to hearing.

"No. It didn't help the situation any. I'm still," I start. I only needed one more epiphany to say gay, and it wasn't that hard. "I left at truth or dare," I add, setting the somewhat truth his way. If Dryden or anyone else had dared me to do something, I didn't recall it, and I was sure now I wouldn't want to know what it was.

"Oh, I see. That's why you were drunk," Christian tells me. I liked his version of the truth better. "You just called me on a drunken dare," he says, making the fact even more absurd. Hence, the topic would have to be discussed sooner rather than later.

"I drank because you never answered me about whether it was," I start to tell him as I count the paranoia of my parents walking into the house, cutting us off from the words that remain in my pharynx. The pregnant topic split between us, leaving the pitiful awkward silence between us. "Christian, truth is," I mush my sentences together as I push myself towards the last word.

"A drunk dare. I get it," Christian tells me. Reminding me of that day, he told me to stop my obsession with serial killers at his house and unfinished some of my podcasts. His ocean eyes meet my hazel for a moment as my heart starts beating tenfold.

"I learned last night that all people are fake, and how can they tell you to be yourself when they're just hollow pieces of metal? I can't even tell my parents I'm gay and that I like you because that's real," I tell Christian. The words slipped out of my mouth like a kid going down a slip and slide unprepared. There's no one waiting at the end when you have no idea where you're going to end up. I wasn't ready to come out to Christian, and now it was too late.

Now was the time for him to walk away. Pack up his messenger bag, and leave as they do in overplayed media. Homophobic stereotypes play in my head. I have grown accustomed to the media sources making perfect sense. Since I had spilled the biggest secret of my life, I was lucky if he didn't ask any questions.

"Feel any better?" Christian asks me as he smiles, the signature Christian smile with his dimples showing his concealed pride as he had just aced one of the physics tests that Mr Olsten had handed out last week. The question seemed as though he hadn't heard what I had said.

"Just peachy freakin' keen," I retorted as I looked at the clock on the stove. "I'm gay," I add as though Christian hadn't heard me the first time, leaving and euphoria pregnancy of the room. The foreshadowing of an invisible demon, as my weight seems to melt into a puddle of silent guilt. Maybe I shouldn't have told him.

"I'm chill with it, Hemsworth," Christian tells me as he places his hand on my shoulder. I want to move it, but it seems too damn comfortable-a motion of comfortability that seems to ease me as I place my right hand on the island, placing it on his notebook. "I think it's cool your coming to terms with who you are," he adds as goosebumps climb all over my body and, if even possible, my brain as well.

"Did I say anything stupid last night?" I ask, knowing that this was most possibly the wrong order to ask now. I should have asked this first when I saw he had brought pizza that still went untouched. Now, as it sits, I can only think of M&M pizza Mia sent her crush in the Princess Diaries, and the clash of last night's alcohol most likely scathed my interest in all things pizza for a while.

"Your phone was on the ground, and you had alcohol in your system. What do you think?" Christian asks. He had wanted me to figure it out, and that much was obvious. A never ending puzzle that if I were in a mystery novel, I'd have to piece together what happened last night.

"I didn't try to force myself on you, did I?" I ask as I hope he tells me no. Then I doubted that we'd be having this conversation if I had. I still wanted him to say something, even if he said he was there. I wasn't even sure if the biological chemistry of this scene was set right. I had never experienced this part besides Netflix clichés and over cached tropes in other media sources.

"No, Hemsworth, you didn't," Christian scoffs, as though he had scripted what he had wanted to say but left the script backstage. "To be precise, you told the truth. "Maybe you were ready for truth or dare," he adds, his forehead a few centimetres away from mine. His breath smelled like cherry punch candies when I got close enough, and I blinked, breaking us apart as he pulled his head back.

"That's good then. I mean, the not doing anything stupid," I tell Christian. I was safe from all the embarrassing things that ran through my mind as he said that. The thing was, if he knew how drunk I was, how could I be entirely sure he was telling the truth.

"You said something about wanting to fuck Dryden or someone," Christian tells me. I was sure he was teasing now, and there was no way I would have said that, and at least I hoped not. My trust fades in Christian again as he continues to mock me.

"I doubt that. My secret is out, and a possible boyfriend sits in a fuckin airborne balance," I tell him as I swat him lightly in the left arm. "Plus, I don't want to date until college anyway," I add prominently. I had silent hope that the vow I promised myself in the early stages of life would remain that way until I was sure I could handle the possibility of dating.

"I call bullshit," Christian tells me as he packs away his messenger, and I look at the clock, knowing the system of when my parents would be home. He was most likely right, and it was bullshit. "You asked if it was a date or not," he adds, throwing his messenger bag over his shoulder, then heads for the door. Before I can say anything, he's gone. Leaving me to think of what I had just told him.

***

As I return to my room, I place the prized polar bear on my shoulder then hold my phone up to take a selfie. I had never taken one but assumed it would be easy enough. I finally figured it out after dropping the phone a few times and a few bad angles. Pressing send, then a text following it.

I assumed he must have still been mad at me for some reason. Maybe he needed space with the news, even though he said he was still with it. A few minutes go by, then a text message appears.

Christian:

Falsehoods do not exist everywhere.