“Just a photo I found online.”
Kyle nodded as he scrolled on.“But you wanted people to believe it was you.”
Was that a question, or a statement, or an accusation?
“Yeah.”
A beat.
“These are all men.That you’re emailing with, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
The conversations weren’t all about sex, weren’t all salacious.A lot of the time, we’d just talked about what it was like being young and gay.How things had gone for them, coming out for the first time.What my own terrors - or JesseJockBoy’s terrors, anyway, as much as they overlapped mine - were, and how I simultaneously feared and hungered for the difficult liberation of no longer being in the closet.
“You’re gay, then.”
Said in that same, unremarkable tone.Almost like Kyle thought the whole thing anticlimactic.
“Yeah.”Barely above a whisper, almost inaudible even to my own ears.
Kyle nodded, slowly.Still staring at the computer screen.“Okay.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Do your parents know?”
The snort slipped out, despite everything.“No.”
“Does anybody else?”
I shook my head, even though he wasn’t looking at me.“No.”
“You should tell Catherine,” Kyle suggested.He glanced back.“Y’know, just in case I’m busy sometime, but you need to talk about...stuff.”
My nod felt jerky.
Kyle frowned, watching me.“Are you freaking out?”
Swallowing still felt difficult.Unnatural.“I’m meant to ask you that, I think.”
He chuckled.“You’re not the first gay guy in the world, dude.”
No, I wanted to tell him, but I could be the only gay guy in our town.As far as I knew, I was the only gay guy in Kyle’s life, certainly.
“So...you’re...you’re okay with it?”
His expression was positively withering, though I thought I could still detect the faint hint of a grin with it.“You’re such an idiot.”He glanced over my naked chest.“And put some clothes on.Talk about over-selling yourself with these fake photos, sheesh.”
“Asshole,” I muttered, as I walked over to my closet.But I was finally smiling, too.
#
“So how was the latestfuck-trip?”
I glanced over at him, sprawled in the passenger seat.Kyle somehow managed to look untidy even when he was just sitting down.
“That’s not what it was.”