This is the picture chosen by the YA GLBT Goodreads group for their March short story....
I wasn't looking too hard at this one as I have other things to write, but this afternoon I glanced at it sideways and got bitten by the bunny.... and this is what he told me...
Reconnecting
Looking up at him from where I lay, my head on his legs,
I couldn’t help but smile as Chris’s long fingers ran through the coarse
stubble on my chin. He’d been my first
crush, my first true friend, and until earlier that night I had never thought
I’d see him again.
One of the biggest problems about being an army brat was
that you never got to stay in one place long enough to make friends. You’d settle in to a new home and a new
school, get almost past that awkward phase of getting to know someone and
before you know it one or other of you would find the family were moving to
another base, sometimes another country.
Before I’d turned thirteen it didn’t bother me it was just how
friendships worked, you picked them up when they arrived and dropped them when
they left. After my fifteenth year I
didn’t even try, making friends bought back too many painful memories of
loosing them. Even now, twenty years
old, independent and away from anything to do with army life, I still struggled
to make friends.
We’d been stationed at the East Yorkshire base for a couple of
months when Chris and his family moved into the house next door. I was star-struck from the start. At almost a year older than me he was smart,
had a wicked sense of humour and in my thirteen year old mind the coolest
tastes in music and clothes. Best of all
to me was that Chris was an only child, whereas I was the middle child and
lived with the constant bickering and teasing that comes with having an older
and younger sister. It’s kind of
embarrassing looking back on it now, but at the start I followed him round like
a faithful puppy. Whether he noticed or
not he never said anything, but as we spent time together a genuine friendship
grew between us.
It wasn’t long until we were virtually inseparable. Out of school, when the weather was good we
were out riding our bikes around the base, when it rained we’d play on the
computer he had in his room with the stereo on full blast until his mother came
up to tell us to turn it down. We talked
about anything and everything, from school and what we wanted to do when we
grew up, our families, the music and movies we loved. We shared confidences and secrets; the only
thing we never talked about was girls.
That wasn’t to say girls didn’t notice him, in fact my elder sister had
a huge crush on him and when she wasn’t asking me about him she was finding
excuses to go round to see him.
Whether girls noticed me or not I didn’t know, and
didn’t really care. I put it down to
living with my sisters, both of whom had large groups of friends who would
frequently invade our house. To me they
were nothing more than a nuisance who teased me and made my life difficult. It was shortly after my fourteenth birthday
that something happened to make me think that my indifference towards girls
might be more than just because of my sisters.
We were upstairs playing on the computer when Chris’ mum
called for him to come downstairs. As he
left I paused the computer game we were playing and then must have hit
something else with the mouse. I was
shocked at the image that came on the screen, a beautiful young man, completely
naked, posing against a whitewashed wall with everything on display. Shocked yes, but not horrified, or squicked
out, and it wasn’t the picture itself that shocked me, it was my body’s
reaction, an unexpected warmth in my face and tightening of my underwear.
Other boys at school occasionally passed round magazines
with pictures of virtually nude girls, I’d glanced at a couple but they’d just
made me feel uncomfortable, certainly I could never summon up the excitement
they seemed to get from those pictures.
Yet I was definitely getting a reaction from the picture of the nude man
on the screen.
I couldn’t be sure how long I looked at the screen for,
but hearing footsteps on the stairs I panicked and started pressing buttons on
the keyboard, not wanting for Chris to know I’d seen it or for him to know what
it did to me. As soon as he came into
the room I picked up my jacket, mumbled some excuse about the time and ran. It was nearly a week before I dared to face
him again. I was sure he’d know what I’d
seen, what it had done to me, but if he did he never mentioned it and we
slipped easily back into the familiarity of our friendship. Life continued as
usual around me, but inside I was frequently asking myself questions I wasn’t
sure I wanted the answer to.
Six months later something happened that finally brought
the subject up. It was my older sister’s
birthday party and my parents had bravely allowed around thirty kids between
the ages of thirteen and sixteen to take over their house. A range of non alcoholic drinks had been set
out in the kitchen, together with a buffet of party food for people to help
themselves as they wanted. Music blared
from the stereo in the lounge, where the furniture had all been pushed back to
the walls so people could dance.
A couple of hours into the party I was starting to feel
uncomfortably warm, plucking a can of Pepsi from the kitchen I slipped out of the
backdoor into the garden to cool off. I
wasn’t alone in the garden, some of the other party goers had coupled off and
were using the limited privacy of the garden to make out in the more secluded
corners. I lent back against the fence
and closed my eyes for a second, not wanting to watch. A hand on my arm made me jump, my eyes flying
open. Marie, my sister’s best friend
stood in front of me, one hand on her hip and her head tilted to one side.
“Hi,” her smile widened as she spoke and for a second I
had a sudden image in my mind of a crocodile.
Without warning she stepped forward into me. I could feel every curve of
her body as she crushed herself against me. Her lips sought out mine, soft and
tasting strangely of fake strawberries.
I froze, completely rigid, I could feel my heartbeat accelerate, but it
wasn’t racing for any good reason; I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do, and I felt nothing,
or at least nothing good. She stepped
back away from me, a confused, hurt, expression crossed her face.
“I’m sorry, I,” I babbled, before thrusting my half
drunk can into her hand and running back into the house. I didn’t stop until I reached the safety of
my bedroom. I didn’t come out till the
following morning.
My flight through
the house hadn’t gone unnoticed; neither had Marie’s tearful return to the
party and for a few days after the party we were the main topic of gossip and
speculation throughout the school. The
only person not to say anything, either to or about me, was Chris. Occasionally I caught him watching me with a
strange expression on his face, which would suddenly change and he’d look away
quickly.
I’d never been happier to get to the end of Friday
afternoon and freedom from my schoolmates for a couple of days, when hopefully
something else would happen and I could return to my usual level of
obscurity. As usual, after tea, I went
round to Chris’ house to hang out. His
mother, long used to my regular appearances at the back door, just waved me
through telling me Chris was in his room.
The door was closed, which itself was unusual, but I
didn’t think anything of it, just pushed it open and walked in. Seated at his computer, his hands in his lap,
Chris flushed bright red as he glanced at me, before jumping out of his seat
and spinning round so that his back was towards me.
“Give me a minute,” he choked out, his voice sounding
hoarse.
Blushing wildly, I backed out of the room and closed the
door behind me; but not before I noticed what he had been looking at on the
computer screen. It wasn’t the same one
I’d seen before, this time a naked dark haired boy was standing under a shower,
running his hands over his body.
I stood outside the bedroom door not sure if I wanted to
go back in or to run away. I could feel
the heat building in my face as my imagination showed me exactly what Chris had
been doing in front of the computer.
When the door opened again Chris didn’t say anything, just walked back
into the room and slumped down on his bed, not looking me in the face.
I sat carefully at the other end of the bed, balancing
just on the edge. For a long time the
only sound in the room was the hum of the fan in the computer.
“I didn’t kiss her,” I said eventually. His eyes finally
came up to meet mine and his mouth turned up into a half smile.
“I didn’t think you had,” he replied quickly.
“I don’t, I mean, I,” I was babbling, I really didn’t
know what I wanted to say. We both
lapsed back into silence again.
“You saw what was on the screen?” he asked
“Yes,” I managed to whisper the word, my face flushing
again.
“Are you okay with it? With me being,” he didn’t finish
the sentence, I could see the fear in his eyes.
I couldn’t help myself, I laughed.
He tensed immediately, his expression showing his hurt at my reaction.
“Maybe you should go,” he said coldly.
“No,” I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, it’s just, I mean, well, I think I might be too,” I finished
lamely, suddenly not able to look him in the eye.
And that was it, just about the only conversation we
ever had about it. We both knew we were
gay, and I’ll happily admit that more than anything I wanted more than just
friendship, but it was the importance of that friendship that stopped us from
ever taking things further. Not, as it
turned out, that it mattered. Two months
after that conversation, my father got deployed to Germany and, like the good army
family, we moved. Then, in the two years
after moving to Germany we moved a further four times.
We stayed in touch for a while, but contact grew more
infrequent until it fizzled out altogether.
I missed Chris desperately at first, I had no one to talk to, to confide
in, no one who I could share my secret with.
I never thought I’d see him again. He was part of my past, a good memory. Until tonight.
I’d been following the band for years; in fact it was
one that Chris had introduced me to in the small bedroom of the army house in
East Yorkshire. So when they announced
the gig at Camden’s Round House I’d queued for ages on the phone for tickets.
Tonight, standing in the middle of the crowd, letting
the beats wash over me I closed my eyes and swayed to the music. The sound was as familiar as it was totally
unexpected, not far away from where I stood in the crowd, Chris’ voice singing
along with the band. Not really wanting
to believe it could be possible that I would remember his voice after all this
time, I opened my eyes and scanned the crowd around me.
He was taller than when I’d last seen him, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, his
black sweater tied round his waist. Slowly
I edged my way towards him and stood just behind him, waiting for the song to
end.
“Chris?” I asked as the last riff of the drums died
down. He turned quickly and looked
directly at me.
“Adam?” his dark eyes widened in surprise.
We stood side by side throughout the rest of the band’s
set and then when it was over we walked and talked for hours. There was an easy familiarity, as though we’d
been apart for six days rather than six years.
We didn’t talk about relationships, or even whether we were out, but by
the time we found our way to the tube station we were comfortably walking hand
in hand.
The carriage was almost empty. Chris sat back on the hard plastic seat as I
slumped lengthways along it resting my head in his lap. He ran his fingers through my hair, then
traced the stubble down my cheek to my chin.
We didn’t talk; he rested one arm across my chest, the other over the
top of my head. Looking up into his eyes
I realised that I had no intention of ever letting this man go again. I smiled at the thought as I reached up my
arm under his and stroked the back of his neck.
He raised an eyebrow as if to ask what I was smiling at
but before I could answer he’d bent forwards, bringing his lips to mine with a
kiss I felt like I’d waited half a lifetime for.
