Josh
I wasn’t surprised to find that Ezra wasn’t in our room when I got there, but I was surprised to be jumped by a whisk of black-and-purple and wrapped into a huge hug.
“Um… hi?”
“Josh!”
It was Ezra. I should’ve expected that, I realised, and I returned his hug. “Oh, hey.”
He drew back. “I missed you! My family sucks and I’m finally back at school and alone and oh my god I’d almost forgotten how boring summers were!”
I laughed at his enthusiasm. “Ah, well… yeah, me too. It’s good to see you, Ez.”
“It’s absolutely wonderful to see you, too,” he responded, a huge smile on his face.
That’s when I noticed something. “You’re not in makeup.”
“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. “The school said that it was too distracting or something, so I can’t have it this year.” He pointed at his ears and gestured around his face. “The piercings, too, except the microdermals.”
“Ah.” I frowned a little, realising that I’d actually gotten used to his piercings. “You look…”
“Different, I know,” he agreed. “It’s not bad, is it?”
“No, it’s… you look fine.”
“Oh. Good.” He smiled a little. “I hoped I didn’t look too strange. I’m just glad they didn’t make me dye my hair back.”
I nodded, watching him brush a strand of black-to-purple hair out of his eye. “I’m glad you get to keep some part of your identity.”
“That and the clothes, as long as it’s not during class.” Ezra nodded as well.
I smiled. “I’m really glad, then.”
“Let’s hang out!” he suggested, out of context. “Talk about stuff. How was the summer camp? Did you have fun? Probably more fun than me.”
“You’re excited, aren’t you?” I asked with a laugh, even as he dragged me towards the window seat.
He pulled me into the window seat, nodding and laughing along with me. “Pretty much. Happy to be out of there.”
“Understandable,” I agreed. “Little siblings and all that.”
“Yeah, that.” He leaned into my side. “You have no idea how good it is to be back here, Josh. I hated it there.”
“That’s somewhat melodramatic,” I accused. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Nah, but… I missed you, I guess.” He relaxed into my side, something he’d never done before, even though we’d sat on the window seat a million and a half times at least.
I felt myself tense up, confused and going into the ‘freeze’ part of ‘fight, flight, or freeze’: the reactions to danger or new, possibly bad experiences. It didn’t take too long for me to decide that there was nothing bad going on, though, and I did my best to relax into him, too.
“So,” he said after a moment, “tell me about summer camp.”
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“…and then I find out that one of my campers had been playing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign the entire time, with some kids from another cabin.”
“Wow,” Ezra said, a little tiredly, as he played with the hem of my hoodie (I’d started referring to it as ‘my hoodie’, even though it had been his jacket first). “That must’ve been a fun adventure for you.”
“More stressful than fun,” I admitted. I found my fingers in his hair, twisting it.
There was an oddly intimate air to the room, as the sun set outside and the sky went shades of yellow and pink.
A long moment of silence fell, and Ezra and I sat on the window seat, legs mixed up and my arm over his shoulders, and I could almost believe that this was what it would be like to have Ezra as my…
I stopped mentally. That’s insane. Stop. Josh, you’ve been through your bi-curious phase, and it didn’t go anywhere. Get over it already.
But another thought interrupted it. What was it Kieran said about people here? “Half of them have probably gone queer out of desperation”?
What if Ezra’s part of that statistic?
Wait, what if I am?
Am I willing to admit it? That I might be?
I sort of glanced down at Ezra, looking over his face. Softened features, a slightly turned-up nose… mouth captured in a nearly perpetual pout, if he wasn’t smiling. Chocolate brown eyes under long eyelashes, and almost imperceptible freckles on his cheeks, darkened a little since I’d last really looked at his face (though I didn’t do it often).
He was kind of beautiful, in a way that I didn’t really understand, and a way that I didn’t think he really saw.
There was a knock at the door, pulling me from my pseudo-daze. “Guys, dinner’s in ten!” Mark’s voice came, calling from the other side.
Tommy’s followed. “We’re sitting with Kieran and Ian, and you two losers can join us, but only if you’re fast enough.”
“We’re coming,” Ezra replied calmly. He stood and turned, offering me a hand up from the window seat. I took it, somewhat grateful. He pulled me close to him, a little closer than I would’ve expected. “I have something to tell you after dinner,” he confessed-- because it was a confession, it could only be a confession with that tone of voice, low and almost scared.
“Okay,” I responded, in a voice I hoped would assuage his fears and possibly offer him a small amount of freedom from the anxiety that always came with ‘having to tell someone something’.
He gave me a small smile, almost offered it. “Okay,” he agreed.
We went to dinner. It was quiet, for once, at least at our table, and the chatter of the rest of the room was almost muffled to me, almost like it was underwater, or like I was.
I didn’t eat much. I hadn’t expected to, the excitement of being back at school, with my room the way I wanted it, with Kieran and Ian and Mark and Tommy and Ezra, turned my stomach pleasantly and made all of my hunger disappear.
When Ezra and I got back to our room, he sighed heavily. He was prone to doing it, shoulders heaving and chest folding in on itself. It was an ‘I’ve dealt with a lot’ kind of sigh, and though it made me somewhat sad to hear it from him, I’d gotten used to it.
“I’ll just… say it, then, I guess,” he muttered, looking through his hair at me, likely for affirmation, for permission.
I nodded, as if to say, ‘you can go on’.
He took a short yet deep breath, and let it all out in two words: “I’m gay.”
Out of all of things I’d been expecting from ‘I have something to tell you’, that hadn’t been one of them, and I stood in shocked silence for a moment after it was out of his mouth.
When it finally got through to me, I noticed the nervous expression on his face, and adjusted my body language, opting for more of a relaxed, carefree feeling. “Okay,” I said, and continued honestly, “I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?” he asked me, clearly in disbelief. “Even though you’re a guy, and we live in a room together, and we’ll be in close proximity all the time? That doesn’t… bother you?”
“No,” I said, and realised that I meant it. “I don’t care. You’re my friend. Nothing’s going to change that, will it?”
“I… I don’t know.” He looked down. “I hope not,” he admitted, pulling his jacket tighter around him.
“It won’t,” I assured him softly, answering my own question so that he could be more sure of it.
“O-oh. Good.”
He was shaking, and I couldn’t tell exactly why. Even though I was hesitant, I stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug. “It doesn’t change anything. I promise.”
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