The Promise We Couldn't Keep

1

TPWCK:
ONE

…………

Then

 
I remembered the day I came out to him, my best friend. I’d been shaking and stumbling over the words.

I’m gay.

Gay.

I had to force them out of my mouth. The word had found a way to stay lodged in my throat and the hard pushing became violent shoving. Still, I’d managed to let the word out, although barely comprehensible. I remembered it clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

I thought I’d ruined the friendship we’d built over a couple of years, but he smiled and the tension then began evaporating from my body. Then, he’d told me being gay wasn’t something I should ever be ashamed of, and promised me that my sexuality’d never get in the way of our friendship, and my shaking began easing up; I could finally breathe, I didn’t even realize I was running out of air until the fresh batch of oxygen entered my deprived lungs. I remembered his words like the song in a car that’s on repeat. Always playing. Over and over again.

Maybe because few people ever mattered to me, and among those few, he was one of those who mattered most, his acceptance meant a lot to me.

“Yes!”

I looked at him from where I was lying on a leather sofa. The thickness of his eyebrows that framed his chinito eyes, more defined now as his face lit up with happiness and excitement from the news that came through his call with his parents. The expression wasn’t rare on him, no, that was a frequent look whenever the three of us were together, but every time I saw him make this face my heart leaped for joy. When something good came to his life, he was like this little kid receiving a big box of sweets when there was no occasion. I always prayed he makes this face every day.

So, while he’d said he’d never let my sexuality get in the way of our friendship, a question had still been prickling at the back of my mind, most especially since recently: He’d never let me being gay get in the way, but . . . what if I did?

What’d happen then when I started getting attracted to him? It was bound to happen, eventually, if it wasn’t already happening yet; he was irresistibly charming and ideal and handsome, so it was a matter of when, and not if.

“She allowed me to sleep here tonight,” he cried out, raising both his hands, and dived onto the couch.

An oof made it out of my lips from the sudden weight as he landed on my stomach but a laugh soon broke out of me. He enveloped his hands around my waist to my back, and I tugged at the hood of his gray jacket to cover his face before hugging back the welcome weight on my stomach.

I prided myself in being one of the biggest people in my age group despite the only sport I knew how to play, and the only sport I ever played my whole life, being badminton. I was just naturally bigger than the average, a trait I got from my biological father, one of the few positive things he’d given me. Yet lately, Fernan had been gaining more muscles and height, just a tad more and he’d catch up to my physique, his growth sprout taking him by storm.

I’d yet to decide whether him catching up on me should make me happy, proud, scared, or anxious. I was feeling them all, but mostly anxious that he’d grow out of his touchy-feely habits when he grew big enough.

“Then I guess I’ll have to stay here tonight too after all,” I said despite the two of us knowing that I was here exactly because Rinia’s parents had called for me to sleep over here so their daughter wouldn’t be alone in the house while they were away for work.