Paper Hearts (boyxboy)

Special Tea

Noah:

I rub my sore nose again. "God damn, my dad can back-hand like a pro." I mumble.

Andy's friend Sara looks up at me and grunts. "Asshole, what kind of dad..."

I shake my head "the kind that's disappointed."

With entire honesty though, I saw it coming. I don't know how I could expect my father, of all people, to be okay with this whole thing in any way. I suppose I don't expect anyone to be okay with it. If it were me on the outside looking in, six months ago I would have been just as weirded out as any high school boy. Gay. So weird how it sounds so taboo.

Sara is back to diligently doing her homework, and I look down at mine. I close my books and start putting it in my backpack. Homework is boring.

"Where you going?" She asks quietly.

I pull out a blank piece of paper and start scribbling things. "Nowhere, just don't want to do homework."

She scoffs. "For a guy who doesn't like stereotypes, you really are a meat-head jock."

I laugh with her for a minute, not able to argue it. I like Sara a lot, I think she speaks her mind and that's refreshing to see. Andy has a few other friends that haven't exactly "warmed up" to me yet, but she has no problem sitting out front before school to study with me. The other girls, according to Andy, think I'm playing him in some way. Like his one friend, Lakesha I think her name is, said: "a straight jock can't go full gay overnight, something fishy is up." That's funny to me, 'cause I thought the same thing for a while. That is until I realized this wasn't an "over-night" thing.

We're quiet for a moment, my mind wandering back to my dad. Boy, did he get me good. I look almost as bad as Andy did after his run-in with Johnson. It kinda feels like losing my mom, like now I have no parents. Except it's different entirely. For starters I loved my mother, and she loved me. If it had been her I came home to have that conversation with, I would have gotten a hug and not a back-hand. And my father isn't dead, I'm just dead to him. He might as well be dead though, considering I probably will never speak to or hear from him again, or the bulk of the rest of my family. Meaning no one will take me in. Meaning I have nowhere to go.

I look down at my scribbles. It's a scratchy, cartoony-looking picture of my boyfriend, holding a bouquet of paper roses. I smile at it softly. I have him, that's all I need.

He means so very much to me, that boy. In such a short time, it feels like an indescribable bond. So why, I wonder, am I so afraid for everyone to know that he's mine?

"Hey Sar'..." I start.

"Yeah man?" She breathes, tapping her pencil on her leg as she stares at the textbook in front of her.

"What do you think about... All this?"

She's quiet for a minute, clearly focused on homework. "I think trig is a cruel and unusual punishment."

"No," I laugh. " I mean...like me and Andy. The gay thing. What do you think about it?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing. I don't think anything about it, other than I met a queer kid who was really nice and we instantly became friends, and he met a nicer boy who he loves. What's there to think?"

I sigh. "It's just that everybody thinks something about it. You know, like its weird or funny in some way."

"Not me." She says flatly. After a moment, she sighs and sets her pencil down. "What do you care so much what I think anyway? What do you care what anybody thinks?"