A New Year's Kiss (BoyxBoy)

41. The Relationship Guidebook

Jay

I'm glad I came back to Scotland for Christmas. I'd never had one like it before. We had a tree, and turkey and presents - the whole works! It was a proper family Christmas, and I knew that I wanted my children to have Christmas's like this too.

That thought hit me rather hard. I've never really thought that far into the future before. Would I ever have children? Would I ever have a wife? I thought I probably would like those things, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't picture it.

What I could picture though was me and Alex, living in our own flat somewhere, arguing over how to cook a turkey, and laughing about our rubbish first attempt at Christmas lunch.

I really missed Alex. Although it was in a different way than I'd missed him in the past. In the past, when we were drifting apart, it hurt. It hurt a lot. Now it was actually comforting, in a funny kind of way. It was more of a yearning, a yearning to speak to him, to see him, to touch him. But the thing was, I knew that I would soon be able to do these things again, and so it gave me a little fizz of excited anticipation every time I thought of him.

For Christmas, my sister (yes, I'd started calling her that now) gave me some vouchers for a new department store that had recently opened up in the nearest large town.

"You need to create a new look," she said to me, on the the way there on the train.

"Why do I need a new look?" I asked, hoping she wasn't expecting me to buy anything too extreme.

"To bag Alex of course!" she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I stared at her slightly shocked. She'd never even met Alex, so how she'd formed this opinion, I didn't know.

"What do you mean?" I asked, checking that 'to bag' someone, meant what I thought it did.

"Oh come on Jay, I can tell you're hung up on him," she replied.

I couldn't help but smile at her intuition, but it worried me that she could tell so easily.

"How can you tell?" I asked curiously.

"Well you talk about him, like, all the time, and you keep getting this far away dreamy look in your eye. Also you're constantly checking your phone, and when you got a text off him the other day, you're face practically lit up. It was hilarious!"

I stared at her with my mouth slightly ajar. Was that really true? This was worse than I thought.

Hannah must have noticed the sudden change in my expression because she put her hand on my arm. "Hey, what's wrong, is it because he's a guy?"

I looked across at her concerned expression and couldn't help but laugh. She hit my arm and pouted at my reaction to her trying to be the 'caring sister'.

"I'm sorry," I said, quickly putting on a more serious face. "I guess I've never really been concerned with the whole 'gay' thing."

"So you are gay then?" she asked expectantly.

I shrugged. "To be honest I don't know what I am, but I don't care either. It doesn't bother me who I fall in love with, boy or girl."

"But haven't you already fallen in love with a boy?" she asked.

"He's my best friend, not my boyfriend." I replied, dodging the question.

"Just because he's your best friend, doesn't mean you can't fall in love with him!"

Ahh, to be young and naive.

"Actually that's like rule number one of the relationship guidebook, 'never fall in love with your best friend'." I teased.