Living Your Lie (boyxboy)

Chapter 18

"Wait, so...you're gay?"

I laughed to myself as I remembered Corian's reaction at the party last weekend. I had literally sat and ranted and vented to her for at least a half-hour out on the curb in front of the house telling her all about my situation, and the only thing she could focus on at first was that I was gay.

"Yeah," I had said, a little unsure about how she felt because she had been nothing but encouraging while I had been talking.

Then she had started laughing before saying, "Now I know why you've never asked me out before."

I had laughed along with her at that. It had been really nice to just be able to laugh after talking about all the bullshit and drama with Dante and Dakota and my messed up feelings about them both.

I wasn't surprised that she didn't care about me liking guys since she was just a really chill person. What I was surprised by, though, was that she seemed like she really cared about my problems even though we didn't know each other well at all. Hanging with the same people at parties and sitting next to each other in economics last semester didn't exactly make you the best of friends.

But the fact that she sat and talked things out with me for almost another hour, made me respect her a hundred times more. Plus, she didn't even try to pressure me into telling her who the two guys were. I was a strong believer in the whole "don't out other people" thing, so I'd tried to be as vague as I could when I talked to her.

All I had said that could have been a give-away was that they both played lacrosse, but that could have been anybody. Hell, we have three lacrosse-playing high schools on the peninsula alone. So her figuring out who these guys were without my confirmation would be pretty difficult. Even so, it was nice that she was willing to give me advice and her two cents on the situation without asking for anything in return.

And as it turned out, Corian's advice was alright. She'd had plenty more experience with guys than I'd ever had, so I thought it was worth taking notes on especially after she'd listened to me for so long.

"I think you just need to pick one, Harley," she had said with finality.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that? Didn't I just go over this? The whole problem is that I don't know how to pick. Or who to even trust. They can both be such assholes sometimes."

"And so can you." When I glared at her she had said, "It's true, you're going behind someone's back. From the sounds of it, it doesn't matter that you aren't a real couple, you owe it to him either way to let this guy know that you're screwing around with someone else. You did say he tells you when he's with other people, right?"

"Well, yeah...I guess."

"Then man up and tell him. If you want to be his boyfriend then you can't hide things like this. And if you don't want to be his boyfriend then you can throw it in his face before you run off with the other guy. He sounds like a dick, so he probably deserves a little bit of a sting."

That had made me roll my eyes. "You could say that. I just don't know if I'm ready for it yet."

"Neither of them are going to wait forever," she had said. "And if this guy you've been with for a year finds out about the other one, I have a feeling you'll be kicking yourself all over the place for causing the shitstorm that will probably follow."

"Corian, you make it sound a lot easier than it really is. I don't think I can just pick one of them like that. I've been through a lot with this guy. Wouldn't it be stupid to let someone new just waltz up and pull me away simply because he's got a thing for me?"

The brunette had taken one of my hands in hers and said, "Harley, no. It's not stupid, trust me. Sometimes you have to let go of people who keep needing another chance so that you can give someone new their first."