The Best of Friends | ✔

three

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"I still don't get why you had to make such a big deal about the air bed," Roger said, shaking his head with a small chuckle before turning off the lights.

My face failed to cool down, still packing in heat from Roger taking off his shirt, confirming the accuracy of my vivid imagination, without any warning. Now, he apparently slept with nothing on but his sweatpants, and it frightened me just how quickly he could've outed me if I didn't hide under the quilt on time── my body wasn't capable of hiding the things I wish it did.

"I don't know, you tell me, maybe it's because I don't want to sleep next to you. We're not kids anymore." I wouldn't be able to sleep if it weren't for the air mattress. Having him close to me on a bed would make me lose my mind. Thank the gods for the invention of temporary, inflatable beds.

"Whatever, amigo." I heard him jump on his bed along with the shuffling of several blankets. "Hey, I don't think I've asked you lately── you got a girlfriend?"

"Not right now," I heard myself say, thinking of some minor crushes. Some, like Charlie Butler from PreCal, I couldn't deny to be guys, and that needed some fixing. "You?"

"I... I haven't had the time for that in ages."

"Sorry, I forgot."

"No, it's fine."

"Hey, if there's one loyal girl to you, it's your hand. Don't forget her."

"Oh, ha-ha, very funny, Dan," I heard Roger scoff. "I treat her very well."

I couldn't resist replying. "Every man does."

After several minutes of faintly hearing the whirring of the A/C, I was convinced our talk was over and that it was time to sleep, but just as I was about to drift off, his voice snapped me out of it: "I'm so glad you're here, Dan. Thank you for being so understanding, for accepting me, for coming, for sticking with me even if I'm like this."

"That's what I'm here for, bud." I couldn't be more honest than that.

"I don't deserve you," he half-whispered, "but you're someone I don't ever want to lose, no matter what." Same, Roger, same. It's why I'll never tell you about me. "So... since that's out there now, I want you to be clear with me, completely honest with me, on one thing."

"Sure thing, bud."

"I don't mean to offend you with this whether it's true or not── I really, really don't want this to burn our bridge so please don't take it the wrong way, but... the way you look at me has always made me wonder, even more so now... do you, uh, are you into dudes?" I sprung out of the bed, as if a ghost had just appeared out of thin air. My heart dropped and a knot in my stomach threatened to make me throw up. Everything within me jumbled up together, and once again my words toppled over, falling apart before they could even come out. This time, however, I was too shocked to gather them up. I couldn't fix them with tape or glue. I couldn't tell what piece belonged to the letter y or the letter s. It all looked the same. "So it's true," he mumbled to himself. "From over half a thousand miles away, and even before you moved, yes, I suspected, and it's true, isn't it?"

The silence following his question spoke a volume of words I couldn't provide life to, and so he knew, within a single day of me coming back to Florida, he knew, because we grew up together and knew each other well, no matter how far apart we were from each other.

It's my turn to weep, isn't it?

I heard the shuffling of blankets again. "Dan, why? Why didn't you tell me? Did you think I would shun you?" Tears stung my eyes, challenging me to try and hold them back. It was impossible. "Daniel." His voice felt closer, and by the time he felt the top of my head I lost it.

"Nobody wants a faggot... or half of one, if that exists." My entire sense of self spoke on its own, giving words and life to my innermost thoughts. "Roger, you know it, I know it. You've seen how others treat people who open up, how they're shamed and told they're disgusting and a menace to society. How they're blamed for that epidemic. I'd... I'd rather keep it all inside." I moved his hand away from my head and covered myself with the quilt again. "I have a whole family; my parents, my siblings, my nanny... they'll all hate me. And I'm already rebelling against Father's wishes to have me take over the Campbell winery, so I can't— I'm not going to do anything else to shame them and lead myself further astray. There's... there's nothing I can do but watch, and I'll be fine with that."

I'll make myself be fine with that.

I heard my best friend sigh. "Sure, you can live your life without coming out. You can marry a girl, maybe happily, and you can choose to turn away or swoon with restraint when you see some hot guy, or me── yes, again, it's obvious── but is that a good thing, to curse and hide away a part of you like that, in shame?"

"Yes," I sobbed. A sniffle sneaked itself out of me. "How bold of you to tell me this. You're doing this to yourself, too."

"It's exactly why I know it's not a good thing, amigo," Roger muttered. "I'm here bathing in a pool of pure self-loathing and disgust. I have more than enough reason to feel that way; I've committed crimes against humanity. You don't── you're just scared. You're shutting yourself out of a wonderful world of possibilities. You can find people who will love you for who you are. People who won't make it a conditional type of love. You can choose who you want as a family, and who to give the privilege of knowing you." A handful of seconds passed without either of us saying anything, but he swiped that silence away like he would to a fly after squeezing my shoulder. "Dan, have you ever kissed a guy? Touched one? Are you... curious?"

"What if I don't want to tell you?"

I felt Roger shrug from the movement of his bed. "It's fine with me, I already know the answer. I asked out of formality." A squeak escaped me. "A perk from the job, I guess," he mumbled. "I, I picked up on how to read people. The generals. And you grew up with me, too, so... I know exactly what you want, and... and I'll do it."

"What?"

"If it helps you, I'll do it," Roger said, his voice deepening more than I thought was possible, making me swoon more than I could handle, and right then and there it happened, the exact scenario I had willed myself to prevent by getting an air mattress: he plopped himself onto my space── we were on the same bed. "I'll show you just how bad it is to damn yourself, Dan. I'll make you understand in the one way you won't be able to set aside or deny to yourself, and you'll love every single second of it."

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Nobody will know, my greatest desire whispered in my ear. It's just you and me here, in this room. Nobody else matters.

Fuck was all I could reply to him as I felt myself give in to the side of me I had bottled up for years.

Within the lush secrecy of his cool, dark room, the exciting dreams I had wished for miraculously came true.