Young Blood

Chapter Fourteen

  “W…what?” I asked. John’s words had come like a slap to my face, a sudden reality. No wonder he and Paul had been fighting so much lately. It seemed every day there was a new quarrel between the two of them. I now knew that John actually had somewhat of a reason.

  “You heard me. I caught him with another man.”

  I bit my lip, afraid anything else I might say could be offensive. “Er.. are you sure it was him?”

  “Yes, George, I’m bloody certain!” John took one of the couch pillows and whipped it at the wall. I hated seeing him angry in general; but angry over Paul was something I was terrified of. Love drove everyone crazy, but it especially ruined John. He had been in a relationship with some girl before, and she had left him for another man. He didn’t calm down for three days. Now, angry over Paul cheating, John was unpredictable. There was no telling what would happen.

  I stood there in silence, afraid of what might happen if I ask anything else. Paul was my friend. He definitely didn’t seem like the type of person to cheat on someone that he acted like he loved very much. He and John were the perfect couple, as happy as can be. Why would Paul cheat?

  “It was late last week. You were off doing something.”

  I nodded, hoping John wouldn’t mind my silence.

  “I told Paul I was going to be gone for a few hours, running errands or something like that… everything’s fuzzy to me now. When I came back, I waited in my car for a few minutes.. I think Elvis came on the radio and I was singing along. Like I said, everything’s fuzzy and I’m not sure the exact details. But I happened to glance at our backyard for a moment, and there he was… a man sneaking through our backyard. And when I came back inside, Paul was tidying up the bedroom.”

  I sighed. “John, you know that doesn’t necessarily mean Paul cheated on you, right?”

  “Well…” John hesitated, “It just seemed like it.”

  “It’s nothing to get worked up about, John.” I patted him on the back, sitting down with him on the couch. It always helped to show you care when you were dealing with John. He loved things like that. He always acted tough, but inside, he was a big baby.

  “But I swear he cheated… maybe not that time, but at some point in his life, he’s cheated on me.”

  “Maybe you’re just sensing the fact that he slept with others before you?”

  “Nah.. Paulie was into girls before me.”

  I scoffed. “And you turned him queer?”

  John smiled proudly. “That I did.”

  I pat him on the back. “Er.. congrats.”

  John smirked and I excused myself from the room for a few minutes.. I wanted some time to think. I was feeling rather odd and I didn’t know what it was about. I thought it was about John and Paul at first, but then I realized.. I was feeling strange about Ritchie. Sure, I wasn’t meant to be feeling this way. Equal attraction between two men was strange, foreign, and worst of all: illegal. I had known in the past that my relationship with Ritchie was built on an illegal force, but it had never really hit me before now.

  My entire life, I had grown up seeing men and women holding hands and kissing plastered everywhere. Not once did you see two people of the same gender being intimate. That kind of thought shocked the older generation, them simply thinking it was a phase and that we’d grow out of it. But I knew what Ritchie and I had I couldn’t grow out of. Even though we had only known each other for a short period of time, I could tell we were both head-over-heels in love with each other. I had never felt this kind of a feeling towards anyone before. It was like Ritchie was my entire life: I yearned for him. When he wasn’t near me, everything literally hurt. I would get these aches and pains in my chest, it became hard to breathe, and I felt like I was going to die. I hated when he wasn’t near me.