Enemies with benefits

Chapter 15: To be normal

Ezra's life could never really be described as easy.

For as long as he could remember, his parents were either arguing or threatening divorce. After 17 years of a nonfunctional relationship, it was only last month that his parents finally got divorced. It was a suffocating mix of uncomfortable custody battles, manipulation from both his parents to lie about which one of them was the better caregiver to the judge, lonely nights as his parents ran away to their lovers leaving Ezra by himself. In conclusion, it was awful.

Years upon years of this had made him silently hope for them just to get a divorce already; he was foolish enough to believe that the divorce would settle everything. He had hoped that it would end the arguments, the screaming, the yelling if they ended their marriage and lived apart. Of course, that wasn't the case.

Even now his parents would scream at each other the moment they came into contact. Ezra had been forced to live with his dad after his mother -the one he believed to be the better out of the two- threw her phone at Ezra and demanded he call his father like he was plotting to do anyway. But he wasn't. He didn't have favouritism, he simply tried his best to be a good kid but he always seemed to get screamed at anyway.

His life didn't get any easier when puberty hit and he slowly came to the sickening realisation that he was attracted to boys and one boy at his school in particular. He'd done so many 'am I gay quizzes' each time he tried to get the straight/heterosexual answers, but one day it occurred to him that if he was doing 'am I gay quizzes' at all, the answer was probably yes. Straight people didn't do the quizzes.

To say he dealt with his feelings well would be a lie. He tried his hardest to be straight (even trying to pray the gay away a few times) but that backfired on him when he got so frustrated, he slept with the school bicycle and got caught.

He could still remember the way she kept shoving her tongue down his throat and her acrylic nails scraping against his naked skin. She'd led him to her bedroom and they both undressed. Joanna had bit and sucked on his skin and let out cute little giggles that would've aroused any man that heard them; but not Ezra. Eventually, he willed himself to get hard at her lustful touches but he did so with his eyes closed whilst picturing someone else. They slid under the sheets of Joanna's bed and Ezra thought he was suffocating under them. It had been so hot under them and he felt he was being crushed by the weight, at the same time he had to save face and fuck Joanna.

It's not that it felt bad, she certainly knew what she was doing, but it felt wrong somehow. He kept his eyes closed the entire time picturing the boy he liked. What would he look like under Ezra? What sounds would he make? How would he feel? Ezra wanted to hear him cry out his name for him to say-

"Ezra?" His heart had stopped at that moment. His body petrified in place. Even Joanna's face was consumed with shock at the sight of Colby standing at her bedroom door. Ezra would never forget how heartbroken he'd looked. The very boy he'd been fantasising about had shown up but instead of looking at him with lust (like Ezra had hoped), Colby glared at Ezra with such hate and he would carry on to do so from then on.

It was for the best, Ezra decided. This way everybody thought Ezra was straight as rumours of him sleeping with Joanna spread like wildfire and Colby stayed far away from him, which helped Ezra reign in his feelings for him. Of course, that didn't work out either.

Colby suddenly jumped Ezra whilst he was in the locker room shower. It took Ezra by surprise but he wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste. That entire week that he spent kissing, touching and then making love with Colby had been the best week of his life. Sure, Colby was still pretty hostile towards him at times but Ezra didn't mind, whatever kept him close.