Truth or Dare (boyxboy)

Chapter 24 - The Gay Thing

"I gotta ask 'cause I gotta know," began Spizzo's question a little later as their conversation continued to move on. The tension had returned after Jacob's dismissal of Spizzo's ability of being good and the two had been quick to dissipate it soon after. They didn't need to fan any flames that would burn down the delicate structure they had been building all night.

That didn't stop Spizzo from toeing the line to test the limits, however. There were very few things that would prevent him from asking questions he knew the other teen hated him for even thinking about (as long as it didn't refer to a certain, now-unmentionable teacher) — and after a night like tonight, with all the information they'd both learnt from each other, this was something he did need to know.

"Did you know you were gay when we were still friends?" he asked, taking a swig from his beer bottle as he waited for Jacob's response.

The other teen groaned as he heard the question, not surprised that it was coming but annoyed nonetheless. "Why are you so focused on this gay thing?" he asked in return.

If it weren't for the cat, which had since returned and placed itself squarely in Jacob's lap for pats, he would've certainly jumped up and rushed over to Spizzo to shake the shit out of him.

Jacob settled on giving the cat the pats it wanted instead.

"C'mon man, it's a simple question," Spizzo hit back for his part of this volley. He wasn't gonna let this ball drop. "Did you know or not?"

Jacob, however, was a stubborn as ever, echoing him last question as he patted the cat harder. The purrs that came from the pampered animal were luckily helping him to keep him cool.

Spizzo, on the other hand, had his flamethrower on full blast. "Hey dude, we've tackled like, some pretty heavy shit tonight and this is what you're running from? At some point we need to stop making every conversation point a hurdle we need to struggle over. If you're ok with being gay, you should talk about it. Are you like, ashamed of it or something?"

Jacob scoffed, rolling his eyes to double down in his disbelief that this was coming out of the other teen's mouth. "Oh god, James, honestly. I wouldn't be ashamed of it if you and your friends haven't tried to shame me for just existing for the last four years. Surely you can wrap your head around why I wouldn't want to open up about it, especially with you. Why would I give you any more ammo than I've already given tonight?"

"Well why stop now if you've already handed over an arsenal?" Spizzo chose to point out. It felt a bit silly to stop at this point of the evening, like giving up on putting icing on an already baked cake. "If tonight is gonna be a new leaf for the two of us, then why not start the new story with some more understanding? If I don't know more about who you are then I'm just gonna stay ignorant about it."

Jacob considered his words for a moment, balancing them to see if they had as much weight as Spizzo acted like they did. "Fine, I will tell you but only if you're truly honest with why you gotta know so badly."

Spizzo shrugged reflexively, more a nagging thought than anything he'd truly considered or assessed. "I don't know, i guess it's not cool to not share something that big with your best friend if you did know before we... broke up," he began to explain, wincing at his last choice of words but unsure what to call it otherwise. "I mean, being gay is a big part of who you are and it should be something that you share with your best friend. It's sorta like if I hid me being a soccer nut from you. Like, I fucking love soccer and even if you didn't give a shit about it when we were kids, you still came to the games and stuff. So you know, its sort of the same, like, I wouldn't have understood it but I would've supported you about it anyway 'cause we were best friends."

"That analogy doesn't fully track and we don't have enough time tonight to unpack that," said Jacob. Although he didn't fully agree with Spizzo's words, and knew that he was painting a more idealistic picture than what would've realistically happened, he couldn't deny that the other teen was making an effort. "But I get what you're trying to say."

Spizzo nodded, happy that his words had been understood. "So?"

Now it was Jacob's turn to shrug, not really sure what to say. "I'm not sure, I can't really say when I knew I was gay, it's sort of small little pieces that sort of came together one day to make me realise I am."

"What do you mean?" the other teen asked, a bit confused at what Jacob was getting at.

"I mean like... remember when I first moved here and everyone was obsessed about who they'd marry one day?" he asked, trying a different tack. He waited for Spizzo to nod before continuing on, "well, all you guys always talked about wanting to marry Steffie Folden or like, Kasia whatever-her-last-name-was—"

"But you always said that you wanted to marry Steffie too?" Spizzo cut in, the memory of it all coming back to him. "We even wrestled over it once."

"Yeah but I was only saying it because you guys were, I couldn't've given two shits about Steffie Folden," Jacob explained, adding, "I was more interested in marrying Ian Morris but I knew then already that I couldn't tell anyone that since I was the only one who didn't want to marry a girl."

"So that's when you knew you're gay then?" Spizzo asked, unsure if that was the end of it.

But Jacob was only getting started. "No, of course not. I didn't know what being gay even really meant until Brokeback Mountain came out like three years later and people were talking about it. Even then, I didn't really realise it applied to me until I started checking out the Year 12s on the bus home when we were in Year 7."

"We were still friends in Year 7 though," Spizzo pointed out, feeling like this was something Jacob could've mentioned.

"Yeah but I couldn't even admit it to myself until like Year 9 and I was still passing it off like I was bi at that point. How could I tell you when I couldn't even tell myself? We weren't friends anymore by the time I did."

"Hmmm ok," Spizzo responded, not sure what he'd really gained from all this new information except to ask, "you thought you were bi?"

"Yeah, it's just a part of the gay journey but it's too complex for me to explain right now," Jacob replied, waving it off. How was he going to explain the intense societal pressure to like to opposite sex that you try to compromise your same sex attraction with pretending like you like girls too? Jacob was sceptical that the other teen had anything in his realm to relate that to — unless it could seemingly tie back to soccer.

Wait.

"Actually no, imagine your entire family, your city, everyone around you in like the biggest Manchester United fan, right, like they're United fans so you gotta be a United fan too, yeah?" he began, the analogy forming in his mind. "But like, you're not really interested in United, you're more into like, Arsenal or like, a third team, I don't remember the soccer teams — anyway, you're an Arsenal fan but you know that everyone expects you to be a United fan so you pretend that you like both when really, you only like Arsenal. Does that make sense?" he finished, waiting expectantly to see if his story paid off.

"You tried to convince yourself that you liked both 'cause the world pressured you to like girls," Spizzo summarised succinctly, adding, "I already got that before your little metaphor but great choice in the team names," with a teasing wink.

"Oh, screw you," groaned Jacob, rolling his eyes as he considered once again why he was subjected himself to all this.

Spizzo just laughed, amused by Jacob's annoyance.

He wasn't an angel, after all.

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A/N: For a book about truth or dare, there hasn't been one in a while lol. That'll change next chapter. Thanks for reading! x