Living In Denial

9

TW's:
-Internalised homophobia

George's POV

That morning I woke up early and immediately left to go to school. Sapnap had texted me a few times that he wanted to talk with me about something so I came to school earlier for him.

I arrived there and Sapnap was sitting down on a bench. I smiled at him and sat down after putting my bike in the bike storage.

'What's up?'

'Clay and I had a bad argument, it started off with just discussing something we didn't agree on, but yesterday after training Clay got really mad at me and I feel so bad about it.'

'What happened?'

'Am I in the wrong if I tell you what happened? I just need to talk about it.'

'Go ahead, I won't tell him.'

'He was just staring at some boys in the changing room and he got called gay by some guy. He got really mad and left. I told him that he doesn't have to keep things a secret for me, but he got even more mad. He started being really homophobic and I walked off so it didn't escalate. Then after training he stared at the boys again and I said something about it when we were alone. He just screamed at me how wrong it was and that I had to shut up as long as I didn't know what it was about.'

I nodded slowly. 'I don't know what's going on with him, he has been acting really weird.'

'Have I done something wrong?'

'You haven't, he's just homophobic. He once told me his dad raised him like that.'

Sapnap nodded. 'I'm just annoyed with him, but I'm also sad. He was pretty mean, screaming that he had a girlfriend and I was just jealous, because I didn't have a girlfriend.'

I rolled my eyes. 'He might be confused about his feelings, but it could also be the divorce of his parents. It's a week ago that he fully moved in with his mum and maybe that's harder than he thought.'

Sapnap nodded. 'That's true, I didn't think about that yet. A divorce of your parents must be hard, definitely when everything is changing.'

I nodded. 'I hope he will talk to us once he sorted out his feelings. Maybe he's annoyed that people call him gay while he has a girlfriend. I can understand that that might be annoying.'

'I haven't called him gay, I just said that he could tell me if he was.'

'He could not know it himself or he is actually not gay.'

Sapnap nodded. 'I'll just trust him, if he says he's not gay then we have to believe him.'

'He might have zoned out a few times, he does that a lot.'

'True, but he always zones out, looking at boys.'

'Well, I walked in on those two kissing. He is either good at keeping up an act or he's just straight.'

'Or bisexual or whatever.'

'Could be, but let's leave that to him. He's the only one who is allowed to fill in his sexuality, we aren't.'

Sapnap nodded. 'That's true, if he says he's straight, I'll believe that.'

I smiled and nodded. 'Are you feeling a bit better?'

'I never had a fight with Clay.'

'Me neither, we've always been close.'

'It's fine, I guess. Real friends stay anyway, I'm not going to leave him and if he leaves me then I guess he hasn't been a real friend.'

'He won't leave,' I smiled. 'He's just in a dark period in his life I imagine, he will be alright. We can only help and support him by being nice and by not complaining about his sexuality.'

Sapnap nodded. 'Let's go inside, he's probably sitting somewhere with Evelyn.'

I nodded and we stood up to walk inside together. After walking around for two minutes, we saw Clay sitting. He was indeed sitting next to his girlfriend and we walked to him, sitting down on the chairs next to the table. Clay looked up shortly and looked back down. He was pale, paler than usual.

'Hi,' I smiled. 'Are we still hanging out after school?'

Clay looked up slowly and nodded with a small smile on his face. 'Sure, if you'd like to.'

'Yes, we can finish the code.'

Clay nodded again and Sapnap looked at him. 'Are we okay after yesterday?' Sapnap asked insecurely.

Clay shrugged. 'Yeah, sorry for screaming. I was just really annoyed that four people called me gay that day when I literally have a girlfriend.'

'I'm sorry,' Sapnap said. 'I didn't mean to call you gay.'

Clay nodded slowly and smiled, but his smile wasn't genuine. He was sad about something and that was really obvious. Clay turned his face away and looked at his girlfriend, kissing her cheek. His girlfriend smiled, but Clay still had the same and deadly expression on his face.

I would ask him when we were at home if he looked up what asexual meant. Secretly I really hoped Clay actually stared at boys and hoped even more that he was gay. I had to stay neutral and act like I would be okay with him being both.

How hard I tried to forget Clay, I just couldn't. I was chatting with a lot of people on the dating site I was on, but Clay was better than anyone. I only wished to have him, but that was impossible. He had a girlfriend.

I just stared in front of me and grabbed my phone to look at some texts I had gotten from my matches. I replied to them before and quickly slid my phone down in my pocket as I felt Sapnap look at me shortly.

He couldn't have seen anything and I looked at the table as the bell rang. We all stood up to walk to our first class of the day. I was looking forward to being with Clay again, but I knew it was wrong. I was in love with him and had to forget him, although I would never forget him this way.

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