playing for the other team (bxb)

[8] i guess i'm the only one

That night, I do end up going over Sawyer's house, just as I had told Jamie.

When I originally told Jamie that I had plans with Sawyer, it had been a lie that I made up to get out of hanging out with him. Lying to Jamie makes me feel guilty, though, so eventually, I ended up texting Sawyer to ask him if he did want to hang out. I suppose that either way, I did still lie to Jamie, but I feel a lot better about lying if I end up doing what I said I would.

It seemed that I had chosen a good weekend to ask Sawyer to hang out. Usually, he's busy with Naomi but this weekend she was busy working on a class project. The two of them are always together. It's like they're completely obsessed with one another. Don't get me wrong, I think that they make a good couple, but it's definitely become harder to hang out with Sawyer alone ever since he's gotten into a relationship.

Sawyer had ordered us a pizza and we now sat in his bedroom eating. I took the last bite of my slice before putting the rest of the crust down on the plate.

"Are you going to Ethan's party next Friday?" I ask.

Sawyer, still with a bit of food in his mouth, responds, "Ethan's party?"

"Ethan Thompson," I clarify.

If someone at school was throwing a party, it was going to be Ethan Thompson. He was one of the few people in our small graduating class who had a big enough of a house to throw a party who also had parents that didn't care about him throwing parties. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Ethan Thompson. He's one of the other guys on the football team and he's Ostrowski's best friend. That alone speaks on who he is as a person. Still, just because I went to his party didn't mean that I had to interact with him.

"Are Lydia and Jamie going?"

"Lydia's probably going to go, but Jamie..." I take a pause, "I mean, you know he isn't going."

"Just figured I'd ask. You never know with that one."

Jamie didn't like to go to parties, especially not any party thrown by someone on the football team. He wasn't usually afraid of the guys on the team, but the idea of being surrounded by a drunk group of people who were less than fond of him wasn't ideal to him.

"So, do you think you'll go?"

"Eh, maybe," Sawyer answers, "I just don't know if I feel like dealing with all of those annoying people." This was honestly fair, considering a lot of the people there were going to be just like the guys on the team, and this certainly wasn't a crowd that Sawyer was fond of. Sawyer was a far more laid-back person who was honestly way too mature to deal with those types of people.

"I don't really wanna go either, honestly," I state.

"Why even bother then?"

"The guys on the team expect me to show up and Lydia and Mikaela will both be there. I mean, Mikaela said that she wanted me to go."

"Aw, I forgot you have a little girlfriend now."

Sometimes, when the people in my friend group made comments like this, it almost felt condescending. Out of the five of us, I'm definitely the least active when it comes to dating or having hookups. Sawyer and Naomi had been dating for quite some time now, Lydia had flings from time to time, and though I had never seen Jamie in an actual relationship, it seemed that he always had a hookup. I, on the other hand, rarely got into anything that even resembled a relationship. I dated a girl for a few months freshman year and I've hooked up with a few girls at parties but other than that, my love life has been barren.

This doesn't necessarily bother me, though. I guess that dating just isn't something that I think about that often. Honestly, I'd rather be with my friends than do anything like that.

"She's not my girlfriend," I mumble, "I don't think we're compatible at all. I don't know."

"Why do you say that?"

"It just doesn't seem like she's looking for... I don't know... a deeper connection? I just feel like for me to date someone, I have to feel close to them. I don't know, I guess that's stupid."

"How do you know she doesn't want that?"

I let out a laugh. "When she came over the other day, in the first five minutes of us being up in my room, she made out with me. In fact, it seemed like the only reason she was really interested in me was to find out if I was gay or not."

"If you're gay or not?" Sawyer questioned.

"Yeah, I don't know. It was weird," I brush this off without a full explanation. I know that if I do explain how she thought I was gay because of how I talk about Jamie, Sawyer would just agree with what she said and make it into some sort of a joke. Right now, the last thing that I needed was to have another person talking about how they think that I have some sort of a thing for Jamie. I segue out of this conversation and into another conversation that was still somewhat related, "Speaking of this, I have a weird question... but you can't judge."

"Knock yourself out."

"Do you ever have any gay thoughts?"

"Gay thoughts as in thoughts about gay people or gay thoughts as in fucking dudes?"

"Second one."

"Hm," Sawyer thinks hard on this for a few seconds, "No. Why?"

Obviously, I had been asking because of my thoughts during my make-out session with Mikaela the other day, but now that Sawyer didn't seem to have any similar experiences, it felt that I couldn't come right out and say the truth about why I was asking. Quickly fabricating a lie, I reply, "Well, Jamie always says all this shit about how sexuality is a spectrum or whatever and how it's really hard to be 100% anything... but I think that it's a whole load of shit... I mean, I've definitely never had any gay thoughts."

I drop the conversation after this but the feeling that something's wrong still lingers.

QOTD: Do you have any unpopular opinions?