Free Fall

: Chapter 15: "A drunk dare. I get it,"

Chapter 15

(Unedited)

I assume it's morning when I open my eyes-the pain and throbbing in my cerebrum claw at every pathway of my brain. I try blinking the pain away but to no avail. I had no recollection of going back home and being forced to pray to whatever Saint my parents would want me to pray to.

The bedroom wasn't so obvious where I must be. A clock sat on a bedside table while a TV in the bedroom showed a black and white episode about monsters as flickering lights triggered sensations of impending horror. Before I could take any more thought of this, I heard footsteps outside the room.

Maybe I was kidnapped. If I was, I had better get my speech down to a cue now, not that kidnappers would want to hear what I had to say anyway.

"Good morning. I imagine you have a killer headache," a gentle mother-like voice spoke. Scratching my being kidnapped theory as the voice came closer to where I was still laying down, clutching the warm blanket, I realised who it was. Linda with her hair done up in a messy bun, scrubs from work, most likely from last night or early this morning, as she still wore her pyjama pants. Comfort setting in, knowing that Christian brought me here instead of returning me home after getting drunk.

"I'm never drinking again," I tell Linda. Though I was sure that I should be telling my mother that, as Linda sits down on the bed by my feet, as I assumed parents were supposed to do when they care for one of their children when they're sick.

"It's a scary new teenage experience. The words seem to freeze in my mind. "Like you are crushing on Christian," Linda says. I feel as if my veins are frozen as if a thousand butterflies had died at the same time. I haven't even told Christian, but his aunt has already figured it out.

I tell her that the two of us are just friends, convinced that he has convinced me. The line that Christian would say that we were. "I'm gay and," I added. Then reality kicked in. I had just blown the door wide open to Linda; there was no turning back now. Any second now, she'd tell me to get out of Christian's room and her house.

"I've seen the way you two act around each other. Do you think just friends look at each other that way?" Linda asks. Weighing the options between my parents and Linda, at least Linda was willing to attempt to have this conversation. My parents would be throwing the words of religion into this and most likely send me to conversion therapy.

"I still haven't even," I began to say, not knowing where in the world my words would take me. Is there a way to make her understand that I told Christian that I liked him while drunk last night? Shouldn't I be having this conversation with him? Or was that the point of having this conversation with her.

"It doesn't matter what you have and haven't done. You're a boy who likes my nephew, and I support that," Linda tells me as she hands me a bottle of water. "Being gay is something that you shouldn't have to be ashamed of," she adds as she gets up and hugs me. My body is unaccustomed to the foreign embrace, and I only hug her back when I begin to cry.

***

I stare at the ceiling while my comfortable bed takes hypnotical revenge on me during a Degrassi binge. Christian should have been my priority instead. Send him a text, take a selfie-something that will induce him to speak out and want to discuss the elephant in the room.

I started typing, but I ended up erasing what I had written. I did not want to convey my desperation in my voice, not even via text. As I remember the memorable scene where Drake gets shot on Degrassi, I get the courage to text him to come over. If I were going to break the ice, this would be the time. My parents are still not home from their shopping venture, leaving us alone.