I knew that question was going to come up. I had hoped that it was going to take Ryan longer to ask it though. I wasn’t quite ready for it so soon after revealing Mikey’s secret. Ryan seemed to sense my uneasiness with his question.
“You don’t have to answer. I’m sorry for asking. It’s none of my business.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“It kinda is your business. You’re my boyfriend and we shouldn’t have secrets from one another.” I still hadn’t answered his question.
He ran his fingers through my wet hair. I could hear soft footsteps pacing around the room. If Ryan heard them he didn’t mention them. I suspected he was just hoping they would stop.
“This will probably sound stupid, but I’m not really sure of the answer to that question.” I admitted.
Ryan kept slowly stroking my hair. I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t know what to say. Part of me felt relieved that someone else finally knew the secret. But part of me was terrified that I’d let my friend down. “You hadn’t put a label on it?” Ryan asked carefully. He was clearly curious but didn’t want to overstep.
“Yeah.” I was thankful that he seemed to understand and that I didn’t have to explain.
“Fuck dude.” A quiet sob erupted from Ryan. I was confused by the reaction. “How did you deal with that? Dealing with your own sexuality, the loss of your friend, and the fact that nobody knew that you and he had something.” His voice cracked. I didn’t even attempt to answer him. I knew that my voice would totally fail me if I tried. “For all this time?” He turned and locked eyes with me in the darkness. “You carried that all this time?” I simply shook my head. I couldn’t speak.
We sat in silence for a while. The room had quieted down. Ryan and I managed to regain our composure. “Did he get to experience happiness?” Ryan asked. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was asking.
“Like did we have happy moments together?”
“Yeah, did you make each other smile?” He was playing with my hair and it was helping to put me at ease.
“Yeah we made each other smile a lot. We were best friends… had been forever. I can’t honestly put my finger on a specific moment where things started to change between us. It was so gradual and felt so natural that neither of us mentioned it. I know that in my head I just wrote it off as what best friends were for the longest time. I think he did the same thing too. We were just comfortable with each other. We were just really close. I would tell myself shit like that every time we started to blur the line between friendship and more.” My voice wavered slightly but I kept going. “Eventually it was obvious that we had strayed beyond friendship. We never… had sex or anything. But laying in bed like this…” I caressed Ryan’s face. “Became a regular occurrence.”
Ryan leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead.
“I was the first to admit it. I told him right here. We were in bed, just like this and I just blurted it out. I told him, Mikey I think I’m gay.” The tears started to stream down my face. “He admitted that he was too right after.” I took a deep breath and pushed on. “It was scary, but at the same time it was liberating and exciting. All of a sudden there was the potential of something with the person I cared about most in this world. It was okay that we had tiptoed beyond the boundaries of friendship.”
I looked at Ryan. In the darkness I could only see the silhouette of his face. I suddenly had a flashback of that night. We had been laying just like this. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair. Mikey’s hair was the same length, just not quite as soft. The words drifted out of my mouth by themselves. “Mikey reacted differently though. When he found out that I felt the same way, he almost saw it as a threat. He wanted me to be straight so that there was no risk of anything ever happening between us. That way he could stay ‘straight’. He knew his dad wouldn’t accept him any other way. Spending time with me began an internal struggle for him. I could tell that he wanted nothing more than to hold me, but he started to keep his distance. I gave him space figuring he just needed time. I saw his struggle…” My voice cracked. “I saw it. And it became my struggle too. I tried to help him get through it. I offered to go back to being just friends. I offered to help him find someone to talk to… I didn’t know what else to do. That last night, he came over. He was different. Happier. It looked like he was free. He smiled for the first time in ages. I thought…” A sob snuck out but I continued. “I thought that he had finally accepted himself and that we were going to be happy together.” My hands began to tremble and Ryan gently cupped them in his own hands.
