It's A Gay Thing

9 //

9 // Pris

I lift up my head, to stare at the cheerleaders performing. It’s only practice – but Ari insisted that I see their brand new routine. I’m sitting on the bleachers. There’s no way in hell I’m being thrown in the air.

I adjust my glasses and continue reading my book. Quite frankly, their new choreography doesn’t really interest me. I’ve got Steinbeck to finish.

As I’m about to turn the page, I hear someone yell at me, “Pris, you’re not even looking!”

The whiny voice comes from Arianna. I roll my eyes, “I’m here, isn’t that enough?”

She hops up three levels to get to where I am, in the bleachers. She’s covered in sweat, panting.

“Why can’t you just be distracted for once?”

Ari grabs my book and sets it next to me. I sigh and watch her go back down, onto the field. Angie glances at me, with a small smile. She’s been acting weird lately. Well, weird to my standard is always looking at me and smiling. She seems – shyer than she did before around me. If she has a crush on me that would seriously be the most fucked up thing ever. When I wanted her so bad that I could have done all her homework for her, she didn’t care about me at all. But now that I’m ‘with’ someone, here she comes. Life’s weird like that. When you’re single, it’s a like desert. There’s absolutely no one in sight. When you have someone, masses of people are running after you. Well, masses as in a metaphor. Two people don’t really represent a ‘mass’.

A few minutes later, it’s the end of their training. I go down the stairs, and join them on the field. Angie is a few steps away from me. She’s cleaning out her bag. As all the girls move inside the locker room, Angie is still there, sitting on a bench, drinking some water.

Arianna appears in front of me, blocking my sight on Angie, and hands me her stuff. “Wait here, okay?”

Before I can answer, she’s long gone, skipping into the locker rooms. I roll my eyes and sit on the bench as well. Angie glances at me and slides my way. Next thing I know, she’s right next to me.

“Hey,” she starts. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes, what’s up?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you liked girls?”

“We’re not exactly best friends, you know.”

“Yeah but – I keep thinking that you could have.”

“Well, I wasn’t comfortable with myself,” I trail off. Lie, lie, lie. I accepted my sexuality extremely easily. I was just relieved that I wasn’t weird; I was just gay. It’s like it all made sense all this time. I basically found the missing piece of the puzzle of my life.

She nods, gets up and walks away. That’s I mean. She’s acting weird.

For some reason, she turns around and comes back towards me, “Hey, are you free Saturday?”

“Hm – yeah. Why?”

“There’s a party at my place and I just wanted to know if you could come.”

“Yeah, sure.”

She smiles and leaves. Yeah, definitely weird. I feel something buzzing in my jeans’ pocket. I pull out my phone and look up who the caller is. It’s Dani. A smile automatically appears. I pick up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Pris. It’s Dani.”

“Hey, what’s up?”