Cabin Nine [Original]

15

That summer, Jack comes home and we spend six hours just getting as close to each other as we can get with his parents in the room. They don't want to spend six hours watching their son fall asleep on his boyfriend, so they leave us alone.

I end up asleep too.

And I wake up in Jack's room. He's not asleep, just staring at me. He smiles when I open my eyes and I can't help but smile back. I never realized how much I missed his hair, his eyes, his freckles.

I love him so much I can hardly stand it.

"So my parents are still gone," he whispers, grinning.

"I can't believe we just finished our first year of college and we still have to tiptoe around your parents," I reply.

Jack just laughs.

His parents come back while we're in the shower. Which makes for an awkward getting-out situation. But they don't mention it and we don't mention it. Louisa and Susie come over and we have dinner together.

It's fun and amazing and... god, I can't believe we didn't do this sooner. It's so nice to have him home.

And then it's time for camp. We're counselors this year. We're finally old enough.

But we really don't want to hide our relationship from anyone. We told Jason last summer that we wanted to be counselors. He seemed really excited about it, probably mostly because we already know how everything works and we know everyone.

Except we also told him that we're both undeniably gay. And that we wouldn't come back unless the camp was undeniably LGBT+ friendly. He was unfazed. He said that they were and that this year's theme would reflect it.

So apparently the theme is support or acceptance or all that junk. And it's all rainbows.

I kind of simultaneously love it and hate it.

Most of the little kids don't understand the whole thing, but that's fine. They're completely in awe of me and Jack. A lot of them didn't know that two guys could be in love. There are a lot less people this year. It was in the brochure that this camp was LGBT+ friendly, so a lot of people stopped sending their kids.

But that means that the ones who came are the ones who don't care that we're gay. So that's good.

There are three unendingly boring junior camp weeks. And then teen camp. I don't know how that's gonna go. We get a week of a break before teen camp. Most people go home, but Jack and I get to spend an entire week together in a fancy hotel that his parents are paying for.

It's all amazing. I post at least three million pictures of us on Instagram. I have a lot of followers, probably because of the heterochromia pictures, and probably more because I'm gay. I've had people DM me to tell me they follow me because I'm gay. So yeah, that's how my life's going.

But it's different this time. Because my mother likes one of the photos.

I don't know what to do with that. I really don't. Jack's no help. He wants me to call her. But I haven't spoken to her in over a year. And before that, she wanted nothing to do with me. So yeah, it's complicated.

I ignore her.

Teen camp is awesome. A lot of Jack's friends were younger there and he's insanely excited that he can boss them around. They don't like it much, but he's nice about it.

Hunter is there. I know that means that he's not homophobic. But he's not talking to me.

Jack can tell that it's bothering me. He keeps insisting that if Hunter doesn't want to talk to us because we're together, he'd rather not be friends with him.