by David Horne
The heat of his body touching mine reminded me of the intimate moments that we shared, and a desire to repeat it right there came into my head, but I shut it out.
“What do you want?” I asked him aggressively.
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
I looked him right in the eyes and ignored his pretentious smile.
“Do you have a thing for public sex?” I asked him angrily.
“Maybe.”
“Then, ask your girlfriend.”
I turned around and reached for the door, but Daniel stopped me, turning around to face him. His other hand suddenly grabbed my dick through my pants, and I realized that I was hard. Why was that turning me on as well?
“If you want to walk away, why are you hard?” he asked me, again, with a very cocky smile.
“I don’t think with my dick, unlike you. I am going to walk out of here even more angry with you than I was before.” I said, turning around again.
Daniel’s arm grabbed me one more time, and I was starting to get annoyed by the fact that he was still physically more athletic than me, even though I’ve been hitting the gym all the time since he left.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His smile was gone. His expression was now more faithful to Daniel that I’ve always known.
“Why did you do that?” I asked him.
“I don’t know…” he replied, shrinking his shoulders.
“Do you even love Carla?” I asked, even if deep down, I already knew the answer.
“I think I’m in love with someone else.” He revealed. “I think that I’ve always been. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“I’m not falling for that one.”
“It’s true. I mean it. You read my diary! I’ve always felt something for you too, and when I found out that you also felt the same, I can’t get you off my mind.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you really hurt me, as a friend. And that, to me, matters the most.”
This time, I was able to walk away. Daniel didn’t try to stop me. Even though I was really moved by his revelation and by the fact that he was finally able to admit it to himself, I wasn’t going to forgive his actions.
I went back to my seat, where Raja was waiting for me to continue watching the movie together. I appreciated that he didn’t watch it without me. Daniel got back into his seat right after me, and I’m pretty sure that Raja was able to figure out that we were just together.
Raja pressed play, and I embraced the sound of the movie, taking over the thoughts on my mind. The film was indeed excellent, a hidden gem that I was now glad Raja showed me. However, there were still some flight left to go.
Dinner was about to be served, and I noticed that Carla wasn’t sitting with Daniel anymore. She had moved into another seat, about five rows away from us. I wonder if he said something that made her angry.
Raja began to show me some pictures that he had on his tablet of him and his dog. Once again, his hand was leaning on my leg, and our bodies were so close that I could hear him breathe. He showed me some funny videos of his dog, and as I was laughing, I saw Daniel staring our way like he was about to throw Raja off the plane.
A part of my subconscious was flattered by it, but my mind was so confused about everything. Discovering that we have been in love with each other during high school was enough to reignite the flame between us, and I could feel the tension between us again, just like I thought when we were kids.
I knew that he was mightily struggling with his sexuality, and I knew that his dad was very conservative. He was a retired marine captain and was also very strict when it came to raising his son. He didn’t even treat me the same way as he used to since he found out that I was out.
However, that was no excuse to treat me like trash and then go on to tell lies about me and even start to date my best friend. Now he wants to confess his love for me? It was odd. Maybe he did lose the sense of who he is and doesn’t even know what he wants anymore.
Dinner was great, and now almost everyone was getting ready to sleep. Usually, I can never sleep on airplanes or anywhere else other than my bed, really. But this was going to be such a long flight, I had no other choice but to force myself to try and fall asleep for just a while.
I woke up gently with a tap on my shoulder. It was Carla, waking me up. She signaled me to follow her, and we both headed to a couple seats at the front. There were a lot of seats empty over that section, so we were safely far away from everyone else.
“I have to tell you something,” Carla said. “I’m sorry that I made you go through all this, but I had no other choice,” she revealed.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“About all of this, being with Daniel and not talking to you anymore.”
“You’ve really hurt me, Carla,” I confessed.
“I know,” she said softly. “And you have every right not to forgive me. I just want you to know why I had to do it.”
“What do you mean?”
Carla stared back onto my eyes, and I finally saw the same caring Carla that I always knew.
“Daniel’s father has something on me… A secret of my own. He’s friends with my dad and, the day before Daniel came back, he came into my house. He threatened me and said that I had to get close to his son.”
“What?” I asked in shock.
“Yeah. When I stopped by that day to talk to him, he was crying and began to say that you tried to kiss him. I knew that he was full of shit, but I saw an opportunity to get close to him, so I went along with his lie.”
I couldn’t move, and I was also incapable of looking at her face. My mind was focused on her words, but I was unable to process it.
“I am really sorry. I never meant to hurt you, but I know that I did,” Carla continued. “I always knew that none of what he said was true, but I had to pretend. And that hurt me in more ways than you can imagine.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked her in a very harsh tone.
“Because he just told me that he’s in love with someone else. I knew that he was talking about you, so I came clean to him. I also can’t stand the fact that I was with him knowing that neither of us wanted to.”
I was staring at the ground, but it was like my eyes were shut off. My mind was humming a sound that was making it impossible to process that information and to think clearly.
“I’m going back to my seat now,” I informed her, getting up.
She didn’t say anything else, and I did manage to get back to my seat. Daniel was also awake, and he signaled me to look at my phone, which I ignored and I deliberately placed my phone on the tray, with the screen facing down.
I tried to close my eyes again and made the best of my efforts not to wake up Raja, but he had just opened his eyes. He looked at me.
“You can’t sleep?” he asked me.
“No, I just slept a little. I’m okay now.”
“Okay. I’ll try to sleep a bit more, though.”
“Of course,” I said, smiling.
Daniel got up and tapped on my shoulder. He knew that I wasn’t asleep, but I still ignored him and didn’t open my eyes. Daniel hit on my shoulder one more time, and then I turned around, totally ignoring him. He must’ve given up after that, and I managed to fall back asleep.
Between waking up a lot during the night, I must’ve slept something like seven hours. This is why I hate sleeping on planes, I can’t when I have a consistent stream of troubling thoughts. Or maybe I was also overthinking everything that I had just learned the day before. Perhaps it was both.
Daniel was asleep, but Raja was awake, already watching something else on his tablet. It was a gay romance movie. I wasn’t shocked, but I was surprised since I had no idea that he was also gay. He looked at me and noticed that I had just woken up.
“Good morning,” Raja says to me.
“Hey,” I reply, still sleepy. “What time is it?” I ask him when I notice that most people are still sleeping.
“It’s 7:30am,” he informs me while looking at his watch.
I looked over to the side and notice that Daniel was also waking up now. His eyes found mine in just a matter of seconds, and his face softened like he was at peace with the image of me. My eyes were trapped into his, and I couldn’t look away. Maybe it was because my brain still wasn’t functioning correctly.
Daniel’s lips forged a soft smile, and I knew that I had to act. The first thing I could think of was to look away, but since my eyes were working on their own will, I had to turn my entire head away, staring at Raja instead.
When Raja saw that I turned my head to him, he also smiled. My expression suddenly became a terrified one, and my brain immediately woke up. Without knowing what else to do, I knew that I had to get out of there, and that’s what I did. Even though Raja was looking at me while trying to decipher what was on my mind, I didn’t say a word to him and just walked away.
I took my stuff and went to sit next to Carla, who was already awake. Maybe it was an instinct of my body to come to sit next to her since I immediately regretted it, but it was already done.
“Hi.” She said, looking surprised.
“Can I sit here?” I asked after I had already sat down.
Carla nodded positively, and I relaxed.
“What happened?” she asked me.
“I just couldn’t stay back there anymore,” I revealed.
“Because of Daniel?”
The only response that I could give at that moment was a shrug. I didn’t feel comfortable yet talking to Carla again. I was still hurting a lot, and even though she justified that her actions were a result of blackmail, I still don’t think that anything would be able to excuse her actions.
I leaned my head on my seat and closed my eyes. I had just barely woken up, but my head was so tired from so much thinking that I couldn’t tolerate being awake any longer. However, I wasn’t going to get any sleep, once my phone notified me of a new message from Daniel.
Daniel: Slept well?
The absurdness of his communications toward me was making me crazy. For what I could finally understand, he feels something for me. Maybe, to some degree, more physically than romantically. Nevertheless, he knows that he is attracted to me.
The way that he chose to handle such feelings was to leave to go study in a different state and to cut any ties with me. Now that he has returned, so did the affection he nurtured for me. The thing is that because of his uptight father, he decided to pretend to date my best friend and make a fool out of me.
The lack of actual consideration toward me is ridiculous. How can Daniel say that he loves me and then do what he did? And then, how in the hell, does he have the nerve to talk to me like nothing ever happened?
I finally blocked his social media profile on the apps that I had on my phone. There was no way I was letting his toxicity into my life again. Even though I still felt something substantial for him. However, I wasn’t going to be humiliated anymore.
If anything, Carla was the one who deserved a second chance. She explained what happened and apologized. Daniel never did that. However, my heart couldn’t forgive her just yet. I still needed more time.
It was around 8:00am, and breakfast was being served. There were still about ten hours of flight left, and I had no idea what to do during that time. Carla was quietly reading a book and wasn’t paying that much attention to me, which I appreciated. She understood that I needed space after everything.
However, Daniel didn’t understand that, as he was now standing next to me and tapping on my shoulder.
“Can we talk?” he insisted.
“No,” I rudely replied, turning my face away from him.
I looked at Carla, and she was staring at both of us, not knowing what to do. Unexpectedly she stood up and left toward the bathroom. Daniel immediately took her seat and was now staring at my face.
“Why are you ignoring me?” he asked.
“Why do you think?” I sarcastically replied.
Daniel looked away with a sad expression on his face. Part of me was feeling sorry to see him hurting, but I had to be stronger since he made me feel a lot worse. I won’t just act like he didn’t.
“I’m really sorry,” he started. “For everything that I’ve put you through.
I believed him. However, that wasn’t nearly enough to make up for his mistakes. But it was a start.
“Okay,” I coldly replied.
Daniel sighed and looked away once more.
“I wasn’t in the right place. I mean, I’m still not. I’m so confused! Getting back here just made everything worse... I’m really sorry for fucking things up. I realize now that you mean a lot to me, and I want you in my life.
I don’t know if I love you yet, but I feel something significant for you. Something that I’ve never felt before in my life, for anyone. And I guess that this feeling was always with me since we were just teenagers. Going away didn’t make me forget you, it just made me hide what I was really feeling and become a different person.”
Wow. Now, that was honest. I understood what Daniel was saying, and it wasn’t anything new. I just couldn’t see myself forgiving him after all of this. Not that easily, at least.
I didn’t reply. To be honest, I really didn’t know what to say at that moment. Daniel stared at me once more and then got up.
“Just know that I will fight for you. I hope that you can just give me a chance, too,” he said, right before leaving.
Carla got back just in time for the flight attendant to take our breakfast orders. I couldn’t eat that much, due to the incredibly tight knot in my stomach. But I still ordered some scrambled eggs and a coffee.
“Do you want to talk?” Carla asked me.
“About what?” I asked, pretending to not know what she was referring to.
“About Daniel...”
“Not really.”
“Look,” she said. “We never did anything when we were together. Daniel would always make up excuses for it. That was when I began to realize that he was in love with someone else. At first, I didn’t know it was you. Not going to lie, but he played a very convincing straight dude.”
“It isn’t because of that. I’m angry about what Daniel said about me.” I explained.
“It was just an act. I knew that Daniel was hiding something about you, I just didn’t know that he loved you. He was always asking me about you and what you liked. That’s when I began to realize that he was in love with you, and then it all made sense.”
“If you knew that, then why did you stay with him?”
Carla’s expression became rigid. She clenched her teeth and looked away.
“One day, I’ll let you know why,” she said softly.
What could the reason be? What did Daniel’s father have against her that would make for compelling blackmail? Whatever it was, Carla wasn’t going to tell me anytime soon. She rarely did hide anything away from me, so it was probably something really personal.
Carla took out her phone and her headphones and began to watch something. Unlike Raja, she didn’t ask me if I would’ve like to join her. She was probably still trying to give me as much space as possible.
Thinking about Raja reminded me that I kind of left him without saying anything. Probably I took the interpretation of his smile too far. He was perhaps just being nice. I don’t think that Raja could feel anything for me.
I got up and went back to my seat next to him. Daniel smiled when he saw me approach, but that smile completely vanished once he understood that I was going to Raja.
Raja looked up at me and paused the music on his phone. He then removed the earphones and made space for me to sit down. Since I didn’t bring any of my stuff back, I think it was clear that I wasn’t planning on staying.
“Hey,” I said softly.
“Hi,” he also said with a soft smile on his face.
“I’m sorry I left without saying anything.”
“It’s okay. Is everythi
ng okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Raja smiled again and took a look at his phone. It was interesting to me how cool with everything he was, and he also never asked too many questions, which I appreciated.
I didn’t sit down next to him, and he honestly didn’t seem to care. Maybe I would come to regret it later, but at that moment in time, I felt like sitting down next to Daniel, where Carla was once seated.
The glow in his eyes once he saw me approach him and actually sat down next to him gave me chills. He rejoiced. The smile on his face was impossible to control. Seeing him like that and knowing that I was the reason for such excitement was making me feel happy too. I was getting tingly just thinking about the fact that this attractive guy who was also my first love is now feeling something toward me.
Maybe, under different circumstances, we could have something together. I never had a boyfriend, although I always fantasized about it. But I never actually thought that I could date Daniel. Not only had I always thought that he was straight, but I also thought that a guy like him would never fall for a guy like me.
He’s the opposite of me, especially physically. He’s strong, muscular, confrontational, masculine – the type of guy who would protect me at all costs and hold me in his arms whenever I was scared. That’s what he used to do when we were friends back in the day.
I’m weak. Skinny, although I have defined muscles, I was never able to beef up. And I avoid any problems, always hide when things get too hard and need lots of reassuring.
If I take my time to think about it, we are kind of a perfect match. Daniel was capable of completing me, and he is capable of loving me and just wanting to take care of me.
“Hey,” he said, with his eyes still glowing.
I just nodded my head without saying anything. Maybe I was starting to overthink everything, especially my decision to sit down in this seat.
“What are you watching?” I asked him, pointing at his laptop.
He was watching a show that I immediately recognized because I watch it too. It’s quite popular and has a lot of gay romantic and sexual scenes in it. It even has a scene between two male friends that occasionally have sex together. The thing is that both are bisexual in the show. Maybe that relationship between them was what inspired Daniel to hook up with me.