Deceptive Secrets

by RM Walker

  “Us too?” Matt asked.

  “No. Just the parents, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Claire aren’t going, and neither are the others. Your dad’s going though.” Josh sat next to his twin on the floor.

  “Dad? Mum said he went to London this morning.”

  “He did, he’s coming down in the afternoon, staying overnight, and then going back the next day.”

  “Family pow wow that doesn’t include us, means it’s about us,” Jake muttered.

  “Great.” Matt slumped into Nate’s chair. “What’s the betting it’s our lack of moral code that’s up for discussion?”

  “I’m not betting against a sure thing.” Nate snorted, sitting on the bed.

  “Your dad and mum have our backs, so does Gramps,” Josh said. “What’s that?”

  Nate looked at Josh, but he was talking to Jake. “Let’s give it a couple of minutes for the coast to clear then get Lily.”

  “Bloody hell,” Josh hooted.

  “Damn, Nate, where did you get this? ‘About me: Everything a girl needs to know about puberty’.” Jake read the title aloud as he held a book up for Matt to see as well.

  “Is there something you need to tell us?” Matt lifted an eyebrow.

  Nate’s cheeks grew warm as he flipped Matt off.

  “Seriously, why have you got it? Where did you get it?” Jake asked.

  “Online. I don’t want to mess up. It’s all right for you, Matt, you’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt. And you two”—he looked over at the twins—“you don’t struggle with her at all.”

  “Struggle?” Matt swung the chair from side to side. “You don’t think you love her?”

  “I do love her, but I’ve never had a girlfriend.”

  “Neither have we,” Josh reminded him.

  “Borrow the book. I’ve finished it,” he suggested.

  “Why?” Jake pulled a face at Josh. “We did biology, we know where everything goes and what happens.”

  “It goes through all the emotional, moody stuff we’re going to have to deal with every month.” Nate took the book, flipping through. He’d been fascinated and mildly disturbed the first time he’d read it.

  “Oh bugger, we didn’t think of that,” Josh said.

  “I used to avoid Connie, she was a real bitch. I couldn’t do anything right.” Matt plucked the book from Nate’s hand to flip through it.

  “She was a real bitch all the time.” Nate snorted. “But we can’t avoid Lily for several days.”

  “She won’t be a bitch,” Josh said. “It’s not in her.”

  “Yeah, well, forewarned is forearmed.” Nate scratched the back of his neck. “That and well, I thought it might go into how to get her off, y’know. But it doesn’t.” The heat in his cheeks spread down his neck.

  “Matt would know,” Jake said, leaning back on his hands. “Go on, Matt, we want to know too.”

  He stopped swinging his chair abruptly. “I’m not talking to you about that. Ask your dad.”

  The twins pulled faces at him. “And did you ask your dad?”

  Matt choked. “Not likely.”

  “Exactly,” Josh said. “Nate, ask him your questions.”

  “Me? Why me?” He wasn’t going to go that far.

  “Well, you’re the one who bought the sex book. We didn’t even think of it until now,” Josh replied.

  “It’s not a sex book.” Nate glared at them. “You ask him if you want to know so badly.”

  “It wasn’t great, not at first.” A hint of red crossed Matt’s cheekbones, and Nate was glad he wasn’t the only one embarrassed.

  “But it got good, right?” Josh rolled onto his stomach and propped his chin on Jake’s leg.

  “Yeah, I guess, after a while. She wasn’t a virgin, so she knew what to do. It sort of worked, I guess.” The colour deepened across his cheeks.

  “Did you get off?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah, every time. It was amazing until I’d pull out and then it was weird. I felt weird with her.” Matt spun the chair from side to side again.

  “Why was it weird if you got off?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t know. At the time it was incredible, the best feeling, but I don’t know. It just....it’s a bit like Christmas, I guess. Everyone gets super excited, and the actual day is brilliant, but then January comes around and it’s just flat.” He shrugged. “It’s odd talking about it with you guys. You’ve never asked before.”

  “Never wanted to know,” Nate said. “Still don’t want to know. I just wanted to know what to do, y’know, to make it good for her. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “Nate, this is a book designed for girls to know what’s going on through puberty,” Matt said. “Why did you think it would have anything in there for that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know which one to get. Do you know how many books there are out there?” he exclaimed.

  “Get the Kama Sutra,” Jake suggested.

  “That’s just positions.” Nate shook his head. “I want to know how to touch—”

  There was a light tap on the door, and Lily poked her head around. “Your dad said it was all right to come on up. Hope I’m not too early.”

  Matt shoved the book at Nate. He threw it towards the twins who jumped away from it like it was on fire.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. Hey, it’s great to see you.” Matt lifted a hand in a wave. “It’s great, isn’t it, Nate?”

  “Do you want me to go away for a bit?” Her cheeks were fire red for some reason.

  Nate got up and tried to casually kick the book under the bed as he went towards her. “No, you surprised us, that’s all. But it’s a great surprise, isn’t it, guys?” He needed to change the subject and fast.

  “Yeah, we weren’t doing anything. Nothing at all.” Jake shifted closer to Josh and pushed the corner of the book that was still showing.

  “Are you looking at porn? God! Sorry, it’s none of my business. I can come...I mean I can leave and then come...Um, I mean if you’d prefer to come...Damn, I’ll go.” She backed out, pulling the door closed.

  “Don’t go,” Nate shouted. “It’s not porn, honestly. It’s about you.”

  “Nate!” The three of them shouted even as he realised his mistake.

  “I mean, it’s not about you, but it’s about you. Sort of.” He shut up, aware he was only making it worse.

  “What?” Her cheeks were stained with the same red he knew was on his.

  Josh pulled the book out and held it up.

  “Oh! Where did you get that? I had one just like it, but I lost it a couple of moves ago.” She went over, took the book and sat on the bed, flipping through it. “Why have you got this? It’s for girls.”

  “I know. Well, now I do.” Nate tugged his glasses off. “Matt, you explain it.”

  “Fuck you, you bought it, you explain it. Besides I’m sure I heard your dad calling me.”

  “Yeah, and us.” Josh jumped to his feet, hauling Jake with him. All three pushed and shoved their way out, closing the door behind them. Nate debated telling her he’d been called as well and run like the cowards his cousins were.

  “It’s okay.”

  Her voice was quiet, but he could hear her flipping through the pages. Hot embarrassment was making him sweat. He wasn’t sure which was worse, getting caught with porn or getting caught with that stupid book.

  “Nate,” she said his name again, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “I don’t know why you have this. I mean, I get why you’d have porn. You’re a guy, it’s well, it’s none of my business.” She laid it on the bed beside her.

  He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to tell her, how to put it into words. So he said the first thing that came into his mind. “I don’t look at porn, never have.” He winced, that was technically a lie. “Well, I mean we did look once, the four of us, when Matt’s dad was out. We got onto his computer and typed in hot porn for men. First site we h
it was aimed at gays, we didn’t look online again. And I’ve seen magazines at college.”

  Lily made a choked noise. She was disgusted, he knew it.

  “Yeah, I know. Pretty sleazy, eh?” he muttered.

  “How old were you when you looked online?” she whispered, her voice sounded funny, but he didn’t have the courage to look at her.

  “Thirteen.”

  She gave a muffled snort that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Was she laughing at him? He looked at her. She had one hand over her mouth, and it wasn’t disgust in her eyes. She was trying hard not to laugh.

  “Oi! I’m telling you one of my darkest secrets here and you’re laughing at me.” He couldn’t work out whether to be offended with her or relieved she wasn’t disgusted.

  “I’m not laughing at—yeah, sorry, I am.” She flopped backwards onto the bed and burst into laughter.

  He sat beside her on the bed. “It was an education, put it that way.” He couldn’t help but smile at her when she was like this. He loved it when she laughed.

  “I’ll bet.” She patted his lower back. “I’m sorry, just the visuals that gave me was hilarious.”

  “What about you?” He was curious now. “Have you looked?”

  “At gay porn?” She giggled. Her eyes glinted with humour, her hair spread out around her, and her chest moved in a way that would mesmerize him if he didn’t concentrate.

  “Any porn, really, gay or not.” He saw her humour vanish, but he wasn’t sure which emotion had replaced it.

  “I saw some magazines once. It was at a birthday party for one of my classmates. They were her brother’s.” She looked away from him. “Nate, why do you have this book?”

  “I just, well you know, how you grow, develop, chocolate, bananas, it’s all good things to know.” He didn’t want to talk about that. “What did you think? When you saw the magazines?”

  “I was fifteen.” She rolled onto her side facing away from him. “I only saw a few pages, I couldn’t look anymore. They were all so—” She stopped, bringing her knees to her chest.

  “They were all so what?” He took a few strands of her hair in his fingers.

  “Perfect, I guess.”

  That wasn’t what he expected to hear. He’d thought she say it was disgusting, perverted, not perfect. He didn’t know how to reply to that. She said she couldn’t look anymore, but she didn’t say why.

  “Perfect?” He wound her hair around his fingers. “Y’mean what they were doing?”

  “No, urgh!”

  Well, that was clear enough. “What was perfect then?”

  “Them, the girls. Perfect figures; big round boobs, tiny waists, pretty faces. Legs that seemed to be never-ending.”

  He knew what she meant now. “Uncle Harold gets the papers, the ones that have the page three girls.”

  “Yeah, Mum gets one of them. I hate that page. All those perky boobs first thing in the morning is enough to make my eyes bleed.”

  “I suppose you’d like it to be a shirtless man.” Jealousy steamrolled right over him as he imagined her looking at shirtless men. “It’s all probably photoshopped,” he grumbled.

  “You reckon?”

  “Yeah.” He let her hair drift through his fingers. He liked her hair, it was soft to touch and smelt great.

  “Yeah, I guess, but even if they are fake, men still like it, or they wouldn’t print it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” He scooted forward on his knees and pushed his nose into her hair. She smelled of the woods, fresh air, and rain. It was his favourite smell and it never failed to turn him on.

  “Are you sniffing me?”

  “Yeah, you smell great, you always do. Lil, do you want to know why I got that book?”

  She didn’t reply, but he saw her nod. “I thought it was going to tell me how to help you,” he whispered. “It did in a way. But it didn’t, as well.”

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  She was so tightly curled into a ball that he couldn’t see her face buried in her knees. He wasn’t sure if she was hiding or just doing—well, whatever girls did.

  “Don’t get grossed out. And don’t get cross with me.” He ground to a halt, not sure what to say next.

  What was wrong with him? He could give a ten-minute talk on teeth in French. He could tell you any element on the periodic table. He could write, and solve, complicated algebraic formulas, but he didn’t even know where to start here.

  “I’m not like the girls in the magazines?”

  “What?” Where did that come from? Why had she asked that? Of course, she wasn’t like them, she was perfect, they weren’t.

  She didn’t say anything, and he debated texting the others to come to his rescue. But he wouldn’t put it past them to laugh and ignore him. Morons. She’d asked if she was like a porn star, or at least he thought it was a question. Maybe it was rhetorical. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to get this right either way, so he went with the truth.

  “Um, no, you aren’t like them at all.”

  She made a funny noise, and he wasn’t sure if it was a hiccup or a squeak. He was floundering.

  “Do they all feel the same?” she mumbled.

  “Feel what? Who?” What the hell was she on about? What did that have to do with this?

  “The twins, Matt, that I’m not like the girls in the pictures.”

  What the hell? He was lost and now he knew why his dad said women should come with manuals. He knew they’d never see her as a porn star, but why was she asking that? What did that have to do with the book he’d bought? Or what he wanted to do with her?

  “Um. I guess so?” He’d no idea what the correct answer was, and it was frustrating. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious you aren’t the same as they are.” That much was true.

  “Is that why you got this book?” Her voice was so muffled now that he had to lean right over her to hear. “To figure out why I didn’t...haven’t...I don’t think chocolate and bananas is going to help though.”

  He reared back. “What the fuck? What are you on about?”

  She uncurled, and he was horrified to see tears streaming down her face. An urge to run surged through him, but he couldn’t no matter how much she scared him.

  “Why are you crying?” He picked up his box of tissues.

  “I’m sorry. Well, no, I’m not sorry. I mean, it’s not my fault. I’m not apologising. I am what I am, and I’m not the way you want me to be.” She took the tissues and blew her nose noisily.

  He didn’t understand a word she’d said. She’d lost him at sorry. Why was she sorry? She hadn’t bought the book.

  She frowned, tearing the tissue into tiny pieces. She took another one and wiped her eyes, putting the bits into his bin before taking another tissue. She kept her eyes lowered, not saying anything, and his frustration levels rose.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” If she’d tell him what to say, he could say it and she’d stop crying.

  “There’s nothing you can say,” she said.

  He sank onto his heels. “Are you angry I bought that book?” He was walking on eggshells with no sense of direction, and he didn’t think he’d ever been as terrified as he was now.

  “You were just trying to see if I could do anything about it, I guess.” Her voice broke and panic had him leaping from the bed and over by the cabinet. He took his glasses off and put them down, before running his hands into his hair and tugging.

  “Is it going to be a problem for them?” she whispered. “Have they talked about it with you?”

  A problem for them? Was she worried they were talking together? He had to be honest about it. “Yeah, we were talking about it when you came in.”

  “Oh. And they left you to tell me? That’s not nice, Nate. They shouldn’t have left you on your own. It’s them as well.”

  “Well, it was me, I wanted to know. They didn’t know till they found it under my bed. But they’re okay with it. I mean they want to know t
oo.” There was little privacy between them and no secrets. But that was going to have to change when it came to her, he could see that now.

  “I’m not sure I can do this,” she whispered, tears slipping down her face again.

  Panic ripped through him and he stuffed more tissues into her hands. “Don’t cry, Lily, please, just don’t cry.”

  “I’m trying not to.” She lifted her head and he saw anger sparkle in her eyes.

  What the hell had put that there? He backed up a step.

  “Okay, well, that’s good. That’s...” He faded out as she scowled at him.

  “I love you, but I’m not going to let you and your cousins do this to me. You can’t change me, and if you can’t accept that, then we should call it off now. I won’t change, no matter how many books you buy, and I’m not going to grow anymore. So, yeah—” She broke into tears again, hiding behind her hands.

  “What the hell? You’re breaking up with me because I bought some stupid fucking book that didn’t help anyway?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and he couldn’t deal with the pain that had erupted inside.

  “You want to change me.” She got up onto her knees to face him. “You want me to look like them. You think I’m going to suddenly inflate if I eat chocolate and bananas, but it doesn’t work like that! I’ll inflate all right, but it’ll be my stomach, or my thighs! And if you don’t like me the way I am then—”

  “Bloody hell!” he roared, his frustration snapped into anger. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t think it’s even the same language. Who the hell said anything about changing you? And why would I want you to inflate? You’re not a fucking balloon. And who the hell is them? You keep saying them. Who? Matt? The twins?”

  “Well, I don’t think Matt, or the twins have big boobs, so it isn’t going to be them, is it?” Her tone was sarcastic, and it fuelled his anger, until her words registered.

  “Big boobs?” He squinted at her. “What the hell does that have to do with it? I don’t understand you.”

  She sank onto her heels and blinked at him. She looked as confused as him and it occurred to him that they might not be on the same wavelength.