“Trinidad, you racist nerd.”
“If I were racist, I would have said Africa,” Darren pointed out almost delicately, and jerked his head at a corner table. “C’mon, Jayden. We’ve got ten before Ethan can remember where he is, never mind get here.”
“He’s not bad,” Jayden murmured as Darren dragged him away to a corner table.
“He’s not bad on his own,” Darren corrected. “It’s the unholy combination that’s bad.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” Darren returned cryptically. “Also, you are banned from my phone. Paul said he knew it wasn’t me the minute the word ‘sorry’ appeared.”
Jayden rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe I don’t like to come off as an uneducated moron on the phone.”
Darren fished it out of his pocket and sent a text. Jayden’s phone promptly beeped and asked, Lyk dis?
“You’re impossible,” he said.
“But you love me,” Darren deadpanned, sipping his coffee. Jayden bit his lip, and reached to take his hand.
“Yeah,” he admitted. Darren raised his eyebrows, but squeezed the hand and after a moment, half-smiled into the cup. “So,” Jayden changed the subject. Slightly. “Am I going to get threatened or something?”
Darren snorted. “No. Most likely grilled about my sexual deviance and whether or not I have any kinky tattoos.”
“Do you?”
“Not yet,” Darren smirked. “Minute I’m eighteen, on the other hand…”
Jayden flushed at the thought of Darren with a tattoo. And at the thought of still being with Darren when he got one. It seemed like a lifetime away, eighteen, but it also didn’t seem so impossible, somehow. To be still drinking coffee and holding this guy’s hand, two years down the line. “What would it be?”
“Fuck knows, I got a few years to think about it,” Darren waved a hand. “Something on my arse, though, definitely.”
“Classy,” Jayden said, sipping the coffee gingerly. It wasn’t too bad, actually, but Darren was wrong: you could totally taste caffeine. “So, um,” he lowered his voice, “how do you know these guys exactly?”
“They’re in my form at school,” Darren said. “Ethan did cello for a while too, but they’re both musically retarded, if we’re honest about it.”
“Oi!”
“It’s true!” he yelled back.
“Says the guy who can’t tell cricket from baseball!”
“It’s the same boring shit!”
Paul made a rude gesture; Darren made an even ruder one back, and Jayden laughed quietly into his coffee. There was something kind of thrilling about the way Darren got riled up like that, even when it was good-natured. Especially when it was good-natured, maybe, because he looked so relaxed and at ease.
“Mushy face,” Paul said, snapping his fingers and pointing at Jayden’s triumphantly. “You’re totally the girl. You done it yet?”
Jayden flamed red; Darren laughed.
“No,” he said casually, and Jayden thought he was going to spontaneously combust.
“Darren!”
Paul grinned delightedly; Jayden buried his face in his hands and heard Darren’s snigger. “What? It’s true.”
“When you do, I bet I know who’s tapping who!” Paul crowed. Jayden felt his ears beginning to heat up, the blush was so intense.
“I bet you don’t,” Darren returned lowly and prodded Jayden’s knuckles. “Are you coming out of there?”
“No,” Jayden mumbled, but proved himself wrong when the door clanged and a boy’s voice whooped. Definitely a boy’s voice. Darren’s and Paul’s had both fully dropped, but the newcomer’s cracked in the middle of the cheerful greeting, and Jayden unburied himself to stare.
Ethan.
He’d seen Ethan on Facebook—he was the one always spamming Darren with dirty pictures of girls and LGBT event dates (and usually at the same time)—but the real thing was even weirder. Floppy, blond hair that had gone out of style about five years ago, an honest-to-God Ralph Lauren polo shirt that had probably seen more action on a cruise ship than a tennis court, and legs and arms that went on forever even though he wasn’t that tall. Yet, maybe.
And then he was beaming in Jayden’s face and hugging him.
“Sorry,” Darren said, once Ethan had let go and bounced back to Paul for coffee. “He’s kind of an octopus.”
“Um…” Jayden tried.
“We went to Dublin with Paul’s parents when we were fourteen. I had to share a bed with him in the hotel,” Darren said and shuddered. “Seriously, I’ve never been cuddled that much in my whole life.”
“Yeah but you’re gay, you’re into that sort of thing,” Paul pointed out. “MARISSA!” he bellowed into the back room; Ethan joined them at the table, curling his impossibly long legs up under the chair. He was good-looking, in a Home Counties toff sort of way, Jayden supposed. He’d probably be, like, the fair Hugh Grant in a few years.
“So you’re Darren’s boyfriend?” he demanded.
“You missed that part of the conversation. Jesus, catch up,” Darren rolled his eyes.
“Yes,” Jayden clarified.
“Have you had sex yet?” Ethan demanded.
“Oh, my God!” Jayden burst out; Darren just grinned unashamedly. Jayden regretted thinking this would be okay. Clearly Darren had meant it when he’d said they were impossible. Because Jesus!
“Are you the girl in the relationship?” Ethan pushed. “Because Darren’s kinda gay, you know, so you might want to give him some girly roles too. I don’t think he can change light bulbs.”
Darren rolled his eyes; Jayden thought he was just going to have a stroke and die right here from pure embarrassment.
“All riiiiight,” Paul pulled up a fourth chair and settled in. “Let the games begin!”
“Don’t go overboard, you’ll wreck his blood pressure,” Darren advised sagely. Jayden couldn’t decide whether he was actually just the most laid-back person in the history of ever, or if he’d just gotten used to this.
“Question one,” Paul beamed. “Do you know Darren’s middle name?”
“No.”
“Damn!” he snapped his fingers again. “We’ve been trying to find that out for years.”
“And you can keep trying,” Darren retorted.
“Okay, okay,” Paul waved him off. “Question two: what’s your favourite Lady Gaga song?”
“Um, I’m not really into Lady Gaga.”
“What kind of gay are you?” Ethan asked incredulously.
“One with a bit of taste,” Darren quipped. He slid his hand over Jayden’s, lacing their fingers together.
“I’m going to puke,” Paul proclaimed. Jayden hooked his elbow over Darren’s until their forearms were pressed together, and squeezed his fingers. He felt more than a little out of his depth.
“I think it’s nice,” Ethan said unexpectedly.
“Anytime you feel like coming out of the closet, Ethan, we’ll be here for you,” Darren returned almost lazily.
The interrogation steadily bled into a mixture of conversation and banter, and Jayden slowly relaxed as the focus came off him a little and dissolved into a slanging match between Paul and Ethan about which one of them was ‘more Asian.’ Jayden gave up trying to actually understand the mad leaps and in-jokes, and sat basking in the feel of Darren’s fingers tangled with his, and company that didn’t mind them holding hands in public. It was…nice. It was normal. It was something he’d been missing, he relaxed faintly, as Paul emptied a packet of salt into Ethan’s milkshake, and Ethan drank it anyway, and it was something he wanted more of.
So maybe you should tell Mum, the voice in his head suggested, and Jayden started. Darren gave him a look, but said nothing. The argument had progressed to whether Ethan would have been killed in Nazi Germany, or whether they would have decided he was a gaywad too and offed him anyway. In Paul’s words.
The normalcy was alluring, and gave Jayden an odd sense of invincibility.
> Courage, the voice supplied, and he squeezed Darren’s hand tightly.
It was time to come out. Properly.
Chapter 20
He chose Monday evening. That way, he reasoned, he could spend the whole week at school, and stay out late with Darren or Charley at least three of the four days, and avoid Mum and Dad. You know. In case it went wrong.
He told Charley he was going to do it on the way home from school, and she’d hugged him on the corner of Churchill Street until he could barely breathe and said, “It’ll be fine, Jay, I promise. Promise.”
He texted Darren—I’m going to come out to my parents, what do I say?—on the hundred-metre stretch between Charley’s house and his own, but there was no answer. There rarely was on Mondays. Vaguely in the back of his head, Jayden suspected Darren just abandoned his phone on Monday afternoons.
The house was quiet when he let himself in. Dad was still at work; Mum had been home, judging by the high heels on the mat, but had gone out again, judging by the lack of a coat. Jayden liberated a can of Coke from the fridge before she could come back and shoo him away to the fruit juice, and headed upstairs with his homework. He wouldn’t do it, but it meant they’ve leave him in peace to mentally rehearse what he was going to say.
He had no idea what he was going to say.
He ramped up the volume on his laptop and opened up his unfinished English essay, but let it sit there. He didn’t care about the sexual references in Othello. He stared at it, left it to stare out of the window, and ended up pacing absently around his room in circles. What was he going to say?
There wasn’t a manual for this. Until Darren, he’d never really thought about telling them because…because why? He’d always thought that it was something everyone worried about too much. He’d figured that once he had a boyfriend, he’d tell them. You know, maybe once he was in his twenties and had a job and a flat and didn’t have to actually rely on them for anything. Maybe then.
Well, he had a boyfriend now. So much for thinking that through.
And now he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how they were going to react. They had literally never talked to him about this sort of thing. He didn’t even get the talk from his parents—they left school to do it, and Dad awkwardly handed him a book about sex when he was eleven, and that was it. Discussion over. They’d never…
They’d never asked about him and Charley—in any sense. Charley’s Mum had guessed by the time he was thirteen, Charley had said so, but his parents had never said a thing either way. And not just to him, but…in general. Charley’s Dad was always ranting about what was going on in the news, but Jayden’s parents barely seemed to know the world existed north of Birmingham and south of the water. He didn’t know if Mum was going to cry or rush out and buy a rainbow flag to fly from the roof.
…If he was honest with himself, Jayden would almost prefer the crying.
His phone interrupted his pacing with a low trilling, and Darren’s sceptical expression over the violin bore into him as he rescued it from his bag. Instead of hello, Jayden was offered: “Try ‘I’m gay.’ Usually works.”
“Gee, thanks.” He flopped backwards onto his bed, bouncing twice and messing up the already rumpled sheets. “Do yours?”
“Do my what?”
“Your parents. Do they know about…you?”
“I dunno. Have to ask Scott.”
Jayden couldn’t help it; his curiosity twitched. “What’s Scott got to do with it?”
“Scott knows, I think. He went rummaging through my stuff and found my porn. Asked a lot of awkward questions, so he must have worked it out. Whether he ever blabbed to the folks is unbeknownst to me. Tip for you, by the way, don’t ever tell Scott anything you wouldn’t mind being plastered on the internet with your picture, name, and phone number.” There was a pause. “Huh. Don’t know if he’s worked you out yet, though. That could be interesting.”
“I don’t like that word. Interesting. That’s creepy.”
“Treat him like an oversized, overexcited puppy with brain damage and you’ll be fine,” Darren said briskly. “And stop worrying. What happens, happens.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“And one day you will meet the creature that is my father, and you will take that back.”
Jayden chuckled, the worried knot in his stomach beginning to unpick itself. “What are you doing?” he asked, hoping to distract himself further.
“Being a lazy arse.”
“No practice?”
“Not on Mondays,” Darren said, sounding unusually cheerful. “I have a whole hour until Father or Mother come back, and Scott’s due to take Misha to ballet any minute now. Then I’ll have nearly an hour to myself.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Masturbate.”
Jayden choked, the heat flooding his face. “Darren!” He shifted uncomfortably, sitting up cross-legged on his pillow. He had the odd feeling, suddenly, that Darren was similarly sprawled in his own room.
“What?”
“You can’t just—don’t just say that! Christ!”
“Why not? I have every intention of doing it, soon as Scott and Misha leave.”
“Are you in your room?” Jayden croaked. He wouldn’t, would he? He’d hang up beforehand, right?
“Yep. With the door closed, but Misha has learned what door handles are for, and has forgotten what knocking is for. So…five minutes.”
“And then you will hang up the phone. Right?”
“…Maybe.”
“Darren.”
“What? It’s not like your voice is exactly off-putting, you know what I’m saying?”
Jayden felt like someone had lit his face on fire. He made a strangled sort of noise, and Darren’s laugh was surprising: low, dark, and very smooth. “All right, don’t choke,” he said. “You can’t fool me, Jayden. It’s always the quiet ones. One day, you’re going to snap, lock me in the storeroom, and do every nasty thing under the sun to me while your mother and her actor friends gossip in the next room.”
“I…I am not even going to dignify that with an answer,” Jayden said primly.
“Sure.” Darren’s scepticism was almost a living, breathing thing in the room, settling itself comfortably at Jayden’s window and filing its nails. It would look, Jayden decided, a little bit like Charley. Maybe with Darren’s curls.
“We still on for Saturday?” he blurted out, desperate to get off—get away, away!—from the topic of Darren’s…habits. And what he did with his hands when they had spare time.
“I am,” came the flat reply.
Jayden took a deep breath, pushing his worries out from the inside, like Darren had showed him. Forcing them out of his lungs. It would be fine. Even if Mum and Dad didn’t like this, they weren’t going to…to kick him out or anything. And there’d be Saturday.
“I can do this,” he said, half to himself, and Darren made a noise of agreement. “I mean. I should.”
“I’ve met your mother, Phillips. I’m pretty sure she already knows. About you, at least.”
“What, and not about you?”
“I doubt she cares about me,” Darren replied. “But she’ll know about you.”
Jayden bit his lip. “What if she doesn’t?”
“Well, that’s the point of telling her.”
“What if…what if she gets upset?”
“She’s not going to,” Darren said bluntly. “Your mother is probably going to try and hug you to death, then march over to Woodbourne and demand they start one of those PFLAG chapters or something. The parents and friends of queers thing.”
“You’re right, you have no filter.”
“Life’s too short.”
Darren’s tone had been flippant. He sounded fine. And yet something about it—the wording, maybe—was jarring, and Jayden bit down hard on his lip. “Are you…okay?” he asked.
Darren paused.
“Darren?”
“Okay, we
need to talk about that.”
“About what?”
“About the walking on eggshells thing you’re doing,” Darren said. “We’ll have a proper sit-down, hash-it-out talk, but here’s the boiled-down version: don’t. Trust me, you are not retarded. You will know when I am not okay. Believe me, it’s not very missable, especially when you’ve been warned.”
“…’Missable’ isn’t a word,” Jayden said eventually. He felt uneasy, but the exasperated strength in Darren’s voice was reassuring. It was the same tone he used when talking to his brother, or complaining about Mr. Weber, or if he ran into Canning. Jayden couldn’t imagine he sounded like that on…on a bad day.
“Yeah, yeah. Pedant.”
“Ooh, big words.”
“Seven letters. Two syllables. It hardly counts,” Darren said.
“I—oh,” Jayden interrupted himself as he heard a car engine outside. “I think Dad’s home. Which means Mum’s home.”
“Which means go downstairs, make a cup of tea, and tell them,” Darren said serenely. “Go on, get it over with. And by the time you’re done, I’ll have sorted myself out, and if you need to come and vent, we can go to the noodle bar or something.”
“I was sure you were going to say something disgusting,” Jayden joked feebly, but the anxiety crawling up his throat left it hollow.
“Maybe after the noodle bar,” Darren said. “Go on. And Jayden? I’m serious. Your Mum will be fine.”
It rang between them, unsaid but well-heard, that he couldn’t say the same for Dad. As Jayden said his goodbyes and hung up, he bit down hard on that fear. Darren was right. Mum might be upset, maybe, but she wasn’t going to explode or hit him or throw him out. But Dad…what kind of Dad wanted a gay son? Dad liked football and going to the pub and he played amateur rugby on Sunday afternoons with some of his colleagues. He wouldn’t want a gay son, and maybe…
Jayden took a deep breath, slid his phone into his back pocket, and went downstairs.
They’d been shopping. Dad was just locking up the car, a collection of Tesco bags on the hall floor, and Jayden postponed the inevitable by hefting some of the shopping into the kitchen for Mum. She hadn’t changed out of her Boots uniform, and she smelled of perfume when she paused to hug him.
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