Sequel: A New Kind of Denial ›
Undeniably In Denial
Camron
“Hey Camron, come take a look at this,” Rina called to me from her computer desk. We were messing around on the internet earlier, so she could have wanted to show me practically anything. I laughed at her urgency and yelled out to her;
“Can I at least finish going to the bathroom?”
“Well, only if you must,” she chuckled in a joking tone. As I finished and walked up behind her, I came face-to-face with a picture of me and Reese dancing at his winter dance the night we broke up. The picture itself was adorable and made me smile, just by looking at it. “So this is you, right?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me.
“Yea, but this was five years ago,”
“Is that Rina?”
“What?”
“The day of the BDG photo shoot, you were really uneasy about it until you found out my name was Rina. Then you got this cutely reminiscent look in your eyes and you were able to do the shoot better. Is this who you were thinking of? I know his name – I actually went to college with him. That’s Reese Karman. It makes sense if he is Rina. You know…Rina, Reese, Reese, Rina. I'm right, aren’t I?”
“Yea, he got that name on Halloween. We both dressed up as girls and went as a lesbian couple,” I laughed, pulling up a seat next to hers. “This was before he came out, though, so we were both kind of hesitant about the whole thing. He was actually the first one to initiate things.”
“What happened that night?”
I sighed, putting my head in my hands and running my fingers back up through my dark hair, looking back up at her. “Magic happened. A cheesy as that sounds, that’s the only way I can really explain it.”
“You know he’s in Europe right now, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t know. Why’s he all the way out here?”
“He’s famous now,”
“How so?”
“You ever heard of the band Karma?” she asked, turning back to the computer and pulling up a new tab in her internet browser.
“Yea, I love them,”
“I'm guessing you’ve never bothered to look up who was in the band, have you?”
“No, I don’t care who’s in a band; as long as their music is good. Don’t tell me Reese is in Karma,” I said rhetorically. She didn’t answer me either way; instead, she typed ‘karma band members’ into the image search engine she pulled up. It got over 1,500,000 hits, and Rina just clicked on the first one that was there. I saw four guys with different kinds of brown and/or blonde hair, and when she enlarged the picture, I couldn’t help but gasp. “That is Reese! And that’s Jason!”
“Yep, Reese is lead vocals slash rhythm guitarist and Jason is bassist. That right there is Ash Callen; drummer,” she explained, pointing at the guy with one side of his hair blonde and the other brown. Then she pointed to the girly and shy looking one and said, “That is the lead guitarist, Ianto Carter. He gets mistaken for Reese’s girlfriend all the time. Him and Reese are the bi ones, and the other two are full out flamers.”
“Wow,” I laughed, thinking about just how gay Jason can be sometimes. That’s probably gotten worse over the years, too. “You know, I always thought something was familiar about that singing.”
“Have you ever heard him sing before, other than in Karma’s songs?”
“Just him singing along to the radio, which, come to think of it, was pretty amazing even then. But I never even knew he could play the guitar,”
“Wanna have a little fun with this?” she asked, smirking an evil smirk that could only mean one thing: she was plotting something that probably would not end the greatest.
“What sort of ‘fun’ are we talking, here?”
She didn’t even answer me - again – and turned back to the computer – again – where she went to ‘ConnectMe’ and logged in.
“Rina, what are you doing?”
“Oh nothing…just gonna mess with his mind a bit,”
“Who’s mind are we messing with, exactly?”
“Well, huh, who were we just talking about, Cam?” she laughed, going to her list of friends and scrolling down to the R’s, clicking on the picture of Reese and bringing up his profile page. She went over to the picture of us dancing, copied the link to it, and pasted it into the bar on the top of Reese’s profile that was for updates. She also typed, Hey Reese, I found this picture the other day and thought it kind of looked like you. is it? the other guy looks like this famous european model named Camron Dole. Do you know him? or am I not seeing this right. Let me know please.
“You’re so evil,” I laughed.
“Eh… I try to be,”
“So how do you know him?”
“When Karma first got together, I was going to college with the guys. I helped get them some of their first gigs, actually. We’ve all been pretty great friends since then, really,”
“Why’d you go to Jersey for school?”
“Needed to get away from my ‘rents,” she shrugged, her British attitude seeping through.
“Why not just move a few cities over or something? Why go all the way across an ocean?”
“They’d have followed me anywhere that didn’t require a plane or a boat ride. They hate boats and planes. And I went to America ’cause I’m too lazy to learn a new language and all I know is English and Spanish. I don’t like Spain or South America, so I went to the US instead. Just easier that way, you know?”
“When did you get into modeling?”
“When I was fifteen,”
I gave her a weird look and she continued explaining.
“That’s why I was fighting with my ‘rents. I wanted to go to college, but they thought that modeling was my calling and that I should have just stuck with it. So I went to America, met the guys of Karma and at the end of college, I moved back to London. When I got back here, my old agent wanted me to do some more modeling, so that’s basically where I am right now,”
“You parents are weird,”
“I know, right?”
“They didn’t want you to go to college…”
“Nope,”
“Yea, well, they are nuts, so I suppose that explains most of it away,”
“That they are, Camron, that they are,” she laughed.
“Hey, look, he responded, I think,” I said, pointing behind her to the computer screen at the top-left where a little ‘1’ was in a red bubble, indicating she had one new notification. She refreshed the page and saw that he did comment back.
yea, thats me and Camron. He was my first boyfriend back when we both lived in Jersey
Awe, when was this taken?
”Really? You already know that answer,”
“I’m aware of this, Camron. Remember, we’re screwing with him right now,”
my senior year in hs. It was my schools winter dance
Really? You two look so cute together. do you mind if I ask what happened?
“You could just ask me,”
“Again, Cam, I know this! I just want to see what he says about it all,”
“Yea, I kind of do too,” I shrugged.
“But you already know what happened,”
“I know, but I want to see how he words it. There’s two ways he could say it. He could say it so that it suggests that it was my fault, or he could say it in a way that suggests it was his fault. Or I suppose he could say it so that it names both of us to blame,”
“Will you tell me what the other two ways are to say it once he responds?”
“Yea, sure,” I shrugged. “Oh, look, he responded already.”
My ex gf kissed me and I kissed her back. I didn’t mean to but I did it either way
“Okay, so he said it in a way that kind of blames no one, but kind of blames me,”
“Well, let’s see what he says to this,” she grinned, turning to the keyboard and typing in, aw. That sucks. did ya love him?
“Why’d you ask that?”
“What are the ways he could have said that?”
“Why are you avoiding the question?”
“Why are you avoiding the question?”
“I’m not avoiding the question. I just haven’t answered it yet because I want you to answer mine first,”
“Well I asked mine first,”
“No you didn’t,”
“Yes I did,”
“When?”
“When I asked if you’d tell me what the other two ways are to say it once he responded,”
“I answered that question. I said sure. Then he responded, you typed that to him, and I asked you why you asked him that. So technically, I asked my question first of the two that need to be answered,”
“You confuse me, you little American boy,” she frowned, turning to the computer again. “He hasn’t said anything yet. And just ‘cause I want to know the ways he could have phrased that, I asked him that because I was going to ask you that next. If you loved him or not.”
“I’ll tell you that in a second, but I’m going to answer your other question first. He could have said something like, ‘he freaked out when my ex girlfriend kissed me’ insinuating that I was an ass about it, which I actually kind of was a little bit, or he could have said it like ‘we had a fight and I broke up with him because we didn’t talk for a while’ hinting at the not-so-much of a fight we had, but putting the breakup blame on himself.”
“Now, did you love him?”
“I’m not sure, really,”
“Well, all this computer stuff is making me thirsty. Do you want some tea?”
I laughed at her sudden change of conversation, but said, “Nah, no thanks. But if you have some coffee, I’ll take some of it.”
“Americans and their coffee,” she mumbled to herself, shaking her head, and laughing.
“Brits and their tea,” I retorted.
“Touché,”
I laughed and turned to the computer as she walked through the door to the kitchen. Reese had answered. I took the mouse in my hand and refreshed the page.
yea, I did love him, but I didn’t just love him. I was in love with him I think
“Camron, I’m out of coffee. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to settle for tea,”
“No, I’m sure I saw some in there earlier,” I yelled back, trying to stall for time. I quickly logged out of Rina’s ConnectMe account and I logged onto mine, going to my friends, finding Rina, and finding the conversation on Reese’s profile. I added something really quickly that I’m not sure he got, because as soon as I sent it, I logged off really fast and closed the internet down. It closed just as Rina walked into the room.
“You were right; there was a little bit in the cupboard. It’s going right now. Hey, what happened to the computer?” she asked, sitting back down in her hair, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.
“Well, the internet was acting all weird and just closed down. Something about the server messing up,” I don’t really know why I didn’t want her to see me type that, or why I didn’t just tell her. I mean, she’d find out the next time she got on ConnectMe because it would tell her that Reese and I both commented back on the post. But I just didn’t feel like telling her.
Oh, and what I actually posted? I told Reese that I loved him too.
“Can I at least finish going to the bathroom?”
“Well, only if you must,” she chuckled in a joking tone. As I finished and walked up behind her, I came face-to-face with a picture of me and Reese dancing at his winter dance the night we broke up. The picture itself was adorable and made me smile, just by looking at it. “So this is you, right?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me.
“Yea, but this was five years ago,”
“Is that Rina?”
“What?”
“The day of the BDG photo shoot, you were really uneasy about it until you found out my name was Rina. Then you got this cutely reminiscent look in your eyes and you were able to do the shoot better. Is this who you were thinking of? I know his name – I actually went to college with him. That’s Reese Karman. It makes sense if he is Rina. You know…Rina, Reese, Reese, Rina. I'm right, aren’t I?”
“Yea, he got that name on Halloween. We both dressed up as girls and went as a lesbian couple,” I laughed, pulling up a seat next to hers. “This was before he came out, though, so we were both kind of hesitant about the whole thing. He was actually the first one to initiate things.”
“What happened that night?”
I sighed, putting my head in my hands and running my fingers back up through my dark hair, looking back up at her. “Magic happened. A cheesy as that sounds, that’s the only way I can really explain it.”
“You know he’s in Europe right now, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t know. Why’s he all the way out here?”
“He’s famous now,”
“How so?”
“You ever heard of the band Karma?” she asked, turning back to the computer and pulling up a new tab in her internet browser.
“Yea, I love them,”
“I'm guessing you’ve never bothered to look up who was in the band, have you?”
“No, I don’t care who’s in a band; as long as their music is good. Don’t tell me Reese is in Karma,” I said rhetorically. She didn’t answer me either way; instead, she typed ‘karma band members’ into the image search engine she pulled up. It got over 1,500,000 hits, and Rina just clicked on the first one that was there. I saw four guys with different kinds of brown and/or blonde hair, and when she enlarged the picture, I couldn’t help but gasp. “That is Reese! And that’s Jason!”
“Yep, Reese is lead vocals slash rhythm guitarist and Jason is bassist. That right there is Ash Callen; drummer,” she explained, pointing at the guy with one side of his hair blonde and the other brown. Then she pointed to the girly and shy looking one and said, “That is the lead guitarist, Ianto Carter. He gets mistaken for Reese’s girlfriend all the time. Him and Reese are the bi ones, and the other two are full out flamers.”
“Wow,” I laughed, thinking about just how gay Jason can be sometimes. That’s probably gotten worse over the years, too. “You know, I always thought something was familiar about that singing.”
“Have you ever heard him sing before, other than in Karma’s songs?”
“Just him singing along to the radio, which, come to think of it, was pretty amazing even then. But I never even knew he could play the guitar,”
“Wanna have a little fun with this?” she asked, smirking an evil smirk that could only mean one thing: she was plotting something that probably would not end the greatest.
“What sort of ‘fun’ are we talking, here?”
She didn’t even answer me - again – and turned back to the computer – again – where she went to ‘ConnectMe’ and logged in.
“Rina, what are you doing?”
“Oh nothing…just gonna mess with his mind a bit,”
“Who’s mind are we messing with, exactly?”
“Well, huh, who were we just talking about, Cam?” she laughed, going to her list of friends and scrolling down to the R’s, clicking on the picture of Reese and bringing up his profile page. She went over to the picture of us dancing, copied the link to it, and pasted it into the bar on the top of Reese’s profile that was for updates. She also typed, Hey Reese, I found this picture the other day and thought it kind of looked like you. is it? the other guy looks like this famous european model named Camron Dole. Do you know him? or am I not seeing this right. Let me know please.
“You’re so evil,” I laughed.
“Eh… I try to be,”
“So how do you know him?”
“When Karma first got together, I was going to college with the guys. I helped get them some of their first gigs, actually. We’ve all been pretty great friends since then, really,”
“Why’d you go to Jersey for school?”
“Needed to get away from my ‘rents,” she shrugged, her British attitude seeping through.
“Why not just move a few cities over or something? Why go all the way across an ocean?”
“They’d have followed me anywhere that didn’t require a plane or a boat ride. They hate boats and planes. And I went to America ’cause I’m too lazy to learn a new language and all I know is English and Spanish. I don’t like Spain or South America, so I went to the US instead. Just easier that way, you know?”
“When did you get into modeling?”
“When I was fifteen,”
I gave her a weird look and she continued explaining.
“That’s why I was fighting with my ‘rents. I wanted to go to college, but they thought that modeling was my calling and that I should have just stuck with it. So I went to America, met the guys of Karma and at the end of college, I moved back to London. When I got back here, my old agent wanted me to do some more modeling, so that’s basically where I am right now,”
“You parents are weird,”
“I know, right?”
“They didn’t want you to go to college…”
“Nope,”
“Yea, well, they are nuts, so I suppose that explains most of it away,”
“That they are, Camron, that they are,” she laughed.
“Hey, look, he responded, I think,” I said, pointing behind her to the computer screen at the top-left where a little ‘1’ was in a red bubble, indicating she had one new notification. She refreshed the page and saw that he did comment back.
yea, thats me and Camron. He was my first boyfriend back when we both lived in Jersey
Awe, when was this taken?
”Really? You already know that answer,”
“I’m aware of this, Camron. Remember, we’re screwing with him right now,”
my senior year in hs. It was my schools winter dance
Really? You two look so cute together. do you mind if I ask what happened?
“You could just ask me,”
“Again, Cam, I know this! I just want to see what he says about it all,”
“Yea, I kind of do too,” I shrugged.
“But you already know what happened,”
“I know, but I want to see how he words it. There’s two ways he could say it. He could say it so that it suggests that it was my fault, or he could say it in a way that suggests it was his fault. Or I suppose he could say it so that it names both of us to blame,”
“Will you tell me what the other two ways are to say it once he responds?”
“Yea, sure,” I shrugged. “Oh, look, he responded already.”
My ex gf kissed me and I kissed her back. I didn’t mean to but I did it either way
“Okay, so he said it in a way that kind of blames no one, but kind of blames me,”
“Well, let’s see what he says to this,” she grinned, turning to the keyboard and typing in, aw. That sucks. did ya love him?
“Why’d you ask that?”
“What are the ways he could have said that?”
“Why are you avoiding the question?”
“Why are you avoiding the question?”
“I’m not avoiding the question. I just haven’t answered it yet because I want you to answer mine first,”
“Well I asked mine first,”
“No you didn’t,”
“Yes I did,”
“When?”
“When I asked if you’d tell me what the other two ways are to say it once he responded,”
“I answered that question. I said sure. Then he responded, you typed that to him, and I asked you why you asked him that. So technically, I asked my question first of the two that need to be answered,”
“You confuse me, you little American boy,” she frowned, turning to the computer again. “He hasn’t said anything yet. And just ‘cause I want to know the ways he could have phrased that, I asked him that because I was going to ask you that next. If you loved him or not.”
“I’ll tell you that in a second, but I’m going to answer your other question first. He could have said something like, ‘he freaked out when my ex girlfriend kissed me’ insinuating that I was an ass about it, which I actually kind of was a little bit, or he could have said it like ‘we had a fight and I broke up with him because we didn’t talk for a while’ hinting at the not-so-much of a fight we had, but putting the breakup blame on himself.”
“Now, did you love him?”
“I’m not sure, really,”
“Well, all this computer stuff is making me thirsty. Do you want some tea?”
I laughed at her sudden change of conversation, but said, “Nah, no thanks. But if you have some coffee, I’ll take some of it.”
“Americans and their coffee,” she mumbled to herself, shaking her head, and laughing.
“Brits and their tea,” I retorted.
“Touché,”
I laughed and turned to the computer as she walked through the door to the kitchen. Reese had answered. I took the mouse in my hand and refreshed the page.
yea, I did love him, but I didn’t just love him. I was in love with him I think
“Camron, I’m out of coffee. Sorry, but you’re gonna have to settle for tea,”
“No, I’m sure I saw some in there earlier,” I yelled back, trying to stall for time. I quickly logged out of Rina’s ConnectMe account and I logged onto mine, going to my friends, finding Rina, and finding the conversation on Reese’s profile. I added something really quickly that I’m not sure he got, because as soon as I sent it, I logged off really fast and closed the internet down. It closed just as Rina walked into the room.
“You were right; there was a little bit in the cupboard. It’s going right now. Hey, what happened to the computer?” she asked, sitting back down in her hair, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.
“Well, the internet was acting all weird and just closed down. Something about the server messing up,” I don’t really know why I didn’t want her to see me type that, or why I didn’t just tell her. I mean, she’d find out the next time she got on ConnectMe because it would tell her that Reese and I both commented back on the post. But I just didn’t feel like telling her.
Oh, and what I actually posted? I told Reese that I loved him too.