Slash - I'm Gay, He's Straight

I stood up, intending to follow him, and pushed my way through the crowd, only to have my upper arm grabbed my a hand that was way too small and way too delicate to be Taylor’s. I was a little embarrassed to realise that I didn’t recognise the touch of my girlfriend of two years, but was in too much of a hurry to talk to her.

‘Not now, Jenny,’ I said impatiently, trying to tug my arm away from her and continue pushing through the crowd after Taylor, but she could be surprisingly strong sometimes.

‘Jake, I need to talk to you,’ she said, and something about the urgency in her voice caused me to look down at her in alarm. I’m 5’11 and she’s only 5’4”, smaller even than Kelly, who is really short. Kissing her was uncomfortable standing up because even on her tippy-toes I had to lean down so much that my neck ached within seconds. It would have been way more convenient if she’s been, say, 5’9”, like someone I could mention but won’t...

Someone I was supposed to be following!

‘Can’t it wait?’ I asked in exasperation. ‘Taylor-’

‘It’s really important,’ she whimpered, her eyes pleading with me.

I gave one last look into the crowd but Taylor was long gone, so I sighed, ‘Fine...’ and followed as she led me out through the French doors, past Kelly and Evan Jacobs who were both pretty high at this point, and over to the opposite end of the pool, where she dropped my hand and started pacing. I lowered myself onto a recliner, suddenly worried it really was something serious and not that Georgia Paulson had called her fat, again, which Jenny always took to heart, much like my sister would have.

‘You know you’re not fat,’ I started hopefully, but when Jen turned a wide-eyed, confused gaze on me I knew for definite it was more serious this time.

‘I just got a call from my mom,’ she whispered, her huge brown eyes starting to water. My own eyes widened in understanding, and I reached out for her hand and pulled her onto my lap.

Jenny is not a bad girlfriend. It’s not her fault she’s not a guy – or more specifically that she’s not Taylor – or that I’m not straight. She’s caring, sensitive, funny, and intelligent enough to hold a conversation with but not so much that you feel intimidated.

And while I’m a pretty shit boyfriend, I’m a good friend, even if I say so myself. So even though Jenny was not who I wanted to be with right now, even though I was waiting for her to break up with me, I knew I couldn’t leave her when something was obviously going on with her stepfather.

‘What’s happened?’ I whispered, holding her against my chest and stroking her hair, as frightened tears started to fall down her cheeks and land on my shoulder.

‘She said Peter just went crazy. He came home drunk, as usual, but way worse, and started breaking things and threatening everyone... He hit her again, and then he started hitting Kevin, so my mom just grabbed him and ran. She said she got in the car and is halfway to my Aunt Betty’s.’

I continued rubbing Jenny’s back as she started sobbing again. ‘Are they okay?’

‘My mom was too scared to think straight... She kept thinking Peter was coming after them. She was scared to stop at a hospital, but they’re at one now. Kevin’s right arm and leg are broken.’

Jenny’s sobbing was getting out of control now, and I felt a flush of anger at the thought of six foot, 280 pound Peter Hancroft beating the shit out of five year old Kevin. I kept myself in check though, and tried to make soothing noises to Jenny.

‘They’re gonna continue on to my aunt’s in the morning...’ she said finally. ‘I can’t go home Jake...’

I felt my chest constrict. Had she thought I was going to let her? ‘Of course not,’ I said, rocking her back and forth. ‘We’ll figure something out.’

‘My mom says she’ll be able to send me the money for a plane ticket in a few days. I hate asking this...’ she hiccupped.

From where I was sitting in the glass extension, I could see the light in my room flash on, and a dark silhouette pass by the window.

‘I’ll go set up the guest room now,’ I said before she could even ask, my eye on my own bedroom window. ‘Kelly,’ I shouted, and my sister, who was only a few feet away at the other end of the pool, turned her head to see what I wanted. I beckoned her over and stood up, placing Jenny down on the recliner. ‘Don’t argue,’ I muttered, ‘this is important. Just look after her til I get back.’

Kelly looked like she was about to do just that, argue, but I turned to Jenny and said, ‘Tell Kelly everything you told me. It will help to talk about it. I’ll be back soon,’ and pushed Kel down on the recliner next to her. Then I made a hasty getaway, the feeling of Kelly’s glare burning into my back.

I pushed though the crowd towards the stairs, my head swimming with alcohol and chlorine fumes, and I grabbed a few more drinks on the way, just because I was nervous. When I reached my bedroom door I pressed down the handle, but the door didn’t open. The bastard had locked it! I went to the airing cupboard and rummaged around for the spare set of keys, eventually finding them behind a pile of hand towels at the back. I angrily opened the door, the few drinks I’d just had hitting me hard now, and I stumbled into the room.

Taylor was laying sprawled out on the bed, a half-drained 70cl bottle of vodka slowly slipping from his grasp.

‘Shit,’ I muttered, running over to the bed and grabbing the bottle, then pressing my hand to Taylor’s throat to check he hadn’t accidentally killed himself. I needn’t have bothered, no more than a second later he let out a huge snore and rolled over.

I set the bottle down on the floor, then thought again and picked it up and drained it straight. I locked the door again before the alcohol had a chance to hit me, then stumbled back to the bed and collapsed horizontally across my best friend, feeling his chest rise and fall beneath me.

Taylor’s POV

I opened my eyes and for a split second everything seemed normal. Then, I wished I had never woken up. I groaned in pain and clutched my head, all but crying with the torture that was going on inside my skull. ‘What the fuuuuuuuuuuuck...’ I moaned, curling up foetal position and holding my poor aching head in my hands.

Jake’s POV

I woke to the sound of groaning coming from somewhere above me to my right and snapped my eyes open, then immediately wished I hadn’t. I joined in the groaning, clapping my hands to the sides of my head because it felt like it was about to split open and smash all over the room.

‘Taylor?’ I asked after a minute.

Taylor’s POV

I heard Jake muttering my name and I grunted in response.

‘What happened last night?’ he asked.

‘I...’ I paused. ‘I dunno. I can’t remember. I know I’m supposed to be mad at you but I can’t remember why.’

I remember why.

Jake’s POV

‘Yeah... I remember I’m supposed to be sorry, but I can’t remember why either.’

I remember why.

‘Probably that you’ll never in your life throw a party to outdo this one,’ I added, relieved he couldn’t remember what a fool I’d made of myself the night before. I remain successfully in the closet.

Taylor’s POV

He can’t even remember. I knew it must have been the drink, just making him kid around. Even so, it had driven me to down half a bottle of straight vodka and it’s lucky I can handle my drink because I should be in the hospital having my stomach pumped right now. By the looks of the empty vodka bottle laying horizontally on the floor, Jake should be too.

I was just about to beg him to go get me some water when he sat bolt upright and called out, ‘Shit!’ Then he started going on about Jenny and I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I need right now. A reminder of your girlfriend.

Jake’s POV

I mean, okay. So I was pissed drunk not to mention laying bodily across Taylor, which was distracting in all sorts of lovely ways, as well as being exhausted. But I should so, so not have forgotten about Jenny.

‘Stop yelling,’ Taylor whined from beside me on the bed, as we had somehow ended up parallel at some point during the night.

‘I forgot about Jenny,’ I mumbled, trying to get enough control of my limbs to manoeuvre myself out of the bed and go look for her.

‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Taylor mumbled, trying, it looked like, to get his pillow to eat his head.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ I said, and explained what had happened. Taylor sat up and started paying attention.

‘What a godawful prick,’ he muttered. ‘I hope he gets ass-raped in prison over that,’ which was particularly weird coming from Taylor, who is a pacifist and a liberal. He paused. ‘That was fairly shit boyfriend behaviour to be fair,’ he added.

‘No shit,’ I muttered, finally managing to stand up. ‘You coming?’

Taylor stood up and followed me out of the room and down the hall to Kelly’s, where I knocked on the door, having no desire to walk in and see Evan Jacobs’ morning glory staring back at me. There was a muffled groan so I walked into the darkened room with Taylor following after me. We both wrinkled our noses at the weird musty smell, a mixture of stale alcohol and something else. To my vague horror, I noticed there were two lumps very close together in the bed.

‘Kelly,’ I whispered. ‘Which lump are you?’ I guess I was still a little drunk.

There was another moan and the lump nearest me shuffled.

‘Have you seen Jenny? I lost her last night and-’

Kelly mumbled something which was followed by something else that sounded like a dismissal.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Come on Kel, it’s important this time,’ Taylor urged, kneeling down beside her bed and reaching out to pull the covers back.

It was a truly weird and horrifying sight.

Taylor pulled the covers the whole way back, and laying there, naked, limbs entangled, were my sister... And my girlfriend.

Taylor’s POV

I mean, I guess most guys would have thought they had died and gone to lesbian heaven by accident. But it was different for Jake and I, because I am gay, and one of the girls was his sister... not to mention his girlfriend was the other. I mean, that sort of shit can fuck a guy up.

Unsure of exactly what to do, I chose to fling the covers back over Kelly and Jenny, leaving only their heads exposed.

‘So...’ I said, and then paused because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘What happened to Evan Jacobs?’ I finally settled on, then mentally kicked myself.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Kelly muttered. ‘We didn’t do anything.’

I chanced a glance at Jake to see how he was coping. Out of the huge spectrum of emotions that could be associated with finding your girlfriend in bed with your sister, he seemed to have landed on perplexed.

‘Jake?’ a small voice said from the other side of the bed, and a fluffy blonde head appeared from under the covers.

Jake went around to the other side of the bed and started asking Jenny if she was okay. Then he announced he was taking her out to get smoothies as she was dreadfully hungover.

‘Bring me back one,’ Kelly mumbled from her position still under the blankets, and I seconded her. Then once Jake had thrown a dressing gown over Jenny and led her from the room, I crawled into the space she had vacated, head still pounding, and faced Kelly.

‘So what really happened last night?’ I asked sceptically, folding my arms.

Kelly sat up and looked at me. ‘Oh god Tay,’ she muttered, looking crestfallen. ‘I’m the worst sister ever.’ And she burst into tears. I put my arm around her and rocked her back and forth until she calmed down enough to tell me the whole story.

‘Well, Jake called me away from Evan and made me look after Jenny while he went off to supposedly set up the spare room. And she started telling me all about her stepfather, stuff I never knew, you know? Did you know?’

I nodded. ‘I had a fair idea.’

‘Like he beats the shit out of her mom. Every night. No wonder she’s so desperate to marry Jake and get away from there. But I started to feel so sorry for her and so horrible for hating her and we were tearing up and I hugged her. And we were just sitting there hugging for a while. And she was crying and I asked did she want to go to bed and she said yes so I brought her upstairs and we went to the spare room but there were no blankets on the bed or anything and we were way too drunk to start making beds to I said she could just stay in my room. And I was high Taylor, really high, and you know what that means, and when we got into bed I went to kiss her on the forehead, you know, totally innocently, but I got her on the mouth instead and then we just making out... And then we naked and we weren’t just making out... Oh god...’

Kelly put her head in her hands and started groaning.

‘So do you, like... Like her?’ I asked what was probably the most inappropriate, unimportant question to ask under the circumstances.

‘Oh, I don’t know... I don’t think so... Does that make it better or worse?’

‘I don’t think anything could make this situation better or worse Kel,’ I admitted regretfully. ‘Do you think she’s gonna tell him?’

‘I don’t know... Do you think I should?’

‘Well... If it was the other way around would you want to know? Like, if you caught Jake in bed with Evan Jacobs or something?’

Kelly paused. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she said with certainty after a minute. ‘I definitely wouldn’t want to know.’

‘Well I can’t make the decision for you, Kel,’ I said. ‘But if it helps any... It did kind of seem like... They were gonna break up soon enough anyway.’ To be fair, this could have just been hungover, wishful thinking on my part.

‘And she’s moving to Donegal next week,’ Kelly added, ‘to live with her mom and her aunt. I’ll at least wait til after she’s gone to tell him, I mean, she has enough going on. Unless she tells him first.’

Suddenly, there was a sound of a door slamming downstairs, followed by some fairly heavy footsteps on the stairs.

‘Kelly!’ Jake’s voice shouted. ‘What the fuck?!’

Kelly looked up at me, terrified.

‘Wait here,’ I said, scrambling out of bed to intercept Jake on the landing. At least this way I wouldn’t have to keep any secrets.

Jake’s POV

I suppose I shouldn’t really have been as angry as I was. I mean, my girlfriend cheated on me, and yeah, it was with my sister, but I’ve been emotionally cheating on her for the last year with my best friend, and they’re equally as bad in different ways. I mean, I care about Jenny, but I’m not in love with her. I think the truth of the thing is, I wouldn’t have been as angry if it was with someone else, guy or girl. It’s just that, Kelly thinks I am in love with Jenny. And she still slept with her.

Oh god. We need to be on Jeremy Kyle. Nobody would be spared.

I was storming up the stairs, Jenny trotting along after me squeaking and trying to calm me down, when Taylor appeared from nowhere on the landing.

‘Whoa,’ he said, holding his hands out in front of him in international sign language for “calm down”. ‘Stop, hang on.’

‘Sorry Taylor,’ I muttered, ‘I can’t talk now. I just really have to go take care of this one thing,’ and I tried to sidestep him so I could go throttle my sister.

Taylor put his hands on my upper arms to keep me in place and I turned to look him in the face, fully prepared to yell at him, but then my brain kicked in and I swallowed really hard. We were standing really close, he had his hands on my bare skin, and he was looking me really intently in the eyes. I was opening and closing my mouth trying to get some words out but my heart was beating too loudly in my ears that I couldn’t concentrate on actually saying them. I could feel my body heating up.

‘If you try to move,’ Taylor said then, really quietly and, though admittedly unintentionally, seductively, ‘I will sit. On your face.’

And he grinned. So I forced a smile too.

‘Kelly really drunk and really high last night and she had no idea what he was doing,’ he continued. ‘And she was definitely wrong to do it even despite that, but you know it was an accident. Right?’

I swallowed again, captivated by his liquid brown eyes, and nodded.

‘Okay. Come on, let’s walk it off.’

And he took one hand off my arm but kept his grip on the other, steering me down the stairs past Jenny, to whom he jerked his head towards Kelly’s room, and pushed me out the door.

‘So do you like... Know what they did?’ he asked me somewhat awkwardly as we sat at the edge of a skate ramp in the park. It was still pretty early, the way you unfortunately always wake up early after drinking heavily the night before, giving you no chance to sleep it off, but it meant there were no kids trying and failing to show off for their friends on the ramps. We had them to ourselves except for the odd dog-walker that passed, ignoring us.

The sun was just starting to get warm and it was shaping up to be another beautiful day. We’d get about another two weeks of this before the rain returned and it was still only June.

‘Yeah... Jenny was pretty descriptive,’ I grimaced. ‘They basically did everything, like they-’

Taylor held up his hands. ‘I don’t wanna know!’

I laughed. ‘Most guys would be gagging for details.’

I saw something shift in Taylor’s expression, and he coughed and said, ‘Yeah, well, you know, Kelly’s like a sister to me too...’

‘You’ll have to mention that to my mom,’ I said, ‘she desperately wants you married into the family.’

We both blanched over the mention of marriage again.

‘So are you gonna dump her?’ he asked after a minute.

I sighed. ‘Well I can’t, can I? Not after last night...’

Taylor raised an eyebrow. ‘I would have thought especially after last night.’

I elbowed him. ‘You know what I mean. Her stepfather and all...’

‘Dude. If she was well enough to score your sister after all that then she’s well enough to handle the consequences. Whatever you decide they should be.’

‘How’s Kel anyway?’ I asked, changing the subject. Typical that the perfect reason to break up with Jenny should come along at exactly the same time as the perfect reason not to.

‘Bricking it,’ Taylor said. ‘She was gonna tell you herself if Jenny didn’t, after Jenny went to her aunt’s.’

‘I’ll let her stew for a while,’ I decided. ‘Might break up with her as well.’

‘You could de-twin yourself.’

‘Yeah, demote her to “ordinary sibling”.’

‘Or just a close friend.’

‘No more weed for her at the very least.’

Taylor laughed. ‘We should get back.’

‘No way man,’ I said, laying back, my knees still dangling over the edge of the skate ramp. ‘Let them freak out for a few hours.’

‘You can be some dick when you want to be.’

‘Well alternatively, I could just go make out with Evan Jacobs, how about that?’

Taylor choked. ‘Eh, yeah, good idea, let’s stay here for a while...’

Why is he so straight?! I squinted up at him through the sunlight and he was leaning on one hand, facing me. I wanted so desperately so sit up and press my lips to his that I had to close my eyes and think clean thoughts til I calmed down.