I Have Only Myself to Give, Nothing More

Rage shoots through my system as Brendon stares levelly at me.

“What do you mean?” I ask, a burning jealousy for this unknown girl eating up my insides. If I thought that hearing about Gabe’s fuck-bunny was crushing, the idea of Brendon with anyone else is intolerable. I think I might throw up.

“I mean, it’s different for everyone, you know?” he says calmly. “Gabe’s got Vicky. William sleeps around a little bit, though I hear he’s a real fan of one-night stands.” Brendon laughs. “Not that I would know. And Pete … well, I’m pretty sure that Pete’s been in bed with at least half the school.”

I lick my lips and swallow. “And you?” I ask in a shaky voice. “What about you?”

Agonizingly slowly, Brendon looks me in the eyes, opens his mouth, and a peal of laugher spills forth. “My parents raised me Mormon,” he says with a slight smirk. “I never lost the big V.”

Relief courses through my veins and I manage a weak smile. “Really?” I ask. “N-neither have I.” The lie slips all too easily through my lips, and I remember my old school. A private school. A so-called “privileged” school. So how is that the only person to call me a fag these days is my own father whereas I was mercilessly bullied each day last year? Why else would Dad take me out of a perfectly good private school in favorite of this public dump?

She had large hazel-blue eyes and forelock of bleach blonde hair with the habit of falling over them. She was small in my hands with bird-bone wrists and a tiny waist. “I love you, baby,” she would say with a slight smile. “We fit together like pieces of a puzzle.” And we did. Her name was Jac and I’m pretty sure the reason I originally asked her out was because it tasted like a boy’s name on my tongue.

We’d go out on dates, hold hands the park, and kiss in darkened movie theatres. I even brought her home to meet Dad and he smiled at her and kept his drinking to a minimum of one and a half glasses. He tucked me in bed that night, as if I were a little kid, and kissed me on the forehead. Told me he was proud of me.

My life was perfect. We were perfect. We fit together like pieces of puzzle.

Except.

Except Jac wanted to take me out a party an out-of-school friends was hosting one Thursday night. “It’ll be fun,” she assured me. “Trevor’s a great guy. Friendly, cute, and always a gentleman.”

“Should I be worried by the competition?” I asked with a laugh.

Jac’s ringing laughter joined mine and she kissed me gently. “He’s gay, Ryan,” she said.

“You’re friends with a gay boy?” I asked in surprise. I didn’t mean to sound rude; I was just shocked.

Jac shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with gays,” she said simply, and we went to the party.

Trevor had warm blue eyes and sweeping, golden bangs. He dwarfed Jac, standing a good head and a half taller than her, and his shoulders were broader than mine. “Hey!” he exclaimed with a bright grin. “You must be Ryan. I’ve heard a lot about you from Jac.”

“Don’t embarrass him, Trev,” Jac said, digging him in the elbows and laughing. “Or me, for that matter!”

“I wouldn’t dream of embarrassing you, Jac!” Trevor said, lips dropped open in a mock gasp of horror. “Oh, Audrey’s already out back, in case you were wondering,” he added, naming Jac’s best friend.

“You’re a dear,” she said and went up on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. “See you in a bit, Ry.” She left me alone with our host with a small wave of her fingers.

Something inside me twisted and fluttered as Trevor watched Jac leave with a smile on his face. “She sure is something, isn’t she?” he said, and I felt a twinge of jealousy, even though Jac had already told me he was gay.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, staring at beige carpet under my feet.

“You wanna go get a drink or something?” Trevor asked and I shyly said yes, following the taller boy over to a cooler of cheap beers.

Before I knew it, I was sitting on a bed in a darkened room with my arms wrapped around Trevor’s neck as his tongue explored the caverns of my mouth, my head swimming with in an alcoholic haze.

“I … I’m not gay …” I whispered against his lips.

His eyes glittered in the half-light. “You won’t be the first straight guy I’ve done,” he said and reached for the hem of my t-shirt.

“I have a girlfriend,” I added.

Trevor frowned. “I bet I’d feel bad about doing this Jac if I weren’t so drunk,” he admitted.

“But we are too drunk,” I finished for him, nodding my head and reaching for the button on his jeans.

Losing my virginity wasn’t anything like I’d excepted it to be, but then again, I never excepted to be having gay sex while my girlfriend drank beer downstairs with her best friend. I also didn’t expect said best friend to come upstairs on the arm of another boy, looking for a bedroom to move into.

“Ryan?!” she shrieked, hazel eyes widening with first shock and then fury. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

The boy she was with merely blinked at the image of Trevor and I naked on the bed, tangled in each other’s limbs and began backing away. “Oops,” he said. “See you later, Audrey.”

“JAC!” Audrey screamed. “You better get up here right now!”

Trevor and I hurriedly separated, grabbing for our discarded clothing when Jac appeared next to Audrey.

“Ryan?” she asked in a confused voice, looking down at me as I struggled to pull on what may have been Trevor’s shirt. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Audrey shrilled. “Your perfect, little boyfriend just cheated on you with your perfect, little gay friend.”

Jac turned to Audrey, a frown creasing her forehead. “I don’t believe you,” she said adamantly. “Ryan wouldn’t do that to me. Neither would Trevor.”

Audrey shrugged. “Ask them yourself,” she said. “I’m gonna go find Ronnie. And if they don’t wanna talk, then I’m sure the smell sex in their hair should be answer enough for you.”

Jac’s lip quivered as Audrey existed the scene before turning to face Trevor and I. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you Ryan?” she asked in a trembling voice. “You wouldn’t.” Her childlike eyes were shining with tears as she advanced towards me.

I was too scared to open my mouth, too afraid of what I might say, too shamed of what I had done.

“Trevor?” she prompted, turning halfway hopeful eyes towards our host.

“I’m so sorry, Jac,” he whispered and ran from the room.

Covering my face with my hands, I didn’t notice Jac’s approach until her arms were around my shoulders, steadying my shakes even as I betrayed her. “You do smell like sex,” she whispered sadly and I could hear the tears in her voice. “I didn’t want to believe Audrey. I want … I trusted you Ryan. I loved you. We fit together like pieces of a puzzle.”

“We do!” I protested, tucking my head into her neck, crying against her familiar skin. “We do.”

“Then why would you do that?” she asked, silently adding, ‘to me,’ but she didn’t have to. We both knew.

Gasping for breath, I raised my head up to look into her watery eyes and pressed my lips to hers.

“Ryan,” she said in a chiding voice once I pulled away. “I want answers, not ki—”

“I think I might be gay,” I choked out, and she looked beautiful in the faint light, frozen in place, eyes stretched wide in shock, lips dropped open in a silent gasp.

Her eyes fluttered closed in a slow blink and it was as thought time itself had slowed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said in a breathy voice, unable to look at me. “How can you know you don’t like girls when you’ve never had sex with one. It’s called ‘sexual orientation’ for a reason, Ryan.”

“Are you asking me to—”

“Yes.”

I sat there, staring miserably down at my hands, trying to understand what she was telling me and when I looked back up, my jaw dropped and my eyes went wide. “J-Jac?” I stammered out.

She stood there, her purple dressed dropped at her feet, pale skin glimmering in the dark. “I want to know if we fit together like pieces of a puzzle,” she said and I realized with a jolt that she was referring to our physical selves.

“Jac,” I began but she was already dropping to her knees before me.

“Let me do this, Ry,” she begged, fingers fumbling with the button of my jeans. “I have to know!”

Her lips, moist and plump, parted and took my cock in her mouth before I could say anything. A thrill of pleasure and a shiver of guilt ran through my body and I decided allowing Jac to give me a blowjob was the least I could do after cheating on her.

She picked up the tempo, created more friction, and smiled when I had to bite back a moan. “See?” she breathed. “You’re enjoying it.”

That was when we heard the police sirens.

Jac swore and dropped me. “These parties aren’t illegal, are they?” I asked, scrambling for my pants for the second time that night.

She rolled her eyes at my naivety. “Don’t be stupid, Ryan,” Jac muttered, quickly dressing herself. “It’s not the parties themselves which get you in trouble. It’s the noise level and the underage drinking.”

“Fuck.”

Striding to the window, my beautiful, strong, amazing girlfriend flung it open and gestured for me to come. “Let’s get out of here,” she said and we held hands as we dropped down onto the grass below. I followed her over the fence and down the street, scared out of my wits and still half drunk.

We collapsed on a park bench two and a half blocks away from Trevor’s house and Jac laughed, a loud and brassy laugh, so full of life. “We got away,” she grinned. “Sucks for Trevor that his party got busted, though I think it might’ve been fate.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

Jac sighed and faced me, suddenly serious. “How did my blowjob feel?” she asked and I blushed. “Or are you still gay?”

“Still gay,” I muttered, ducking my head in shame and Jac nodded like she wasn’t surprised.

“We don’t fit together like puzzle pieces anymore, Ryan,” she said softly, brushing the side of my hand with her fingertips. “The sirens proved that for me.”

“No!” I wailed, clutching at her wrist. “We still fit like puzzle pieces! We have to! We have to!”

Jac shook her head sadly, pulling away from me. “Perhaps we just don’t belong to the same puzzle,” she said and kissed my forehead lightly. “I’ll miss you, Ryan.”

“No,” I whimpered as she got to her feet.

“I still love you,” she said and extended a hand to me. “Come on, Ryan. I’ll take you home.”

The next day was hell on earth. Audrey, her boy-toy Ronnie, and a couple of his friends—Max, Bryan, and Omar—stalked me down the halls, cutting me up with their words.

“Fag!”

“Hey, Homo, I heard you enjoyed yourself last night!”

“Faggot.”

“You cheating, lying, two-faced bastard!” That was, of course, from Audrey.

“Mind your own damn business!” I shouted back, and Max’s fist collided with my eye.

That was the beginning of my extremely intimate relationship with harassment, and at the end of the day, Jac found me curled up against one of the lockers, bruised and bleeding and I knew that it was nothing compared to what I’d face at home once Dad had heard what happened.

“Trevor got busted,” she told me, sitting down beside me and looking in the other direction. “I just thought you should know.”

I dragged myself into something resembling a sitting position and looked at her soft profile. “What’s gonna happen to him?” I asked, using the back of my hand to wipe the blood from my mouth.

“Juvie.”

It all happened over a year ago and I left that all behind when I switched schools due to the constant harassment, but the memory still makes me cringe with guilt and I cannot tell my friends about my past.

“Then I guess that makes us the virgin pair of best friends,” Brendon says with a slight smile. “Since Gabe and William are both out of the running and Patrick would have a running if it weren’t for Pete.”

“What about Spencer and Jon?” I ask and Brendon blushes.

“Jon used to date this girl named Cassie—she’s also a senior—but they broke up last year because they decided that they just weren’t in love in anymore,” he says. “Isn’t that romantic?”

But they didn’t love each other. “I guess,” I mumble.

“Ryan,” Brendon says and offers me his hand, just like Jac did so many times in the past. “Let’s head back to the cafeteria.”