Kick Me Like a Stray

Nothing properly prepares you for when you move out. No matter how many wounds inflicted upon me, I hadn’t really planned a life outside my home. I worked to save up money to leave, get my own place, but none of it was really….real.

Until it was.

We were friends. Friend enough that he helped bind all my cuts and bruises each time I came to work cut and bleeding, friend enough he had dropped it when I said I wouldn’t explain, friend enough I had read almost every comic he owned and him mine.

Not friend enough that we had ever been to each other’s houses, or that other than the fact we had both come out as gay to each other, we knew neither of the other’s secrets.

We were friend enough that he hugged me and would help me move out.

Not friend enough to tell me him and his brother shared secrets, mutual ones.

They didn’t tell me their secret till the Summer Equinox. By a year it was too late. I was too emotionally involved, and when you get to that point, you are willing to get over the fact that those you thought you knew are….