Dan Western Stole My Girlfriend

Dan's POV

I lied to Avery that day in detention. I lied about a lot. I lied that I had had sex with Holly, although I did get a blowjob from her and she was as good as I said. She actually had wanted to have sex but I turned her down by saying that I was tired from soccer training that night and she blew me instead.

Blowjobs from girls are much easier than actual sex because I can just close my eyes and let my imagination run wild and not have to worry about not being able to keep it up. It’s hard to stay hard when you’re not attracted to whoever you’re supposed to be fucking. Most of the time I could manage it, because I mean, sex is sex, but I just couldn’t be bothered that night.

At the time, I didn’t know why I told Avery that I slept with Holly. I knew it would hurt him, but I did it anyway. I figured out later on, while I was lying awake in my bed that night with the right side of my face throbbing and my eyes sore from crying, that I told him what I knew would hurt him so that he would stop being in love with Holly and instead start hating her. She had told me how long it took for the two of them to get sexual and how important it was to Avery for them to wait until the right time, so I knew telling him how quickly I got Holly out of her clothes would break his heart.

The only problem was; the look on his face after I told him ended up breaking my heart. I felt bad for lying to him and I half wanted to take back what I said, but at the same time, I didn’t want him to question why and so I settled for asking if he was okay instead. Any other day, for any other reason, his sarcastic response wouldn’t have bothered me, but I could tell that he was trying hard to keep his emotions in check and I really hated myself in that moment.

I hated how I always had that overwhelming impulse to try and hurt Avery when I could just be normal and treat him like a friend, or maybe even something more. It was stupid to think that making him hate me would be enough to eliminate all my feelings for him. The banter and rivalry between us is what made those feelings come to the surface in the first place. I enjoyed stirring Avery up for the sheer pleasure of seeing his reactions and hearing whatever clever response he came back at me with. That was what I liked about him. I could annoy him, but he would always have a comeback. But his reaction to our conversation, I didn’t like. It hurt me, knowing that I’d really hurt him.

And I knew that I’d done it before; a few weeks earlier, when I pursued Holly and convinced her to date me. It was my fault that his heart was broken, but Holly wasn’t blameless either. She could have told me to fuck off, but she chose not to and I knew why. My ex-girlfriends were all examples of what she wanted to be – pretty, popular and at the top of the school’s social ladder. The main thing they had in common was dating me. It wasn’t hard to convince Holly to break up with Avery. She cared more about herself than she did him, something which became very apparent the day she casually told me that Avery was bisexual like it was common knowledge – which I knew it wasn’t because I would have known before then. Word travels fast at our school and if something as big as someone coming out of the closet had happened, I would have been among the first to know.

So, Holly had outed Avery to me and I really hated her for that. Keeping a secret like that is hard enough even when you haven’t told a living soul. Trusting someone with it is an extremely risky thing to do, and Avery clearly trusted Holly to keep her mouth shut. I know that if it was me, finding out someone I loved betrayed me would destroy me.

I could have kept my mouth shut about knowing. I know that. It would have prevented Avery’s panic attack and he could have continued living his life without concern that I knew he liked boys. But I just had to know if what Holly said was true. I had to. And as scary as witnessing Avery’s panic attack was, it gave me a sliver of hope. Maybe, just maybe, one day I would be able to trust someone with my own secret. I could finally be myself around someone. Maybe that someone could be Avery.

Despite that feeling of hopefulness, once Avery recovered and we established that I wouldn’t tell anyone, I didn’t tell him about me. And I lied to him. Again.

I asked him if he’d ever kissed a boy, secretly hoping that he hadn’t. He told me no but then shot the question back at me. That was when I lied. I told him about Robbie and me in the hot tub – that was the truth – but it wasn’t the only time I’ve kissed a guy.

Travelling is a wonderful thing. Truly, it is. You can go somewhere and be someone completely new. When my grandpa was alive, I always used to visit him. He lived about four hours away in a medium sized town that had a lot of activities for both young and old people. I loved visiting him and was devastated when he died two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. He was the only one who I had ever told, in words at least, that I wasn’t straight and he made me feel so accepted. He was the one who introduced me to his neighbour’s gay, eighteen-year-old son, Tyler. Tyler was flamboyant. He was loud. He was annoying. And he was so damn attractive that I couldn’t help but kiss him back when he attached himself to my lips on New Year’s Day back when I was turning fifteen.

I spent the rest of that summer until school went back hanging around with Tyler, allowing myself to temporarily knock down the walls I had built up for so long and just being myself for the first time since I realised that I wasn’t interested in girls. Tyler and I spent a lot of time kissing but it never went any further than that, mostly because we knew that what we had going on wasn’t going to continue when I went back home. Plus, I was underage. I wasn’t a virgin or anything, but since Tyler was already an adult we didn’t want to risk him getting in trouble. That, and the thought of having sex with a guy terrified me at that age.

Tyler and I never bothered getting each other’s phone numbers or anything like that. Actually, I never saw him again after that summer. He and his family moved interstate not too long after our little fling ended. But my experience with him definitely shaped the way I saw myself. Even though I rebuilt the walls that he had broken down and never revealed my true self to the world, I’ve known who I am inside from that point on.

Since that summer, the only other boy I’ve kissed has been Robbie, and like I told Avery, we were drunk in a hot tub playing Spin the Bottle. It was just a regular kiss, nothing earth shattering, but for me, kissing a boy again felt right, even if it was my best friend.

When Avery asked me what kissing a guy was like, I very nearly blurted out how amazing I thought it was, but managed to catch myself and was able to give him a nonchalant answer instead. I also wanted to offer to let him experience it for himself, but again I forced myself not to. It’s not easy having to conceal my thoughts around Avery. There’s just something about him that makes me want to speak exactly what’s on my mind, regardless of the consequences. I know that he had opened up to me that day in detention and I wished that I could have done the same. Fear was what was holding me back. Always fear of the unknown.

Our conversation didn’t continue after that. Avery and I both completed our work in silence until Mr Ferguson came to set us free for the weekend. Avery waited for me to leave with him but I needed to talk to Mr Ferguson about the physics test that we’d taken that day so I told him to leave without me.

As soon as Avery was out of earshot, I asked Mr Ferguson if he had marked my exam yet. Immediately, a look of disappointment appeared on his face and my heart sunk. I’d failed. Dad was going to kill me. Mr Ferguson was sympathetic – not that I told him why I was so upset at my mark – but couldn’t allow me to retake the exam; it wouldn’t be fair on the other students. The only silver lining was that he told me that my mark was not the worst in the class. Around 70% of our class failed the test (which, you would think, meant that it was too hard), but that didn’t stop Dad from backhanding me across the face and throwing me into a wall when I got home and reluctantly had to tell him. He also grounded me for a week (soccer was excluded) and sent me to my room without dinner, telling me that I was a fuck up and a disappointment. Then, he went and grabbed himself another – there were several empty bottles on the coffee table in front of the television – beer from the fridge and sat down to watch the news, pointedly ignoring me as I struggled to get up off the floor and drag myself to my room.

Tears threatened as I slowly lay myself down on my bed, cringing as the shoulder that hit the wall touched the mattress. I hated crying. I really did. Crying was for the weak and I avoided doing it as much as possible. But I couldn’t hold the tears back this time and soon they were pouring down my cheeks as I sobbed quietly, and I let them slide off my face to wet the pillow under my head.

A disappointment. That’s all I ever was to my father. I wasn’t good enough at school. Not smart enough, even though I took the advanced Maths and English classes and was near top of the class in both. I wasn’t the best soccer player in my competition – or even in my own team. I wasn’t committed enough to his goals. I liked boys instead of girls, though if it was up to me he would never know that. I could never be a golden child like my brother, who could do no wrong in my dad’s eyes. I was just the second son – the unplanned one. The punching bag. The disappointment.