Dan Western Stole My Girlfriend

“Go! Go go go go! Yes! Ye – No! Screw you Yoshi,” I shouted at Hansel as he beat me once again at Mario Kart. “How do you always beat me?”

Hansel clapped me on the shoulder with a grin. “Skill, my friend. Major skill.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right,” I muttered, then sighed and put down my X-Box controller. I had been debating coming out to Hansel for most of the school holidays and now, the last day before school went back, was the last chance to do it. Even though Dan and I had texted back and forth a few times during the holidays and he didn’t seem to have any plans to out me, I still wanted to be the one to tell my friends on my own terms. Besides, if Dan did change his mind about spreading that information around, the whole school would know by the time we came back anyway.

Hansel put down his controller as well. “Everything alright?” he asked, looking at me in concern.

“Yeah… I wanna tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone else, okay?”

“Okay, you’re starting to scare me. Did you get some girl pregnant or something?”

“What? No!”

“Well, what then? Rip off the Band Aid.”

“Okay. Okay,” I took a deep breath. “I like guys. As well as girls. Um, I’m bisexual.”

Hansel stared at me. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He only stared and I started to freak out. My breathing went shallow and I was on the verge of a full-on panic attack when Hansel finally spoke.

“Avery! Hey, whoa. Mate, it’s cool, okay? I don’t care if you like guys, you should know that. I’m no homophobe… or… is bi-phobe a thing? Well, whatever it’s called. It’s cool. Really, so calm down, okay?”

I went through my breathing exercises and slowly I was able to get my breathing under control.
“Are you okay?” Hansel asked cautiously.

“Yeah, I think so. Listen, Han, you really can’t tell anyone okay, because I… I can’t have the whole school know.”

“I get it. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Now, let’s play GTA.” He got up off the floor and went over to the shelf with all my other X-Box games to search for the one he mentioned. Once he found it and put it in the machine he turned back to look at me. “Are you sure you’re okay? You looked pretty freaked. Does anyone else know?”

“A couple of people know. My family. Holly… Dan…”

“Dan Western? Why the fuck did he know before me?” Hansel’s voice wasn’t angry, more incredulous and I could understand why. As far as he was aware, Dan and I barely spoke to each other.

“Holly told him.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. When?”

“Nope. She told him pretty much as soon as they started dating. He asked me about it in detention.”

“Wow, what a bitch. Was Dan like, a huge dick about it?”

“No, he was surprisingly cool about it. I feel like… we actually kind of, I dunno, connected in a way.” I blushed slightly and turned my face away from Hansel to hide it. I may have just come out to him but there was no way in hell I was going to tell him about my recently discovered feelings for Dan. “I had a panic attack after he said he knew and he calmed me down.”

Hansel made a little ‘huh’ noise. I waited for him to say more, but instead he just started the game and we played GTA: San Andreas in multiplayer mode comfortably for a while.

After we finished slaughtering our victims in one of the rampage challenges, Hansel put down his controller. He looked at me as if contemplating asking me something.

“You can just ask me, Han, I’m not going to get offended or anything,” I said when he didn’t say anything.

“How’d you know I was going to ask something?” he asked innocently. I raised my eyebrows, making him laugh. “Yeah, okay, I was.”

“So, what is it?”

“How did you know you were bi?”

“Oh… I dunno, really. It was a really confusing thing because I was dating Holly – I loved Holly – but then I realised that I… I had this, this crush on a guy and I really, really didn’t want to and I tried to justify it in my head that it wasn’t a crush, that it was just some, I don’t know, admiration for him or something.” I began, and then the words suddenly started flowing out of my mouth before I could stop them.

“But then one night I was sleeping and I had this dream where I was kissing him and I was enjoying it and it just kind of… clicked and I realised that he wasn’t the only guy I found myself attracted to; there were others, except that the attraction was nowhere near as strong. I knew I wasn’t gay because I still loved Holly and I was still attracted to other girls too. I knew what bisexual was and it seemed the most fitting. I hated it. I didn’t want to be different and I tried to not be… But I couldn’t deny the crush that I had on this guy. I just… I really struggled, for a long time and I got really depressed. I wanted… I wanted to… To hurt myself and I almost did.”

Hansel drew in a sharp breath. He knew about my anxiety but I don’t think he was expecting to hear that I had been struggling with something so much that I’d wanted to do myself harm.

I continued on with my story without letting him speak because if he did, I knew that I would never get it out.

“But then Holly called me while I was sitting on my bedroom floor with a lighter in my hand, contemplating… well, I guess you can figure it out. She heard I was upset and I ended up telling her everything and she was amazing about it. She really helped me through it and I finally started to accept that it was okay to feel like I did. I told my parents and Jamie and Willow a while later, and I was really lucky that they were all accepting, even though Jamie teases me about it a lot,” I finished, drawing in a deep breath.

It felt good to let all that out. Even when I came out to my family, I didn’t tell them everything about what was going through my head and I especially didn’t tell them that I was contemplating self-harm. Only Holly, and now Hansel know about that. I never actually did anything, but it scares me to know that I went (and could potentially go again) into such a dark place where I really wanted to.

Hansel had been watching me carefully while I was speaking but a few moments after I finished, he shifted his body so that he was on his knees in front of me and pulled me into a tight hug. He held me there for a good minute before he let go, holding me by the shoulders at arm’s length.

“You ever feel like hurting yourself again, I want you to talk to me, okay? I don’t care what time of day it is, you call me. Got it?”

I nodded. “Promise,” I murmured.

“Good. Thank you.”

“For what?” I asked, confused.

“I dunno. Promising. Telling me what you did. Trusting me. You’re my best mate. I don’t want to see you hurting or struggling. I love you, man.”

“You sure you’re not the half gay one here?” I joked, and Hansel, rightfully, punched me in the shoulder. I laughed. “In all seriousness, I love you too.”

“In a totally platonic way, right?”

It was my turn to punch Hansel. That made both of us crack up, and we laughed until we couldn’t breathe, and we sat there leaning on each other for ages as our lungs begged for air.

After we recovered, we switched the television over to Netflix, so we could watch ‘Archer’, and settled in for a marathon, even better friends than we were before I decided to tell Hansel my biggest secret. I felt calmer that afternoon than I had for a long time.