“Nothing. He meant nothing, right, Scott?” Eric shot him another look as he twisted open a bottle of water.
Scott straightened his back, took a deep breath, and puffed out a “whatever,” before facing me. “Is he,” rather than using his words to complete the sentence, he flipped his hand back and forth, “you know? A fag?”
I’d like to think there wasn’t anger or hatred in the way he spat out the word “fag”, but then I’d be lying. I’d also like to say that my world didn’t spin a little, threatening to swallow me whole as the word tumbled out either, but then again, I’d be lying once more.
Scott, a kid who I’d known less than twenty-four hours, had put a voice to what I’d always thought about my best friend, but could never say myself.
He’d also put a voice to my own darkest secret – one which would never see the light of day.
Knowing there was no way I could let them think that, or let them see my faltering, I recovered quickly and tossed my sweaty towel in his face. “No way in hell. I’ve known Dylan my whole life. Don’t you think I’d know if he was queer?” A feeling of betrayal punched me in the gut at calling him a queer, even if it was only intended to defend and protect him.
It still makes you a coward.
“No need to get your sac all twisted. I was just curious.” Scott punched me jokingly on the arm, and all I could think about was whether I’d been convincing enough.
Twenty minutes later, when we were all done with our workout, the three of us trekked across the campus to our dorms, more than exhausted and in desperate need of a shower. When I got back to my room, Dylan wasn’t there, but it was clear he had been. Shrugging off the unease from the early conversation, or accusation depending on how you looked at it, I showered quickly, not wanting to focus on the possibility of Dylan being gay.
Or the reality of me being gay.
After being at the camp for a week, I wasn’t so sure I’d made the best choice. Rather than giving me the time to think and clear my head, all being there had done was confused the fuck out of me. Reading over the words I’d written in my journal over the seven days didn’t help at all. At home, it was different. No one looked at me differently. I was just Dylan Hopkins; there was nothing more to me. Maybe that was because I was never without Shane and Reid – maybe they took the focus off me.
But here, I felt like there was a sign over my head in rainbow-colored letters flashing “homo” wherever I went. I was pretty sure Scott caught me staring at Shane in the weight room the other night. He glared at me sideways and whispered something under his breath to Eric who immediately looked my way.
It became nearly impossible to be around everyone in the weight room and even more so after we worked out. My brain was turning into a jumbled mess and I had no clue how to un-mess it. So while everyone was out doing whatever it was that they did after we were free for the day, I pulled out my journal and tried to clear my head.
Most nights, I wrote until my hand felt like it was going to fall off, but tonight, Shane came barreling through door, laughing like a fool.
Before he could see it, I slid my journal in-between the mattress and box spring and sat up straight against the wall. “You gotta come down to the lake,” Shane puffed out, trying to catch his breath.
“Why?” I kicked my legs over the side of the bed and slid my feet into my Nike sandals, ready to go in an instant, despite the skepticism in my voice.
I grabbed my key from the desk and pulled it over my neck, letting in fall down my back in-between my shoulder blades. The humid summer air that was usually unbearable during the day was marginally better. As we walked closer to the lake, the air grew a bit cooler. The moonlight shimmered across the lake as a loon called out in the distance. In the shadows, I could see a bunch of the guys huddled together under a tree, the bright glare of what I assumed was a computer screen lighting their faces up in the glow.
“What the hell?” I kept the words to a low mumble, one hopefully only I heard. The moans I thought I heard from a few feet back were now growing louder and louder as we approached the group.
It seemed as if no one even noticed us as we sat down. They were obviously glued to the screen where the girl on girl porn was playing. “Eric swiped it from his older brother,” Shane said by way of explanation.
You could have heard a pin drop. Except for the noises coming from the computer, no one spoke. I watched on and tried my best to appear interested; though I’m pretty sure no one was paying attention to me.
Shit, if I thought my head was fucked up before this, it was even more so now. In the back of my brain, the part that was always trying to maintain the perfect cover for who I knew I really was, I couldn’t help but think this was all some kind of game. Perhaps a trick that Eric and Scott were trying to play on me after our stilted exchange of glares in the weight room the other day.
Rather than getting too ahead of myself, I sat there calmly and tried not to get too worried about being outed. Besides what did they have as proof?
You checking out another guy. That’s what they’ve got against you.
The laptop lid slamming shut shook me out of my worry. “Dude, that was fucking hot. You have to get more of those,” Ryan, one of Scott and Eric’s friends from their hometown team said as he not-so-casually grabbed at his crotch, disguising it as readjusting himself.
Without saying anything, Scott looked over his shoulder at me, his face half-hidden, half-lit by the moon. “Hot, right, Dylan?” Insinuation was thick in his words.
I didn’t think the other guys heard the accusation in what he’d just said, or the sneer in his tone, but I did. “Hell yeah, it was,” I spat out quickly, with what was hopefully not too much eagerness to seem unconvincing.
“All right, boys. It’s been real, but I’m being eaten alive out here. Damn mosquitos.” Eric swatted away an imaginary bug before adding, “I’m heading back to the room.”
Snorting through his laughter, Scott stood next to him. “Bugs, my ass. You just want to go jerk off in the shower before I get back to the room.”
“How about I race you back to the dorm and whoever gets there first gets the shower for as long as they need while the other one has to wait in the hallway?” Without even giving him a beat to react, Scott sprinted toward the dorms, leaving Eric more than a few steps behind while the rest of us stood there laughing at them.
“And that is why I’m happy to be in a single this year.” Ryan clapped his hand to my shoulder, setting me on edge even more than I had already been. “See you in the morning,” he said as he strode away from us.
