Now You Know ✅

Chapter 25: Cracking the Surface

A/N
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There was no point in lying to April, especially when she had already presumed that something out of the ordinary had happened. At the same time, Pelham couldn't resolve whether confiding in her had been an overall solace or something that he might regret later in the future. Not that he wanted to take his words back and keep them locked up in his brain forever. Rather, it was her response that seemed to be hounding him.

Pelham had been straightforward, pitching his voice into a nonchalant mode, so he sounded as though he was merely discussing the issues regarding the weather that day.

"Then he kind of kissed me," he'd stated with a casual shrug, looking anywhere but April's eyes at the school compound earlier, having gotten out of class early and going to meet with her afterwards.

Her eyes had widened then, and her eyebrows rose further up on her forehead that they were at the verge of vanishing into the depths of her hair. "Kind of kissed you?" she'd exclaimed, earning a few glances from some students at the compound area. "I knew something sexual happened."

"April, it's not like that,"

"I didn't know he was gay,"

"Oh, I don't know-"

"What do you mean you don't know?" said April, regarding Pelham with the air of someone trying to tell a minor that one plus one equals to two instead of eleven. "Pelham, unless Lucio is a actually a girl in disguise and 'she' kissed you, then that explains it. Though, of course, heteronormativity tends to get bland. Then again, there are various of factors ..."

"So, what, you want me to try and grope his crotch next time I see him?"

"If that's what you do best ..." she was smirking. "If he winces, I don't reckon it'll give you much of a valid result. So I suggest you start interrogating him in a dungeon-"

"April,"

She had merely laughed.

"He panicked afterwards, though," he said, proceeding to the topic. "Kind of detached himself before he left the house - as well as his phone."

April just nodded and hummed to herself, looking fairly contented to have had listened to the whole story. Pelham admitted that he felt better after getting it out of his chest, for he himself was still at a state of bewilderment at Lucio's actions.

Especially when Lucio refused to acknowledge Pelham's presence for the rest of the day at school, regardless of the number of times they passed each other in the hallway, or how Pelham had called him for more than a couple of times. For someone who had actually sat there on the couch when it happened, who didn't do anything, Pelham felt like he was the one who had kissed Lucio. If that were the case, however, Lucio paying no heed to Pelham would at least be explicable.

Not the other way around, where things grew more disconcerting than they already were. And there was Pelham, who still couldn't quite grasp his own feelings.

Then, just when he thought the topic had been over, there came April's seemingly simple question with a seemingly straightforward answer, jumbling Pelham's head even more; "Did you like it?"

And it took him quite while to respond with another casual shrug, along with a quick-witted answer. "I mean, I'm not bothered by it," he simply said - which was true, yet avoiding the real answer, seeing as he himself was still puzzled.

Before Lucio, he had expected that kissing boys will be like his first time kissing someone. Instead, it had felt somewhat normal, to which its level of normalcy exceeded the level of normalcy for when he was kissing a girl. He had kissed other girls than April when he was younger than fourteen, but those never felt adequately right.