Closeted | Boy x Boy

~Zwölf~

I walked into the English room and looked around. Charlie was sitting in my spot talking to Jay, who had a distracted look on his face. When he saw me walk into the room, he perked up, his brows arching with surprise.

"Abe? H-Hey, how-"

I turned on my heel and stalked across the room to Charlie's seat, on the other side of Marley, and sat down promptly. Marley looked at me, a concerned look on her face. She reached out a hand to grab mine, and we held them there for a few moments, letting me tightly squeeze her wrist. I pulled away, clasping my hands in my lap. At least Marley liked me, I knew that for certain. 

I could feel eyes on me, especially Jay's, as I stared straight ahead. Charlie looked triumphant, and she gave me a sly grin and a cheeky thumbs-up. I flipped her off, and she rolled her eyes and turned back around in her seat to continue blabbing to Jay, who wasn't even paying attention. He was looking down at his lap, fidgeting with his fingers as his brows were furrowed in deep thought. I knew he was confused, but if I told him the truth... if I told him the truth about Charlie then Charlie would tell everyone I was gay. And I wasn't. 

"Abey, do you want to skip?" Marley whispered. "We can go to the bathroom if you wanna talk about this."

I shook my head. I just wanted to sit here and wallow in my own self-hatred. I wrapped my arms around each other and rested my head on my desk, closing my eyes briefly. I opened them again, and met Marley's worried face.

"I don't want to talk about it," I mumbled, my voice muffled by my sweater sleeve.

Marley nodded. "Alright, just... let me know if you change your mind, okay?"

I shook my head in agreement, and closed my eyes again, slipping into the warm darkness that surrounded me. Mr. Summer shuffled his papers at his desk, tapped his pencil against his thermos, and then finally rose with a grunt and a sigh. He wasn't any more excited to be here than I was. 

"You have one more week to get your poetry project done in class. Remember, a five-sentence evaluation of seven different poems from an actual poetry book, not just some nursery rhyme book for kids. I've already had to remind a handful of you to find an actual collection rather than a paper-back from the children's section." His gaze landed knowingly on Jacob Shritz, who flushed and looked down at his shoes. Everyone chuckled.

Mr. Summers rubbed his hands together. "I've seen some of your guys' work already, and I must say that a few of you have undoubtedly impressed me with your paragraphs. However, there are others that I am incredibly... disappointed? Eh, maybe disgusted, by the lack of effort, grammatical errors, and the horrid poems you chose. So I'm going to make a rule. These poems can not look like they're lyrics out of a rap song. No mention of sex, drugs, gangs, booze, or any of that. No slurs, no f-bombs, and preferably no shit. Just damn, hell, frick, if it's in there, are going to be allowed. You will have points taken off if you do not follow this rule. Also, many poems are written about one's partner or crush, those ones are okay, if they were written in the nineteenth century. No mention of boobs, vaginas, things like that, okay? I'm really sick of the evaluations some of you have done on these topics. You know what, better yet, if its a female body part, boys can't do an evaluation on it. Case closed."

A few groans sounded around the room. 

I looked down at my lap and pulled out my phone. Sixty three messages? Four were spam, two were from Marley, a handful of them were from unknown numbers, and approximately forty-five were from Jay. Each message notification made the gaping hole in my heart a lot bigger. But, I didn't miss Jay- did I? How could I? He'd made me hate myself, and he made Charlie hate me, too. He'd practically ruined my reputation. But... I guess he was kind of endearing. And maybe I sort of liked it when he teased me. Not in a gay way, but in a normal way. A perfectly normal way. I kind of liked when he gave me those looks with his gray eyes, those fond, amused looks. And I even kind of liked that he'd wanted to kiss me. That meant something, didn't it?

I sighed. I clicked on the bubbles and messages popped up, the text messages filling the screen. 

J: Are you mad at me?

J: I don't know what I did, but if this is about the kiss then I'm really sorry and I swear I won't do anything like that ever again.

J: Please just tell me what I did wrong

J: You can't avoid me forever

J: We have to work on the project still

J: If you just tell me what I did, I can make it better

J: Sunshine?

The last one hurt my sould a little bit. I took a deep breath and typed out a reply. The little ellipses must've popped up on Jay's phone, because he quickly snatched it and the icon saying he was online appeared. That made this all the more harder.

A: I told you to only text me about the project

A: Don't talk to me

I turned off my phone and set it in my lap, taking deep, uneven breaths to try and calm my racing heart. I felt awful. I was a total douchebag, and that made the whole thing seem even worse. Jay didn't deserve this. Even if he didn't like me as a person, he still had a right to know why someone like me was mad at him. I didn't deserve his concern, or his time. 

A: You're wasting your time. I don't want to talk to you, and I don't want to see you. Just leave me alone.

(...)

J: Please?

I turned off my phone and looked away, tears pricking my eyes.