Frustration -SERIES- [Part 1] [boyxboy]

Chapter Twelve

He shook his head carefully. 'No. I mean, I'm pretty sure. I don't have any doubts. I'm completely sure about you, at least. And I don't really think being gay is bad anymore. Nothing about you is bad.'

I tried to be cynical but I couldn't help smiling at that.

'And anyway, even if I was into any of that stuff, I wouldn't do it the religious way. I was never anti-gay because of religion. It was all because of my dad. I don't care who Leviticus is, he can shove his abomination up his ass.'

I laughed and snuggled closer to him. There had been a scary half hour there where I'd been worried he might have been tempted.

'Were you really worried?' he asked a second later, obviously reading my body language in exactly the way it was coming off.

'...Maybe.'

'Tyler, I've had a mammoth crush on you since the first day I saw you in first year and I've finally got you. I'm not going anywhere.'

I completely froze for a second and then pushed him away to make him look at me. 'Excuse me?'

'Oh,' said Conor, faking nonchalance. 'Have I never told you that before?' Conor has always been kind of cagey about when he first started having feelings for me, because it was longer than I'd had feelings for him. I wouldn't have imagined it had been that long though.

'You were crushing on me for three years before you said anything?!'

'Well, I mean, I did go out of my way to touch you as often as I could.'

'Yeah, by knocking into me in the hallways!'

'Semantics,' Conor said distractedly, pretending to be uninterested in the conversation.

I smacked him on the arm. 'Stop being so annoying! Tell me everything!'

Conor took on a pained expression, but I could tell he was partly enjoying himself. 'Do I have to?'

'Absolutely, you have to.'

Conor rolled his eyes. 'Fine. We all arrived at Glenstal Abbey on the first day of school in September and they brought everyone into the gym, remember? To divide us up into classes. So I was sitting in the middle-'

'As usual.'

'Do you want to hear this story or not?'

'Yes. I'll shut up. Sorry.'

'Right. So I was sitting in the middle with Sally and Philip, purposefully facing the back because we were so cool, and you walked in with Josh.'

So far the story seemed to be pretty accurate.

'And you were wearing that stupid shirt that was too big for you and you looked terrified. And I got this weird feeling in my tummy and I couldn't stop staring at you. Tarquin caught me too, when he walked in behind you, so I had to look away and when I checked back later you were gone. Next time I saw you, I made sure to shoulder you and you dropped all your books.'

'I remember that! Josh wanted to punch you in the head but I told him it was an accident.'

'It wasn't.'

'I figured that out when it got repeated daily for the next three years.'

'Right. So Sally figured out at some point near the end of third year that I had a crush on you and she badgered me every day for the next six months to do something about it until eventually I did.'

I grinned. 'Sort of.'

Conor affected an air of detachment. 'It was never stipulated that anonymity was forbidden.'