I Still Need ✓

1. I'm lazy and I can't lie

It would make sense that I was here, wouldn't it? Just getting some much-needed groceries, like milk and bread and butter, in the local supermarket. Merely a daily activity that many people participated in.

Only it didn't. I would never have gotten out willingly, just to get groceries, for heaven's sake. Even if my mom yelled at me to do it. I would still refuse to go.

So why was I here?

Well, that question was easily answered. Very easily. The answer was walking up to me with a bright smile that very second. A seventeen-year-old boy called Floyd. My brown-haired and amber-eyed best friend. And... crush.

Cliché, isn't it? In love with my best friend... So very, very predictable and boring, but could I help it? No. That's the whole problem. I had to endure every twinge and flutter in my stomach when he smiled, did something cute or funny, or even looked at me when I talked. It honestly all made me want to barf, but well... that wouldn't make me look very charming, now, would it? My chances were already pretty slim—not knowing if he was gay and whatnot.

I lifted my hand up in a greeting and, as always, Floyd reached up to smack his own hand on it. "Hey, Hugo, whatcha doin' here, man?"

Getting shit for my mom instead of letting her do it herself, because I knew you'd be here.

I cleared my throat, ready to tell him the lie I had made up on my way here, but it didn't come out. I couldn't lie to him. I could never lie to Floyd.

"Offered to get Mom's groceries," I sighed.

Floyd frowned. "Why'd you do that?"

I shrugged with a faint smile and, mercifully, he took it and didn't inquire further. Lucky me. He tapped my basket with his foot, making the milk bottles rattle loudly as they bounced up and down. "What're you getting then?"

"Ah, just the regular stuff, you know."

He reached into the basket and lifted two bags of potato chips, raising his eyebrows at me in question. "Very regular."

"Yeah, I know," I laughed. "Gotta put the leftover money to good use, right?"

He flicked his fingers at me and said with a wink, "Right. You gotta get the new ice cream flavor, though."

"Nuh-uh. You eat the ice-cream, I eat the chips. That's how it goes."

"Let's change things up a bit then!" he said, snatching my bags of chips from my basket and switching them for the bucket of ice-cream he had in his own basket. I rolled my eyes at him, but I left the bucket in its place and continued with my grocery-shopping. Floyd walked along with me. Correction; he skipped along with me. He had one of those walks that made him look like he was always overly happy. Kinda like a cartoon character. With glimmering eyes and rosy cheeks and everything.

He talked my ear off, but I didn't mind. Everything Floyd had to say to me mattered. I found everything he said interesting and I could listen to him for days and never get tired.

Signs of a hopelessly in love fool? Definitely.

I would probably never tell him, though.

He didn't even know I was gay. No one did. The only people who did were my family. It's not that I didn't want to come out of the closet. I was perfectly fine with people knowing, as long as they didn't have a problem with it. I just didn't like having to tell them. I hated having to say those words, "I'm gay," because I felt stupid having to point it out. What did it matter whom I liked?

I knew who suspected I'm gay. Dylan, my other 'friend'.

No, scrap that. He was not my friend, but since we were acquainted, because of our mutual friend, Floyd, I was humoring him by calling Dylan my friend. We didn't get along, like at all, and I didn't even know why. We just had an inexplicable hate for each other.