Ezra's life could never really be described as easy.
For as long as he could remember, his parents were either arguing or threatening divorce. After 17 years of a nonfunctional relationship, it was only last month that his parents finally got divorced. It was a suffocating mix of uncomfortable custody battles, manipulation from both his parents to lie about which one of them was the better caregiver to the judge, lonely nights as his parents ran away to their lovers leaving Ezra by himself. In conclusion, it was awful.
Years upon years of this had made him silently hope for them just to get a divorce already; he was foolish enough to believe that the divorce would settle everything. He had hoped that it would end the arguments, the screaming, the yelling if they ended their marriage and lived apart. Of course, that wasn't the case.
Even now his parents would scream at each other the moment they came into contact. Ezra had been forced to live with his dad after his mother -the one he believed to be the better out of the two- threw her phone at Ezra and demanded he call his father like he was plotting to do anyway. But he wasn't. He didn't have favouritism, he simply tried his best to be a good kid but he always seemed to get screamed at anyway.
His life didn't get any easier when puberty hit and he slowly came to the sickening realisation that he was attracted to boys and one boy at his school in particular. He'd done so many 'am I gay quizzes' each time he tried to get the straight/heterosexual answers, but one day it occurred to him that if he was doing 'am I gay quizzes' at all, the answer was probably yes. Straight people didn't do the quizzes.
To say he dealt with his feelings well would be a lie. He tried his hardest to be straight (even trying to pray the gay away a few times) but that backfired on him when he got so frustrated, he slept with the school bicycle and got caught.
He could still remember the way she kept shoving her tongue down his throat and her acrylic nails scraping against his naked skin. She'd led him to her bedroom and they both undressed. Joanna had bit and sucked on his skin and let out cute little giggles that would've aroused any man that heard them; but not Ezra. Eventually, he willed himself to get hard at her lustful touches but he did so with his eyes closed whilst picturing someone else. They slid under the sheets of Joanna's bed and Ezra thought he was suffocating under them. It had been so hot under them and he felt he was being crushed by the weight, at the same time he had to save face and fuck Joanna.
It's not that it felt bad, she certainly knew what she was doing, but it felt wrong somehow. He kept his eyes closed the entire time picturing the boy he liked. What would he look like under Ezra? What sounds would he make? How would he feel? Ezra wanted to hear him cry out his name for him to say-
"Ezra?" His heart had stopped at that moment. His body petrified in place. Even Joanna's face was consumed with shock at the sight of Colby standing at her bedroom door. Ezra would never forget how heartbroken he'd looked. The very boy he'd been fantasising about had shown up but instead of looking at him with lust (like Ezra had hoped), Colby glared at Ezra with such hate and he would carry on to do so from then on.
It was for the best, Ezra decided. This way everybody thought Ezra was straight as rumours of him sleeping with Joanna spread like wildfire and Colby stayed far away from him, which helped Ezra reign in his feelings for him. Of course, that didn't work out either.
Colby suddenly jumped Ezra whilst he was in the locker room shower. It took Ezra by surprise but he wasn't going to let the opportunity go to waste. That entire week that he spent kissing, touching and then making love with Colby had been the best week of his life. Sure, Colby was still pretty hostile towards him at times but Ezra didn't mind, whatever kept him close.
It only lasted a week.
In hindsight Ezra should've seen it coming. After everything he'd done to Colby, why did he expect his feelings to be returned? It was just like the divorce, a childish fantasy that things would get better.
Ezra drove home by himself after the football training weekend more pissed than he'd ever been in his life. A revenge operation. That's all it had been and Ezra had fallen hook, line and sinker for it. He felt like an idiot and that point was proven when he got home to find his father waiting for him.
Ezra currently lived with his father but the two didn't tend to interact very often. Same house, different worlds. That's why Ezra already knew he was in trouble when he saw his father sitting on Ezra's bed with an opened bottle of lube and a few condom wrappers next to him.
Crap. Panic swallowed his body before he could even begin to think of excuses.
"Son." His father's voice had always sounded cold to Ezra, like he was nothing but a pest in his father's eyes. "Do you have any way to explain yourself?"
Ezra hardened his face and tried his best to sound honest and confident. "I had a girl round on Friday."
His father glared at him with his icy blue eyes. "Really? Because Miss Herson next door didn't mention seeing a girl come round on Friday but she did mention a boy." That nosey old bitch. She called herself the neighbourhood watch dog but she just liked knowing everyone's business and then tattling on them. "We've talked about this, Ezra. You know how I feel about this kind of behaviour." His father stared at Ezra expectantly.
"My behaviour isn't right." Ezra said, maintaining the agonising eye contact with his father.
"Exactly. I let it slide when it was just porn on your computer." If you called being screamed at for two hours over the gay porn Ezra had forgotten to erase from his computer history -letting it slide- then yes his father had let the issue slide. "But to actually invite a boy round and do," his father's face twisted with disgust, "god only knows what with him. That's taking it too far and you know damn well it is. Did you think for a second about how this would effect me? You think Miss Herson is going to keep the fact that my son might be a homosexual to herself?"
"No." Ezra replied quietly.
"No!" His father said loudly. He got up from Ezra's bed and came closer to him than his father had been in months. Ezra had grown to be around the same height as his father but in that moment, he felt like a tiny child under his father's angry gaze. "Not only are you humiliating yourself; you are dragging my name through the fucking mud. It's a phase, Ezra. You'll get over it, get a nice girlfriend and be embarrassed that you ever acted this way. You are normal. Now start acting like it."
With that his father left the house and probably went to whatever woman he was sleeping with.
"Normal." Ezra whispered to himself. What did that mean? He felt normal, he felt like himself when he was with Colby but maybe it wasn't. Maybe that's why Colby didn't feel the same, because their relationship wasn't normal. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to cry or punch something. Why couldn't he be normal?
He tried his hardest to be normal at school. Colby had apologised for what he said but he was normal, he liked Joanna. Joanna was a girl and Colby was a guy so it only made sense that Colby had lingering feelings for her and not Ezra. Although, it pissed him off. Joanna wasn't loyal to Colby and certainly couldn't love him the way he deserved... but if that's what Colby wanted them Ezra would grin and bare it.
Ezra tried to be normal by flirting with Sophie. She was nice and pretty and fun to be around. She did most of the flirting and seemed okay with it even if Ezra only smiled at her. He was acting normal.
How come Finley and Brent didn't have to be normal? They were openly together with the approval of their parents, a situation that Ezra could only dream of. They kissed in public (which was kind of funny to watch with the height difference). They didn't have to act normal, they were themselves and didn't care what others thought.
Ezra had never told anyone about his- confusing feelings but now with Brent dating a guy, he felt it could be okay to finally confide in someone a little bit. It wasn't easy.
Ezra and Brent had been playing video games for about an hour before Ezra finally had the balls to bring up the subject of boys. Saying it like that, he felt like a school girl. "So, you and Finley are together now?"
Brent smiled to himself and kept beating Ezra at the game they were playing. "I guess. We haven't put anything official on it yet but it's just nice to be around him, you know?"
He didn't know. He had never known what it was like to be around a person and feel nothing but nice. To not have a thousand thoughts eating away at him about how he was doing something wrong. He envied Brent's ability to go with the flow and not care what others thought of him. Image was everything, as Ezra's father often said.
"You two are cute together."
"Thanks. What about you, got any girls on the pull?" How was Ezra supposed to respond to that? He knew that he should come clean and admit he was...
No. No, he couldn't say it out loud. Then it would all become real and come back to bite him tenfold. Brent wouldn't judge him and he wouldn't tell anyone but still it was too much. He was a normal guy. Not that he thought Brent wasn't normal, it was simply that he was lucky and got to be different and follow his desires.
"You know me. Every girl's got a chance." He was such an awful guy, lying to his best friend, lying to himself, he felt like shit.
"Well you could go for Sophie, Finley says that she's got a thing for you. And Josh said Joanna's been talking about you again." Great, that's exactly what he needed. Two girls he could never truly like liking him, at least it would get his dad off his back. Ezra often found himself wondering whether Colby had been right, that he really was a selfish prick that only cared about himself and took from others. Here he was, fully prepared to date a girl to avoid the wrath of his parents. "Could even go for Colby, if you were into that." Brent laughed until he turned to see Ezra gaping at him.
"What do you mean?" Ezra demanded. Brent looked flustered now, he was unsure whether he'd said something to upset Ezra.
"I'm only joking. You two seemed to get on so well last week and he keeps on asking me about you. Sorry it was silly..."
"What did he ask you?" Colby had apologised for their argument but Ezra didn't really believe everything he said. For a moment, he gave himself a false hope even though he had stopped their relationship himself.
"He asked why you slept with Joanna?" Brent looked really nervous at that point.
And there it was, the crushing of any of his hope. Why Joanna? It always came back to Joanna. Why couldn't Colby get over her, move on and date... somebody else.
"Ezra? Are you okay?"
"Fine." Ezra replied through clenched teeth, he shouldn't have hoped.