The man was probably the biggest she'd ever seen. His button down clung to every bulge of his muscles, and his jeans were baggy but still showed how toned he was. His head was shaved, shining in the light like her new shoes, and his brows were furrowed, etching a permanent wrinkle into his forehead. But his eyes were gentle, despite his monstrous appearance, and his smile made her relax.
"Ivette?" The man asked, his smile growing. She nodded silently, her hand moving to tug on her pigtail. "I need you to come in sweetheart. You're not in trouble, no need to look so scared."
She pushed off the chair and carefully walked into the room, taking everything in. The desk was pushed almost to the wall, but the principal wasn't sitting in his usual spot. There was a couple also sitting where students generally sat, both very well dressed and both of their faces were cold. She shrank back, naturally, towards the much friendlier looking giant.
"Ivette, meet the Deveu's," he boomed. The couple smiled curtly, and Ivette waved, her mouth still set in a line. "Have a seat, Ivette."
The young girl hopped over to the remaining empty chair and sat down, crossing her legs and sitting up politely. The giant man sat down where the principal usually sat, the leather chair groaning under his weight, causing Ivette to giggle nervously. She had no idea what was going on, her confusion was making her slightly worked up.
"Ivette, do you like gym class?" The man asked. She nodded.
"Do you think you're good at it?" Another nod.
"Do you get along with people very well?" A pause, then a shrug. The couple looked at each other uneasily, and Ivette knew she said the wrong thing.
"I um, I like some people," she mumbled, her doe eyes flicking down to her hands. The man laughed, leaning forward.
"I'm sure you do. But I'm not hear to just ask you questions we both know the answer to. We've talked to your parents, and we wanted to see if you'd like to be the Deveu's daughter's body guard? It has to be completely secret- it's of the utmost importance that you don't let her know. You need to befriend her, earn her trust, and protect her for the rest of your school careers."
That was a lot for a ten year old to take in. She squirmed uncomfortably, thinking over his offer. Now that she thought of it, she knew the Deveu's daughter. She was loud, and pretty even at this age, and had never given Ivy a second glance. But the idea of being someone's secret guardian? Now that was exciting.
"We'll be paying you, of course," Mr. Deveu added, his perfectly shaped eyebrow arching.
"Okay. I'll be her super secret body guard," Ivy agreed.
Justin’s hand bounced against his leg, his eyes darting to the waitress that approached him. “You sure you don’t wanna order something, sweetie? How about a slice of pie?” She asked.
“No thank you,” Justin said with a tight smile. “I’m waiting for someone.” The waitress gave him a sad nod and walked away. He knew what she was thinking. He’d been stood up by a date. But that wasn’t true. He’d been sitting here for over half an hour trying to gather as much courage as he knew he would need for the coming conversation. Jeremy wasn’t supposed to meet him for another ten minutes.
So Justin just stared at his hands, clenched together on the table and waited. He didn’t even know what he would say when Jeremy got there. ‘Hey Jer. So, I’m bisexual. What’re you eating? I heard their cheeseburgers are really good.’ Somehow the words didn’t seem to work well together. He’d been trying to find a way to tell Jeremy for a while. He first realized that he was attracted to men about a year ago when he had his first ever straight-boy crush on some jock that was on the basketball team. It was stupid, he knew, and the guy had since started dating a cheerleader. So his first straight-boy crush had been naïve. His second straight-boy crush, well, that had started only about a week ago. Maybe it had been longer, but he only acknowledged it for what it was about a week ago.
Justin bolted upright when the bell over the door chimed, and there was Jeremy, looking around the diner until his eyes landed on Justin.
“Hey,” Jeremy said, sliding into the booth across from Justin.
“Hey Jer,” Justin muttered. He looked down, suddenly very intent on the menu even though he probably couldn’t eat anything if he tried.
“So what was so important that I needed to come here?” Jeremy asked. “You sounded pretty out of it on the phone.”
Justin set the menu down, though his eyes didn’t move from it as he crossed his arms over his chest. Why was this so difficult? He didn’t care what people thought; but this wasn’t just any person. It was Jeremy. It was his best friend, and Justin was more afraid of him reacting badly than anyone else. His family was irrelevant; he lived with them out of obligation and nothing more. Familial ties. He hadn’t told them, and didn’t intend to. If they found out by some chance, he didn’t care what they would say. His father had said worse, and his mother, well she had thought worse, even if she hadn’t said it aloud.
But Jeremy, though. Justin was terrified to lose him. He’d prided himself for years on taking care of himself, and relying on no one. That had changed when he became friends with Jeremy. He didn’t even realize how much he relied on the boy until one night his parents had had a particularly bad fight, and Justin had gone running. He often did just to get out of the house, but he hadn’t had a destination in mind, and somehow he ended up on Jeremy’s front doorstep. His safe haven.
With Jeremy sitting barely a foot away from him, Justin couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat. He swallowed several times before leaning forward, his arms on the table. “I’m- Jer, I- Shit,” Justin stuttered. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Damnit, Jer, I’m bi.” He closed his eyes, fingers pressed against his eyes lids, his ears straining to hear a response. All he was met with was silence. He hoped that keeping his eyes shut would let Jeremy hide any negative reaction on his face that he may have. But when he opened his eyes, every negative reaction he’d been afraid of was written clearly, in permanent ink, across Jeremy’s face. Disgust. Distrust. Shock. Horror. It was all there. Justin wanted to say something, anything to make the expressions, the reactions go away. But he couldn’t take it back. He wondered for just a moment if he would, if he was able to. No. He could do a lot of things, but lying to his best friend about part of his life wasn’t one of them.
“You’re what?” Jeremy asked. Maybe the way he spat the question with disgust should’ve made Justin feel ashamed, but it just made him angry.
“Bi,” Justin asked curtly. “As in bisexual. As in, I’m attracted girls and guys.”
“I know what it means,” Jeremy snapped.
“Then why’d you ask?”
Jeremy didn’t answer, though it didn’t appear to be for a lack of trying. He opened his mouth several times, closing it again each time, until he finally shook his head and stood up. He shot Justin one more disgusted look before he bolted for the door. Justin sat frozen in the booth for several long minutes before he turned towards the bar.
“I uh, I think I’ll have a slice of that pie now,” Justin called to the waitress, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. His body felt numb, and his head was spinning. He knew that that reaction had been a possibility. He had every possible outcome stored in his head, ranked from best (he really didn’t want to even torture himself by considering that one,) to the worst (basically exactly what happened.)
Twenty minutes later, Justin left the diner at a sprint. Two hours later, he hadn’t slowed down to less than to a jog, and had ended up down by the boardwalk, jogging towards the pier. As soon as his shoes landed on the worn wood of the old pier, his phone rang. He pulled his phone out, stopping and leaning against a bench to catch his breath as he checked the screen. He winced when he saw Jeremy’s name flash across the screen at him.
“Yeah,” Justin answered.
“Hey, Justin?” The voice sounded uncertain, questioning and much different than the voice that he’d heard in the diner a couple hours before. “I want to talk to you. Where are you at?”
Justin pressed his lips together tight. He really would prefer to be alone, but if talking would be enough to bring Jeremy around, then he was willing to give it a shot. “I’m out at the pier,” he said. There were a few piers along the boardwalk, but Jeremy would know which one he meant. This was the longest pier, and was the one that Justin’s dad used to always take him and Jeremy out on when he decided several years ago that they needed to learn how to fish. Justin gave it up pretty quickly, but still he and Jeremy ended up on this pier more often than not when they were together.
Jeremy showed up about fifteen minutes later, and walked to the end of the pier where Justin was leaned against one of the wooden pillars at the edge of the water.
“What?” Justin asked coldly as soon as Jeremy was within earshot. He didn’t want to bother with the small talk and formalities, especially considering he was pretty sure that Jeremy was only here to tell him that he never wanted to see him again anyway.
But Jeremy winced at his tone and hunched his shoulders sheepishly. “I guess I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” he said. “I mean, I still don’t really understand it. I-I have some questions.”
Justin relaxed a bit, but didn’t let it show on his face. “Shoot.”
“I just don’t get-I mean, it’s disgusting. Why would you choose something like that?” Jeremy asked in his innocent tone that only reminded Justin why he really wanted to punch the kid. He was blissfully ignorant to the point that he apparently didn’t even realize how own words sounded.
“It’s not a choice,” Justin snapped at him.
“Of course it is,” Jeremy said, brushing off Justin’s logic. “I mean, my dad says-“
“Funny, I was under the impression that I had come out to my best friend, not his dad,” Justin said in an icy tone. “My mistake.”
“Don’t be like that,” Jeremy said. “I’m only trying to make sense of it.”
“You’re not making sense; that’s the problem,” Justin said. He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. When he spoke again, it was in a forced calm tone. “Look, just- It’s not a choice, alright? And whatever your dad thinks about it, it’s not true. Look at me. I’m your best friend. I haven’t changed. I’m still the same Justin that you’ve known for years. Nothing’s different.”
“Are you kidding?” Jeremy asked. “Everything’s different. I mean, I’ve stayed over at your house. I’ve gone swimming and gone to the beach with you. And all that time, you were just looking at me like-“ He stopped, cringing in disgust.
“Like what?” Justin snapped. When he’d been trying to come out, he’d found online articles written by other teens; one of them had said that coming out was more than writing a new present and future. It was also writing a new past. Justin hadn’t understood what the writer meant, but now he was starting to. “I wasn’t looking at you like anything other than my best friend.” Which was mostly true; yes, he’d looked at Jeremy differently before, but it was more out of curiosity when he was questioning his own sexuality than out of interest in his friend, though that may have been a small factor.
“And you expect me to believe that?” Jeremy asked. “It’s sick, and it’s not right. I mean, my dad knows some people. The best psychiatrists in the world. And he can-“
“No,” Justin cut him off, grinding his teeth together to keep from yelling at him. “No. I’m not going to some fucking shrink, because there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not some broken toy that needs to be fixed.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Jeremy said. “But it’s not normal. And there’s ways to-“
“I’m not having this conversation with you,” Justin said. “There’s nothing abnormal about being bi, and I’m not going to try and fix something that isn’t broken. So just-just accept it or walk away.” At that moment, he truly hoped that Jeremy would choose the latter.
Jeremy was silent for a while, eyes cast towards the waves moving towards the shoreline. “Yeah, alright,” he said finally. He shrugged and looked back at Justin. “It’s not my business. You do your thing, it’s fine.”
Justin relaxed, a relieved smile barely reaching his lips. “Good, thank you.”
“So let’s just never have this conversation again, alright?” Jeremy asked.
“What do you mean?” Justin asked, frowning at him. He had already come out to Jeremy, so why would they ever have this conversation again anyway?
“Like, just keep it to yourself, okay? I don’t want to know,” Jeremy said, shrugging as if the request were perfectly normal and acceptable. “I don’t want to know about any guys you’re with, and I don’t want to meet them. And I don’t want to hear about any guys that you’re interested in, or any stories about guys before. Just don’t tell me about any of it, okay? Keep it to yourself.”
Justin felt like he’d been punched in the gut. With a sledgehammer. He’d gone through so much to try and come out to his best friend, but Jeremy didn’t even want to hear it. He wanted Justin to go back into the closet and never come out again. He felt sick. His own best friend couldn’t handle who he was, and so wanted him to hide it. To protect Jeremy’s sensitive beliefs forced on him by his asshole of a father. Justin didn’t know who he hated more: Jeremy’s father for forcing those beliefs on him, or Jeremy for actually believing them. He’d meant it when he decided that he couldn’t lie to his best friend about a part of his life. His closest friend, one that was supposed to stick by him no matter what, wouldn’t ask something like that of him. And at that moment, he no longer considered Jeremy his best friend.
He wanted to punch Jeremy. He wanted to cuss him out. He wanted to walk away and never see his face again. But he couldn’t do any of that. Not because of any sentimental reasons. He was done with sentimentality. His entire body felt like ice. He had no feelings towards the boy standing in front of him. No, the reason he couldn’t walk away was because he literally had no choice but to stay. He was Jeremy’s guard. Jeremy had no idea, and never would if the choice were up to Justin, at how close he’d come to ending their friendship that day.
So Justin just laughed, as if the acidic words were a joke. “Yeah, you got it, Jer,” he said with a plastic smile.
“So, we’re cool, right?” Jeremy asked.
“Of course,” Justin lied with an easy smile.
Jeremy smiled, and they stood in an awkward silence for about thirty seconds before he took a step backwards towards the beach. “Right, well I’ve got to go,” Jeremy stuttered. “I told my dad I’d help him with some stuff.”
“Sure,” Justin said, willing to accept the flimsy lie, and hoping Jeremy couldn’t see through his owns deceptions as easily as Justin saw through his. “We’re still on for the movie with Cohen and Brax tonight, right?” Justin couldn’t even remember now what movie they’d decided to go see. Some kung-fu movie with subtitles, he was pretty sure. He didn’t even want to go anymore, but he didn’t have much choice.
“Yeah, definitely,” Jeremy said. “See you later!” He turned and jogged down the pier. Justin’s plastered-on smile fell as soon as Jeremy was halfway down the pier, and he was sure he wouldn’t look back.
Fucking hell. That couldn’t have gone worse. But he knew what he had to do, as much as he hated it. He couldn’t just walk away. For one thing, his home here and everything his family had was provided by the guard program. If he backed out, he lost everything. More than that, he wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to back out. It would be difficult to put another guard in his place and get Jeremy to trust them so easily. Still, though. He’d almost wished Jeremy had just refused to be his friend anymore. Then technically he could get out of it, without being at fault. Sure, he still would’ve gotten reamed for it, but he could at least claim innocence as his family’s home was taken and he and his parents were thrown back into absolute poverty. He sat down on the edge of the pier, letting his legs dangle off, just a few inches above the water.
He made a decision that was less of a decision and more of a plan for keeping his sanity and self worth. He could play the part of Jeremy’s best friend. He would have to, even if he didn’t want to be. And for almost a year, that’s exactly what he would do.
Justin would play the part. He would fake smiles and laughs at Jeremy’s jokes, and feign a defensive attitude on Jeremy’s behalf when he was the butt of jokes, even when Justin wanted to join in, and make comments that were less joking and far more malicious. But over that year, he would also relearn how to be Jeremy’s best friend, until he could hold the title again, even if the change wasn’t noticeable from the outside. He would learn to censor his words until he hardly noticed that he was doing it; until the lies about what he’d been doing the night before sounded almost like truth to his own ears. He’d been good at lying and telling stories before; that year he mastered the art.
That’s how his life would go for the next year. But for now? For now he hated the boy who he was forced to call his best friend.
Justin’s second straight-boy crush ended that day. However short-lived it was, those seven days would forever be marked in his memory as The Mistake.
There were certain things Harris tried really hard not to think about. The really hot TA in biology, how he was probably going to be a virgin forever, and anything related to do with his dad were all things topped the list. And this summer had already made him think about all of them. Jeremy's casual mention of his own dad had sparked up anger in Harrison that he had sworn never to look at again. It just wasn't fair that two guys who had the label 'dad' thought fit to derail their sons lives because they weren't comfortable enough with themselves to deal with it. Realizing it was not just their dads but parents, teachers, friends, everywhere just made him feel worse. Nobody asked for their sexualities, and it was ridiculous to see the effect it had on quality of life when hair, height, and eye color couldn't even remotely compare.
He still remembered the time he'd come home happy and slightly sore, spinning around the living room in his eagerness to show his dad what he'd learned that day. Time had taken what exact move it was away, but he'd never be able to forget perfectly executing it and turning around fully expecting to bask in his pride and instead getting a disappointed sigh and, "You look like a girl. Go change and come back. We need to talk." Nine year old Harris had been confused, but he went changing into jeans and after a moments hesitation between his favorite lilac shirt and the black one, went for the darker one. He'd felt like he was in trouble and couldn't think of what he'd done wrong.
His bed was made, he'd done the dishes the night before, his homework had been finished before he left, what had he forgotten? A small frown settled onto his features, but he climbed up on the couch next to his Daddy who was patting the spot next to him anyway. "Son," his dad had started, "Dancing is for girls. Kind of like how football is for boys. You don't see any girls on the field during the games we watch, do you?" Even more confused now, he shook his head but promptly opened his mouth, "But what about Tommy and Drew? They're boys and they're in my class. There's even boy teachers! They said if I kept practicing, I could maybe be a teacher one day too!" His dad's eyes had shut like he was about to sneeze before he was turning and placing both hands on Harris' tiny shoulders, tight enough to make him squirm. "No son of mine will be a poofy dancer, you hear me? You're done. You are better than that. You're going to go outside and play. Kick a ball around, climb a tree, get dirty. Be a boy, Harrison."
What fun was being a boy if you could only do things Harris didn't like? "But - " "No. My mind is made up. It's final. No more dancing, no more flowers, no more musicals. I'll talk to your mother about it. And trust me, you'll thank me for this later. Now, Daddy has a very important chapter to write so go outside, alright? Take your sister! She at least knows how little boys should be. Maybe she can help you."
Harrison had slid off the couch without another word, effectively creating the rift that would always exist between him and his father. A sense of being made wrong had filled him even then as he walked away. He never did go find his sister that night. His mother had been crying in her room and he'd gone in there instead, not saying a word but just letting her hug him until she stopped crying and apologizing. And the next day when he'd come home from school to find all his clothes had been taken away and replaced with rougher, darker things, he didn't say a thing. Just pressed a smile on his face and kept his head up, playing the part of happy perfect son that was expected of him. The rest of his teenage years had followed the same pattern, with him instinctively clamping down on any tells before they could fully form and steering consciously away from things that peaked his interest - like theater. If he liked it, it was a safe bet his father would not, and he didn't have enough left in him to keep fighting that battle.
His father had broken something that afternoon and Harrison wasn't sure it was something that could be mended, not if just over a decade couldn't do the trick.
