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It was hard to believe that it had been a year already.
Technically, it wasn’t a year just yet. Tomorrow it would be a year. A year since he and TJ had started dating.
Cyrus lay in bed, trying to fall asleep, but failing as he thought about his upcoming anniversary. It wasn’t like it had snuck up on him or anything; he had memorized the date of the party, and every month, he felt a little spark of joy when they made it to another month of being together. And tomorrow it would be a whole year. They had already made plans to celebrate – or at least, TJ had made plans and refused to tell Cyrus what they were. Apparently, it was going to be a surprise.
A whole year.
To Cyrus, sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago that he had started to figure out that he liked boys. That he had a crush on a boy and not on his girlfriend. That he didn’t like girls at all in the romantic sense, but that he found boys cute and attractive. He felt like a different person than who he had been back in seventh grade.
He had gone through one crush and then slowly started to realize that he liked someone else. In retrospect, it made sense that he had a crush on Jonah. The other boy was cute and nice and could play guitar and sing and he was the first guy that had ever really treated Cyrus as a friend. It made sense that Cyrus would have a crush on him.
It didn’t make sense that he had developed a crush on TJ though.
TJ was rude and abrasive and mean to Cyrus’ best friend. He was a little scary too, but despite all of that, Cyrus found himself liking the other boy more and more.
And maybe it was because after only two interactions, Cyrus was able to see that TJ could be nice and thoughtful and helpful and encouraging. Even though he put up a front of being a jerk, he really wasn’t. And then he started to make changes to be a better person.
It was a slow process, Cyrus realizing that he liked TJ as more than a friend. As they got closer, Cyrus found his feelings changing. TJ was popular, athletic, and intimidating to most people – and he wanted to spend time with Cyrus. He wanted to help Cyrus with things he struggled with, and he seemed genuinely interested in being friends. It threw Cyrus for a loop a bit at first, and he kept waiting for TJ to get bored or decide that he wasn’t interested anymore.
But that never happened.
And as they got closer, Cyrus found that he was starting to look at TJ in a different light. Sure, he was attractive. That had never been in question. Cyrus knew a good-looking guy when he saw one. But when he first met TJ, he always seemed to be frowning or sneering, which was a distraction from his looks. The more time the spent together though, the more he got to see TJ happy and relaxed, and that made a huge difference.
Coupled with that, TJ talked with him, asked him how he was doing, and genuinely seemed interested in hearing what Cyrus had to say. They could talk easily for hours on end, and Cyrus felt happy after he had spent time with TJ.
It soon became abundantly clear that he had started to develop a crush on TJ. At first, he wasn’t sure how to process that. As far as he knew, TJ was straight, and he knew that crushing on a straight guy would just end in unhappiness for himself again. So, at first, he tried to ignore his crush and hoped that it was just a passing feeling. But it kept growing stronger, and soon he had to acknowledge it.
And he started to wonder if TJ felt the same. Because while Cyrus didn’t have a ton of guy friends, he could tell that his relationship with TJ was…different somehow. Maybe it was the constant touching; it seemed like TJ always had an arm around his shoulder, or a leg pressed up against his own. Or the way he would catch TJ staring at him sometimes; it made his stomach flutter and his heart speed up a bit. Or how TJ’s voice would change when they were talking about something serious or personal.
When Kira showed up, it all seemed to come crashing down around him, and Cyrus berated himself for getting his hopes up. He had been right about TJ just being another straight guy that he was hopelessly crushing on.
But then TJ was sliding his fingers between Cyrus’ own, and the whole world seemed to shift around them. In that moment, on the cold bench in Andi’s backyard, something changed. And it made the world feel just a little bit brighter.
In the days and weeks that followed, the pair of them talked a lot. They always talked before, and it was as though they had been preparing for this. They talked about dating and where they were personally as far as coming out to people. They talked about their sexualities and how they had figured things out. They talked about Costume Day and the other roadblocks in their way that now seemed like a thing of the distant past.
And they held hands. They held hands a lot. It was though the first handhold broke down the barrier to open up the opportunity for them to hold hands as much as humanly possible. They didn’t hold hands at school or in front of their peers, but they held hands when they were alone at one of their houses, and they held hands in front of their friends, and they held hands in corners of tiny cafes.
As time went on, and they grew more comfortable in their relationship, they tried new things out as well. Their first kiss was a few months after they started dating, at the swing sets. Cyrus initiated it, and for a moment, it was as though it was just the two of them alone in the world.
They cuddled a lot, snuggled up on couches or beds, while watching TV together. The first time TJ lay his head in Cyrus’ lap, Cyrus thought his heart was going to leap out of his chest, but he soon relaxed and found himself playing with TJ’s hair as they watched a movie. TJ also took every excuse he could find to play with Cyrus’ hair, explaining that he always thought it looked fluffy and he just wanted to touch it.
They got each other presents and left little notes in each other’s lockers. More than once, Cyrus opened his locker to find a chocolate chocolate chip muffin sitting on the top shelf, and he stuck post-it notes with sweet messages inside of TJ’s locker. Cyrus brought TJ hot chocolate on cold mornings and stole about half of TJ’s sweatshirts to wear himself.
As their eighth-grade year wore on, Cyrus slowly became more comfortable with the idea of coming out to everyone. With TJ’s support, he did so quietly. While it was the buzz of the school for a few days, it ultimately stopped being a big deal. On one of their last days of eighth grade, TJ held his hand at school during their Field Day activities and didn’t let go.
Over the summer between eighth grade and high school, they went to pride together with their friends for the first time, and TJ posted a picture of them afterwards, making it very clear that they were a couple. In the last week before school started, they went to the high school with their friends and mapped out the hallways. On the first day of school, they found each other before the busyness of the morning started, and TJ slipped his hand into Cyrus’, right there in the middle of the hallway.
High school took a little getting use to, but after the first few weeks, it felt as though they had been doing this forever. They walked to some of their classes together, holding hands in the hallways, and kissed goodbye before heading to their respective classes. TJ tried out for the football team and made it, so Cyrus showed up to all of his games, decked head to toe in school colors, sign in hand. He wore TJ’s jersey on game day and kissed him good luck before each game.
Cyrus ended up working backstage for the school musical, and TJ came to watch the performance, even though Cyrus wasn’t in it. Together with some of their friends, they set up a GSA at Grant, inviting in other students to a group that celebrated the diversity of sexualities and gender. Cyrus was voted unanimously the president, and he soon became the welcoming face of the group.
Both had pictures of the other in their lockers, and the notes continued into high school. They went to homecoming together and danced in front of the entire school for the first time. Dates became more frequent, although many of them were still just the two of them hanging out after school, working on homework and watching TV together.
Before long, it became normal. Cyrus didn’t marvel at the fact that he had a boyfriend. He didn’t get butterflies every time TJ texted him, and the little voice in the back of his head that doubted that it was real soon went away. He and TJ were together; it was real. They settled into a routine in high school, and they were happy.
And now they were coming up on a year together. It was almost halfway through their first year of high school, and the future was stretching out in front of them. Cyrus didn’t know what the rest of high school would hold, or the years after that. His first couple of months of high school were already quite different than what he had pictured they would be like. His friend group had shifted and changed a bit; Andi wasn’t there as often, and they had made new friends along the way. And he had never imagined that he would have started high school with a steady boyfriend.
But here he was. Tomorrow would be one year of being with TJ; one year of holding hands and kissing and going on dates and coming out and just being together. In some ways, it seemed as though it had flown by, and in other ways, it felt as though that night at Andi’s party had been a million years ago. But all he knew was that he was happy, and he was ready for tomorrow.