Chapter Text
When I was 14, I became friends with a boy at my high school who I’d only known by name and through mutual friends since we’d both started at the school 3 years earlier. We were kinda friends, but only through seeing each other when we hung out in groups.
His name was Connor.
When we turned 15 and us and our friends started camping out in different fields around where we live. This was when we starting talking more, since neither of us were really into drinking or drugs, so whilst many of our friends would be drinking beer and smoking weed, we’d usually be the only sober ones left, leaving the rest of our group alone and finding a quiet spot to talk.
So for a few months we talked almost every weekend in various different fields about normal 15 year old boy stuff, who we thought was cool at school or what teachers were annoying, until we’d start talking about each other and innocently complimenting each other’s personalities
You’re so funny!
Pshh, you’re so smart!
…until it turned into obvious flirting, neither one of us sure if the other was being serious or not. He would talk about my hair and my smile, and I would return the favour and compliment his long eyelashes and deep green eyes. There was always a comfortable silence between us after this, both of us simply indulging in the company and conversation of the other.
Now at this point in my life, I was already out of the closet, openly gay, since I was 13. My moms are gay, meaning I didn’t have any worries at all about coming out to my moms and my siblings at home.
All of our friends knew, everyone at school knew and I was unbelievably blessed to have never experienced any homophobic bullying whatsoever at my school from anyone.
Connor however had a homophobic father, who Connor already resented for forcing him to play baseball and soccer, even though Connor would much rather be learning about cooking. Connor loved to cook, and was good at it, but his father said that cooking was for girls. This probably contributed to Connor not being very open about his sexuality. He never talked about anybody that he liked. He would talk about girls being pretty and guys looking fly, but never more than simple observations.
All of our friends were so supportive of me, and yet for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough for Connor to be open about himself. It became clear later that Connor was very insecure about his sexuality, but he was good at hiding his fears. I thought because of the aforementioned flirting, he must either be straight and secure enough to ‘flirt’ with other boys, or that he was actually curious but only felt comfortable enough with me to show it.
I never wanted to make him uncomfortable by asking him about his sexuality. I was terrified that if I asked him if he was into boys, I’d lose not only the person I’d begun to fall for, but my friend too.
So for a long while we’d have the same routine, innocently flirting with each other at 2 AM, the conversation never becoming too serious, out in a field somewhere away from our other friends elsewhere in a large group round a campfire.
I later realised that our absence from our main group must have caused them to all quickly realise that we were into each other, though none of them mentioned it to either of us at the time.
The night that changed our relationship was when we shared a tent together. We were out camping again, this time in the large backyard of one of our friend’s houses during the summer. There was enough space for two people to each tent, and a lot of our friends, most of them straight, were bunking with their significant others.
Again, our eagerness to share a tent, just the two of us, was probably a blatantly obvious indication to everyone else that we were crushing on each other. I hadn’t planned anything spectacular, I had no agenda, no big talk, no melodramatic confession of undying love. At that point, I knew that I just looked forward to spending a night talking with my best friend.
That night, after the noise of teenagers arguing over who could throw a bottle the furthest into the neighbouring fields and loud, electronic and/or rock music had died down, there we were, this boy and I lying on our backs, side by side, me on his left, looking up at the inside of the tent. We repeated our routine the same as always, talking about life and our interests and arguing over the best video game characters. For once, we talked about the future, which even then intimidated us as we would soon be studying for finals and the next year would be crucial to our future education. We ended up talking about not wanting to be separated from our friends behind when we went to college, but knowing we’d probably have to leave a lot of them behind.
As soon as I mentioned that the two of us might not see each other so much when school started because we were studying different subjects, the conversation grinded to a halt.
“Oh. Yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that.”
There was a long silence after that.
During the silence, we both realised how close our hands were to each other, pinkies almost touching. Simultaneously, we both slowly reached out for the other’s hand. We intertwined our fingers and held them tight, not speaking.
We didn’t say anything for a long time. Just lying there, holding hands, not really sure of its significance, but sure that we felt something for each other.
A while later, I boldly decided to let go of his hands, a move which confused him at first glance, but he then seemed content as I lay my head on his chest and held his right hand with my left.
Again, an eternity passed, just being, existing close to one another. My intention was to fall asleep then, in blissful peace.
Until, he slowly sat up, causing me to sit up as well. Before I could ask what was wrong, he placed a hand gently on my cheek and kissed me.
My first kiss, with the boy who I’d begun to fall in whatever the naïve teenager equivalent of love is.
The kiss lasted no more than 20 seconds, after which we caught each other’s eyes and blushed as we looked away. The realisation of what had just occurred made us both lightly snicker. Not awkwardly, or out of embarrassment. Just out of childlike happiness that it had happened. His forest green eyes caught my chestnut brown irises once again.
“Good night, Jude”
He lay back down, still holding my hand as I placed my head back onto his chest.
“Good night.”
It wasn’t clear what any of it meant, or what would happen next.
All we knew one thing.
We liked each other.
A lot.