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he first knew that something wasn’t right when someone asked him how he knew chris and instead of telling them that they were best friends, he hesitated. it was a split second- a stumble- but enough to make him think.
“we go way back.” was what eventually spilled out, words numb on josh’s lips. not “best bros” or “my wingman”, but “way back.”
seven years, three months. not that he was counting.
-
when josh got home that night, he watched tv, but he couldn’t hear its words.
he read a book, but he couldn’t remember which.
he got in bed, and suddenly the ceiling was the most interesting of all.
-
a week later it came back, stronger this time. the feeling of the unknown. the feeling of what if.
it hit him in the middle of the day (12:31 pm. it was cloudy. someone told that him it might rain) as he excused himself from lunch. sam looked up at him.
she knew. he pretended not to.
the pills in his backpack snapped him out of it.
-
“your boyfriend calling you?” mike snickered as josh’s cell announced its ringtone in the middle of psych.
a hushed giggle, coming from nowhere in particular and everywhere at the same time.
josh’s elbow in mike’s side, just hard enough to make mike realize.
-
maybe everyone else figured it out before josh did. his mind wouldn’t let him know.
(maybe because he didn’t want to know. )
-
dr. hill told him it was completely normal.
they had known each other for a long time, they were closer than most. it would almost be strange if they never had to have this talk.
he never trusted dr. hill, anyway.
-
“dude, is your guy gay?” that was chris, watching josh play dragon age 2. it wasn’t multiplayer, but chris insisted that it was the best game ever made or something like that.
(josh read some [most] reviews online that said otherwise.
he smiled, but didn’t notice it at the time.)
“uh.” he’d forgotten to turn down some mage that had flirted with him. or maybe he hadn’t forgotten.
the characters were kissing now. the brightness of the screen competed with josh’s ears.
“hah. guess i didn’t expect that to happen?” he didn’t mean for it to be interrogative, but his voice cracked and it happened anyway. “did i do something wrong, man?”
“more like you did something right.” a smirk, from chris. a friendly punch to josh’s shoulder.
“shut the hell up.”
he prayed that his face wasn’t red.
-
he first admitted it to himself in the journal he’d been keeping.
hannah had convinced him to. keep the journal- not write the words.
(did she know what he would write, too?)
he erased it almost immediately after.
-
he couldn’t look at chris for almost a month.
it wasn’t anything chris had done.
maybe it was that he couldn’t live with himself for almost a month. but that wasn’t true, was it?
no, it had been much longer.
the prozac promised him that.
-
he couldn’t look at ashley for even longer.
-
(after playing 10 more hours, he decided that his dragon age character must be gay. he had fallen for some blonde, nerdy guy after all.
his avatar.
not josh.)
-
he almost confessed one day. it was after class.
(it didn’t matter which class.)
he had a speech planned and everything.
calling it a speech was too flattering. it was more of a jumble of feelings that were barely words that were hardly sentences.
but when chris looked at him, his mind went blank.
maybe josh told some stupid joke that may or may not have ended in “your mom.”
real smooth.
-
(the crying happened more than usual
maybe it was because he had a reason this time
was it supposed to feel like this-
love?
or maybe it was more of a longing.)
-
a dull ache.
-
his 20th birthday.
(2:43 am. technically it wasn’t his birthday anymore.)
everyone else was gone already, but chris was staying the night.
josh had decided this out loud, booze slurring his words.
“oh yeah? where’m i supposed to sleep?” that was chris. he might have laughed. he might have smirked.
he might have gotten a little closer to josh, before
finally
-
josh couldn’t remember what happened next but he figured it out the next morning.
-
(who knew chris hogged the covers?)