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Lovro had a foolproof strategy to deal with his problems, he ignored them until they went away.
That's how he managed to live with his parents this long, he just tuned out the noise of their constant fighting. And now he was ignoring the fact that his dad left them.
That was also how he was able to hang out with his two best friends. He loved them both very much, but looking at them kiss each other made his heart clench. He also did not think about what that could mean. When Jakov got his first girlfriend he thought he was just jealous because he had never kissed anyone before, so he decided to see what it was all about by making out with a random girl at a party.
He couldn't deny it had been fun, even though he secretly felt that was more thanks to the alcohol in his veins than because of the pretty brown haired girl he had his arms around. The sting of jealousy when seeing Jakov with whoever his current girlfriend was did not go away, but he just assumed that was because he never found a girl he liked well enough to date. In fact he preferred to never see them again after kissing them. He sometimes felt he didn't like girls the way Jakov did but he just suppressed that thought.
It was the middle of the night and Lovro was outside of the house party he Jakov and Eva had attended. He grabbed his cigarette and searched for a lighter in his pocket.
"Can I borrow your light?" A guy with bleach blonde hair and an eyebrow piercing appeared next to him.
Lovro nodded, holding out his lighter. But the guy just stepped closer to him, with a cigarette in his mouth and leaned down to meet Lovro's. Their eyes met and suddenly Lovro had the strong urge to get away. He quickly stepped back, threw his cig on the ground, muttered an apology and ran inside. His heart was beating faster than usual and he decided to blame the fact that he had run.
Huh, he blushed. What was that?
He found Jakov and Eva. "Lovro," Jakov laughed, "you look like you've seen a ghost."
Jakov's smile did not help the weird feeling he had in his chest, so he decided to do the only logical thing. "I just... not feeling too well I'm gonna head to the bathroom."
Eva seemed concerned. "Should we come with you?"
"No!" Lovro responded, maybe a bit too quickly and disappeared away to the bathroom to calm down.
He locked the bathroom door behind him and put water over his face. He did not even know what he was freaking out about. An awkward encounter with a stranger?
He'll get over it. And then seeing his two best friends. Seeing Jakov's smile.
Huh? His stomach felt weird thinking about that, but he decided to blame that on the alcohol.
He opened the door again, after convincing himself that he was just overreacting and was face to face with the blond guy from earlier.
"Oh hey." He smiled.
Lovro looked at him in shock and his heart started beating faster again. Just because this situation is so awkward, he tried telling himself.
"I didn't mean to scare you off earlier."
"You didn't." Lovro lied.
The other guy raised his eyebrows. "It's just... I thought," he gestured at Lovro. "Because of your hair and I got a vibe..."
"What? My hair?"
"It's just... alternative people" he pointed at Lovro. "tend to be more open." He stepped towards Lovro into the bathroom.
Lovro tried very hard not to think about what he could mean by that.
The guy closed the door and now they were in this tiny bathroom all by themselves and Lovro felt the urge to run again. But then his eyes fell to the lips of the boy across from him.
He smiled at Lovro and he did not know if he had noticed Lovro looking down. When he looked up again to catch the other guy's glance he noticed him staring down as well.
Lovro would blame the alcohol for what happened next, but he closed the distance between them and for the first time in his life he understood why people enjoyed kissing that much.
Since then he used every option he got to kiss men, it was only at parties, he told himself it was nothing, he was drunk and it was basically the same as kissing girls (just better). But when he found himself on a gay dating site, he knew it had to stop. He never met up with anyone, it's not like he was gay, he was just curious, but if he ever wanted to find a girlfriend he needed to focus.
The real turning point was when he went home from the supermarket one day and a group of 12 year old boys he was walking by giggled to each other. At first he ignored them, not thinking it had anything to do with him, but then he noticed them staring.
"Emo!" One of them called after him. Lovro was wearing jeans and a brown pullover with a simple logo on it.
He wanted to brush it off, but one of the boy's insults got to him. "Faggot!" He flinched. He thought about all the men he had kissed and the phone in his pocket felt heavy with the dating app, a reminder that something was wrong with him. It wasn't like he had anything against gay people, he just wasn't one of them. He decided to keep his head down and walk home quickly.
He thought of the guy he kissed in the bathroom, about what he said about his hair, and all the other men who flirted with him for the same reason and he thought of all the interactions he had where someone insulted him for the sole reason that they thought Lovro was gay.
That's when he got out his phone to delete the app and text his best friend.
'Wanna help me dye my hair?'