Page 63 of He's the One

“Your mum and dad are fabulous,” Theo said.

“Mum’s going to have trouble keeping quiet about you and me.”

“Even after you warned her not to say anything? Twice? I don’t want it to matter but—”

Col squeezed his fingers. “It’s fine.”

“You know it’s not because I don’t want to be seen with you, don’t you?”

“Is it because I’m a messy eater?”

“Oh God, I didn’t want to tell you but yes. Once you’ve learned how to eat with a knife and fork, you’ll be much more acceptable.”

Col chuckled. “Are we okay holding hands?”

“It’s dark, we’ve passed no one and it’s not as if we’re walking around Asquith pushing my gayness in my mother’s face. I need to find the right moment to speak to them. Again.” Which would be never. But Theo wasn’t going to give Col up. Not without a fight.

“What would happen if they did see us together?”

Theo chewed his lip. “I don’t know. No matter how much they want to think I’m not gay, they have to know I am. I think it’s easier for them to pretend if I’m not with anyone or seen with anyone.”

“Is that why you’ve never had a boyfriend?”

“In part. Going out with someone would mean getting dressed up in nice clothes, spending money, knowing the right place to go, looking for a guy, choosing one or letting myself get chosen with no idea what I was doing, and all the time trying not making a fool of myself and say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing…” He took a shaky breath. “And sex stuff. All of that terrified me.”I’m still terrified.

“But that’s the same whether you’re gay or het. We all blunder through understanding what we are. Whether to kiss, how to kiss, what not to do…”

“It’s easier if you’re het though, because that’s what most people are and it’s the assumption. It’s great that some guys feel comfortable being out and proud. They wear amazing clothes and strut their stuff and don’t care what people think or say and I admire their bravery. Whereas I feel like a tiny, not very interesting fish that’s wandered into the deep blue ocean with no idea how to avoid being eaten up by a bigger fish with huge teeth, or how to find my tribe and whether they’ll accept me when I do.”Stop with the fish stuff!

“Do you want bright stripes and neon colours? Is that you?”

“Probably not. I go out of my way to avoid anything flashy because I know it would piss off my mother. I’m supposed to wear a suit at all times unless I’m working in the garden.”

“Even in bed?”

Theo laughed. “I’m rebellious in bed. I’m everything I want to be in there. But then it’s easy to be brave when no one’s watching. I mean, how can you tell if someone’s gay? How do you know whether they’re really interested in you as a person or if all they want is sex? How do you figure out what they’re into and what to do if you’re not into the same thing? It’s an ocean full of sharks and barracudas and I’m still at the edge trying to find the courage to poke a fin out of the seaweed.”

He’d gone far enough with that crazy metaphor and it had strayed uncomfortably close to a real fear coming up at the bottom of this road.

“What was school like?” Col asked. “No sexual experiences there? It’s usually as a teenager that you sort out all that sort of thing.”

“You’ll probably find it hard to believe, but I was a quiet, well-behaved boy. I hid in plain sight, sat right in the middle of everything, including the classroom. I saw what happened to boys who got singled out for whatever reason and I made sure I was never one of them. I didn’t have a best friend, but I wasn’t disliked. I endured school, never enjoyed it.”

“So how did you figure out you were gay?”

“One of the four boys I shared a room with let us watch porn on his laptop and I realised I wasn’t interested in the women. There was no gradual dawning, it was like a bomb had hit me. I stared at the guy’s cock and went instantly hard. I got away with it because we were all hard. Back in bed, I heard the others jerking off and I did too, but not for the same reasons. The noise they made… It turned me on.” Theo trembled. “I didn’t even try to be quiet. Actually, I don’t think I could have, not that first time.”

Col sighed.

“That night, I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was what being gay meant, how I was going to be disliked for something I couldn’t change, and my family was probably going to be furious, and my life was going to be difficult, and there was nothing I could do about it except maybe one thing. Pretend for as long as I could that I wasn’t gay.”

“How did that go?”

Theo gave a long exhalation. “Horrible. I felt guilty, anxious, constantly on edge. I was miserable and went even quieter at school. Saying nothing kept me safe. Not interacting with anyone kept me safe. Lonely, but safe. No way was I going to go to university. Apart from not being clever enough, I’d have been chum there.” He groaned. “If I say anything else to do with fish, trip me up.”

Col squeezed his fingers. “Hiding what you are isn’t easy.”

“Did you hide?”

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