One Little Word: Gay YA Romance by Finn Manning

Author:Finn Manning [Manning, Finn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Luke

Lunch was awkward. Of course it would be awkward. I had just sucked face with a guy in front of our table. The seniors had gotten up and left, something they usually did when Ryan sat with us, but it felt different now. This wasn’t a video or a rumor. I had just kissed a guy in the cafeteria. I thought the stares were bad before.

No, everything was perfectly normal. No, that wouldn’t work. The atmosphere at the table was too tense. I didn’t think it was just disgust, there was probably a lot of that, but the team was also probably pretty pissed I’d outright lied to them. I insisted the kiss wasn’t real, that Ryan and I weren’t together. Then I kissed him in front of everyone, and now we were having lunch with my shell-shocked team. There had never been this much quiet at the table before.

“That was… weird,” Joey said eventually. No, it was probably just the kiss that weirded them out. I guess the bright side was they might not even have noticed the lie.

“Not a big deal,” I tried, throwing my arm around Ryan for a second. He tensed under me, and it felt like everyone was laser focused on my arm around his shoulder, so I removed it.

“You said you and Ryan weren’t together,” Ted pointed out.

“I was… in the closet.” They hated this “homo crap” as they called it. Why were they grilling me about this?

“Wouldn’t it have been better to stay there?” Joey asked. Oh great. Real supportive. Then I remembered it didn’t matter. I wasn’t really gay.

“I shouldn’t have to hide,” I tried again, grabbing Ryan’s hand this time. “We shouldn’t have to hide our love. Right, baby?” I squeezed his hand, trying to indicate he should go along with this.

“Uh, I. Of course, snookums?” he managed, but his nails dug into my flesh. Ouch! Little bastard can never make things easy.

“This isn’t right,” Ted said, and some of the guys nodded.

“Come on, man—" I started.

“No, it’s not that,” he interrupted, gesturing between me and Ryan. “I mean, I’m not thrilled about that,” he admitted, looking at us distastefully. Yeah, that was quite obvious I wanted to snap but managed to hold my tongue. “It just seemed like…” Ted looked at Zach and the other guys followed suit.

I looked at him, not getting it. What, Zach had the biggest problem? I was irrationally hurt, even though it wasn’t real. We were best friends. I’d have thought he’d at least try to be supportive, or pretend to be. Okay, Zach didn’t really do supportive, but I didn’t think he’d go out of his way to be a bigger asshole than he already was. That was true friendship for him.

“Uh, we thought you and Ryan were just pretending,” Joey said carefully. “And just a second ago, we were pretty sure Zach liked Ryan.”

God, Joey was so dumb. The catcher obviously took too many fastballs to the head, even with a helmet. “It must have been a misunderstanding,” I said easily.

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