I adjusted myself in my seat, hiding just how excited those damn pants made me by rolling my chair further under my desk. Somehow, I managed to pry my gaze away, keeping my creeper tendencies in check while I tried to focus on the spreadsheet in front of me. Numbers swam, columns danced, rows rearranged themselves all into the shape of a thick pen—

“Hey, Noah, you have lunch yet?”

“Nope, not yet.”

So if you’d like to serve me some sausage, we can just get started.

Damn… I was thirsty. And not just for the half-drank Gatorade bottle on my desk (blue, because that was the superior flavor according to anyone with taste buds). It wasn’t exactly a new state of being for me. I’d been boy crazy ever since my hormones kicked into overdrive—likely the exact moment I witnessed the star quarterback of our high school’s football team changing in front of me, nearly causing an extremely embarrassing and traumatizing mess in my towel. Luckily, I held it together that day, but the boy-session never left. I embraced it in my senior year when I came out to two of my best friends in an empty Taco Bell parking lot after we had snuck a (minuscule) amount of vodka out of my parents’ fridge and got drunk at the playground nearby.

I remember being scared shitless. Eric and Tristan had been my best friends since elementary school. We’d been through some crappy times and some over-the-chart incredible times, always sticking together through it all. But this? Well, this was different. It wasn’t about who cheated in Super Smash or Tristan choosing to go on a date with Sarah Miller over their usual Saturday night hangout.

This threatened to shake the very core of our friendship. Being gay—especially back in the early 2000s—was something that many people still didn’t understand, and high school boys weren’t exactly revered for their ability to fully understand and empathize with the world around them. Not only that, but kids were mean as shit. My friends might have been okay with me being gay, but would they have been okay with being gay by association? It all stacked up on my shoulders and made the words a mission to get out, likely not helped by the slight slur I had from taking my sip of vodka and orange juice.

“I’m…well, I’m—”

“What? Scared of butterflies? We know that,” Tristan said, pushing his glasses up his nose and flashing that thousand-watt smile of his.

Eric took a bite of his taco, speaking through the crunches. “You’re going to be competing on the next season of Big Brother?”

“No, yeah, right, I wish. Imagine me on—” I shook my head, getting off track. I just had to let the words out. Two simple yet galaxy-sized words:

“I’m gay.”