All the characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, is entirely unintentional.
The story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author who can be contacted at: pjalexander1753@gmail.com
A Very Ordinary Boy (Part 2)
From Chapter 7:
And the minute she finished telling me her story, things instantly made sense. Noah was a text-book case of hiding in plain sight - playing the big, macho, straight stud in order to make sure no-one even suspected the truth, the truth that he's a scared and closeted gay-boy. Just like I was. So why didn't I see it? All the clues were there, Noah's interest in Italian art, especially pictures and sculptures of beautiful young men. Then there was the amount of time he seemed to want to spend with me and inviting me on the camping trip. And, fuck, how good he was at getting me out of my clothes and then raping me. Even when he cut me dead as soon as he'd done with me, how did I not work it out? So much for gaydar. I've been such a pathetic, fucking idiot. Yeah, I have. I shouldn't have been so naïve and trusting. And Tani said she felt totally let down and betrayed by him too. But then everything for her went completely tits up, and I'll tell you about it later. Why not now? Well, `cause you've been here all this time, sitting there and listening to me moaning and complaining, and right now, what I really need, is to hold you and kiss you.
Chapter 8:
Has anyone ever told you what a totally awesome kisser you are? Not that I've got much to compare it with, I know. Yeah, okay, so the brutal truth is I've got nothing and no-one to compare it with. But even if I had kissed shed-loads of other guys, I just know you'd still be right up there at the top of the list. And how did you know that one of my favourite fantasies is having someone stand behind me, kissing my neck and biting on my ear? But it was when you slid your hands down my T, starting at my chest, and didn't stop till they'd reached the button on my jeans, that's when everything turned to jelly. Everything, that is, except my cock which was sooo hard and so desperate to be let out. That's why it was so grateful when you unfastened the button and then reached down inside my underwear. So grateful, in fact, that it went and exploded into your hand without even waiting for you to get started on the real action. You see, that's the effect you have on me. Blowing my load like that was totally your fault. It so was. You are so fucking amazing. You're caring and thoughtful and kind. Oh, and did I mention, billboard beautiful and balls-achingly sexy? So yes, me cumming into your hand like that without any warning or build-up was completely your fault.
But the best part, the very best part, was watching you lick my load off your fingers, one by one. Or maybe it was when you let me open your jeans and kiss the outline of your perfect cock through your CK's. That was `I-must've-died-and-gone-to-heaven' time. But, thinking about it -- and believe me, I have done a lot of thinking about it -- kneeling on the floor while you wanked those godlike six inches into your hand and then drip-fed me your load, that must have been the most incredible moment of my entire life. No question. And it's given me an idea. Oh, ha ha! Yes, I do have them occasionally. And for that crack I'm not gonna tell you what it is, at least, not until I've finished telling you the rest of the Tani story.
So, like I said, that night on River Street, she finally had all the pieces of the puzzle and knew that the whole of Noah's macho, cock-of-the-school stuff was an enormous front to hide the fact that he was deep-in-the-closet gay. And she felt betrayed, totally. She had thought she was his friend, thought they had each other's back, thought they could be honest with each other about everything. Now she discovers that none of that is true. She also feels bad about all the other girls, the pretend girlfriends, who he's had dangling on a string, and all the lies he's told to keep them quiet about never having sex with any of them.
No surprise, then, that she goes from feeling betrayed to being really, really angry at him. But, she told me, at least he didn't try to deny it when she cornered him the next day, out of sight on the far side of the Greenside car park. She said he didn't just not deny it, he burst into tears and begged her to keep it to herself. He told her that he'd known for years, since he was a little kid, that he was gay but had kept it secret `cause he knew his dad would go ballistic if he ever found out, would throw him out, cut him off, disown him, the whole pathetic and predictable homophobic nine yards. When she asked him how he'd managed to keep it secret, even from her, his answer was that he'd never done anything with anyone at school, never so much as spent half a second too long looking at another guy in the locker-room or the gym, had never taken anyone back to his house (for obvious reasons) and had relied on his hand and gay porn sites for years, only ever hooking up with guys at places like Mr. B's once he was old enough to blag his way in. Basically he'd kept the two halves of his life completely separate, and that's the way he had intended things to stay until he could leave school and move away. And it was the way he hoped Tani would allow it to stay, even now that she knew the truth. She told me that she felt totally conflicted. Here was this guy who she'd known her whole life who she thought of as her closest friend, thought she knew inside out, who suddenly turns into a whole other person who, she feels, she doesn't know at all. After all, if he could keep something like that a secret from her, what else was he hiding? So she said she needed some time, needed space to get her head around what she now knew and time to try to decide if she even wanted to be his friend any more.
And the weird thing was, the more she explained about the situation between her and Noah, the more I was thinking about me and Dyl. I mean, what was the difference between the two stories? Me and Dyl thought we were each other's BFF yet we'd both been hiding something from each other, something big. And when we'd both found out about each other's secret we'd both been properly mad and felt totally betrayed. What, I was asking myself, was different between that and what Tani was telling me about her and Noah? And it meant that I could totally understand everything that she had been going through. And, you know, that was weird, too, `cause I'd spent so long hating her and yet, there I was, completely feeling sorry for her and the impossible situation she was in, through no fault of her own.
It took her some time, she said, more than a week before she sent Noah a message to say that she'd made up her mind and wanted to see him. And it had been quite a week for her because a couple of days after her conversation with Noah she'd started seeing his older brother, Aidan. He'd noticed that she hadn't been around and that Noah was spending all his time in his bedroom, so he worked out that something was going on. They met for coffee (at FfT, where else?), and a day later coffee became dinner, and dinner became a movie and the next thing Tani knows she's in a relationship with Noah's big brother. So what's she to do now? She decides she can't be dating one brother and, at the same time, not even speaking to the other. And that's when she realises that, yes, she still feels totally let down by Noah but, when it comes down to the wire, he's too important and too big a part of her life for her to decide to give up on the friendship. And that's what she tells him, that she wants them to stay friends but only on the condition that he doesn't keep any more secrets from her. No surprise, then, that he jumps at the chance to rescue the friendship and swears that he'll be 100% up front with her from that moment on.
And he kept his word, telling her everything that went on in his life during the times when they weren't together, which is how Tani knew about his rep for bouncing from one short-term guy to the next, picking up a new date every couple of weeks and never getting attached. And that's what she was worried would happen when Noah started getting friendly with me at the book shop, that I'd totally buy into the Noah myth, fall for him and then be crushed when he dumped me pretty much as soon as he'd had sex with me. And what do you know? She was 100% right in every way.
But way before I'd even begun working at FfT, things had started to go totally down the tubes for her. It turns out that Aidan is the abusive boyfriend. Can you believe it? He starts out being Mr. Nice Guy, all sympathetic and caring, making her feel like she's queen of the world but, bit by bit, he takes control of her life. First it's how she looks. He thinks she should wear less makeup and, maybe, get rid of the sleeveless tops she likes and the short skirts with the buttons all the way down the front. He says she's so lovely and he doesn't want her to get upset when other guys try to hit on her. Then he persuades her to get a new phone, one with in-built controls that he can use, he says, to protect her from random sexts and nuisance calls. "Everything I do is for you, baby," is what he says, over and over. And she believes him because she wants to be the number one person in his life, his perfect princess.
It's money next. If they want to get a place together then they need to pool their cash. He's working for his dad so, naturally, he's earning more than she is from her weekend job at the little pizza restaurant on West Street, but, "Every little helps," and it would be best if she paid her money into his account `cause he's an adult and a proper earner so letting agents will take more notice if he's the named tenant on any rental agreement. And then he persuades her to give up the job and, bit by bit, cuts her off from her friends. And all the time she believes it when he tells her how much he loves her and that everything he does is for her and to keep their relationship special. But, she tells me, the scariest thing was the sex. At first it's all pretty vanilla but still, as far as she's concerned, totally fantastic and proves just how much he's into her. (No, that's not a deliberate pun.) Then he says he wants to move things on, "Widen her horizons and open her up to new ideas." And widen her up he does, every hole, both back and front, with an ever more extreme and frightening range of sex toys that she never even imagined existed, much less had ever seen or used before. And it wasn't long before the sex toys became bondage "games", and then those games became more and more violent -- she didn't go into details, she was too upset, but you can use your imagination. And it's not difficult to work out who was the one getting hurt every time.
And she never told anybody, not her mum and dad, no-one at school, not even Noah. They all thought that she had found `the one' and was living her dream life with the boy she loved and they were happy for her and didn't want to intrude or break the spell. And, Aiden, of course, was careful to make sure that none of the bruises or burns, the cuts and scratches was visible. And that's how it went on for months. And each day she became more and more isolated and dependent and scared, until the night when things went completely mad and blew up. The way she described it was exactly how Noah had told me that day in the van on the way to the camp site -- the brutal beating (she said she genuinely thought she was gonna die that night), the dumping at the abandoned farm and then Noah coming to her rescue and the making up of the story about her falling off her bike. She said she was never more grateful to have Noah in her life than she was that night and she knew that, whatever she was able to do for him for the rest of their lives, it would never be enough to make up for the way he had saved her. Which goes a long way to explaining the way their relationship worked from then on.
Yeah, good question, why didn't they go to the police or, at the very least, why didn't Noah have it out with his brother? Stalemate, that's why not. Noah did confront Aiden, jumped him when he was asleep in bed, beat him up really badly before Aiden knew what had hit him. But when Noah said that that was just for starters and that he was gonna go straight down to report him to the police, that's when Aiden told him that he didn't think that would be a good idea `cause he knew about Noah being gay (she still has no idea how he found out) and if he ever so much as breathed a word about what had happened to Tani he, Aiden, would make it his business to blow Noah's cover so that everyone at school, around town and especially their dad would know the, "filthy fucking truth about the filthy fucking faggot."
They'd got each other well and truly stalemated and Tani was stuck in the middle. But as far as she was concerned one good thing, at least, had come out of the whole toxic mess -- she was out of the relationship with Aiden, and that was totally thanks to Noah. And that's when the whole Noah and Tani as a couple' myth was cooked up, and it had been going on for weeks before that day when Noah flattened me onto the floor of FfT. And they were really good at it, mainly because they both knew how much depended on everyone buying into it. So it was only natural that I totally believed the whole well-practised fiction. It was when Tani saw how Noah was becoming friendly with me, spending more and more time with me every time he came into the café, that's when she started to get concerned. It was the camping trip which finally flipped her from concerned to worried, especially the week after the trip when she began to get the feeling that something wasn't right. At first she tried to convince herself that it was some sort of hangover from the bust up between Noah and his brother but, no, that had been weeks ago. Then she realised that Noah hadn't talked about me in days and had even stopped arranging to meet up with her at FfT. She got really suspicious cause she'd worked out that Noah was trying to avoid me. This, she said, was classic Noah behaviour whenever he dumped another `victim' (her word, not mine). So she called in at FfT on one of the days she knew I wasn't scheduled to work and Michelle confirmed Tani's suspicions, that ever since the camping trip I'd been acting weird and not being anywhere near as good at my job as usual. That got Tani really worried. She'd guessed that I wasn't just another of Noah's usual pickups, that I was genuinely into him and, because of that, very vulnerable to his standard pattern of dating behaviour. She'd also worked out (was I really so transparent and obvious?) that I was deeply in the closet and no way was I able to deal with being dumped by my first and biggest crush.
From FfT she went straight round to Noah's place to find out exactly what had gone on during the camping trip. And believe me, that took guts, cause there was every chance that Aiden would be there but, no, that didn't put her off, she was so determined to have it out with Noah. He'd promised her that there would be no more secrets and she was gonna hold him to that. And as she was telling me all this I was thinking, What sort of low-life am I? Here's this girl that I've been hating and slagging off for weeks, and she's so concerned for me that she's about to stand up to her best friend to defend me, all the time knowing that she might walk straight into the bastard who'd been making her life a living hell for months. Talk about balls! I felt so guilty but also totally in awe.
Anyway, Aiden isn't there and when Tani demands answers about the trip, Noah swears that me and him had a great time together. He even tells her that we had great sex and that I was grateful to have my cherry taken by someone who was so gentle and kind. Can you believe it? Well Tani didn't, especially when she heard from Michelle about me skipping that shift at FfT and lying about it, and then walking out altogether. The clincher, she told me, was when she heard I was in the hospital, that's when she knew that something bad, very bad, had gone down on the trip although she didn't know any of the details, definitely not that I'd cut myself and not even that I was in the psych ward. It was then that she lost it, she said. She felt really bad for me and started blaming herself for me being let down by Noah but mostly, she said, she couldn't stop blaming herself for what had happened with her and Aidan. She convinced herself that it was all her fault, that she should have seen what Aiden was doing to her, that she should have been stronger, that she should have walked away. Every way she looked at it, she said, she was the one in the wrong. She'd been weak. She'd been naïve. She hated herself. I mean, how screwed up is that? After all the crap that'd happened to her. It's no wonder she cracked. The next thing she remembered was being found by the police, wandering the streets in the middle of the night with her hair cut off, no make-up, no outdoor clothes, no shoes and no idea where she was or how she'd got there.
So where do you think she was taken? Yeah, got it in one, to the same hospital. In fact -- and this is so weird -- in the same psych ward (different rooms, of course), at the same time, with the same assigned medic, Doctor Mirthless, who, she said, was the one person whose help and support stopped her from losing it completely, from being banged up as a nut-job for a very long time. She said if it wasn't for him she'd still be there. You couldn't make it up! It was while she was there that she heard more about what had happened to me, that I'd experienced extreme trauma' which had resulted in a genuine and determined' attempt to end my life. It didn't take her long to work out what, or rather who, had been responsible for that trauma and what I'd done to myself. And there we were again, full circle, with her in tears and begging me to forgive her for doing nothing to stop me becoming yet another victim of Noah's cruel and selfish behaviour.
Wow! It's all still feels so real, as if the whole Noah thing happened just a couple of days ago. And poor Tani. She's still seeing Doctor Charmless almost every day, still on medication, still trying to believe that all the shit that's she's been through, well, that none of it is her fault. She said she wants to believe it but it's all still too raw and I can totally relate to that.
You know, something about telling you the whole Tani story has made me feel sooo tired. Would it be okay if we stop now? I could totally do with some sleep. Do you mind? Thanks. What's that? My idea? Oh, yeah, that. I was thinking, if you'd like to, and if you've got nothing else planned, well, I was wondering if you want to stay over on Friday. I'm sure I could square it with my mum and dad and we could order in pizza (don't tell Rosa) and watch a couple of movies. But if you've got something else planned, well, no sweat. Another time, maybe. What's that? You'd like to? That's fantastic. Great. See you Friday. Now I need to sleep. See ya!
As an author, it's REALLY encouraging to know that there are people out there who are taking the time to read what I've written, and then bothering to send a response. So please, do feel free to write to me at the email address given at the top of the chapter. I welcome all comments and guarantee to write back. PJ
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