CHAPTER ONE
JACK
“Is this a joke?”
OK, it’s not the reaction I’d hoped for, but coming from Dylan, it’s practically a compliment. I wave my hands up and down my tuxedo in the manner of a game show hostess. “It’s Italian tailoring, one hundred per cent pure wool, with satin trim details.”
He crosses his arms and gives me unimpressed eyes.
“Is it the shoes?” I ask.
“It is not the shoes.”
“Dolce and Gabbana.”
He shakes his head and steps inside like the shoes are nothing, and closes the front door behind him.
I blow my cheeks out, really giving it some serious thought. “Oh!” I say, feigning suddenly remembering. “Do you mean” – I twirl around on the spot, the rainbow flag cloak that’s around my shoulders billowing out like some fabulous gay tornado – “THIS?!”
Dylan still isn’t smiling, which is weird because this has to be the most spectacular thing ever. “Very funny.” He grimaces.
“Thank you, I think, but this is actually my outfit. So.”
Dylan glowers at me. I’m pretty sure this is meant to be one of the most romantic nights of my life, the sort you look back on if you’re lucky enough to make it to eighty, and sigh, and remember it all in gorgeous sepia, but my boyfriend literally looks like he’s going to murder me – and not with something clever and glamorous like cyanide in champagne (surely the weapon of choice for any homosexual with a shred of self-respect?), but violently. With an axe. “I thought we agreed—”
“I know, but I wanted to—”
“It can’t always be about you, Jack.” He stomps through to the kitchen. “Can I get a glass of water?”
“Sure,” I mutter, staying in the hall while he disappears.
So, it’s going well.
“You look nice!” I shout through to him. And he does. He looks fricking gorgeous.
The sound of a tap running.
“There’s a bottle of Evian in the fridge if you prefer not to drink piss water. I know it’s environmentally less friendly but since we’re all going to die in the apocalypse anyway, I say DRINK THE GOOD STUFF, BABY!”
Silence.
He’s pissed off with me, but year eleven prom is, quite frankly, the end of five years of near total hell at secondary school and I’m not going to mark its passing quietly. Hell, no. This shitshow is going out with a bang. And turning up in the same shiny polyester suit that all the other year eleven boys will turn up in is not anywhere close to being “a bang”. Screw that. If I’m not going to fit in, if I’m going to stand out, then I’m really gonna stand out.
Speaking of which, he didn’t even mention the glittery eye make-up. Do I need more? I walk through to the kitchen, where Dylan is finishing off a glass of chocolate milk.
“Sorry,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He knows the chocolate milk is mine, and he knows it’s precious to me.
“The eyeshadow,” I begin.
He licks the last of the milk off his lips and looks across at me. “Uh-huh?”
“Do you love it?”
He stares at me, then his face breaks into a smile. “Well, you … I mean, you certainly look gay.”
“I am gay!” I say. “So are you!”
He doesn’t deny it, but he ever so slightly flinches, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing. “Besides,” I continue, “you don’t win prom king and queen without going to some effort.”
He scratches his tousled dark brown hair. “You really think they’re gonna give it to a gay couple? Really? Our school?”
He has a point, of course, but he must clock the look of disappointment on my face because he quickly adds, “Hey, but who knows? Maybe things are changing.”
I nod at him and smile, although I know he was probably right to begin with.
“I want to have a nice night, so I’m sorry I was a dick about your outfit,” he says.
“That’s OK.”
“I’m a bit tense.”
“Why are you tense? Do you need a massage?”
“No. I mean, yes, I do, but—” He gestures to his bow tie. “It’s real. I don’t know how to do it back up again if I untie it.”
I laugh at him. “Were you dressed by your mum?”
“Practically.”
I know why he’s tense. He prefers me to be “straight acting”. He told me that when I turned up to one of his matches in a Some people are gay. Get over it! T-shirt. I was just trying to do my bit to challenge homophobia in football, but apparently some of the other boys found it distracting and that’s why they lost the game. I don’t know, it’s almost like some people have a lame excuse for everything. I sigh. “Do you want me to lose the rainbow cloak?”
“No.”
“I want them all to see it, Dylan. I want everyone who made my life hell for the last three years to see they haven’t won. I’m here. And I’m gonna shine so bright I’ll blind the fuckers!”
“I know.”
“Aaaaand I’ve only gone and bagged the hottest guy in the school. Also worth celebrating.”
He flicks his eyes down to the floor, embarrassed, I think.
“You look really good, Jack. You’ve maybe got a whiff of gay vampire about you, but it works.” He smirks at me. “Now make a joke about what gay vampires suck.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m classier than that.”
He holds his arms out wide. “Come on.”
And I go in for a hug.
Dylan.
I one hundred per cent, truly, madly, deeply, unreservedly, from the bottom of my big gay heart, love this boy. And OK, OK, I know what people say. I know how I’m not supposed to really understand the meaning of love because I’m “only sixteen”, so how could I possibly get my innocent little head around such a complex thing, but it’s not like I see anyone older with their shit together in this regard. In fact, I vividly remember the screaming row Mum and Dad had, before Dad left, when I was ten years old. “I love you!” Dad had pleaded, shielding his head from the onslaught of shoes that Mum was hurling out of the window at him. “You don’t know the meaning of love!” Mum had snarled back.
So, I’m not convinced it’s an age thing.
And me, I do know the meaning.
And right now, he is standing in my kitchen, my date for the prom, in a dinner jacket and bow tie, with that dark brown messy hair of his, those goddamn deep brown eyes, and that playful little smile he always has when he knows I’m about to kiss him, and I think, yes, this is love, because if it isn’t, then what the hell is it?
OK, maybe right now, it’s mainly lust. Let’s say seventy per cent lust and the rest – I can’t even do the maths because I’m so horny – is love.
Thirty per cent. It’s thirty per cent love.
But normally it’s more fifty-fifty.
It’s just … Christ alive, he scrubs up well.
I go in for a kiss.
“You smell gorgeous,” I murmur.
“It’s actually my dad’s,” he says. “I just spritzed it on.”
“Well, it’s certainly a step up from Lynx.”