Cookies

Deep breaths. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold.

It felt like I had been programmed. My left hand lifted up to about shoulder level and rang the bell. The shrill noise from inside made me jump out of my skin, though I knew I caused it. Its been a while since I was here last. Long enough for them to change the doorbell, I realized in some corner of my mind that wasn't freaking out.

Breathe in. Hold.

The door opened. It was his mum. She smiled.

Breathe out.

"Oh, Nathaniel! Its been so long!"

I had pre-planned and planted a huge smile on my face when the door opened so I knew my nervousness didn't show. I knew I wouldn't be safe forever, Karen knew me better than my own mother did.

"Karen! Yeah its been long! How are you?"

Yuck. I could almost see the exclamation points at the end of every one of my sentences.

"I'm good, you look good... Time for a haircut?"

I looked up at her face, a little confused. It had been a while since anyone said that to me. At least six years. Thats how long its been sice my ponytail phase. Then I saw the smile playing on her face and i realised she was referring to that time, when I was five when I'd cry at the barber's unless Karen and her son, my best friend, came with me. Well it automatically became a matter of pride when Kyle was around. You don't cry in front of other guys, especially if you know them. Well, I was five years old.

I met her eyes, we laughed.

"Here, try this" she said stuffing a cookie of some sort into my mouth. I hadn't really noticed that she had navigated me into the kitchen. That's what I used to love about being here, Karen made the world's best food and my mum barely cooked. Karen was a surgeon with the craziest working hours but but the kitchen was always stuffed with food.

I bit into the cookie and it melted in my mouth. And I followed Karen like a lost puppy, to where she was taking something out of the oven to see if there were any more.

She turned around to see me attacking the plate of cookies she'd left on the table and swooning with every bite. She laughed. "Take them upstairs. Ky's probably in his room." I nodded, picked up the plate and went up the stairs.

So there I went. Upstairs.

Outside Kyle's room, I repeated my breathing excercise. I wondered if I should knock. Decided against it. You don't knock when you enter the room of your best friend for eighteen years. Even if you guys hadn't really met in the last five.

I opened the door and walked in. And I couldn't see anything. The lights were out. Someone yelled, "Jenny! I keep telling you to knock before you enter. Someone else yelled from the opposite room, "It wasn't me!"

The lights turned on. Ow. Fuck it is so bright.

"Oh it's you."

Not maliciously. Just-oh-it's-you-so-I-didn't-have-to-yell-at-my-sister.

"Yeah. Me. And cookies." I said, picking up a pair of shorts from the bed and throwing it onto the clothes stand on the side and sitting down where I had just semi-cleared.

"Awesome"

He crashed onto the bed, narrowly missing the plate. Took a cookie and put the whole thing into his mouth.

"So good.. Mmh"

Well that was with his mouth full so it didnt sound much like it, I'm just assuming.

He looked up at me. "Where have you been?"

"Same place. You?"

"Yeah, same. Came back last week. You?"

"Yesterday."

We were both in university, a thousand miles apart. Five years ago the day he was leaving, Karen asked us if we weren't going to cry. Because it would be the first time since kindergarten that we'd be so far away from each other. We had laughed. But I know I cried on the ride back. A little bit. I needed to put my new Ray-Bans to use anyway. What better way than to hide your teared up eyes.

I know Kyle did too, I felt in the goodbye hug, an undertone of 'Bitch don't cry, I will if you do'

"I called last week."

Kyle interrupted my train ride through memory lane. Yeah, he had called. I hadn't called back. I hadn't called back in about two years. Maybe three. I had a lot of explaining to do. Let me finish the cookies first.

"Yeah... I was busy"

"Mmm.. After cookies?"

I looked at him trying to see if he was pissed off. He just seemed a little amused. It was so cool the way he still could see through me even after so long. But maybe I should just be honest.

"Uhm, no. Maybe i should just tell-"

"Hey Jackass, return my moisturiser."

I turned to see who it was that interrupted my honesty roll. Jenny stood at the door. Kyle's sister, four years younger than us. She stopped when she saw me, though I'm not quite sure why, and added in a very different tone, "Oh hi Nathaniel"

Kyle threw something at her, "Out!" as I mumbled my pleasantries.

"See you later." she smiled at me and left.

Shit. Since I wasn't in touch with Kyle I used to talk to her whenever I bumped into her, she went to school near where I used to study. Ask about Kyle, and Karen too sometimes. Then she started to call me up once in a while, I picked up about half the times, maybe less.

"She's sort of into you"

Oh shit.

"What?"

"Jenny. She's sort of into you."

"Oh."

"And you?"

"Me?"

"Do you like her?"

"Not in the way she seems to think I do"

"She said you guys met up a lot and spoke on the phone too."

"We met once. I was out with a bunch of guys and she was with her friends. She called once in a while. You know she's a sister to me."

"That's what I said. Just tell her that the next time. I know you didn't lead her on on purpose but she doesn't."

"I swear it hadn't even occurred to me that she'd consider me as anything but a brother until about three seconds ago."

"Why wouldn't she? You're so different from before."

"Different?"

And I regretted saying that the second it fell out of my mouth. I hoped he wouldn't say anything about me not keeping in touch. I wasn't ready for that conversation yet.

"Yeah. You been working out?"

"A little. You have too."

"Yeah. Not as much as you evidently. I'd fall for you" and he promptly fell of the bed.

Yeah that was lame. But that was also a joke that had us rolling on the floor in stitches for a good twenty minutes back in the eighth grade. An inside joke of sorts. We laughed. And I lost my balance and fell off the bed. Then we laughed some more.

It felt good. Like everything was normal again. Then it hit me that everything probably wouldn't be normal ever again if I did finally get around to saying what I came here to say.

I'll deal with it when it comes. Why screw up a possibility of a few more memories?

We spoke for a while. It felt good. I hadn't felt that good in, well, I'd never felt that good. Now that word sounds weird to me. Good. Goood.

Bah. It felt like we were back in grade school,  playing video games, talking about the girls we liked. Only now we were sitting around eating cookies talking about college and jobs and working out.

"So, you still dating that Katie girl?"

Well, thats exactly the opening i had wanted. Come on Nat, honesty time.

"No... Bu-"

"Oh, you okay?"

"Yeah, I decided to be honest to myself."

He looked up at me but didn't say anything. He probably figured that I had something to say.

"I never really was in love with her. I dated her because everyone expected me to."

"It's okay man, we all do shit at times."

"What I meant was, I don't even like girls."

I tried to gauge what he thought of that from the way he looked into my eyes. They gave away nothing. He was always the mind reader. Not me. So I continued.

"I figured it out about four years ago but I couldn't deal with it. Thats why I dated Katie. I thought maybe it was just a phase but then I realized that was who I was. And I freaked out. I mean, what would my mom think, you know what she's like. What would my friends think. So I just kept pretending. Then on the last day of college, someone said something about what they had achieved over four years and you know easily I get influenced by this inspirational crap so I broke up with Katie and decided to, you know, come out."

"So you are gay?"

I took a deep breath. "Yeah"

"You didn't tell me because you thought I'd freak out?"

"Kind of, I wouldn't be able to deal with it if you never wanted to talk to me again"

He looked at me for about three seconds, completely expressionless. Then his face exploded with rage. "Bitch! Eighteen fucking years and you think I'd ditch you because you're gay?!" he yelled, hitting me over the head with his pillow, blanket and everything else he could lay his hands on.

And I took it for a while because now that he said it that way I felt stupid. Then I realised, 'Fuck! It hurts!' So I fought back. We wrestled for a while then I held him by his wrists, his arms behind him, effectively pinning him to the ground.

He had probably realized he couldn't get me off when he said, "Ow. Okay, fine, I'm done."

I let go and we sat on the floor panting slightly.

Then he suddenly looked up st me and said, "So this is why you haven't spoken to me in the last three years?"

"Well, no. Sort of."

I got up and offered my hand to him, to help him up. I pulled him up and we sat on the bed, next to each other. He kept looking at me. I looked straight ahead.

"The thing is, the reason why I figured out I was gay, was because there was this guy I couldn't stop thinking about. And I know him well enough to know he'd never like me the way I liked him. And I didn't want to risk the friendship I had with him because it meant everything to me. So yeah, I tried to distance myself from him, talking less, trying not to meet him. But now that I'm coming clean..."

"Did it work?"

"What?"

"Staying away from this guy. Did it help you get over him?"

"Honestly? No, because there is always this tiny bit of hope. There is always a 'what if this could work'. The only thing that happened was that maybe I ruined our friendship, though that was the last thing I wanted to happen."

I don't know how I could just sure there and tell him how much I liked him. Maybe because he was talking in third person, it felt like we were talking about, well, a third person. Get it? Third per- Uh. Screw it.

"So, this guy.. Nat, is it me?"

"God, Kyle, the point of this story was to explain why I haven't kept in touch with you."

"So it is me?"

Me who was looking straight ahead, turned away from him, "Yeah, Kyle. It's you."

"Oh"

I didn't really have the balls to turn towards him and see his expression so I didn't. For a while. It felt like hours.

When I finally did look at him, he was looking at his hands. He looked up when he saw me looking, his eyes still expressionless. I looked down. He leaned in way close to my face and said, "Hey"

I looked up.

Three seconds later. Holy crap did he just-

"I always wanted to know how that would feel." he said, running his thumb over my lower lip, his right hand holding my face.

He laughed at my dumbfounded expression. "I like you too, dummy. I have for at least the last three years when I realized that I hated the idea of you being with anyone but me."

"So you..?"

He smiled, nodded and closed his eyes and leaned in again. This time I knew what was going on so I closed my eyes and leaned forward too.

The door banged open. "Kyle! You finished my moisturizer you have to get me another- What's going on?"

I was, once again, dumbstruck. Kyle though, looked up at her and grinned. I hoped he wouldn't say something about me leading her on-

"I keep telling you to knock before entering or you may end up seeing things you never wanted to. This can be one of those things."

Jenny stood there, for a few seconds longer. She looked at me, then at him, then at the way his hand was still on my face and made a strangled sort of noise, got out and slammed the door.

He laughed. Then looked at me and said, "Where were we?"

And I said I'd show him.

--------

Epilouge (For my satisfaction)

Ten, maybe twenty minutes later, we were lying on our stomachs on the bed, picking crumbs off the plate.

I had never been happier. Never with a capital N.

He looked at me, "Nat?"

"Hmm?"

"What are you thinking?"

I rolled onto my back, looked at him, smiled and said, "That I have never been happier"

I interrupted whatever he had to say by pulling him onto me and kissing him, softly at first. Then, you know, we got carried away.

Another ten, maybe twenty minutes later, the smell of the world's best chicken pot pie came wafting upstairs. I stopped kissing him and well, I have to admit, swooned at the awesomeness of that smell.

"Lets go" he said, got off me and off the bed too.

I got up. "Can I move in? The only time its not take-out at my place its when I make cup ramen."

He laughed and pulled me up. Then he took my hand and we went downstairs.

"Won't your mum mind? "

"Mind what?" he looked confused.

I lifted my hand, the one he was holding.

"Oh no. She's fine with it."

"I haven't told anyone."

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

I held on to the hand he tried to pull out of mine, "I think I do."

Jenny, coming up the stairs looked our hands, then at me.

Kyle looked at her, laughed, threw his arms around me and said, "Mine! You stay away."

Jenny stuck her tongue out at him, pushed him out of the way and went upstairs.

We went down to the kitchen where Karen was keeping four plates onto the table. She had her back to us when we entered but she heard us coming in and said, "Took you long enough... You're usually here before its done"

Kyle looked at me and grinned, "Yeah Ma, we got busy."

Karen turned to us and said, "Well, sit down now."

Then she noticed. The twinkle in her eye was unmistakable when she said, "What did I miss?"

Kyle, attempting to feed me a grape he picked up from the fruit basket in the middle of the table, said with his voice dripping with innocence, "Huh? Nothing at all."

I could feel her eyes on me as she waited to see if I'd take it, and the secret(or so she thought) smile on her face when I did.

Kyle looked at me, grinned and pushed me against the counter. When I had been sufficiently cornered, he leaned in and began nibbling on my lips.

"No making out in the kitchen!"

I felt my face flush, Kyle just smiled, kissed me on my cheek and dragged me to the table.

"No footsie at dinner either."

I knew, Karen probably did too, that Kyle had other plans from the way he grinned at that and said, "Okay mommy"