Bloodsport

Chapter 3

When he woke up on Monday, he decided to stay at home. He didn’t want to face school, and he definitely didn’t want to risk running into Jasmine. He had failed to tell his parents, and he doubted he’d ever gather enough courage to come as close again in a long time.
He kissed the family cat on the head, scratching behind her ear where she slouched at the top of the stairs, and slowly headed down. He planned to make coffee, and then curl up on the sofa to watch a rerun of last year’s Champions League final and sleep until he couldn’t remember anything about his life. Sufficiently putting an end to his plans, his father met him in the kitchen. He was in sweats and a t-shirt that wasn’t all that flattering.

“Will you be home today?” asked Harry, surprised.

“Is that an issue?” his father chuckled.

It really, really, really was.

Harry turned around, went upstairs and packed his school things, took a shower, and drove to school. The world didn’t seem to allow him even a moment of reprieve.

Making matters worse, Zayn was nowhere to be found throughout the first half of the day. Harry knew he liked to sit behind the cafeteria and smoke with some of his mates, but when he went to check during a break he wasn’t there.

Are you in school? he texted when it was time for lunch. He’d sat through the lessons, ignoring the teachers, and prayed he wouldn’t run into Jasmine — or Louis for that matter.

Nah man, was the reply he received a minute later. Harry sighed, walked out of school and towards the parking lot. He wasn’t in the mood to face the cafeteria on his own, because without Zayn or Ed, Jasmine was more likely to approach him. He was still hungry, though, so he jumped into the car. It had been a gift for his last birthday. He admitted it was a lovely thing, black and expensive, but he knew it was more or less an apology from his parents for not being around much since Gemma had headed off to uni. Nevertheless, the car meant independence, and he had accepted the gift knowing it meant less time listening to his parents’ nagging during school drop-offs.

He bought a sandwich at the large Sainsbury’s, not too far from the school. The break was long, though, so he strolled through the shop, uninterestedly glancing at things he wasn’t going to buy. Eventually, he ventured into the pharmacy department. There, it was the rainbow flag on a shelf that made him stop. It was small, but enough for Harry to notice. It made him both sad, and happy all at once. It reminded him that being gay was accepted by most, but also brought on the disappointment of not being brave enough to share it with the people closest to him. It also made memories of Jasmine resurface.

He stared longer, turning angrier and angrier as he kept looking. The flag was placed next to a piece of paper taped to the shelf with intimate products. “Safe sex for all.” There were lubricants and lubes for vaginal and anal sex, along with condoms and other pleasurable stock. Harry had never had sex, but he had been interested enough to stare at those particular products more times than he could count. He’d never bought any of them. He didn’t even have a boyfriend. Hadn’t ever kissed a guy. All he knew was that sex was something he wanted. Or maybe it was love he wanted. At any rate, sex was usually in the mix of that.

Most of the time, Jasmine scared him shitless to be out. However, sometimes he also felt guilty for not being out. Guilty because he wasn’t brave enough to stand up alongside his community. And sometimes… he felt like his lack of gay experience jostled his validity as a gay man.

Perhaps it was the sexual curiosity that took over and made him pick a bottle of lube off the shelf. Maybe it was pure defiance. After another moment of consideration, he also grabbed a small set of condoms. He was gay, no matter who knew and who didn’t. He didn’t have to tell people to be extremely fucking homosexual.