A/N- Hey all! This is a story I had to write. I am focusing in on it now...hopefully it can be written alongside my other focus Shield My Eyes. This is basically something loosely and overtly exaggerated based off of my life. All of the characters are fictional, though what Gavin is feeling and most of the things he deals with is exactly what I have been through...with more of an edge. ) ENJOY AND REVIEW!!!!!

Prologue

I had hoped the warm water would kill the aching I felt. Steam entered my nose, and I breathed it in heavily. I am not a morning person, nor do I deal with heartache well, by any means.

I can’t describe it now, and I couldn’t describe it then. I just felt, empty. Empty…like a hollow tree. Empty, like a child’s bottle when they cry for more milk. Just plain empty…

Growing up Catholic, being raised under a roof with a mom and a dad, two brothers, and a younger sister, it all was surreal when it hit me that Saturday night.

Lying in my bedroom alone watching TV, a shot of Brad Pitt taken by fans came up on the screen. And suddenly, un-willfully, and in my mind…I pictured Brad Pitt naked, in the bed with me. Shocked? Yes. Disappointed? HELL no…

Though wanting so damn badly to attribute the sudden Brad escapade fluttering through my teenage head to overactive imagination, I just couldn’t. I knew it maybe was my imagination…but not of a straight teenage boy. One of a gay teenage boy…

Gary, the oldest sibling in my house and in college, brought home his girlfriend the very next day, and was glued to her face like a damn vacuum. Mitch, just a year younger than me but most definitely smarter, had a crush, he called it, on Rachel…his ex-girlfriend.

My little sister Emma, well, Sesame Street was her soul mate.

And me? I had Mia. For three months, 2 weeks, and 1 day…I had Mia. Mia Vardalos. Gorgeous coffee brown eyes, cute smile, adorable laugh, and a killer figure…

Damn, who was I kidding? Brad Pitt had a killer figure…Mia was only like a sister to me. Although I had kissed her, held her hand, told her even that I loved her…it was all plutonic. She was just a really close friend…

And that, I realized, was the aching I hoped the shower was going to kill. That I had lied to Mia; lied to all of my friends (the whole three of them), that I had lied to my family…

And inside the very pit of my stomach, inside my heart that beat so hard under the hot shower water cascading down my body, I knew a confession was in order.

When? I couldn’t tell yet. But it would happen soon.

I just hoped I wouldn’t get the reaction I had feared anyone would give me if I told them…

What exactly that reaction was going to be was anyone’s guess.