Do you know what? You do don't you. I thought I'd actually finished off this story! Then when I received some reviews saying that I hadn't, I had to read it, catch up and update. That's appalling. I've been leaving you guys waiting since God knows when. Well, here it is then next chapter. I hope you enjoy. I might just re-vamp some of the older chapters since it must have been over a year since I wrote the chapters before this one! P.S, You just have to love Lance. He's one of the best guys since the guy who brought us the Cillit Bang advert. That was sarcasm. Barry Scott - get him him shot.

Derek57 - welcome back sport.

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I stared. And I stared damn hard at him. The edges of my peripheral vision dissolved and my eyes were fixed on his blank face. His words just cut my trail of thought off completely. I realised how tightly my teeth were clenched. It hurt. His face was unreadable, but it always was. His aura was cool and calm. No change there.

“Lance, you’re joking. You’re actually fucking me off aren’t you?”

I never swore, but this was far too serious to think about controlling my manners.

His lips broke into a smirk and he brushed the end of his nose with his index finger. He must have found this hilarious all this while and I imagined that the shocked, disgusted, gaunt expression on my face was enough to make almost anybody turn round and think – ‘what the hell is wrong with him? He looks like he just found out his girlfriend is actually a boyfriend.’

“Lance, you’ve gotta be pissing about,” I demanded. Putting my palms on my knees just like Lance was, I shook my head. He leaned over and swept my desperately-needed-to-be-cut black fringe out of my face. This was normal and I ignored his gesture. “Lance?”

“Yeah, of course I’m joking you nit,” he sneered with a twitch in his smile. “I mean, it’s I find it hilarious to inform you that you’ve been dancing and kissing and flirting with the wrong sex.”

For a moment, I believed him. Then his eyes said it all. His gaze was cemented on me; deep and flickering. The only joke so far in our conversation had been his last comment. I felt angry with him when in reality, I should have been angry with myself.

“Jen, as in…Jensen…is a boy?”

He gave me one of those noisy sighs that a mechanic gives you when he’s able to tell you that the repair work on your car is going to cost you a small fortune. He looked almost he was pleased to have the upper hand – in a sort of ‘yeah, you should have listened to me mate, but you were just too busy messing up your current reputation and love life.’

Blinking hard, I asked again if this was all a joke and he was straight with me this time.

“Dylan, I’m not making this up. His name is Jensen Roxborough,” he paused as if I should have showed some sort of recognition at his name, “Finn’s little brother.”

It fit. I had been stupid - so fucking stupid. I couldn’t get to grips with my utter idiocy. Finn. Of course. That was how I should have known. Finn Roxborough, a fairly popular lad in my year. Though I didn’t know him well, I knew his last name for sure. When I had realised that ‘Jennifer’ and Finn were siblings and noted how similar they looked, I should have known they would share the same last name. Their mother looked different from them, so it implied that they had inherited their looks from their father, and since they were so similar in appearance, they must have had the same dad. Hence having the same surname and therefore, if I had used my bloody grey-matter, I could have worked out for myself that Jen’s name would also be Roxborough.

Jen’s name couldn’t have been Harris at all. How dense must I have been? I slumped in my seat and covered my hands with my face. I couldn’t look at Lance; I was far too embarrassed.

“What’s more, you both have a reputation now.”

I pulled my hands away, expecting him to continue. He didn’t for a while and I realised he was contemplating telling me or not.

Then I clicked again for the second time in that space of five minutes. This was just typically me. Always the last to know about anything, always the only person not to realise these things. I hadn’t known Jen was a boy up until now. I’d had my suspicions. But that was all they were – suspicions. Nothing to prove me wrong but nothing to prove me right.

The bottom line was that I had danced with another boy on that night and that’s what had raised eyebrows. That was obviously what attracted so much attention and why I received daily hoots and caused other pupils to get infected with a contagious case of the giggles. They must think that I’m, well, that way inclined. I screwed my eyes shut and slumped back, my pounding head bouncing off the back of the leather seat.

“A reputation?” I enquired, avoiding eye-contact with Lance. “What exactly did I do at that party?”

“I don’t think I’m not the one to tell you th-…”

“Lance, for shit’s sake, what are we talking about here? A kiss? A hug? Both?”

He paused again and his lips contorted into the pained grimace of a doctor about to tell a patient that his daughter had the hole-in-the-heart syndrome. I certainly felt like I had a hole somewhere inside my body, like a black hole – consuming everything that should be ordinary for an ordinary lad like me.

“I really ca-…”

“Mate, come on,” I pleaded, coming close to his face so he could clearly see my fraught expression. I thought I’d break the barrier with him. I hadn’t spent time with him for days and I appreciated that he was a little edgy and pissed off with me, but I needed to know. He’d be the only one I’d trust to tell me out straight. “Lance, please. I need to know what happened.”

He tossed his head about a bit and sighed. He didn’t want to say it and I knew that it was worse than I thought. Did I hug him? I looked at Lance hard. Did I kiss Jen back? I waited. Did I touch him?

“You got naked.”

I put my head in my hands. Just the mention of the word naked…it made me tremble. I couldn’t decipher what he meant though. He could be literal or he could be metaphorical and for the love of anything Holy and good, I hoped it was the former. If he was being literal, it meant that I literally only stripped, but the metaphorical meaning would imply that…that I’d had sex with him.

“If you mean I – I mean we – uh, had sex, then I don’t want to know.”

Lance issued an amused chuckle and shook his head. I groaned in relief.

“You didn’t have sex, but if Finn hadn’t found you, you probably would have,” he explained. Even though he hadn’t been at the party for long enough to know what had gone on, Lance and Finn got on considerably well since Lance had once been with his older sister Lydia for about a year not too long ago. He saw the mortified look on my face. “Yeah, Finn found you two and he didn’t like what he saw either. He told me after I saw Jen; when he came to meet us that time. I went to go and see him and he told me all about this. I’d been avoiding you because I didn’t want to get up in the conspiracy that you were some sort of gay slut.”

“Me? A gay slut? I’m not even a heterosexual slut.”

“I know, quite the accusation wasn’t it? But we all had the evidence. It was undoubted that you and Jen were…you know, okay I’ll just tell it straight to you, but you were on him in the loos. Bare bum naked and all.”

I cringed. “On him?”

“Lying on him. Finn said it was a nasty sight, but who’s to say? I’ve quite fancied an ass like yours.”

I scowled at him and the smile on his face crept closer the corners of his eyes. “That’s not funny.” I snarled.

“Of course it’s not funny, it’s hilarious. But that’s beside the point. What I’m saying is, because of Finn, when he came looking for his little brother and saw you and him doing what you were doing, that how the story started. You were obviously pissed off your face mate, because I said to Finn, Dylan just wouldn’t do that. He can’t get his way with girls let alone even know where to start with boys.”

“Thanks for that.”

“That’s what I said anyway, but you know him; he wouldn’t buy a word of it. It spread round the school pretty quickly and that’s how you got your reputation. People have been talking about you and I’ve heard the story a lot of times now, each time it’s been twisted. But I stuck up for you.”

I muttered thanks, but it didn’t make the situation any better knowing all that. He waited for me to say something but I didn’t. I wanted to go home and was, quite lamely by this point, wondering where the nearest tree was and where Lance kept his spare rope.

“So that’s all there is to tell. And when you told me that you’d got a girlfriend…I was sceptical it was the same Jen, but I was pleased that you weren’t keeping your sexuality from me. I knew you weren’t gay or anything like that. I knew you’d tell me wouldn’t you?”

“Would I?”

“I’d hope you would Dylan,” he creased his brow and shook off the thought. “Anyway, do you fancy a drink? How about a little Bacardi and coke to really get you in the queer mood?” I scowled at him and told him again that his joke wasn’t amusing me. He gave my face a gentle stroke but as always, I thought nothing of it. Lance had done that since I remember. He could be a bit queer at times, what with the touching and the colourful scarves he wore, but you wouldn’t know he was bisexual unless he told you. Really.

He walked into the kitchen to fetch a couple of cans of something from the fridge. I heard the dull clink of liquid in a metal container as he picked them up. I felt like getting my phone out and texting Jen but remembered that I’d rubbed his number off my hand ages ago. I never wrote it down. I never thought I’d get this far. Not that I wanted to in the first place.

What embarrassed me the most was the fact that I’d taken so long to even realise he was boy. It was so obvious to me now. The ‘underdeveloped’ chest, the pointed face, the tall frame, the too-deep-voice-for-a-girl. But what I couldn’t comprehend was how feminine he was. He was obviously gay and his family and friends knew about it.

His nice shaved legs, his slim indented waist, his slightly curved hips, his rounded shimmering eyes, his dark mascara-ed eyelashes, his small shoulders, his dainty hands, his too-high-pitched-for-a-boy-voice and most of all his girly giggly flirtatious way of conducting himself. He had a delicate balance of both sexes in him and it was no wonder that I was so confused. But now that I now realised, it should have been obvious to me. He wasn’t butch enough to be a tomboy kind of girl, yet he was girly enough to be a…well…like he was.

I guess I had seen in him what I had wanted to see - an attractive girl.

“I only have Carling’s, that okay?”

Lance threw me a can of beer. I caught it only just in time, opened the can with a welcoming crack and almost gagged on its bitter tang. Just the way I liked it.

“I’d better not give you too much of that stuff,” he said, resuming his seat on the coffee table, “next thing I know and you’ll be stripping.”

“Jerk,” I snorted after taking a long swig. “You can be a real knob sometimes you know.”

He put the comment aside as I’d told him that so many times over the years. I was glad to have him back as my friend. I was lost without his advice and his uplifting – though rather slightly over-personal and odd – sense of humour. I appreciated everything about Lance. Except maybe his crude wit.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked and set the can next to him on a placemat. “You could always just end it with him and tell him it didn’t work out.”

“Nah,” I sighed. I began thinking. “He’d want an explanation. Then I’d have to tell him I thought he was a girl and then I’d be feeling even more stupid than I currently do.”

It was silent again and Lance casually scratched his head. He could tell I was in deep thought. You didn’t need to be a ‘Dylan-Kieran-Skews-ologist’ to work that out.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Jen,” I answered flatly.

He issued a bemused sort of snort. “Jen you say? What the whole nearly having sex or the whole ‘I just discovered he’s a boy’ thing? Yeah, that would give me nightmares too. Both of them.” I ignored him.

“I couldn’t kiss her – err…him yesterday, even when I was convinced he was a girl. I knew something wasn’t right. Even though his room had all the tell-tale signs of being a girl’s, I just couldn’t place my finger on why I felt wrong kissing Jen. But we did. Does that make me gay?”

“Nah, I doubt it, it was just a kiss, and you didn’t know-…”

“I enjoyed it though.”

“You didn’t know who he was though, did you?”

I waited for him to say something else. I wanted to tell him everything I felt, but wondered if he would understand me. He often did, but he always made no indication of his feelings. I couldn’t tell if he would be shocked, upset, angry, glad or even any of those things. It was like trying to predict which way a ball would roll down a hill.

“You asked if I would tell you if I was gay, didn’t you?” I said after a while. He lifted his head; I had attracted his attention. “Well, I’m sorry to say I’m not gay-…”

“You’re not gay?”

“No I'm not gay, but let me finish,” I said quickly. “I don’t think I could…let Jen go either. Thing is Lance, if I could kiss him in private…I actually would. I can’t even describe how I feel. As a girl – I mean, when I thought he was a girl, I was attracted to him by his personality and by his looks. I think he’s pretty wonderful, even if he does seem a little too hands on. I’ve not had any luck with girls…”

“So you’re saying you’d like a shot at it?”

“Not quite. I’d like to try it but in private, so nobody else knows. If I could just…get to know him, you know, a little more personally, and I don’t think I’d mind getting to know his lips either. Do you understand? This is really odd Lance, so don’t tell anybody how I’m feeling. This is personal. Bottom line is…that I’m kinda attracted to him in a sort of way that I can’t turn back now. Am I being too dramatic?”

He stood up. That was it. I couldn’t see his face but the way he was stood, he was serious. His shoulders were tense and he wasn’t looking at me. I felt like I had gone back to yesterday with him, back to when we weren’t talking.

“Come on,” he said in a monotone voice that I had only heard when he either disgusted or getting down to business, “stand up and grab your coat, dick. You’re leaving."

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Oh Lance, my boy, you dissapoint me. This is your best mates hour of need! I've had a cup of tea to keep me awake. It's quarter past one in the morning here in jolly old England. QAURTER PAST BLEEDING ONE. So if you see enni miztaykz den itz joo to the tym. Downt blaym me for that, I'm nocterrnull. Did enni ov u nowtiss the zed in the sekshun brayk juzt abuv heuh?

Why do I sound so much like Amy Tranter?