Molly Snow is a Top 10 Idaho Fiction Author, awarded by The Idaho Book Extravaganza. Her works include quirky teen romances Beswitched, Head Over Halo and To Kiss a Werewolf. Also a speaker on writing, her school assemblies have been featured in The Contra Costa Times and The Brentwood Press. Snow is married to her high school crush, has a set of silly twin boys and a bobtail cat named Meow-Meow. She also co-writes with her mother Z & C Mysteries, the first in the series being The Riddles of Hillgate.
http://mollysnowfiction.blogspot.com/
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Friends With Benefits
Kate Aaron
He’s using me. I’m not so dumb I don’t know it. He’s always used me, ever since we were teenagers and he’d tell his parents he was staying at my house to cover his nights out at clubs and bars, dates with older men, drinking and dancing ‘til dawn. Used me when he copied my homework on the bus the next day, a pirate smile on his face as he whispered scandalous details of what he’d been up to. Or maybe it started earlier, when he was the one who kicked the football through the side of his neighbour’s greenhouse and I took the blame; or earlier still, when he glued Hannah Jones’ pigtails together with PVA. Yes, Liam McGinty has been using me since we were five years old, at least. And all that time, over all those years, I’ve let him.
Tobias Black, doormat, at your service.
I’m not bitching. Honestly, I’m not. I’m grateful. I started school six months late, thanks to a poorly-timed transfer at Dad’s work which saw the whole family—me, my parents, my two older sisters—relocated from the rolling green hills of the Cotswolds to the grimy grey of Manchester when I was just four years old. I was the new boy, an oddity with a strange accent. And to make matters worse, I was a fat kid, of course, a tubby barrel of lard topped with a shock of hair as dark as my name, and NHS glasses. My peers, quite rightly, shunned me. All except Liam.
Before my arrival he was a loner; a strange, reclusive child—not shy, Liam McGinty was never shy—but he looked down on the other kids like they were already beneath him, infinitely inferior in every way. It was like he knew, even then, exactly what he’d grow up to be.
I can’t remember the first time I noticed him, really noticed the breadth of his shoulders, the narrow taper of his waist, the way his jaw had squared out beneath the jut of his cheekbones and the dimples which showed either side of his full lips when he smiled. He smiled often, and I began to long and live for those smiles dripped in sin. Even at fourteen, he looked like a wanton. By eighteen, thoroughly debauched and long schooled in the art of seduction, the illusion was complete.
Not that we were eighteen anymore, but even ten years on Liam still looked like a man in his prime. It simply wasn’t fair. I’d morphed from the chubby kid into a skinny twink, from one cliché to another. These days I couldn’t seem to put on weight if I tried, and God knows I’d tried. At fourteen I hit a growth spurt which rearranged my body from round to tall, and while I wouldn’t complain about that, I wished I had some muscle, some small hint of definition. Naked, I feared I still looked like an adolescent, all ribs and bony points. The kind of men who found me attractive were usually older, seedier and, dare I say, predatory in their attentions. They made my skin crawl—would have done, even were I not hopelessly in love with my best friend.
In my defence, he leads me on. And yes I know I get a say in the matter and I know I can always say no but, well, who could possibly say no to him? Certainly not me.
We’d always been close, even as kids. Not only in the sense that we lived in one another’s pockets, but we were affectionate; ‘touchy-feely’, as my dad put it, with increasing concern in his voice. Changing for PE or at the swimming pool I was always conscious of my body, but never before Liam. Maybe that was odd, when most people are on edge around someone they’re attracted to, but Liam has such an easy, open nature. He never shied away from me, never expressed disgust or revulsion when I unveiled first my flab and then my scrawny frame. I was, I guess, a nonentity to him; my body simply didn’t matter because it was hardly like he’d be interested in me, was it?
So when he made that first move, back when we were fifteen or so, it shocked me to my very core.
He knew I was gay already—I’d made a tearful confession some six months previous, and he hadn’t seemed surprised. Indeed, it was he who ended up surprising me, admitting he was bisexual himself.
“What?” I’d started out of his arms, tears shocked into submission.
Liam shrugged, ran a hand up through the back of his medium-brown hair then carefully rearranged the artfully-mussed strands. “I’m bisexual,” he said, like he couldn’t understand why I thought it a big deal.
“You’re attracted to men?” I heard the scornful edge twisting my tone, but I couldn’t help myself. I mean, nobody’s bisexual, right? Not really. For a horrible moment, I thought he was making it up just to make me feel better.
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Like who?” I demanded, seeking proof.
His pouty lips pursed in a wicked bow. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
It was such a desperate bluff I didn’t even bother calling it. A wild and unauthorised hope sinking in my breast, I turned away, trying to find it in my heart to be grateful he’d been supportive enough to make up a story so I didn’t feel like I was the only one.
“I thought you’d be happy,” Liam protested, a hand on my arm halting my movement. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages—”
“Whatever.” I shook him off and spat the word at him, a wounded animal lashing out. For the briefest of moments, I’d allowed myself to hope…
“Toby? I, I thought you’d understand—”