With my arms out to each of my sides I balance along the side of the railroad track. It was a dangerous game Liam and I were playing, goofing around on a train track, but what did it matter, we both had crappy lives so should something happen to us it’s not like we had anything to lose.

The two of us met on the first day of our freshman year of high school. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. Him in his red collard polo shirt that his current foster parents had made him wear and his long shaggy blonde hair brushed back neatly. Looking back I have no idea how I didn’t laugh at him for his seemingly put together nerd look, but at the time I was desperate for a friend, even if it had to be the short nerd who sat in front of me.

If only I knew that short nerd, who was actually not a nerd at all, would become my best friend. If only I knew that I would fall in love with my, seemingly straight, best friend.

And so as we play on train tracks I take the moment to admire him and his still shaggy blonde hair, his pale blue eyes, his taller frame, his ripped jeans that pair perfectly with the red flannel draped over his grey tee shirt, and his goofy grin that hasn’t changed since high school.

“You like what you see lover boy,” he muses, noticing how entranced I was by him.

“Yes, actually I do,” I reply returning his grin as I look back in front of me thinking of what we could be if I only had the guts to say something.

Indeed, I did.