Gemini - 5. Honesty and Secrecy

Jacob's POV

“C’mon, J, tell me already, what is it you’re doing this afternoon that you cannot tell me about?”

My God, Ethan had been bugging me about this all day. He wasn’t this annoying, usually. I decided to just tell him. He knew about Josh anyway.

“Ok, ok,” I said, as we left through the school gates. “I’m meeting Josh.”

“Cool, can I come with you?” He shot back excitedly.

“Uhm, nothing personal, but we kind of want some time for us alone, you know? It’s all pretty weird and we want to figure things out before we do anything else.” I told him.

“Aww, c’mon,” he begged. “Let me come along. Just for a tiny bit and then I’ll leave the two of you alone.”

“Fine, but only for a few minutes,” I agreed, to stop him bugging me.

As soon as I had spoken those words, Ethan was all smiles and happy. “Ok, that’s fine,” he said.

We walked to the park as fast as we could. After my last period, my math teacher had wanted to talk to me about my latest disaster of a math test, hence I was already late.

When I got to the clearing, Josh was already waiting for me. He had brought sandwiches, like last time, and some soda. It’s funny how the two of us even had the same taste in food.

“Hey J,” he greeted me with a grin and we made the half-hug again. Then he looked over to Ethan. I had expected him to be annoyed that Ethan was here, but he just shyly smiled at him and greeted him with a ‘hey’.

Ethan was a bit more enthusiastic. “Hey Josh, nice to see you again!” he exclaimed happily. “I won’t be here for too long, don’t worry, I just wanted to come along and say hi.”

“It’s not a problem,” Josh replied, never stopping to smile.

We bullshitted for a while about school and told Josh a bit more about how Ethan and I became friends. Ethan had a lot of fun observing the two of us and commented every time we did something exactly like the other did.

After a while he started staring at us with a stupid grin across his face.

“What?” I asked him.

“It’s nothing,” he said defensively.

“You are like a girl sometimes,” I complained playfully. “If they say, it’s nothing then it’s always something. Tell us already.”

He laughed. “I was just wondering, with the two of you being so similar, if your dicks were the same.” He grinned. “If one of you is longer than the other, then you know which of you is the alpha male.”

“You are so full of shit.” I told him, shaking my head. “We are not gay or anything like that.” I added, and made disparaging face.

“Whatever,” he replied dismissively.

After that nobody seemed to know how to continue the conversation. We sat for a while in our circle and the situation grew awkward.

“Anyway, I guess I should get going,” Ethan said. “See you later.”

We said our goodbyes and Ethan left.

I grabbed another sandwich and looked at him expectantly. “So, today is your turn to tell me something about you.”

I saw how he wanted to say something, but then he hesitated. He looked at me for a minute, then two, not saying a word. I started to feel angry. Yesterday I had told him everything about my life. I even trusted him about the thing with Sarah, and here he sat and didn’t want to tell me about him.

Before I could comment on that, he started to speak in a soft voice.

“There is something about me that I should tell you first. If we really are twins, then you will find out eventually and I want to be honest with you and not keep secrets from you from the very first day.”

He hesitated again and then continued “If you don’t want anything to do with me after I tell you, I can understand that, but I must ask you to swear that you will never mention it to anyone, no matter what.”

His voice was almost pleading and he looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights.

I tried to remove tension by joking. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” I asked him with a laugh.

He didn’t laugh though. “I’m not kidding, this is really important to me. Please.”

I sighed and then said seriously. “Okay, I promise, no I swear, I will not give your secret away, even if I don’t want anything to do with you once I know it.”

I paused. “Although I can’t think of anything that could cause that,” I reassured him with a smile.

He looked at me a little bit calmer and tried to smile too, even though it kind of failed. It was more a forced smile than a real one.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m, uh, you know… yesterday you asked me, if I had a girlfriend.” he hesitated again.

“So, do you have one?” I tried to make it easier for him.

“Uh… no.” He replied.

“No?” I asked. “That’s it?”

“Well,” he started again. “The thing is… you know…I’m, I’m like…” he trailed off again.

I just looked at him, confused.

“I’m gay” he suddenly blurted out.

“You’re gay?” I asked, looking at him in disbelief.

“Yeah,” he just said, weakly.

I just sat there, trying to process what he had just told me. Gay? He didn’t look gay at all, and how would he know anyway at our age? If he came out, would he go all feminine then? My brothers flashed into my mind. That wouldn’t go down all that well. They weren’t exactly tolerant of that kind of thing. I wasn’t religious or something like that, but still, his being gay really did freak me out for a moment.

I looked over to him. He seemed really scared and like he was bracing himself for me to hit him.

I felt sorry for him. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s just a phase. I can try and hook you up with a girl. Maybe you’re just confused.”

“No,” he said adamantly. “I’ve known it for a long time. How do you know you’re straight? The same way I know I’m gay.”

I looked at him uncomfortably.

He broke our eye contact and looked at the ground. When he started speaking, his voice was low and sad. “That’s not what you expected, right? I’m sorry. I… I guess I just destroyed this whole thing. I…” he sobbed and started to speak faster. “I just can’t help it, you know? I wish I was different. If my father finds out about this, he will beat me to a pulp, kick me out of the house and disown me.”

He was wringing his hands now. “It… It’s not like I want to be gay. If I had the choice I would be straight, but I just can’t change it. I… I’m sorry… I...” he sobbed again and tried to take a deep breath to calm down, but failed. “I can understand if you want me to go now...” he trailed off.

I looked at him. There he sat, sobbing and heartbroken. I didn’t know how to react. I was still trying to process what his being gay meant. It was unexpected, and weird at first. Then again, I had always believed that it’s not my place to judge other people. Did I want to lose him over this?

There was so much to this twin thing that we had yet to explore. It was something that many people probably dreamed about. Did it really make a difference if he was gay? Suddenly I felt very protective of him. Thinking about it, my reaction had not been nice, and somehow I felt responsible for him feeling the way he did. I scooted over and wanted to put an arm around him, but for some reason I had weird inhibitions and hesitated.

“It’s not contagious, you know,” he sobbed.

I laughed and felt very stupid. I wrapped my arms around him and pressed him against me. “Shhh, it’s alright.” I gently rocked him. “I guess no matter what, we’re still twins.”

It was like there was energy flowing between our bodies. This really was going too fast for me and I didn’t know what to think anymore, but I felt that what I was doing was the right thing.

After he had calmed down we broke our contact, but remained sitting close.

“You know,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone who was gay, besides this one guy at our school.” I hesitated. “My brothers sometimes pick on him, but I have never done that.”

I continued in a soft voice. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really know how to handle this, ok? If I say something stupid or like that, then please tell me and don’t get upset right away. This is kind of weird for me, but I want to try and do my best.”

He smiled at me thankfully. “I can understand that. I really feared that you would push me away and tell people at school or that you would be disgusted with me.”

I fidgeted. “I’m not saying I’m totally comfortable with it, but I guess I’ll have to deal with it. This whole twin thing is as new to me as it is to you, but I don’t want to lose that for something like this, it’s just too important to me.” I paused for a moment before speaking like a sage. “I suppose accepting our differences comes along with embracing our alikeness, we can’t have only one part of it.” I did mean that and tried to put as much seriousness into my voice as possible.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Don’t worry. I’ll try not to rub it in your face, also, I doubt I will find anyone any time soon. It’s not as easy for me as it is for you, you know?”

I smiled at him. “I guess I can see that,” I agreed.

He grinned at me. “And don’t worry, we don’t need to compare our dicks, like Ethan suggested.”

I laughed at that. “You are just afraid yours will be smaller,” I said jokingly.

He looked at me, shocked that I would be so comfortable with joking about this topic so soon, but I guess sometimes joking about something is just my way of easing a situation.

Then his shocked look slowly turned into a grin. “Haha, you wish.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and we had to laugh. After we calmed down, both of us were in thoughts.

I broke the silence first. “So, do you have a crush then?”

He blushed furiously and stammered. “Uhm… Uh… maybe?”

“It’s not me, is it?” I asked, shocked.

“Duuude that would be like masturbation,” he drawled.

We cracked up at that. For a minute I wanted to pry to find out who it was, but I decided that he had endured enough today and instead I grinned at him and changed the topic. “So, wanna tell me about your life?

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said and smiled, thankful that I didn’t try to find out who he was crushing on.

♊

Josh's POV

I told him about my childhood, how shy I was and what living with my parents and Philip was like. I described the move to Albany and how Parker had been on my case for the entire school year. When I told him about my parents’ religious beliefs and jobs, he gave me a compassionate look.

I didn’t like looking weak or getting any compassion. I usually tried to pretend that my life was ok and things didn’t bother me, but his knowing about how things really were seemed ok to me, even good in a way. Since I had told him about my being gay, and he had accepted it, I felt completely at ease with him.

I talked about all the vacations I went on, and the money my parents had. I also explained that it might sound cool, but that it wasn’t what I needed to be happy. I think he understood that. I even told him about how I had noticed that I was gay when puberty hit, and the urge to hide it from others.

He said he felt that he really understood me and being gay better now and that he tried to imagine what it would have been like for him. “It must be tough with your parents. I don’t know how I would deal with it. I guess, I can only partly understand it, but it sounds like it’s pretty difficult.”

He paused and stared off in the distance. “It really makes me think about how my friends would react if I were gay and would come out,” he wondered loudly.

“I guess you would know who your real friends were, then.’ I replied, sounding like a sage.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he replied, thoughtfully.

I went on talking about how much I swam and what my other interests were. When I told him about me being a straight-A student, he laughed and said: “Well, then you can take my history and math tests now.”

I looked at him seriously and said: “You have to cut your hair and all, but I will totally do that for you.”

He stared back at me. “This is crazy,” he said excitedly. “Just imagine, if we play it right, you can get my marks up and if your parents annoy you too much, I can hang out at your place for a day or two. You can be me and I can be you, for a while.”

“Wow,” I said, just as excited. “I mean, it would require a lot of preparation and we have a lot of details to think about but it sounds pretty cool.”

“There is one problem though,” I said, worried. “When you go to my school, you have to deal with Parker, and I really don’t want anything to happen to you.”

He grinned at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with him.”

I wasn’t very convinced but let it go, too excited with the idea to fight about it. “Alright, what do we need?”

“Well, we need to go into detail about how we act towards certain persons and know all the things that we did together with them, so we don’t slip up,” he started.

“That should be mostly work on my my part, there are not many people in my life you need to know about.” I joked,

“Bad luck for you.” He grinned at me. “But Ethan and Sarah can help you. We also need to make sure we look exactly the same.”

“We almost do,” I said. “You only need to cut your hair an inch or two so it looks like mine and then we have to do something about our clothes.”

He looked at me worriedly. “Your clothes look pretty expensive.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured him. “We’ll just trade. If you mess them up, it doesn’t matter. I have too many anyway.”

He smiled, relieved. “Cool, looks like we will keep us being twins a secret for a little longer. I mean, as long as nobody knows about us, it will be much easier to pretend that you are me and I am you.”

We schemed for a bit longer, excited to be able to swap identities with each other, and then went to a hairdresser to get Jacob a hair cut. When we were done, Jacob’s hair looked exactly like mine. If we were to wear the same clothes, probably not even Sarah or Ethan would be able to tell us apart.

At that point, we decided to head back home early to think everything through and make notes on the things the other had to know about our lives. We planned to meet early the next morning to exchange all the information we needed. It would be a lot of work. I almost felt like I was preparing for a major exam.