Soon, I hung in his room with him while he did his makeup, listening to Rihanna, talking about guys. Pretending not to care, I glanced over, and mumbled something like, “he looks hot.” While watching TV together on a break from school, he casually showed me a picture of a guy he’d hooked up with. As two people uncomfortable with each other are prone to do, we didn’t address anything outright. In a sense, we were getting to know each other for the first time. Before the conversation with my mom, I had already started to find the courage to talk to Hayden about being queer.
