Kieran & Drew Read Online Free Page B

pretty hard to misunderstand what that meant. But he reasoned that he couldn’t be the only person with those initials, surely? But then why would Kieran shove the paper in his mouth ?
    It’d been easy to see the clear-cut humiliation on the poor guy’s face. Kieran had a hard enough time as it was, without drawing attention to himself like he had today. Though he’d never thought of the super-quiet guy he sat next to in art class as a weirdo like others seemed to, he had to acknowledge that Kieran was most definitely marching to a beat all of his own.
Thing was, he kind of liked that.
    Yeah, sometimes he dressed a little… differently. And yes, Drew never saw Kieran hanging out with anyone else or even talking to anyone else, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t an okay guy. In fact, Drew sort of admired someone who was brave enough to break away from the herd. He thought about Jefferson, and how he put up with the guy’s attitude and bullshit for the sake of keeping the peace. If he were braver, like Kieran, then maybe he too would have told Adam to go fuck himself a long time ago.
    The idea of approaching Kieran now was an uncomfortable one. He couldn’t do it without acknowledging what he’d seen in that notebook. But the idea of leaving him to stew and fret over the next time they bumped into each other seemed worse, somehow. He had to at least let him know it was okay. If the initials hadn’t been his? Well then the decent thing seemed to be to tell him to pay no mind to what anyone else said or thought, and that he was okay in Drew’s books. And if they had been his initials….
    That required some thinking. It was a subject that he’d as yet been unable to acknowledge to himself. How did he feel about the prospect of another guy maybe being into him? He thought about it and had to admit, it was a little… stirring. Not exciting in a looking-forward-toyour-birthday kind of way. Exciting in an… off-balance, nervous kind of way.
    All of his friends had had girlfriends; they’d had that exhilarated feeling of doing something sexual and new for the first time. His few (very few) fumbles with the opposite sex so far had been nothing but stressful and obligatory. So far, he’d felt nothing but resigned and almost cheated out of something he bet his friends didn’t think twice about. The idea of there being someone else like him in school? It was nerve-wracking but kind of cool.
    Kieran himself? He’d never given it thought. He never had a reason to. Put a gun to his head and… yeah, he’d have to admit the guy was kind of cute. Not hot as in porno-guy hot, but cute in a preppy and offbeat-with-big-blue-eyes kind of way. He felt himself grow warm; he’d never actually allowed himself to think that way… in a gay way.
    He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, though. For all he knew, he could be making shit up out of wishful thinking. But at the very least, he felt he should go check if Kieran was okay and all. A few more minutes and the bell would ring for school to let out. He discreetly pulled his cell out of his pocket and texted Matt that he’d be fifteen minutes late meeting him at the front gate.
    He had a feeling he knew exactly where Kieran would be. Last year Drew and some other guys had been screwing around with a football outside the art department and the predictable happened: they broke a window, and as a result, he received detention by Mr. Trinder.
    T
HISwas quite possibly the shittiest day of Kieran’s life. He was used to feeling awkward and uncomfortable around other students, but today had to be one of the most embarrassing days on record so far for him. He couldn’t decide what was worse; that he had shoved that piece of paper in his mouth, looking like a freak in front of everyone, or that Drew had seen what was doodled on the paper.
    He was almost relieved when Mr. Trinder told him what his detention would be. Clearing out the art supply storage room for the next few