Chapter 1

1: The Lead Singer

“Mom? Dad? I’m gay.”

My reflection looked terrified. Why did my forehead have to be so shiny?

I could do this. Totally. Yep. I’ve got this.

I took a step toward the door and blanched.

I couldn’t do this! No way. I’ve got nothing

“Babe, we’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon!”

My defenses immediately went up. I toldhim I didn’t like being called babe. Well, okay. I’d told him, like, three times in the two years we’ve been together. I wasn’t known for telling him exactly how I felt.

“I’m almost ready, Hec.”

I stared at my reflection for a minute longer. My eyes were defiant, knowing I was ready to come out. It was my heart, not knowing if it could take the rejection, that kept stopping me.

I sighed, rubbing my face. I’d been trying to come out to them every day for the last three years. And every day, something stopped me: the memory of my father shouting in disgust at the two men kissing on TV.

What if he thought the same when looking at me?

I put my favorite onyx studs into my ears, shut off the bathroom light and walked back into the living room. Hector was sitting on the living room chair, typing on his phone.

“I’m ready, Hec.”

Hector looked up and gave me a dazzling grin. Then he stood and gave me a quick kiss. “You look good, Junior.”

I shook my head. Everybody called me Junior. I’d gotten used to it, but never really liked it. Technically, I was William Nicholas Martens Jr. And my dad goes by Bill, so I never understood why they couldn’t have called me Will or Nick or something.

Junior followed me everywhere. I was Junior in high school and at every job, because my dad was a real estate agent, and everyone knew him.

I grabbed my jacket off the back of the sofa and we made our way out the door. I got in the passenger seat, still feeling a little huffy. He calls me babeand Junior, he never lets me drive, and he’s always trying to push me to be somewhere. Granted, I’m often running late, so he’s just trying to keep me on time. But it’s still getting to me.

“Remember, my parents are paying tonight, so you can order whatever you want.” Hector pulled out of the driveway, wind howling as rain beat the windshield.

“I’m not going to make them spend a ton of money on me. And I still think we should leave the tip.” I opened my passenger visor mirror to check my hair. It was just the right amount of in my face, but it was going to get messed up in the rain.

I took a comb out of the glove compartment (Hector called it his jockey box, so I made sure to call it a glove compartment) and combed my hair to look more like it did at work.

“We can offer, sure, but they’re going to say no.” His parents had been very generous since we started dating, especially considering I was in a band. Well, probably becauseI was in a band.

We’d formed Taking Back Nick in high school as kind of a joke, really. Originally, it was for a talent show where we performed this ridiculous song about how everybody called me Junior. But we won first place, and decided to keep on playing together to see what happened.

I sang and played the piano. My friend, Levi Skaggs, played lead guitar and did backup vocals. Kennedy played the drums, which matched her noisy personality. And Casey, my childhood friend—and the only one who called me Nick (Nicky when he was drunk)—played the bass.

We’d gotten really popular in the region. We all lived in King, Idaho, and had traveled to Boise, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, and down to Salt Lake several times. Our Facebook page had ten thousand likes, which was pretty big for us. Plus, Kennedy managed our Twitter and Instagram, so we were pretty well covered on all social media.

We performed some covers, but mostly did original material. Casey and I wrote our most popular song, “Sorry,” which was actually all about not being sorry at all.

See, Casey had this whole thing where he says I apologize needlessly. And he might have been right, but it was still weird for me to acknowledge it. Like, I wanted to apologize for apologizing too much. So, I guess he was right.

He said I was too sorry when it came to Hector. Casey said I was always apologizing to him, and he never apologized to me. But it made sense to me to apologize, because we had to keep our relationship secret, since I wasn’t out to my parents. It was an inconvenience, and I didn’t like being the cause of it.