I Always Thought I Was Straight Until I Moved In With My Best Friend. Now Our Landlord Is Kicking Us Out And I Have To Decide. Should I Tell Him How I Feel Before We Lose Everything?

Fear and Interruptions

The not knowing is worse than any answer he could give me. He finally speaks, but his voice sounds different, careful.

He says, “Maybe it’s better he didn’t say it. That he doesn’t want to make things weird between us.”

The words hit me harder than I expected. I can hear something underneath what he’s saying. Fear. Real fear in his voice that makes my chest hurt in a way I’ve never felt before.

He’s scared of losing me. Scared of changing what we have. And I get it, because I’m terrified too. But hearing that fear makes me realize we’re already past the point of going back to how things were.

The weirdness is already here. We’re living in it right now, sitting on the floor surrounded by Christmas decorations and pretending we can ignore the tension that’s been building for months. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep pretending.

I put down the ornament I’m holding. It makes a small sound against the hardwood floor. I turn to face him fully and wait until he looks at me. When his eyes finally meet mine, I tell him he could never make things weird. That he’s my best friend and he can tell me anything.

I mean every word. Whatever he needs to say, I can handle it. Even if it’s not what I want to hear. Even if it makes everything more complicated. I just need to know.

He stares at me for a long moment with this look on his face that I can’t figure out. It’s not quite relief and not quite worry. Something in between. Something that makes my heart beat faster because I think maybe he feels the same way I do. Maybe all this tension hasn’t just been in my head.

He opens his mouth and I hold my breath. This is it. He’s going to tell me whatever he almost said last night. But then his phone starts ringing from across the room where he left it on the couch. We both look at it.

The Cycle Continues

The screen lights up with his mom’s name. He closes his eyes and lets out this frustrated laugh that sounds more like a groan. I laugh too, but it comes out forced and hollow. The moment breaks apart like glass.

He gets up to answer the phone, and I hear him talking to his mom about Christmas dinner plans. What time we should come over. What she’s making. Whether we need to bring anything.

Normal conversation about normal things while I sit on the floor and try to calm my racing heart. When he comes back, he sits down, but the energy has shifted. The moment is gone. We go back to untangling lights and hanging ornaments. We don’t talk about it again that night.

I lie in bed staring at my ceiling again. The clock on my nightstand says 2:00 in the morning. Then 3:00. Then 4:00. I can’t stop thinking about how we keep getting so close to having this conversation and then something interrupts.

His mom calling. Work stuff. Other people showing up. It’s like the universe is actively working against us. But I know that’s not really true. The universe isn’t doing anything. We’re just scared. Both of us too scared to actually say what we need to say.

Christmas is in less than two weeks. Eleven days exactly. I don’t know how much longer I can handle this. The tension is becoming unbearable. Every time he looks at me, I wonder if this is the moment.

Every time we’re alone together, I think maybe now. But nothing happens. We just keep dancing around it. I need to figure out how to actually tell him. Not just plan to tell him or almost tell him. Actually do it.

The Gym and the Walk

The next morning, I drag myself out of bed after maybe two hours of sleep. I make coffee and sit at the kitchen table. He comes out of his room a few minutes later, already dressed for the day. He pours himself coffee and sits across from me.

I look up and catch him staring. Just looking right at me with this expression I can’t read. When I ask what he’s thinking about, he shakes his head fast, says nothing important. But his ears are bright red.

I know that tell. He always gets red ears when he’s lying or embarrassed. I want to push, but I don’t. We drink our coffee in silence. The tension sits between us like a third person at the table.

Later that day, he asks if I want to go to the gym. We haven’t worked out together in weeks. We’ve both been too busy with work, and honestly, I’ve been avoiding it. But I can’t avoid him forever. We live together, so I say yes.

We drive to the gym and change in the locker room and head to the weight section. Working out next to him feels completely different now. I keep getting distracted watching the way he moves. The way his shirt pulls across his shoulders when he does pull-ups.

The way he wipes sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt. I’ve seen him work out hundreds of times before. It never felt like this. I have to force myself to focus on my own sets to stop staring.

I’m pretty sure he notices because he keeps glancing at me with this look on his face, half amused and half something else. Our mutual friend from the gym walks over while we’re resting between sets. He asks if we’re still living together.

Tension in Public

When we both say yes, he laughs and makes some joke about us being an old married couple. My face goes hot. My roommate handles it like he always does. Makes a joke back, laughs it off, smooth and easy.

But when he reaches for his water bottle, I see his hand shaking just slightly. Enough that I notice. Enough that I know he’s not as calm as he’s pretending to be. Our friend keeps talking about something else, but I’m not really listening anymore.

I’m watching my roommate’s hand shake as he drinks his water. Watching him try to act normal when clearly neither of us feels normal right now. After the gym, we grab coffee at the place down the street. We order our usual drinks and find a table in the corner.

We sit down, and he takes a breath like he’s about to say something important. Then he actually does. He brings up last night. Says he really does need to tell me something. That it’s important.

My heart starts pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I tell him I need to tell him something too. The words just come out. We both laugh, but it sounds nervous and shaky. Neither of us seems to know how to actually start this conversation.

The coffee shop is crowded. People talking loud at other tables. Music playing overhead. It feels too public. Too exposed. He must be thinking the same thing because he suggests we go for a walk instead. We leave our coffee cups on the table half full and head outside.

The Park Interruption

We end up at this park near our apartment. Just a small neighborhood park with a path that loops around. We start walking slow. Neither of us talking, just walking side by side trying to figure out who should go first. The silence feels different from it did before.

Not uncomfortable exactly, more like we’re both building up courage. The path curves through some trees and comes out near a pond. We keep walking. Our hands swing close enough that they almost touch. Almost, but not quite.

I think about reaching for his hand. About just grabbing it and seeing what happens. But I can’t make myself do it. So we just keep walking, waiting for one of us to be brave enough to finally say something real.

I open my mouth to say something real, something honest about how I’ve been feeling. But before any words come out, this woman with a golden retriever stops right in front of us on the path. She’s looking at my hair with this big smile on her face and asking if I’m in a band.

I can feel all the courage I’d been building up start to slip away. My roommate steps back a little to give us space, and I watch him pull out his phone. The woman keeps talking about how her son plays guitar and has long hair too. She asks what kind of music I play.

I tell her I don’t actually play in a band, just listen to a lot of metal. She laughs and says I look like I should be on stage. The whole conversation probably only lasts three or four minutes, but it feels like forever. When she finally walks away with her dog, I turn back to my roommate.

A Missed Opportunity

He’s still looking at his phone. The moment is completely gone. We start walking again, but neither of us says anything. I can’t figure out how to get back to where we were before the interruption. We loop around the pond one more time and end up near a bench.

He sits down first, and I sit next to him. Close, but not touching. He puts his phone in his pocket and turns to look at me with this really serious expression. My stomach does that flip thing again.

He takes a breath and says he needs to ask me something. I nod because I don’t trust my voice right now. He asks if I’ve noticed things feeling different between us lately. The way he asks makes it sound like he already knows the answer but needs to hear me say it.

I tell him yes. That things have felt different for a while now. I watch his whole face change. Relief washes over him so fast it’s almost funny. He lets out this breath like he’d been holding it for days.

Then he asks what I think that means. I realize he’s trying to figure out if I feel the same way he does. If this tension between us is mutual or if it’s all in his head. Before I can answer, my phone starts ringing.

I pull it out and see it’s my boss. I almost don’t answer, but then I remember I’ve been waiting for feedback on this project all week. I apologize and take the call. It’s a work emergency. An actual one, not something I can deal with later.

My boss needs me to fix something that broke in production, and it can’t wait. I stand up and start walking back toward the parking lot. My roommate follows without saying anything.