A/N: As a disclaimer, I have watched S3; however, I had this whole story written before the season came out. I don't have it in me to make the major changes I'd need to make to get this to line up with season 3, so this will not be entirely canon. Some of it fits, but there will be a fair amount of things I talk about that don't fit into the season 3 narrative and vice versa.

~ Chapter 2: Just a Little ~

I don't remember when people stopped calling Lucy my girlfriend. At what age are you in that sweet spot where you're too old for a fake girlfriend and too young for a real one?

I have no idea, but it was the best time of my life. There was no pressure. All the weirdness of figuring out the rules with Jeremiah and the different rules with Lucy went away. We got to just exist as the three of us. It didn't last very long, but it was nice. I was in fifth grade when most of my classmates started having their first kisses. I felt so behind because I was older than all of them, and it hadn't happened for me yet.

I wanted it to happen. Not because I wanted to kiss a girl but because I wanted to be able to tell people I'd kissed a girl. I wanted to understand the hype, and I wanted to want all the things my classmates wanted.

It finally happened for me at a school dance at the end of fifth grade. It was country-themed, and we'd been learning square dancing for weeks in gym class. I was dancing with this girl who doesn't live in Atlanta anymore. I say dancing loosely. I had my hands on her shoulders and we stood a full arm's length apart as we swayed back and forth. She was a sixth grader, a grade older than me, but she was actually younger by a little over a month.

I liked her. Not in a romantic way, but it was fun to dance with her. She could make me laugh and I figured my first kiss being with her made sense.

To this day, I don't remember exactly how it happened. I think my mind blocked it out or something because I remember so much of what we talked about before the kiss, but I have no idea how we went from talking to kissing. Maybe she just went for it and there was never anything to block out. Who knows? I just remember that, for a split second, our lips touched.

And. I. Felt. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now, it's important for you to know that I felt something with every girl I slept with or dated. It wasn't the right something, but it was something. That day at that dance, I might as well have pressed my lips to a teddy bear. I honestly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Of course, when I was asked about it, I would lie and say that all the planets aligned (that was actually word-for-word what I said), but the truth never left me. I knew that I hadn't felt anything to the point that I almost wondered whether it had happened.

It did happen. I knew it happened because we'd been seen by one of the chaperones, and my parents got a phone call about it and everything. Seriously, we were considered "deviants". My parents gave me this whole lecture about how I was too young to be kissing girls and how I acted in public reflected back on all of us. I figured that was why I didn't feel anything; I just wasn't old enough to feel anything. Maybe all of my classmates were in the same boat but didn't want to admit how weird it was either.

The funny thing is, and I say funny as sarcastically as possible, it immediately built up a reputation for me. Ella had told a bunch of her friends that we'd shared a magical first kiss. I don't think she really felt that way; I think she just felt like that was the right thing to say. I have trouble believing it could have been so bad for me and so good for her, but all the guys in my grade assumed that I'd kissed a lot of girls and just hadn't told them about it. I don't know. I really don't, but I kind of welcomed the security that came with that rumor. It was like I didn't have to pretend to be like everyone around me because they were pretending for me.

It gave me time and the opportunity to figure out why that kiss had been so weird. In truth, I think that I just genuinely wasn't even the slightest bit attracted to her because when I had my second kiss with Jessica at Kyle's Fourth of July pool party, it wasn't like kissing a teddy bear. It still wasn't a great kiss, but I thought that was partially because Jessica had braces and I could feel the indent of the wire through her lips. We kissed behind the shed in Kyle Porter's backyard.

I know it seems like I'm about to start talking about my ex-girlfriends, but I'm not. No, this part of my story is substantially more life-changing. Something really important happened at Kyle's Fourth of July party. Way more important than kissing Jessica. It's where I had my first drink.

Kyle had stolen one of his dad's beers from his fridge, and he took four of us with him to try it out. I remember taking a sip from the can, and I nearly spit it out. The only thing that stopped me was knowing that no one else had spit it out, and I wasn't going to be the first. I thought it was poison. It was the worst thing I'd ever put in my mouth, and I didn't understand why anyone would ever drink it.

Or maybe I did understand because when the can was offered to me again, I took another small sip. It was just as bad the second and third and fourth time. Then it got easier.

I didn't drink that much. Maybe ten sips or so. There were five of us, and we had just the one can between all of us, so it couldn't have been much. I had just enough that I felt okay about my night. Not great; I wouldn't experience that rush for another month, but it felt great to be included. I can speculate about when it started to make sense to me that I was gay, but I am absolutely confident that that was the night my drinking problem started. It wasn't because I drank so much that I could escape my world for a few hours but because that was the night I decided that if I needed to drink to fit in and feel normal, then I wanted to drink. More than that, I learned that drinking made them like me. We all stood around laughing about our stolen beer, and it felt so good to be part of that.

You see, Victor, it mattered to me. It mattered more than anything that people liked me, so I jumped on that bandwagon so quickly. It wasn't really peer pressure. I never gave them the chance to pressure me; the moment it was offered to me, I took it.

That night, as we watched the fireworks, I felt like I'd made all the right decisions because there they were. My people.

That party was a stolen beer. Kyle's back-to-school party in the middle of August was a stolen handle of vodka. It was somehow worse than the beer – we didn't know you were supposed to mix it with something, so we took tiny sips and tried not to gag. It only took a handful of sips before I felt it. That glorious buzz. It was disorienting and made me dizzy at first. Then, I started to ride it.

It felt great. I didn't drink enough to black out, though that would be coming quicker than you'd think. I remember everything about that night. I think most kids remember the first time they get drunk, don't you? You remember whether you got sick, the things you did, some of the conversations you had. Everything kind of feels different when you're drunk like the world is a little brighter, a little funnier, and a little more confusing. I remember Kyle's dad coming outside to check on us. We thought he knew what we were doing, so we all scattered.

I ran in a zig zag because, for whatever reason, I thought that would help me get away from Kyle's dad. Jeremiah grabbed my hand as we ran, and we ended up behind the same shed that I'd kissed Jessica behind a month earlier. We were laughing and trying to catch our breath. It was one of those moments where time seemed to move slower as we caught our breath and realized that we were standing really, really close to one another. He turned to me to say something, but all I could think about was how cute he was. I'd never noticed before; why hadn't I noticed?

I hadn't noticed because I'd been told my whole life that I was supposed to be with a girl. Lucy was supposed to be my girlfriend. Two boys didn't work like that. The vodka stripped it all away until it was just Jeremiah and me. Just like when we were little.

To this day, I think he started it but if you ask him, he'll tell you that it was all me (once he gets over the shock that someone knows, that is; I never told anyone about Jeremiah). He'll say that he didn't want to do it, but I know the truth. I doubted it for a long time; thought that maybe I did make him do something he didn't want to do. The truth is so much messier than that. I don't know if Jeremiah is gay or straight or somewhere in between or if he was just curious. I just know that we kissed behind that shed for longer than we would have if he didn't want to do it, and we kissed more than once because we kissed for like half a second and pulled back for a second. I remember how big his eyes looked as we stared at each other. I didn't have long to take it in before we were at it again. I felt something. I felt the something I thought I would feel with Ella or Jessica. It felt so right.

It was nothing like kissing you, Victor, but then again, nothing really compares to that. At the time, it created my standard for what it meant to kiss someone.

Jeremiah and I stopped being friends that night. When we broke the kiss, for a second, I swear he looked as happy as I felt. Then he looked horrified. He told me, "this never happened" before he ran off. Jeremiah had his first girlfriend before the school year started. He chose her over everything and left me and Lucy behind. That was the start of me keeping secrets from Lucy too. I didn't know if she'd believe me if I told her about Jeremiah, and I didn't want to take that chance. I think I also didn't want to admit that it happened, if I'm being honest. Once it was clear that Jeremiah did not want to do it again, I thought the best thing would be to pretend it never happened.

When I started the sixth grade, it was just me and Lucy. I'd lost Jeremiah and that felt terrible. I kept thinking about the last time that I didn't feel terrible. When we were taking sips of vodka around a bonfire in Kyle's backyard. I thought about it so much, I actually convinced myself that that's what I felt when I kissed Jeremiah. I didn't feel anything that I wouldn't have felt with a girl. Surely, it was the vodka.

I knew it wasn't actually the vodka, but I think I needed to believe I had a chance of being normal.

Labor Day weekend, my mom and dad had to go to some work event for my dad's company. They left me home by myself for a couple of hours. When that happened, I snuck down to our basement to the cabinet my parents kept their liquor in. It technically had a lock on it, but they wouldn't start to use it until the summer before I started high school.

When I opened the door, it was like Disney Land, Victor. There was so much stuff in there. I had no idea where to start. I ended up picking a random bottle and running back to my room. I hid it under my pillow for a few minutes as if my parents would sense that I was up to no good and come home to catch me in the act. I knew they would think what I was doing was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I also knew that I needed to feel better. I needed to stop missing Jeremiah. I wanted to feel the way I felt at that party; I needed to.

When they didn't come home, I started drinking. I looked at the bottle for a long time as if it was going to tell me what I was supposed to do. It was tequila, and my first sip burnt the whole way down.

It took me a month and a half to work my way through that bottle. At first, just a handful of sips was enough to take the edge off. Eventually, it took more than that. Then, it took even more. By the time I finished sixth grade, it took a lot.

Through trial and error, I figured out how much I needed to drink to fill the emptiness, or to escape the feelings I had for Jeremiah and if I was particularly struggling, how much I needed to drink to black out and forget my life for a few hours. The first time it happened was terrifying; I woke up and had no memory of what I'd done the night before, but I kind of fell in love with that feeling; with knowing that for a few hours I could leave behind my shitty life. That's when alcohol became my second love, and I knew how each type affected me.

I knew tequila made me really emotional. When I drank tequila, I missed Jeremiah more than I usually did; I told Lucy that she was my best friend in the whole world more often; I cried an embarrassing amount during really long showers. The thing about tequila though is that it's a really happy drunk followed by a really sad return to reality. Genuinely, getting drunk on tequila is… was the best. At least, that's what I thought. I felt like the sad parts were worth it because at least I could feel my own version of happy, and I didn't know how to feel happy without it.

I knew bourbon made me angry. It made me feel abandoned by Jeremiah and furious at my parents and angry at myself. When I drank bourbon, I'd scream into my pillow and throw things. It helped a lot. Bourbon didn't leave me as hungover as some of the other stuff I drank, and it felt like I got a lot out when I drank it. I always woke up feeling the right kind of empty.

I knew wine made me feel classy and like a comedian. It was easier to laugh after wine, easier to crack jokes myself, and it's true that wine makes you sleepy. Technically they say all alcohol does, but wine is the sleepiest. My deepest sleep always came after some wine. It was the only time I felt like my brain stayed off. It was a tradeoff though because wine hangovers were the absolute worst. You'd think it would be tequila, but it's not. At least, it wasn't for me. It's wine. I always woke up with this disoriented dizziness that made it difficult to figure out which way was up. I'd take the tequila headaches over that any day.

Beer calmed me down. I felt more grounded and in tune with the world. Things that usually seemed like a big deal stopped feeling like a big deal. The problem with beer was that I felt like I couldn't get as drunk off of it. It was like I felt full before I reached the level of drunk I could with everything else. My parents also weren't big beer drinkers, so I didn't have much access to it. They only ever had it if they were hosting something for work or if my aunts or uncles were coming over.

Whisky made me cocky. I felt like I was on top of the world, and it was the only time I truly liked myself. The parts of my life that sucked ceased to exist when I drank whiskey. I could believe that I wasn't a terrible person and could embrace the good parts of me without acknowledging the rest. It was like I could breathe and like I took up the right amount of space in my skin. The problem was, after that high came the lowest of lows. When my drunk wore off, I hated myself. Like, really hated myself. Sometimes, I thought it was going to burst out of me.

Rum made me flirty and bold. Almost every kiss I had that year, and I had a fair amount, happened when I was drinking rum. I discovered mixed drinks while drinking rum. I could make a mean rum and coke. It was after a rum and coke that I made out with a girl for the first time. There was something different about making out with a girl. You just feel more no matter how little attraction you feel toward someone.

That's when it all started. Once I started drinking, I didn't stop… I couldn't. I drank pretty much every day until my accident, and my world revolved around what I could drink and when I'd be able to drink again. I don't remember not knowing that it was waiting for me. The only time I didn't drink was if I was sleeping over at someone's house. I knew that my classmates weren't drinking as much as I was, but I figured it was just a little every day. As long as it was just a little, it was fine. Saying that out loud sometimes makes me want to crawl out of my skin because my standard for "just a little" always changed so that however much I drank fell in that category.

I turned thirteen that year, so, this all started when I was twelve. Do you know how embarrassing that is? To know that I became an alcoholic when I was twelve? You told me I should be able to tell you anything, but I couldn't even admit that to myself. I hate thinking about it. No one knows that that's when it started. Not my parents, not Derek, not Lucy, not the therapists my parents made me see after my accident, not even Hank. You are the first person I've been able to admit this too. Maybe tied for first because this is the first time I've admitted it to myself too.

They don't know that that's when I started chasing the feelings I had for Jeremiah, and I was convinced that the more I drank, the closer I would get to feeling that again.

I never drank before or during school. I could choose to not drink, and it was always disappointing, but it wasn't impossible, so I didn't have a problem. The thing is, being able to put off drinking isn't the same as being able to stop, and I didn't know that. I didn't realize I was setting myself up for the day when I wouldn't even be able to put it off or that the decisions I was making would one day make it feel impossible to stay away from the stuff.

Even if I didn't think it was a problem, I knew other people wouldn't see it that way. I could see that they'd started noticing that I drank way more than them at parties, so I started taking precautions. I would drink before I hung out with someone and bring a bottle that I could pretend was just coke or something so they wouldn't realize how much I was drinking. I knew myself better than they did, after all. I thought I'd know if it was a problem. Surely, it would start to get in the way of my life, and it wasn't. I had it totally under control.

Everything depended on it staying a secret. Just like when I was a little kid. If I wanted people to like me and I wanted to make my parents proud, I needed to be someone else. Drinking made me someone else. It made me a more tolerable Benji, but people couldn't know that that's why I was better.

I knew I also needed to hide how much I'd liked kissing Jeremiah, and how much I wanted to kiss him again. I pretended that I didn't know for sure even though I did. It hadn't taken me long to realize that I got butterflies around guys, and I was so much more comfortable around girls simply because I didn't feel tongue-tied or excited about what I could do with them. I felt like I had to pretend because none of my classmates seemed to have that problem. I thought it was a problem, Victor. No one was talking about what it was like to be gay. No one ever said, "hey, it's cool if you're into guys". The assumption was that I was straight, and I desperately wanted them to be right. You know what that's like.

I became very good at hiding. I hid behind the girls I kissed and dated. Though, I think we need to stop saying that sixth-graders date because all I did was sit on someone's couch and hang out with their friends. Sometimes, we awkwardly held hands and exchanged short kisses. It was the closest we got to dating. I don't think I really dated anyone until Derek. Maybe not even then. You are the most real relationship I ever had.

Don't worry. It's not Derek's part of the story yet. No, Derek wouldn't come into play until high school when he would shatter the perfect world I'd created for myself.

For now, buckle up because I'm just getting started.