‘What am I doing?’ Craig made a long drawn out sigh. This wasn’t right, so much was messed up now, and he wasn’t sure how he could put it right. He wasn’t sure that it was his job to. He wasn’t the one who’d done this, he was happy before, why the hell wasn’t he happy now? What had changed exactly? He was still in school, still had Sarah, was still fulfilling the minimum daily requirements in terms of interest-slash-participation in the Osborne-Dean family. So what had changed in the past 24 hours?

It was the same thing that had him staring at his laptop and thinking about buying a train ticket, go down to London, see Debbie, see Debbie’s fit flatmate, clear his head for a couple of days. No forget that - he had Frankie’s credit card numbers memorized; how about a one way ticket to the States? Only, whenever his train of thought got that far, he would be struck by that massive reminder of what he was running from: JP McQueen.

Now, Craig Dean was nothing less than a modern, 21st century bloke. He had no problem with the whole ‘gay thing.’ In fact - Craig chuckled as a memory resurfaced - he’d pretended to be gay for a while, just to get at Darren. But that wasn’t the same thing at all really, was it?

Being cool with it. Having a couple of gay mates floating around somewhere - people his age who were off at university now. It wasn’t the same as being kissed by a bloke. Having some guy’s tongue in your mouth. No, not just ‘some guy,’ John-Paul, his new best friend.

It was weird thinking back to how he and John-Paul had first met. Dumb school stuff the first day back after failing his A-Levels; all that crap with Sonny Valentine; because it was all just a couple of months ago, when Craig thought about how close they had gotten since then?

Well, he was trying not to think how close they had gotten since then.

Things were going well. His A-levels were back on track, he and Sarah Barnes had been practically joined at the lips the past couple of days, and after their little hombre-to-hombre chat, JP was finally showing a little initiative with Hannah Ashworth. They’d had their night out was planned and right on schedule, he and Sarah - not to mention JP and Hannah, were love’s young dream, or whatever. So why did JP have to go and change things? And why the hell wasn’t Craig so opposed to some of those changes?