“Little did I know that sex was just sex to him. A release, and a perfectly acceptable and safe one, doing it with other guys. No strings and all that. No surprise babies. And because he was an even bigger idiot than he was asshole, he believed there was no risk of STIs because he full-on for real thought you could only get them from women.”
“I’m sorry? He what? Wasn’t he in university?”
“Outdoor Rec.” Evan shook his head. “Dumb as a post. To him, relationship was something completely different and separate from sex.”
“Like having sex with guys was okay but…”
“Dating a guy was the worst. Less than a month after I introduced you, he came to me with a ton of photos and video ofme getting fucked by all kinds of guys. I had no idea he’d done that. He threatened to show it all to you if I didn’t dump you.”
“Jesus fuck! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t matter. I pointed out how very illegal it was to even have that on his phone. Because none of us ever knew he’d recorded it, he’d essentially sexually assaulted all of us. Funny how it all magically went away in a hurry when I pointed out one of the men he’d recorded was a cop.” He shrugged. “Not that I told him that right away. Not before I’d copied it all while he was in the shower then sent it to said cop, and to my brother’s lawyer, because I’m not as stupid as he is. I’ve been assured it’s all on record in case any of it ever turns up anywhere.”
He violently crossed out Kevin’s name. “Him I definitely kicked out for being a shit friend and generally crap human being.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Getting him out of my life to make room for you was no sacrifice.”
As he was straightening up again, Alan let himself in.
“Come sit,” Evan invited, indicating the bed on my other side. “We were talking about our relationship history.”
“Oh dear.”
“Perry has a list of things he thinks I gave up to be with him. I was just explaining how it actually is.” He quickly caught Alan up on the first two points before moving on to the diminishing of his sex life.
“I won’t lie and say I didn’t love all that sex. But it would be disingenuous of me to not point out that ninety-nine per cent of it was hollow, physical nothingness. Also, risky for obvious reasons. Also, having less sex that’s a million times better didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice from my point of view, so.” He crossed sex off my list.
“Lost friends.” He put the pen to his lips as if in deep thought. “Let’s see. I lost touch with the guys who, as it turned out, onlywanted me around for the convenience of my hot, tight hole.” Hard dark line through that point. “Not much of a loss.”
Alan leaned past me to grip Evan’s face. “No more of that,” he said sternly.
“No,” Evan agreed.
“Will you tell me about it?”
“So no one can try and broadside you with it or use it against us, yes. But not because any of it matters to me anymore.”
Alan nodded. “Good.” He waved at the paper and sat back. “Continue.”
“Started curling.” He panned to look at me. “How would you even think this a sacrifice? I love curling, I just didn’t know that until I met you. Added bonus, I have new friends who actually like me. We’re in that quality over quantity territory again.” Instead of crossing curling off the list, he drew a heart around it, along with a bunch of smaller hearts with initials inside each. R, S, D, M, M, C, and a bigger one with Alan’s full name.
“Robbie, Shaw, Michael, Mikko, Carol. Who’s the D for?”
“Darby, obviously. You don’t even know how often he texts me about Shaw. Those two.” He shook his head. “Anyway, what’s next?”
“School,” I said. “I promised you?—”
“You have no idea how close I was to flunking out anyway,” he said softly. “I hated it. I was doing it so Jacob could get on with his life but I loathed every second of it and if I hadn’t quit when I did, I would have wasted so much money so I could feel like absolute shit for failing.”
That list item got almost as dark a line as Kevin had. “That wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a save.”
He turned so he was facing me. “And that’s the end of the list. You see all these things as sacrifices. I see them as improvements. My life got better when I met you. I made smarter choices. I tried harder to be kinder to myself. It isn’t thatyou made me a better person, but you did give me all the reasons to make myself a better person.”
“That’s… Really nice of you to say.”
“It’s true.”
“I owe you so much.”
He shook his head. “You don’t, but if you won’t believe me, then what you can do is focus on the dream. We win the Trials. We go to Milano Cortina. We bring back gold.”
