Ian tilts his head, running his tongue along his teeth. “Yeah, I’m doing that to give you privacy, not because I’m uncomfortable.”
What?“Why? This isyourhouse.”
“I know, but you still need alone time. Besides, don’t you need space for, like, dude needs?”
“Dude needs?”
He hesitates but regains his confident expression almost immediately. “Yeah, like, jerking off and hooking up.”
I choke on my sip of beer and sputter into my almost-empty glass. “Sorry, what?”
Ian doesn’t seem to register my confusion. “I mean this in the least homo way possible, but someone who looks the way you do has gotta be balls-deep in…options.”
My body is frozen, except for my blindsided, blinking eyes.
Does heseriouslythink I’d hook up with someone in his living room?Is that something other guys would do? Is he confused that I'm not doing that?
“I don’t hook up,” I clarify. “And I’m not gonna disrespect your space by jerking off in your house,” I say, lying through my teeth and purging the quick flashback to yesterday afternoon's shower out of my mind. Sure, I might have been a little weirded out about taking care of myself when I first moved in here, but he’s gone a lot. Besides, I have “dude needs,” as Ian calls them, and I’m a lot less weird about those now. At least when I manage to keep thoughts of him separate, not like what happened in my sleep this morning.
He sucks in a tight breath, bringing my attention back to him. “Okay, man, I never thought I’d say this, but you’re a dude. You have my full permission to jerk off and bring someone home while you’re living here. Like, discreetly and whatever.” He lets out a weak chuckle. “Jesus, why’d you think I’d have a problem with that?”
“I thought that’d be impolite.” I take a swig from my water bottle, hoping the switch away from alcohol brings my brain back to earth. I might be buzzed, but I could stop and change the subject if I wanted to.
Then again, I'm supposed to open up like I said I would. I just never imagined it’d be aboutthis.
“Stop me if I say too much, but my parents believed in some messed up things. It was almost like they had their own brand ofreligion, and even their church didn't go as far.” The alcohol’s helping me loosen up, that’s for sure. “But hey, they started reading some extreme stuff online about living purely and saving your kids, and then there was no stopping them. ”
Ian's lips are pressed together, his expression unplaceable and his eyes soft. Even with my limited experience, I can tell there's an absence of judgment in his gaze, a lack of the kind of pity I'm trying to avoid.
There's nothing but sympathy. Care, the kind I've never seen before, deep in the warm hazel.
That's all I need to keep talking. Or rambling. “It was as if I wasn’t allowed to feel good, like positivity was a temptation I had to fight.” I grab the beer from the coffee table and take a sip, before remembering that it’s Ian’s, but he simply shrugs and gestures for me to keep it. “Like, it was mostly my mom who went all gung-ho with the weird stuff. My dad didn’t seem to be as extreme.”
He sucks in a hiss through his gritted teeth. “But he still went along with it, right?”
“He did.” I pause, debating whether to allow childhood memories to enter my consciousness, or to shut them out like usual.
I let them in.
“Still, he tried to get me out of the house and stuff, even when my mom took me out of school to ‘preserve’ me after they committed the unforgivable sin of having sex ed classes,” I continue. “My dad was the one who convinced my mom to let me go to community college in the first place, saying it’d help me provide for a future wife and whatnot. He didn’t say anything about what my mom did, but at least he was nicer to me, and the only fun I ever had was going hunting with him once in a while.”
“Theonlyfun you had?”
“I mean, my parents encouraged me to work out, probably because it’s a ‘guy’ thing or whatever, and I’d sometimes go shooting with my dad. But everything else I could have liked wasdemonized. Books, TV, games, imagining shit in my head that let me escape for a second, and yeah, sex too.Thatwas a huge no-no.”
“Yet somehow, you came to be,” he mutters. “I wonder how that happened.”
I scoff, a smile somehow finding its way onto my face. “Tell me about it. There were always exceptions for them and never for me, hence my hang-ups about everything to do with sex.”
“Jesus, that fucking sucks. So you just didn’t? At all? Even with yourself?”
“Nah, I'm an outlaw,” I joke, letting out a breathy chuckle. “Not that it was easy, or pleasant, but I kept my, uh, solo activities under wraps. My mom would have flipped if she knew, and I didn’t dare try to find anyone else. Not like I had options in that tiny town.”
Ian’s face is scrunched into a concerned frown, his eyebrows raised at their inner corners. I expect him to say something, but he shakes his head instead, staying silent.
Not that I necessarilywanthim to keep this topic active—he’s gotta be at least a bit uncomfortable with talking about sex.
Pressing his hands together, Ian sighs. “Look, I’m just gonna say it out loud: your parents are pretty messed up for that. I’m glad you got out.”
