As soon as we were done, he sat down next to Justin and the two of them talked while I worked. Shortly before eleven, Dax excused himself as he said he was going to. I took deep breaths as I watched him leave, trying to think about anything other than how he told me he’d be waiting for me. In my house, in my bed. Fuck, we were really going to do this.
“Man, if I didn’t love you so much, I’d be pissed as hell at you,” Justin chided once I pulled myself out of a Dax-induced haze.
“Why’s that?” I asked. It was late enough that I could get away with having a beer, so I pulled one out of the cooler. It wasn’t something I did often, or ever, but sitting on top of the cold chrome across from Justin, it felt like the shattered pieces of my life were coming back together. Dax was right; I could do this.
“Because you’re fucking straight, or at least I thought you were, and you scooped up the first gay guy who’s moved to town in years.” I wanted to feel bad for Justin, but I didn’t. If I had, it meant I might start thinking about how different everything could’ve turned out if he’d met Dax first, and that raised my blood pressure in a way I wouldn’t admit.Mine. The word repeated in my mind and I knew Justin could tell I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of them together. “Do you have any clue how hard it is to be gay around here?”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked. Maybe I’d been fooling myself by thinking everyone in town would be as open and welcoming as my mother had been when I told her.
“Not that way, man,” he corrected my unspoken assumption. “Seriously, for a tiny town we’re pretty liberal. But that doesn’t mean there’s a line of guys waiting to have someone shove their dick up another guy’s ass.”
Luckily, I hadn’t yet gone to take a drink of my beer, otherwise I’d have shot it across the room. And that had me thinking about other things shooting, like my dick erupting into Dax’s hot mouth, or how badly I wanted to repay the favor tonight.
Then, I remembered where we were and looked around, scared that someone had overheard Justin’s lamenting. The few who were left in the bar so late in the night were staring blankly into their drinks, as if they’d somehow find the answer to all of life’s problems somewhere in the melting ice.
“Guess I don’t.” I shrugged, trying to play it cool. Yes, I knew sex would eventually happen, but I hadn’t honestly thought about it that much. Would Dax want to fuck me? Would he want me to do him? I wasn’t as turned off by the former as I thought I’d be. “You’re not really pissed, are you?”
Justin rolled his eyes. “No, you dipshit.” He leaned over and cuffed the back of my head. “I’m happy for you. It’s good to see you smiling again. And, you know, not running the other direction when you see me.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I apologized. Again, not the time or place for this conversation, but it needed to be had and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for it. “It wasn’t right for me to say some of the shit I did to you. You were only trying to help us out. I’d understand if you were still pissed.”
“For being one of the smartest guys in our class, you sure are dense,” Justin bemoaned. “I’m not pissed. Iwashurt, but I get it. You were trying to cut yourself off from everything that was part of your old life. And that included me.”
“Doesn’t make it right,” I pointed out.
“No, but we can’t change what’s done,” he countered. “All we can do is try to get through it. And we will. And then I’ll kick your ass because you didn’t even tell me you liked dudes.”
“I don’t,” I protested. And I didn’t, as a rule. It wasn’t about whether Dax was a guy, it was about the person he was. I wasn’t falling for his dick—it was his heart and mind that I loved the most. Shit, it was definitely too quick to be throwing around words like love, even in my mind.
“Uh, hate to break it to you.” Jason laughed. “Dax is a dude. One hundred percent hot, gay male. That means you’re into dudes.”
“First of all, quit saying dude. It makes you sound like you’re thirteen,” I scolded him. “Second, I’m still not really into guys. Most of them do nothing for me.”
“So it really is a case of him being the special snowflake, huh?” Justin asked.
“Pretty much.” I didn’t bother hiding the goofy smile plastered on my face. Justin was right. If I quit worrying about how much my life was changing, I was happy.
Dax made me want to get out there and do something about the hole that’d become my life. I hadn’t mentioned it to him yet, but he had me thinking about things like going back to school, or even checking the want ads to see if there were jobs I could do. Even though I hadn’t gotten through med school and wasn’t sure it was in the cards for me, that didn’t take away the fact that I had a degree I was doing nothing with. Until Dax, I’d thought my career was all or nothing. But then I saw and heard about how he’d taken a hard look at where he was going and regrouped. I wanted to do that, too.
“All right, I have to get going,” Justin said as he pushed away from the bar. “Let’s not wait another two years to talk again, okay?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” It was surprising how easy it was for Justin to accept my apology and move on as if nothing had happened. “Hey, Mom’s having dinner on Saturday. Do you want to come over? I think she’d like seeing you.”
“I might be able to do that.” It wasn’t the quick acceptance he’d have given me in the past, but it was a start. “Get my new number from your man and call me tomorrow.”
My man. That sounded so strange and so right all at the same time. “Will do. Get home safe.”
“You too.” After he left, I counted the number of people still in the bar and silently cheered when I noticed the four guys in the corner getting up to leave. That meant we were down to two people nursing their drinks, both regulars who sat here until we kicked them out for the night. Rex wouldn’t give a shit about me making last call early, and now that business had died, I didn’t want to sit around milking the clock. I had something worth far more to me than the twenty dollars I’d lose by closing up waiting on me at home. In my bed. Naked.
Hell, yes. “Okay, last call, guys,” I hollered. These two never ordered a drink at last call. They simply tipped back their drinks and pushed them onto the rail when they were done.
“Night, Mikey,” one of them said. Tonight, even being called Mikey by the drunk old man couldn’t get me gritting my teeth.
