“Is it about that night?” he prodded when I didn't answer quick enough. I nodded, sucking my bottom lip between my teeth. The bubblegum lip gloss had long since worn off. I jumped when I felt Ryan's hand on top of mine. “I'm the one who should be apologizing to you. I was heartless and a bit cruel that morning.”
“Because you were surprised,” I offered. “Most guys would be when they go to bed drunk and wake up with someone's hand on their cock. Part of me knew you weren’t all there when I walked in and saw you jerking off, but then you looked right at me, and I let myself believe you wanted me with you. I know that what I did was wrong. I took advantage of you and you have every right to hate me.”
“Oh, Tanner,” he sighed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I could never hate you. Was it fucked up? Yes, but you were young, I was drunk, and that’s a recipe for bad decisions.”
“But you should,” I insisted, a bit too loudly. “You didn't ask for it. You didn't tell me you wanted to be with me. Do you know what that means?”
Ryan let out a low growl. Then he spoke, his voice deep and gravelly. “Don't you even say it, Tanner. I hate that you would've thought that for even a second.”
“But it's the truth,” I argued. Why and how was he letting me off the hook this easily? If the roles were reversed and anyone had climbed into my bed while I was sleeping, Deegan and Ryan would have castrated them. But all of a sudden, because it was the pathetic, lovestruck younger brother, it was okay? Fuck that. “If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't have touched you.”
“Is that because you think it was a mistake or because you didn't enjoy it?” He shifted in his seat and I didn’t miss the way he quickly adjusted himself. He was turned on talking about this?
I had to have slipped and hit my head, and I was now in some alternate reality. This couldn’t be real life.
My mouth fell open and I gaped at him. He leaned forward, pressing my mouth closed with one finger. I shivered when the back of his finger ghosted across my jaw. “Tell me, Tanner. If not for the way things happened, would you have regrets?”
I nearly blurted out that I would regret that night as long as I lived but I couldn't. Not with the anxious, sad, pleading eyes blinking slowly across the table. If he’d invited me into his bed with more than an unfocused, drunken look, I could have died a happy man. He was the first person I ever fell in love with, even though he’d never even kissed me.
“I'm going to let you in on a little secret,” Ryan said as he swirled his spoon around in his coffee mug. He didn't look up as he spoke the words that shattered everything I thought I knew about my life up until this point. “When I woke up and you were next to me, the first thing I felt was happy. It felt like I had to still be dreaming because there was no way that you were actually in the bed next to me. I hated that the night before was hazy because I wasn’t sure what was real and what I’d imagined while trying to get off so I could go to sleep. But then I panicked. We were in your parents’ basement and you were still a kid—”
“I was seventeen,” I corrected him. “That's hardly a kid. And it was less than a month before my eighteenth birthday.”
“It doesn't change the fact that you weren't an adult,” he insisted. “I wanted to flip you over and bury myself inside of you, but all I could imagine was the look of horror on your brother's face if he walked out and caught us. To this day, I’ve never even told him I’m gay.”
“Because of me?” I rolled my eyes and wished I could slide under the table to get away after making such a stupid comment. I knew better than to think one sloppy, middle of the night blow job could make a guy gay.
“No, sweetheart. As pretty as you are, even you couldn't have made me gay if I was straight.” He took a sip of his coffee. The spoon clattered against the edge of the mug when he set it down. “I don't even know why I've kept it a secret this long. I'm not in the closet back east, but whenever I come home, I neatly pack that part of myself in a box and put it on a shelf high in the closet. And it's not even like there's any reason for it other than not wanting to answer questions about why I waited so long to come out. It’s easier to pretend to be the guy everybody here thinks they know.”
“Why did you wait?” What I really wanted to ask was why I couldn’t have been special enough for him to tell. Even if he didn’t say anything to Deegan, he knew I was gay. He could have told me. I would have understood, and he wouldn’t have had to feel so alone.
Now it was Ryan's turn to blush. He kept his chin tucked against his chest as he glanced up at me through his lashes. “Well, thatisbecause of you.”
“How in the hell is this my fault?” I’d definitely fallen and hit my head. He wasn’t making any sense now.
“You were always so open and honest about who you were. I envied that about you,” he admitted. “It wasn't long after you came out that I understood why I didn't react the same way the rest of the guys did when a pretty girl gave them attention. You were the person who made me feel those butterflies in my stomach. I had to be careful whenever you were home so you wouldn't see how hard I got whenever you walked into the room.”
My head spun and it was hard to breathe. Ryan Schmidt was sitting across the table from me, telling me that I was the person who made him realize that he was gay.
“The problem was you were still a kid.”
“I was seventeen,” I repeated, a bit more curtly this time. But I was starting to understand that, from his perspective, my age was a problem to be avoided at all costs.
“Wrong. You were only fifteen the first time I noticed you, and I was nineteen,” he corrected me. My mouth fell open and I blinked a few times as I processed what he’d just said. “That was before you started exploring your style and sneaking Haley’s makeup when you thought no one was home. You were wearing an oversized red t-shirt and jeans, but I couldn’t stop looking at your ass every time you bent down to get something out of the fridge. Do you understand what a mind fuck that is? I could've fucking gone to jail if I’d given in to all the things I wanted to do to you.”
We were so engrossed in our conversation, neither of us noticed when the waitress appeared with our lunch. She let out a squeak of surprise. Ryan buried his face in his hands, muttering under his breath about how I was trouble.
“Sorry about that,” I apologized to the shocked waitress. “I promise, there's nothing hinky going on here. We’re old friends, catching up after not seeing one another for a long time. We’re actually on our way to my brother’s wedding. He thought it would be a good idea to get married up in the mountains, so now we have to drive all day to get there, and I don’t have a car, so Ryan offered to drive me.”
I didn’t stop rambling until Ryan squeezed my hand. When I looked at him, he winked, and I pursed my lips. He narrowed his eyes and his nostrils flared as he sucked in a sharp breath. That should not have made my dick hard, but he was my Ryan, and simply being close to him and knowing I hadn’t destroyed everything turned me on.
“No need to apologize to me, sugar,” she reassured me. “You wouldn't believe some of the things I hear around here.”
She gave me a wink before quickly leaving us alone.
“So where do we go from here?” I asked in between bites of the chicken club sandwich Ryan ordered for me. It wasn't something I would've ordered on my own, but it was damn tasty.
“I'm not sure there's anywhere to go,” he responded sadly. “I'm only in town until the first, and then I'm headed back east.”
