“What the hell?”Leander blurted.
Xi covered his crotch with both hands, although that still didn’t hide the obvious bulge in the thin, white material of his underwear.If anything, the fabric highlighted Xi’s impressive endowments.“You have one, too,” he said defensively.“I assume you know how it works.”
“But you’re hard,” Leander said, confused.
“And I assume you knew boners occasionally happen, but again, I might be wrong.Maybe you’re as cold and sexless as people whisper behind your back,” Xi snarled.The words were barbs that sunk deep, and Leander flinched at the vitriol, but he knew Xi was trying to drive him away.He had never been subtle, after all.
Bracing himself for more insults, Leander waded through the water, closing the distance between them until they could have touched if they had both reached for one another.“I am fully aware of what makes a man hard; I just don’t know why you would have that reaction here.”Leander knew what the logical answer was, but it made little sense.
Xi rolled his eyes.“Are we going to have another round of Leander’s self-deprecating insecurity?”His voice was a growl of displeasure, but he was still hard, and Leander struggled to keep his eyes from straying to Xi’s crotch.
“Are you saying you’re attracted to me?”
Xi threw his hands up in the air.“Of course I’m attracted to you.It’s not like I kept it a secret when we were young.”
“It was a secret from me!”
“Fine, then everyone except you knew I liked you, but all you could ever see was Finn.Even when you two agreed to date other people and keep it casual,” Xi’s voice dripped with derision, “you still couldn’t look away from Finn long enough to notice me.Face it, at fourteen, you were obsessed.”
With a snort, Leander forced his gaze back up to Xi’s face.“Clearly, I was because I couldn’t see the betrayal that was coming straight for me.”
For a time, Xi stared at him, and Leander’s discomfort grew like a weed in Leander’s chest.“I feel like we talk in circles.”Xi’s voice was lifeless.
“Surprising, given that I feel like we have just entered completely unfamiliar territory.”
Xi sighed and turned his back.“I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.I can move back to the house in town.Give me a couple of weeks and I can reach my contacts and move on.”
Leander caught Xi by the arm and pulled him around so they were nearly nose to nose, and that meant they were other anatomy to other anatomy, and Leander now regretted his choice.However, he knew how to bluff his way through distressing situations.“Why are you jumping from me being surprised to running away?”
“Because you don’t look pleased at the realization.”
“You idiot.Of course I’m pleased!Who wouldn’t be pleased that someone liked them?”
“Lusted after.Right now, whether I like you is questionable.”Xi’s voice was desert-dry.
Leander ignored him.“You’re as stupidly hot as you are stupid, so of course I’m pleased.But you can’t rearrange my entire worldview and all my memories of our childhood and expect me to just..I don’t know...deal with it.I don’t deal with change well!”
They stared at each other, two idiots standing in a river with mud in their hair and a lifetime of fucking idiocy between them.
Xi spoke softly, “You have a shitty way of showing that you’re pleased.”
Leander made a production out of looking down where Xi had softened considerably.“You’re not looking so pleased yourself.But are you serious?Men can get erections without wanting to have sex.”He was terrified, and he couldn’t quite say why.
Xi snorted, and the sound turned into strangled laughter.“You’re an idiot.When we were kids, you were the one that always held us together as one strange dysfunctional little family.”
“I most certainly was not.Finn was the social one who always charmed people and brought them into our little circle.”
“His charm was superficial.He smiled at everyone; there was nothing important behind the kind words he said and didn’t mean.But you were the obsessed one who held onto the rest of us, even when life had hurt us too much for us to hold onto each other.You made our family work.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”Leander had always felt like a side character in Finn’s story, and that feeling had grown worse with each decision Finn made.He’d gotten Tecca pregnant, and Leander shrank.She’d lost the baby, and he shrank more.Finn stayed with her night after night, and he felt like there was nothing of him left at all.Of course, by then, the police had taken Xi, and Petel had disappeared.Ireen had started doing drugs, and Karn was so busy studying that he didn’t have time for anyone.
“Your memory is a faulty thing,” Xi said.“Finn charmed everyone.But you held on to someone, when you took them into your family, you made us believe you would never let us go.”
“Our therapist at our group home would’ve called that unhealthy attachment,” Leander said, struggling to turn the tone of the conversation using humor.
“Probably,” Xi agreed, “but for a bunch of orphans who were used to having no one, it felt good.”
Leander ran his fingers through his hair, not sure where to take this conversation.No matter what Xi said, Leander wasn’t good with people.Maybe his obsessive tendencies had made some misfit orphans cling to each other more tightly, but that wasn’t the same as being equipped for an adult conversation of this nature.
