“Don’t you have to get ready for class?”I ask, purposefully not answering the question.Because the actual answer is, “Getting up so I can freak out in private.And maybe take a cold shower.”
“I need at least another fifteen minutes in bed before getting up.”He stretches his arm out and smiles.“Cuddle for a bit longer?”
I should say no.Every self-preserving part of my brain is telling me to say no.But what must be the masochistic part of my brain apparently controls my ability to nod, because that’s what I find myself doing.
It’s pathetic.I’m pathetic.And yet, as his arms wrap around me and his fingers find their way into my hair, I can’t find it in me to care.
Chapter 6
Parker
Song: Kiss the Boy by Keiynan Lonsdale
Youshouldbringyourboyfriend.
My classmate Maggie’s words keep playing over and over again in my head like a broken record.
Of course, the moment I think of the phrase “broken record,” another voice also pops into my head complaining that it makes no sense because an actual broken record wouldn’t skip and repeat like the idiom implies; it wouldn’t play at all.Reid’s voice, from one of his more recent mini-rants that had launched into a longer rant about how most common phrases people say don’t make “any damn sense linguistically.”
Reid, as in the “boyfriend” that Maggie told me to invite to drinks on Saturday to celebrate her birthday.
Boyfriend.
Obviously, I corrected her, saying that not only is Reid just my friend, but I’m straight.She simply apologized for the assumption, even if she didn’t look all that convinced, and told me to still bring Reid anyway because she wants to meet the roommate I’m always talking about.But as I tap my SmarTrip card to exit the metro, smiling at the memory of what I’d say probably ranks in my Top 5 Reid Info Dumps, I wonder if maybe Maggie wasn’t that off base in her assumption.
I do talk about Reid a lot.I find myself thinking about him almost constantly, and when I do, more often than not, I end up smiling to myself.I want to spend all of my time with him, even if all we’re doing is sitting on opposite ends of the couch, not speaking, while I work on homework and he reads a historical fiction novel.
Then there’s last night.When we “accidentally” slept together—except it wasn’t an accident.
He’d fallen asleep on my shoulder not long after he’d started holding my hand.I should have woken him up; it was only 8 p.m., far earlier than either of our usual bedtimes, and we hadn’t even eaten dinner.Ireallyshould have woken him up, especially knowing he hadn’t done his nightly routine, and missing any of his routines always makes him anxious.But he looked so peaceful, the way his lashes brushed his cheeks and the soft smile that played at his lips as he nuzzled into my shoulder in his sleep.He was beautiful, honestly, which was not a word I’d ever thought about a man.I didn’t want to wake him and ruin the relief he’d found after the day he’d had.So I stayed, and eventually fell asleep too.
And this morning, I woke up hard.It’s not unusual for me to wake up with at least a semi, and it’s not the first time I’ve woken up hard while spooning someone.But every time that’s ever happened, it’s been with a girl, and as easy as it would be to tell myself that my body was confused and assumed for a moment that Reid was a girl, I know that’s a lie.I knew it was Reid.I woke up and immediately knew where I was and who I was with.I remember how happy I was to be waking up in Reid’s bed with him in my arms.When I felt him stirring, my instinct had been to pull him closer, not push him away.
Of course, I immediately pushed that specific part of the morning out of my mind once I stepped on campus.But now… Now I can’t stop myself from recalling the way his ass brushed against my half-hard cock or the way he trembled when I tucked my face into the back of his neck.Suddenly my skin feels too hot, even though it’s barely above freezing out and the wind is aggressive in my face.My heart is beating faster, and I can’t quite catch a full breath.
I can’t tell if I’m having some sort of anxiety episode or if I’m just turned on.
Fuck, maybe Maggie really was onto something.
I told her I’m straight, but would a straight guy get hot and bothered at the memory of spooning their male roommate?Would a straight guy even spoon his male roommate to begin with?Would he like it as much as I like it—crave the physical contact as much as I crave it?And I do crave it.Some days, it’s all I can think about until I get home, and when I finally feel Reid’s arms wrap around me, I can feel something in me settling.
Oh God, do I have feelings for Reid?Am I gay?No, I’ve been attracted to girls before.So bisexual, maybe?Unless I only thought I was attracted to women and have secretly been gay this whole time.
Our apartment comes into view, and I speed-walk the rest of the block to let myself into the building.I need to get inside.I cannot have a full-blown sexuality crisis in the middle of the street.I fumble with my keys, unlock the outer security door, and scramble up the two flights of stairs to our third-floor apartment.Thankfully, the apartment is empty since Reid is still at work.So I shed my bag, keys, coat, and shoes, carefully putting them in their proper place.I scoop my bag back up and head straight to my room, shutting the door behind me.Then, I do the only thing I can think to do right now: research.
I pore over every interaction I’ve ever had with male friends in the past, trying to figure out if these feelings are new or something that has always been here.I take “Am I gay?”quizzes and read articles about queer identities and Reddit posts about how to tell if you have feelings for your roommate.I probably have thirty tabs open, and I only get more confused with every tab I open.But I keep going because I can’t stop.I read article after article, each one saying basically the same thing, but hoping that maybe there might be one sentence that brings everything into clarity for me.
Then I hear a jingle of keys and I realize hours have gone by because now Reid is home.
Fuck.
My door is closed, and Reid would never enter my room without knocking first, so it’s not like he would see my screen.But I slam the lid of my laptop closed all the same, and sink back into the chair, closing my eyes as I try to calm my racing heart.After a few rounds of deep breaths—breathing in, holding, and breathing out all by counts of four—I let my eyes flutter back open.The first thing my eyes land on is the sticky note collection on the wall, each with a handwritten phrase on them.It’s something I read about on the OCD subReddit—to handwrite affirmations so there are physical reminders of the truth when the intrusive thoughts start to get too loud.A few are written by other people—one in my sister’s handwriting saying “I love you” she’d left in a book she let me borrow; a “great job” that a professor had stuck on my first major essay last semester; one from Reid, with “you’ve got this” scrawled on it, that he’d stuck to my travel mug on the morning of my first final last month.But most of them are in my handwriting.My eyes flit over all of them because I’m honestly not sure which of them I need at the moment to ease the tightness in my chest.
Then I see it, one I didn’t put here.I can tell because it isn’t lined like the rest of mine, and it’s a little bigger than the rest.It’s pastel, like Reid uses because they aren’t as overstimulating as the neon ones.When I read it, my breath catches.
“I appreciate you.”
I’ve never seen this one before.He must have written this the morning we woke up together.He’d texted me saying the same thing, and I’d said I appreciated having it in writing.The text had been enough, but of course Reid took it a step further.It’s not like he doesn’t know about the sticky notes.But he didn’t say anything.He just snuck it in here among the rest of my little reminders for me to find the next time I needed them.
