“I’m sure that has nothing at all to do with being stuck with me, without any other options,” I said. I sat up. I was going to get out of bed and do something with my time. This conversation was leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
“It’s not,” Aiden said. His voice sounded plaintive. “I actually thought you seemed cool when we met out there, too.”
“Cool?” I repeated. I looked over my shoulder and raised my eyebrows at him. “We exchanged pretty much one word.”
“Okay,” Aiden said. He looked down, muttering. “Cute.”
“What?”
“I thought you were cute.”
I blinked.
“Cute?”
The tips of Aiden’s ears were going red. Now, that was something I hadn’t seen before.
“Yeah,” he said. He shrugged and then met my eyes openly. “I thought you were cute.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and tilted my head. “You know, for a straight guy, you say an awful lot of suspect things.”
“Yeah, about that,” Aiden said, scratching his chin. “I’m beginning to think I might not actually be straight.”
“I asked you that first time,” I said, furrowing my brow at him. “You said you weren’t gay.”
“I’m not that, either,” Aiden said. He made a kind of helpless shrugging gesture. “I don’t know. I’m figuring it out myself. I think about hot guys as much as the next man, but I never realized I would actually enjoy gay sex so much.”
I tilted my head at him even further. “How much do you think the average man thinks about hot guys?”
“Uh…” Aiden shrugged again. “Like, I’m not blind. I can see when guys are hot.”
“And you’ve watched gay porn,” I said, remembering that little snippet from before.
“Yeah, sure,” Aiden said. “It’s fine. It’s people fucking. What’s not to like? Doesn’t everyone enjoy that from time to time?”
“Nope,” I said. “A lot of guys wouldn’t be caught dead watching gay porn.”
“Yeah, but that’s, like…” Aiden made a vague gesture. “Internalized homophobia.”
I chuckled. “Good psych assessment, but I don’t think that’s all it is. Aiden, I actually don’t think completely straight men would normally find other guys hot.”
“Really?”
“Maybe a guy crush on someone who they really, really want to be. Like when people idolize that movie star, Ridley Angus, for all his muscles,” I said. “Not like really, seriously thinking someone is hot in a sexual way. Not guys on the street.”
“Huh.” Aiden considered that for a moment. “So, what? Am I bisexual?”
“Maybe,” I nodded. “Or pansexual, maybe. I don’t know. It’s kind of up to you to figure that out.”
“Pansexual?” Aiden repeated.
“Attracted to anyone regardless of their sexuality, gender, or identity,” I clarified.
“Oh.” Aiden brightened a little. “I like the sound of that one.”
“You don’t have to make a choice right now,” I told him. “You should try living with it a little, see how it feels.” Despite my own words of caution, I started to feel warmth in my chest at the thought of it. If Aiden was actually pan, then it meant he wasn’t completely off-limits to me once we left here. It meant that there was a possibility that something more could come of this.
And, my sinking heart reminded me, if he still rejected me – it meant I couldn’t blame it on his sexuality. It would be all because I wasn’t good enough for him, pure and simple.
