“That’s a problem?”
“Might be. Depends on what you want.”
The question hung in the air between us.
What I wanted was everything: his hands on me, to know what it felt like to be with him, to stop holding back.
But the wanting came tangled with fear.
I’d had hookups before. Discreet encounters with men who needed the same anonymity I did. Functional. Physical. Nothing that required emotional vulnerability or morning-after conversations.
This was different. This was Étienne, who mattered in ways those encounters never had.
What if I wasn’t good at this? What if sex with me wasn’t what he expected or liked? He’d been with women. But I’d be his first man.
The weight of that responsibility felt enormous.
“Hey.” Étienne’s hand found my face, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. “Where’d you go?”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“This. Us.” I made myself meet his eyes. “I want… I want to be with you. Completely. But I’m—” Shit, this was hard to say. “What if I can’t satisfy you? What if you realize you don’t actually like being with a man?”
Understanding flickered across his face. “Marco. I’m not going to suddenly realize I don’t like men. Don’t likeyou. That’s not how this works.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know.” He said it with absolute certainty. “Because it’s not theoretical anymore. It’s you. And I want you so much I can barely think straight. No pun intended.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. “Bad joke.”
“Terrible joke. But true.” He shifted closer. “And as for satisfying me—I have no idea what I’m doing. But we’ll figure it out. Together. No pressure. No expectations. Just us.”
Guilt chose that moment to surge up, familiar and suffocating. My mother’s voice in my head, the priest’s sermons, the teachings I’d absorbed since childhood. This was everything I’d been told to resist.
Being attracted to men was one thing. I’d learned to live with that, to compartmentalize it.
But this—being in a relationship, planning to sleep with him, actively choosing this—felt different. Felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross.
“What?” Étienne asked, reading something in my expression.
“Nothing. Just—” I struggled with how to explain it. “My family. They’re Catholic. I was raised Catholic. And I’ve spent my whole life being told that this—” I gestured between us. “Is wrong. It’s a sin. And I’ve been able to ignore that when it was impersonal. But now…”
“Now it’s personal. Real.”
“Yeah.” My throat tightened. “And part of me keeps hearing my mother’s voice. The priest from our parish. Everyone who told me that being gay meant going to hell. That you could overcome it if you tried hard enough, prayed hard enough, chose to be different.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.” It was the most honest answer I could give. “I don’t want to believe it. But years of conditioning are hard to shake. And being with you—actually being with you—makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong even though it’s the most right thing I’ve ever felt.”
Étienne was quiet for a moment, his hand still resting against my face. “I’m not religious,” he said finally. “So I can’t really speak to the theological part. But I do know that caring about someone, wanting to be with them, choosing them—that can’t be a sin. I won’t believe that.”
“Your father’s homophobic,” I pointed out.
“He is. And I’m terrified of what he’d say if he knew about us. But that doesn’t mean he’s right.” Étienne’s jaw set in that stubborn way I recognized. “My father being a bigot doesn’t change the fact that this—what we have—is good. Is real. Is worth fighting for.”
