She pries them gently away. “To hell with your father or anyone else who can’t accept you for the amazing man you are.”
I huff. “If only it were that easy.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that it gets easier to not give a damn as you get older. But I don’t recommend waiting too long, because I am also here to tell you that holding back who you are and not allowing yourself the freedom and comfort of living and loving the way you were meant to, will only lead to regrets down the road.”
Her pale grey eyes are intense, the meaning behind her words clear in their intentions.
Ms. Delia has regrets and has held onto something painful. If I’m reading the heartbreak behind her eyes correctly, it’s because she held back an integral part of herself.
I know your truth, Becky.
“Can I tell you about this guy I met?”
Life is strange. Or rather, it’s different.
There’s been a significant shift in, well, everything. I’ve noticed that I am both more at ease and on edge than usual. Bouncing between settled and anxious like there’s no state of being between the two extremes.
My classes are the same, as are the regular interactions with my father. The closer we get to a wrestling event, the more I get the pleasure of hearing from him. He calls often and asks if I’ve been working on my form and endurance, or he wants to break down defense techniques because he feels my hand-fighting and shot defense still need work. This, of course, is on top of the regular inquiries about my schedule, because he doesn’t think I’m disciplined enough. He wants detailed breakdowns of how I’ve been spending my days, and how I’m staying on top of my diet and conditioning program, whether I’m doing my lifts on schedule, if I’m getting enough reps in, and how my classes are going. In case I need more reminders that anything less than perfection isn’t good enough, and that a 3.85 grade point average means there’s “room for improvement.”
What’s changed, I think, is me. Since my visit with Ms. Delia, I’ve felt less reactive to my father’s overbearing nature. Maybe I needed the reminder that he isn’t perfect, and that his standards are near impossible. Whether or not that’s by design, I don’t know, it’s too much to consider.
The energy between Brody and me has also shifted. There’s less animosity during practice and when we run into each other on campus. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, but there’s no outright fighting. Morning lift has become almost companionable. This morning we found ourselves side-by-side on the treadmills for some light cardio and didn’t try to compete with each other. Brody even passed me one of his earbuds to share his music with me. It was … Well, it was weird. But not unwelcome.
And that might have something to do with my visit with Ms. Delia too. Because for the first time in my life, I said the words I’ve never said out loud before, not even to myself. Not because I didn’t know, but because I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Evenwhen discussing the details of my toxic relationship with sex and self-acceptance with Caty, I never actually came out and saidI’m gay.
Part of me hoped that if I didn’t acknowledge it, it would go away. Before meeting Caty, I thought that maybe if I dated enough women, tried acting the way I wassupposedto, or did everything I could toprovemy straightness, that I could discipline it out of me, but I hated everything. Meeting Caty was perfect because I didn’t have to pretend with her. She recognized me from the start as someone who shared something in common with her—the necessity to put on a show for their parents.
It was at a mixer during our freshman year. I’d gone to the poorly disguised meat market with the intention of finding a girl my father would approve of who wouldn’t require me to actuallydoanything. Someone with low expectations of the kind of attention they’d receive from me. On the outside, Caty seemed sweet and innocent, she had a kind ofsaving myself for marriagevibe I thought I might be able to work with. Until she opened her mouth. And her eyes, because she kept staring longingly at the tables that were reserved for the campus Pride Alliance, where a gorgeous girl with golden skin and blue hair was chatting with a tall, willowy black man wearing shimmery eye shadow. I asked if she knew the blue-haired girl, and Caty had sighed and muttered, “I wish,” before she could stop herself. When she narrowed her eyes at me and said, “You didn’t hear that,” I mimed zipping my lips.
Later that night, Caty informed me that she's a raging lesbian, but her parents had threatened to cut her off if she didn't prove to them that she's agood girlwhich meant straight-A's, a degree from a prestigious university that her mother is on the board of directors for, and being on the arm of a dashing young man froma good family—rich, conservative, and powerful—whether that was what she wanted or not. She was playing along so she could get a good degree, make her own fortune, then someday publicly donate every cent of their blood money to the most offensive queer charities she could find. Her words.
I think I started planning our lavender marriage on the spot.
Without realizing it, my relationship with Caty gave me the space I needed to stop pretending and pushing myself to change. And it was Caty’s ‘try it, you might like it’ mentality that led me down my first dark hallway to let a man put his mouth on me for the first time.
It was Brody, of course, who gave me the opportunity to try so much more. So, so much more.
But the acceptance of the only person who’s ever loved me is what gave me the confidence to admit to her, and myself, that this is part of who I am.
So maybe that’s why I’ve so easily fallen into an unspoken routine with Brody. Where a look is shared between us, and we both show up at our spot on the stairwell without ever making the plan to meet. Or randomly following each other into empty rooms around campus. There’s less fight there, but I’m not sure how to feel about that. He gives me what I need by telling me what to do, and taking control of not only his pleasure, but mine too. He used to make me orgasm as a point, as if to prove to me that he saw through my lies and denial.
Now that I’m not denying it, it’s not much of a game anymore. And that alone is freaking me out. It’s making me antsy in a way that only seems to be soothed by spendingmoretime in his presence. Which, of course, fucks with my head even more.
So I decide to do what any mature adult would do in a situation like this.
I make a plan to fuck with his head as much as he’s fucking with mine.
CHAPTER 20
BRODY
I don’t know which one of us made the first move. It could have been him. It might have been me.
Or maybe it was both of us. Maybe the second our eyes locked across the dining hall, he felt the same hot, electric jolt ignite him into movement that I did. A flash of something primal and desperate that let him know I was going to bend him over and own him in front of everyone if we didn’t get to somewhere private as soon as possible.
All I know is I’m on my knees, face buried in his ass, sucking and tonguing his hole like I might extract the last drop of lifesaving ambrosia. I’ve got a proprietary grip on his thighs, pulling him back against me while my mouth makes him squirm and push back on my face.
We’re in a stupid position, in the middle of the stairwell where he tripped and I caught his hips to tear off his pants and underwear. His boxer briefs are torn and hanging off his ankle, pants strewn haphazardly on the stairs somewhere behind us. Beck has one hand gripping the handrail, the other braced against a stair, one knee pushed up higher than the other, body bent forward in a way that makes every moan, gasp,and whimper echo off the concrete. My knees feel like they’re bleeding from when I fell onto them so heavily when I tackled him. But the way he’s falling apart, breaths heavy, and raspy voice breaking as he tries to keep his sounds inside him, is so needy and wrecked that I don’t give a single thought to the likelihood of us getting caught. All I care about is making him say my name and marking my territory however I can.
