“I’ve never seen you like you were tonight.”
“I won us a game, cap.”
He waits. He’s good at waiting. Benson can sit inside a silence longer than anyone I’ve ever met, and most of the people who’ve tried to wait him out have lost.
I don’t fill it.
“Is it your mom?”
I look at him. “No.”
“Your brothers?”
“No.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “The league?”
“No.”
A pause. Long enough that I know what’s coming. I don’t think I’m ready for it. It’s not something I want to talk about. But Icouldn’t have been any more obvious than calling a May Day the other week and then dipping out on the party last weekend. Now the game tonight. My head’s been a fucking wreck all week.
He finally looks at me because he knows. We never talk about our feelings, so I can tell he’s treading lightly. He breathes, and then he lays it out for me, “Is it because of the girl?”
I look at the carpet and don’t answer. I was so fucking fast to say no earlier, and now he asks this, and I have nothing to say.
“Do you guys have history?” he asks.
I think about lying.
I’ve lied about this since the sixth fucking grade. To my mother. To my brother. To every guy in every locker room who’s ever asked me why I don’t take a girl home from a party. I’ve lied because saying the truth out loud would have made it a thing I had to carry in two places — in my chest and in the room — and I’ve only ever had room for it in one.
But this is Benson. This man’s my best friend. I bet I’ll be his best man at his wedding with Lucy. I know he’s deep in shit with that girl. Melly Sorcha was a name that has never come up between us, but I have mentioned in passing that there was a girl from high school, and he never pressed for more information. Because when you say something like that, it implies it stays in the past. It’s fuckinghigh school.
I decide not to lie because keeping it in all these years have done me nothing good.
I nod.
Once.
Eyes on the carpet because I can’t face him. Internally, I’m filled with shame, and it’s eating away.
“When?” he asks.
I hesitate for a second. “I’ve known her since sixth grade, and we went to high school together.”
His brows fly up. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
He takes a moment to think and says, “You don’t hook up with girls, man. In two years, I’ve never seen you take a girl home. From a party. From the bar. Anywhere.” His face pulls into a small, dry smile. “Stanley had money on you being gay.”
I look up at him. “Get the fuck out of here, Reeve.”
He’s grinning now. “Twenty bucks.”
I laugh. Once. Through my nose.
“Fuck, dude. You might be a bigger romantic than I thought.”
