Then my brain helpfully queues up Holloway’s boyfriend. George and I screwing the same guy at the same time, looking at each other like there wasn’t an entire other human being between us—like we were the actual thing fucking in that room.
And The Blank Spot Night. Waking up naked in his bed with no memory of how I got there or what we did. I woke up with that faint smell of him on the sheets and a pounding in my head that said I might’ve crossed a line and couldn’t even remember how.
I sit upright so fast my neck twinges.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Being attracted to men is not a theory or an abstract concept. I came back from that trip with more questions than answers, which is probably what happens when you do something you’ve never done before in a context you’ll never be in again. Adrian made it feel easy, which was both a gift and a problem, because easy isn’t the same as figured out. The experience cracked something open, then the week ended and I went home to my regular life. I’ve been standing right at that crack ever since without looking through it.
But ‘cracked open’ isn’t quite right either. It’s more like something that was already there finally had room to move.
There was this guy at the gym I started going to when I just turned eighteen, some regular who spotted me a few times. I remember being aware of him. The way he moved through a set, the line of his back when he racked the weights. I told myself I was studying his form. Competitive instinct, maybe. I never went back to that gym after he stopped showing up and told myself that was a coincidence too.
Azure Tides probably didn’t start anything. It just made it impossible to keep calling things research, or form, or coincidence.
I’ve also always known how to handle shit. See the problem, fix the problem. Crack a joke when things get heavy because humor is control and control is safety.
Right now, I’ve got no control at all, and it’s not just men in general. It’s George. I don’t know when he stopped being just a normal part of my life and started being something I almost violently react to. I’m feeling things I haven’t felt before around my best friend who brings me coffee, fixes my car, makes me laugh, and sometimes turns his attention to me like I’m the only person in the room.
George is on a fucking date and I’m sitting here in my apartment, trying and failing to make sense of what he keeps pulling out of me.
I reach for my phone before I can talk myself out of it. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I need to get a grip again.
Fine. I’m into men. That’s just true now, whatever that means going forward. George doesn’t get dragged into this if it means I don’t get to keep him. I don’t know what I’d do with that.
The app store throws up a dozen options for men looking to meet other men. I download one calledNorth,the logo a simple white compass on a dark blue background. It promises connection and community in clean, reassuring text. The logic makes sense in my scrambled brain.
It opens to a wall of profiles. Shirtless torsos, gym selfies, or carefully angled face shots. The sheer volume of options immediately overwhelms me.
Profiles flash past, each one spelling things out in blunt, no-nonsense terms. Looking for fun. Hosting tonight. Vers bottom. Into rough play. Discreet only. There’s no room to misread any of it. It should feel like too much, and for a fewseconds it actually works, because nothing in here is George and that’s the whole point.
I stare at my phone, frozen by the fact that I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.
The app prompts me to create a profile. I should close it, delete it, and pretend this moment of panic-driven impulse never happened. Instead, I start filling it in.
Photo: I scroll through my camera roll and find a gym selfie from two months ago. Torso only, abs visible, and face cut off at the chin. It’s basically the same as half the profiles I just scrolled past, completely generic and unremarkable.
Name: I type “L.” My brain can’t conjure something cool right now so I’ll just roll with that.
Age: 28.
Looking for: Friends, dates, see what happens. Yes, I write down the vaguest possible description, noncommittal to the point of useless.
About me: “nurse.” That’s all I have in me right now. I’m not about to write “currently having a sexuality crisis, please advise.”
I save the profile and stare at it, this sanitized version of myself that reveals nothing and somehow still feels too exposed.
“Congratulations,” I mutter to my dark apartment. “You’re really branching out today, Bradford.”
It takes less than a minute for the app to prove it works.
First up is some guy named Raymond. Thirty-three, lives four blocks away, hits me with a basic “hey” and a wave emoji attached to a beach photo where he looks like he wandered out of a fucking Ralph Lauren catalog. His bio says he teaches kindergarten, hikes every weekend, and is willing to throw hands over the correct way to load a dishwasher.
He seems…nice. Perfectly fine.
And approximately a foot shorter than George. I close out of his profile.
More keep coming. One opens with a nursing pun so catastrophically bad it somehow loops back around to being impressive. Another asks for my height, then replies to my answer with nothing but a thumbs-up emoji, like he’s running me through some secret compatibility algorithm and I just passed the first round.
