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He smiled, and I studied him. His posture, clothes, how his eyes sometimes lingered on Mason before snapping away. I recalled the way he’d gone silent yesterday when some of the boys started talking about girls. I knew, or suspected, but I wasn’t going to put a name on something that belonged to him.

Nobody had given me that courtesy.

“I used to,” I finally said.

Trevor looked surprised that I’d admitted it. “Did he know?”

I laughed. “Eventually.”

“What happened?”

“That’s classified, kid.”

“Meaning bad?”

“Meaning Darius D’Angelo was a teenage asshole who morphed into an adult twat-fuck.”

Trevor peered over at the dining hall. “He seems nice now.”

“People contain multitudes.”

“What?”

“Roughly translated? Somebody can be nice and still be a dick.”

“Oh.”

“Write that down. It’s important.”

Trevor laughed and then his expression changed. “Were people mean to you?”

Ah! I saw where this was going. Not are you gay? Not when did you know? But were people mean to you? Different question entirely.

I looked at him. “Sometimes, my dude. People can all be dicks, whether they have one or not.”

“Here?”

“Sometimes.”

His fingers picked at the hem of his shorts. “Because you’re gay?”

I didn’t answer immediately and not because I was ashamed. Fuck that. I hadn’t been ashamed of myself in years. It was because I knew this moment. One wrong move and he’d slam that door so hard I’d never get near it again.

I focused on the lake instead. “Sometimes people get scared when somebody else is brave enough to be something they’re afraid to understand. Doesn’t make them right.”

Trevor went quiet for a long moment. Then he asked, “Did you know?”

“That I was gay?”

He nodded.

“Yep.”

“How?”

I smiled. “I had eyes and a mirror, babe.”

He laughed again. “Seriously.”