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I’m running my fingers through my hair—again—when my gaze catches on the birthday boy himself. There’s something on Shawn’s face…something phallic looking, that sparks in the light.
My lip twitches. What the?—
Just then, a body cuts into my line of sight, and my steps falter, my smile dimming.
Wide, pale blues gaze back at me, a stinging contrast to the last time I saw those eyes, slitted and bleary, peering up at me with desperation as he cupped my face. Called me by my sister’s name. Begged me—her—not to go.
My heart pounds, this time not with nerves, but anger. It’s the only feeling I seem to experience these days, outside my usual apathy and anxiety.
For a long moment we both just stand there, silently staring at one another. The song’s still playing, and people are still talking and laughing. The world keeps spinning, and yet mine has fully stopped.
His lips part, and his eyes grow glassy with each passing second.
I don’t know what to make of it—the look on his face right now. And better yet, I don’t want to make anything of it.
You’re just a casualty.
He doesn’t actually see you.
I’m just the closest thing he’s got to her.
Every muscle in me tenses at the much-needed reminder, prompting me to stand a little taller, and jut out my chin, hardening myself to his intrusive, almost pleading gaze.
“JJ,” he whispers, his voice breaking.
My jaw ticks. Asshole. “Don’t call me that.”
He starts to smile, but then seems to realize I’m actually being serious this time.
Not that I haven’t always been serious when telling him to not call me that, but I guess somewhere along the way, probably around the time I started calling him Mase Face as payback, it stopped feeling like a call back to when I was a kid when people just took it upon themselves to call me something I never agreed to…
And it started feeling like an inside joke between us. Mason and me. Our thing.
After all, he never hated Mase Face like I once hated JJ. It’s always made him smile. Maybe that’s why JJ started making me smile too. Because he only called me that when he was teasing me, and not in a bad way, but like…like I was in on the joke, rather than the butt of it.
“Can we talk?” he says, his face pulled tight. “Please.”
Sucking in my cheeks, I glance past him, and meet Waylon’s furrowed gaze as he watches us.
I haven’t seen him since last weekend, when Ivy and I tricked Will and Waylon into finally reuniting after weeks of radio silence. The three of them came down to Allentown to stay with me for the night, and we went to one of my favorite night clubs for the monthly Pride night. Which just so happened to fall on Halloween weekend.
It wasn’t just Will’s first time seeing Waylon since the night he and Mason decided to go two-for-two with the fucking mental breakdowns, but Waylon’s first time at a gay bar.
At least, as far as I’m aware, it was his first time, seeing as up until a month ago, I was certain Waylon was straight.
Seeing as he’s here now, back in Shiloh, celebrating Shawn’s birthday—and no longer holed up in the motel he’s been living out of with Reggie, avoiding everyone—I take it things are looking up. That Mason and him talked. Mended fences or whatever.
It reminds me of our own mending of fences of sorts—Waylon’s and mine—outside Tink’s, the bar we took him to the other night.
I remember now all that he confided to me…how shitty he felt, how sorry he was…
Then what I told him, after realizing what had led to the rift between us, the one I’ve always felt, but never knew the origins of.
It’s so obvious now, that I kind of want to beat myself up for not seeing it years ago. Especially knowing all that I know now, thanks to a heavy night of margheritas with Will at my apartment a few weeks ago.
Waylon’s…
Gay? Bi? Queer?
