I’d filed that away. Thought about it more than I wanted to admit.
But the plant-whisperer version of Ellis, relaxed and barefoot, sleeves pushed up past the tattoo, lived behind a locked door. The Ellis who left for work every morning buttoned up past the throat. Different guy. Not entirely, but enough.
Small things triggered the shift.
One Thursday after the gym, we’d grabbed smoothies and were walking back toward his block when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and his whole posture shifted. Shoulders squared, jaw set, like someone had yanked a string up through his spine.
“Hey, Marcus. Yeah, I can talk.” He mouthed work at me and stepped a few feet away.
I sipped my smoothie and waited. Watched him pace, one hand in his pocket, his voice dropping into that careful, flattened voice I’d started recognizing. Professional Ellis. Controlled Ellis. The one who measured every sentence before releasing it.
“Dinner Friday? Can’t, I’ve got plans. Yeah. No, not that kind of plans.” He laughed, but it was thin. Performative. “Just busy. Tell Derek I’ll review the sprint notes tonight.”
He hung up and came back to me with a smile that didn’t quite land.
“What kind of plans can’t you have?” I asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘Not that kind of plans.’ What were they assuming?”
His jaw worked. “Marcus was just asking about Friday’s happy hour. Beer and wings.”
“So go. I’ll survive a Friday without you.”
He exhaled through his nose. “They’d start asking questions about what I’ve been doing and who I’m doing it with.”
The conversation tilted. The way a picture goes slightly crooked on a wall. You can’t stop staring at it even though it’s barely off.
“Then tell them. You’ve been hanging out with your boyfriend.”
Ellis looked at me the way he looked at receipts he didn’t want to itemize. Pained, briefly, before smoothing it over. “I’m getting there.”
“Getting where?”
“Jett.” He said my name. One syllable with a full paragraph packed behind it.
I raised my hands. “Your pace.”
We walked the rest of the block without talking, which for us was unusual. I filled silence the way Ellis filled his apartment with plants, compulsively, because the emptiness made me twitchy. But something about the shape of his quiet told me not to push.
At his door, he turned to me and said, “It’s not about you.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. It’s not shame. It’s…”
“Self-preservation.” And I did understand, mostly. I’d been out since sixteen. Being queer was the least interesting thing about me—I’d had years to sand down the sharp edges until it was another fact, like being Dominican, left-handed, or obscenely good-looking. But Ellis had lived an entire adult life as a straight man. Colleagues, gym buddies, his whole professional identity—all built on an assumption he’d never corrected because it had never been wrong before.
Until me.
“My gym crew keeps asking who I’m training with.” He was unlocking his door. “I told them a friend.”
“A friend.”
“What was I supposed to say?” He pushed the door open. Held it for me. “’Hey guys, I’m dating a man now?’”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what you say.”
