Page 30 of These Secret Years

“You don’t think?” For some reason, he gestures at the room when he asks.

“Just because we have the same hometown doesn’t mean we have to be best friends. There’s plenty of people here I never want to talk to.”

“Does that include me now?”

I scowl at him, then I come out and ask the main question I have for him. “What’s your angle, Knight? What’s this about?”

“I’m just saying we don’t have to act like we’re strangers. We don’t have to be strangers. I know I said we could be friends, and maybe that’s not something I followed through with, but⁠—”

“Why would we be friends?” I ask. “For what purpose? Is there something you feel like you can tell me and not Deandre or the twins?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, surprising me.

“What?”

“That I’m gay.”

“Oh.” Right. I guess he and I are still sharing that secret.

He lets out a breath. “I don’t say that out loud all that often.”

“How’s it feel?” I ask because what else am I supposed to say?

“Fine. Good. Bad. I don’t know.”

“No one else knows?”

He shakes his head, looking down at his folded hands. “No one can.”

“So, what happened that night at The Front?”

“Um. You did.”

Silence has a lot of sound. Sometimes it’s a soft, warm rumble, and other times it’s a roar. This one is so loud, I want to cover my ears. Or maybe I only want to unhear what he just said.

He lets out a self-deprecating laugh that breaks up the cacophony. “You broke me.”

I want to say something along the lines of how he seems to have put himself back together just fine, but I also know that sometimes what’s inside doesn’t match the outside, so I don’t say anything.

“You never told anyone about it,” he says rather than asks.

I shake my head, not looking at him.

“I mean, I guess to some people it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, and I totally respect whatever decision you made about it, but it was a big deal for me, and I feel like I could have done more in terms of…I don’t know…after.”

“Like what?” I ask, not because I think he should have or wish he had, but I’m curious what he thinks he could have done, and I get the sense he’s got more than a few things to get off his chest.

“Like fucking talked to you?”

“I didn’t need you to talk to me.”

“Maybe I did,” he says, which makes me feel like an asshole. Cold and shut down. Maybe I am.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Look, you don’t have to like me. I don’t expect you to. You said we’ve got nothing in common…I mean…maybe we don’t, but you don’t really know me, and I don’t really know much about you, either, but saying I never wanted to know you would be disingenuous, and I guess I wonder if you’d want to hang out sometime.”

“We’re hanging out right now,” I note.