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Feeling oddly touched by that, I smile.
“And I met other gay dudes,” he goes on. “College was fucking full of them. But the more of them I met, the less I felt like one.”
“Sure,” I say, encouraging him to keep opening up.
“And the more I hung around my buddies—all their fucking talk of pussy and tits and whatever tail they’d just gotten the last weekend—the less I felt like one of them. Dude, I even had a time when I thought I might be asexual. Like, something was different with me. I fell right in the middle, but the middle isn’t a place. It’s a fucking swamp of … confusion. It was easier to call myself straight and just be done with it.”
“Except for your whole neglected bromo side.”
He snorts. “Sure, whatever.”
While considering what Stefan’s saying, my eyes lazily study the pattern of the slats of wood and beams that run across the huge ceiling of the gazebo. They’re hypnotizing. “I think people are just happier with white and black.”
“What do you mean?”
“People want to know that something is this … or that. Right or wrong. Good or evil. Female or male. Yes or no. Happy or sad.”
“Gay or straight,” grunts Stefan.
“Exactly. People are comforted by labels. That way, they can put everything they encounter into a box they can understand.”
“People are dumb.”
“Trouble is, life isn’t black and white,” I go on. “It’s gray. And people are very discomforted by that. They don’t want to think that something can be right … and wrong. A little good and a little evil. Female and male.”
I turn my head slightly, wondering if he’ll catch my train of thought and ride it to the conclusion.
He’s silent instead. I hope he’s stewing on it in a positive light, though I’ll understand if it takes him time to work it out. I just don’t want him to keep hating himself in the process.
“You aren’t a weirdo,” I assure him. “You’re just you.”
“You sound like a fucking self-help book.”
I elbow him for that. “I have degrees in this stuff. Gotta put it to use somehow.”
“I kinda thought you might analyze my brain at some point,” he admits. “Pulling out all your smarts on me. Don’t know why I expected you to put me on a couch, hypnotize me, and make me tell you about my dreams.”
“That part’s next,” I tease.
“So … what the fuck am I, then?” he asks with a sigh, his voice a touch quieter.
I prop myself up with an elbow and turn toward him. Stefan’s sharp blue gaze meets mine. “You’re trying to be the dude who wants to know the black and white. Don’t. Look for the gray. It doesn’t need a name, what you are.”
“Well, maybe I’m a dude who does kinda need stuff put into a box.”
“Alright.” I smirk down at him. “You’re a guy who encourages his buddy to falsely take a sick day so that we can go to the park and commit vandalism, public indecency, and consume alcohol in public. Does that sit well in your little box?”
The tension in his face breaks as he lets out a little laugh. “Vandalism?” he protests smilingly.
“Your muscles broke the damned bridge.”
“Definitely your fault, not mine.”
“You weigh a hundred times more than I do!”
“With that fat brain of yours?” he fires back. “You’re so smart, you’re top-heavy. You broke the bridge.”
“Well, the public indecency is on you.”
“Again, it was your cock that was out. Not mine.”
I laugh at that. “Oh, you’re a cocky bastard today, aren’t you. Always gotta be right.”
“I’m cocky and humble. Remember to appreciate the grays in life, Ryan,” he adds in a mock condescending tone.
I leap onto him, turning our relaxing little lie-down into a physical endeavor. He’s alive in an instant, laughing and grunting as we roll around on the gazebo floor, wrestling each other for dominance.
I’m on top in one instant, attempting to pin him. Then he gets on top of me, grinning victoriously down at my face, until I flip him over me and get back on top.
I’m not a wrestler. But hell if I love being one with Stefan.
After one last desperate move, Stefan straddles my chest, my hands pinned up by my head with his knees. With his free hands, he playfully bats at either of my cheeks like he’s a cat and I’m his toy. I laugh and keep trying to turn my face away, but he just smacks it the other way while wearing his cocky smirk of victory.
When he stops and I look up, I realize my head is pretty much cradled between his thighs, my chin digging into his crotch. With just a shift of my eyes, I see that he’s hard.
“Do you think wrestlers fight boners all day long?” I ponder as I stare at his package, which—from this close-up angle—looks fucking massive.
