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I’m totally caught off-guard. Where is this coming from? For some reason, I don’t want Dana or her friend to think that I wasn’t privy to this information, so despite my widened eyes, I only give a little shrug and go along with it. “Yeah. Guys said a lot of shit back then. Teenagers are always bored and gossiping.”
“Gossiping,” agrees Stefan, though his bright blue eyes carry a strange glimmer of skepticism in them.
I return his odd look. What the hell was all of that about with him saying people thought we were a couple back in the day? Did he hear that somewhere, or was he making that shit up to be funny or entertaining?
I’m not entertained. I’m annoyed and unsure where Stefan’s head is at right now.
“But you’re not,” states Dana. “Right?”
Stefan and I turn to her at once. “What?” I prompt anxiously, my throat constricted.
“Everyone thought you were a couple,” she says, wagging a finger between us, “but you’re not. Right?”
My heart jumps out of my chest and lands in my margarita with a splash, then proceeds to pump furiously before our eyes.
Or not.
Dana has literally, in the space of one tiny conversation, dug up the meat of the conflict between Stefan and I and laid it right there in the middle of the table for all of us to witness.
Stefan leans back slightly in his seat, props an elbow on the table, flashes a cocky grin, and answers, “Nah.”
I watch him, studying every flinch and flex of his expression. Is that just a cover-up? Is he still obligated to some sort of public image where he can’t come out? Is he toying with them?
“What?” mutters Stefan with a careless shrug. “A straight guy can’t be close friends with another guy without everyone thinking they’re gay? Ryan’s my bro. My mate. My buddy. We’re close.”
I feel my stomach harden. I guess if Stefan’s plan of action is to play along, I can do the same damned thing. “Yeah,” I agree. “We’ve always been close friends. Even when we’re total dicks to one another.”
Or are holding one another’s dick. Either way.
“I can feel it,” Dana insists. “You guys just ‘get’ each other. Wow. It’s really cute. I get why people think you two are a couple.”
Stefan snorts and, after taking one kick-back of his beer, says, “I’ll take that as a compliment. No, I’m straight. Definitely straight, no doubt about it.”
The word is like a heavy mallet to my chest.
Straight.
Definitely straight.
Just like that, all the sexiness of the past week is obliterated. Click, recent browser history deleted. We don’t sometimes cuddle. We don’t do things that involve oil all over his body and tongues in certain orifices. We don’t totally do the gayest not-gay shit you can imagine two not-gay guys doing.
I realize Dana is staring at me—as if digging into my psyche and seeing all of this inner turmoil I think I’m hiding so well—so I straighten up my expression right away and mask the scowl I’m sure I was making.
“I have to use the lady’s room,” announces Angela so quietly, I almost don’t realize what she’s said until she’s already dismissed herself from the table.
The timing makes me wonder if Angela isn’t so comfortable with all of this gay talk.
Then Stefan speaks up. “I gotta take a leak myself.” He gives me a slap on the shoulder as he hops off his chair. “Be right back, bro. Excuse me, Dana.”
I watch him go, my throat dry and my appetite, gone. I have no idea what’s going on anymore.
“Hey, Ryan.”
It’s Dana. I flick my eyes back to her. “Yeah?”
“Don’t worry,” she says quietly to me. “I already knew.”
I swallow. “Knew what?”
“I knew it since I first met you. I think I have one of those gay-dars,” she explains with a tap of her long fingernail to her temple. “I always had a suspicion. It’s why I asked you out for drinks. I like you. I trust you.”
There are so many things happening to my nervous system right now that I don’t even know whether I’m happy, scared, sad, furious, or relieved to hear this from Dana.
Maybe I’m all of those things.
“It’s okay,” she assures me again, then reaches across the table to take my hand. “I won’t blab. Gay people are my favorite. Your secret’s safe with me. Promise.”
I slowly nod, unable to say anything yet.
Her hand is cold and wet from holding her margarita glass. That’s all I seem to notice at the moment.
“And also,” she adds, a bit of humor entering her eyes, “you know semi-famous people like Stefan Baker. That’s definitely a perk to knowing you, you lucky dog, you! Even if he is straight.”
I swallow hard, then glance off toward the bathrooms where he disappeared to. “The only semi-famous person I know is Stefan Baker,” I confess lamely.
