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And it hasn’t changed.
I’ve let him down all over again.
I grip my glass and stare at the murky golden-brown liquid, waiting for my strength to find me.
Listening to all the angry words and echoes of regrets flitting around the furious flame of my brain like moths, I’m left with a simple choice: drink, or don’t drink.
Gay, or not gay.
Love, or …
“The worst part is …” Ryan’s words haunt me. “I think I’m in love with you.”
My eyes clench shut. You had to go and say that, didn’t you? You just had to go and say that.
I see his smile. I feel his hands on my skin and his mouth by my neck, breathing, content.
A boy curling up next to me in my childhood bedroom, too scared to admit his feelings, too naïve to know what they even are.
“I think I’m in love with you, Stefan.”
My eyes clench shut even tighter. Shut up.
“The worst part …”
The worst part is that I know I’ve fallen for him, too. And I know I’ve loved him since the day I pinned him to the floor of a bathroom and stared down into his terrified eyes. Neither of us knew what it meant, the connection we had. And it didn’t matter.
What am I so fucking scared of?
Let the world put us in a cute little box it can understand. Gay. Straight. Black. White. Something grayish and scary and who-knows-what in between.
Let the world decide what it wants to see when it looks at me and Ryan, and it sees the way we gaze into each other’s eyes, and it thinks it knows what’s going on in our hearts.
Let it think it knows me. Let it be wrong.
Let all of them sneer and say we’re just another pair of homos in the world. Just another straight guy in denial. Just another self-hating embarrassment to gaykind. I don’t care. They’ll never know what I am, and they won’t have to.
Ryan and I always had a special something. I’ve had it with no other man or woman in my life. It is one of a kind. Truly unique.
Like this glass still sitting, undrunk, in front of me.
Drink, or don’t drink?
“I love you, too, Caulfield, you fuckin’ bastard,” I murmur to the glass, then lift it to my lips.
My phone buzzes right then, stopping me.
The glass goes right back down as I lift the phone to my face. On its screen is a message.
It’s a message from my dad.
I throw a twenty on the counter and bolt out of the hotel the next instant, abandoning my glass, still undrunk.
27
RYAN
“Everything’s totally fine,” I tell myself Monday morning in the office, sitting alone at my desk with a can of Diet Coke staring at me that I’ve opened, yet haven’t taken a single sip of.
I’m so pathetic.
The first thing I did after Stefan left Friday was go to his room and stare at his things like a creep. I felt gutted and numb, just like the socks that rested on his bed next to a pair of red gym shorts that had no business being there.
Once again, I was being forced to deal with the pain of Stefan ripping himself out of my life all over again.
It’s no wonder I’m an emotional cripple.
Nothing lasts forever, not in Ryan Caulfield’s little life.
The day Stefan Baker and I had our huge blow-up in the school cafeteria in front of all our friends, I skipped the rest of my classes and hid under the bleachers. Some sick part of me thought that Stefan would actually try to come find me here, knowing that we used to hang out under them sometimes when we skipped home period.
He never came.
A skunk did instead.
Yeah, even with my emotional state, I screamed and ran away, despite it totally not lifting its tail or threatening to dress me in its unconventional brand of cologne.
When my dad picked me up from school that day, he knew for sure that something was wrong, but had the sense not to pry. At home later, I had the pleasure of hearing the murmur of my parents in the dining room chatting about me.
I remember wishing that my sister wasn’t off at college becoming a geologist. I wanted to talk to her, but she rarely even answered her phone anymore, so busy with work and having her nose buried in books all day as she was.
I was truly on my own—perhaps for the first time ever.
A funny thought I had that same night: Why didn’t I make more friends than just Stefan Baker?
Talk about putting all your eggs in one social basket.
Weeks went by where I was a completely different person. I took my lunch to the bathroom for many days, unable to sit with my (former?) baseball buddies and unwilling to make new friends at some other table. I went from class to class as fast as I possibly could, dreading the possibility of running into anyone I knew. I was certain that everyone on the baseball team hated me suddenly and that none of them would take my side.
