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“You didn’t—”
“You punched a wall because of me! I hate that I called you that. I’m so sorry, Austin.”
“It wasn’t even that you called me a slur that made me hit the wall,” I said, flushed with heat at how everything was unraveling. All because of a past that I had already come to terms with and was now reliving through fresh eyes. A twisted stab of fate’s dagger, straight to the heart, right when I had let down all the guards around it.
What a fucking joke.
“You told me you’d never love me, Charlie. After I admitted I was in love with you. You told me I was pathetic for thinking I was anything more than a dirty secret. That was what made me explode.”
His jaw dropped, eyes popped. “No… I… Oh no—no, no, no. I did say that. I remember it all now.”
All I could do was watch as the memories slammed back into Charlie’s mind.
26
Charlie Marsh
I suddenly remembered it all, like it happened yesterday.
My parents’ house was empty, college was over, my job was set. Everything about tonight was supposed to be smooth sculpting. Austin and I had already hooked up three times in the past two hours, and I could probably go for one more before we moved outside to the pool. I thought Austin felt the same way, so I was extra surprised when he sat on the edge of the bed and wouldn’t react when I started kissing his neck and rubbing his arms.
“What’s wrong?”
And that’s when the floodgates opened. Austin stood, the bed dipping and almost dumping me onto the carpet. He rubbed his face, walking around the bedroom in his black Calvins and nothing else.
“Char, I can’t—I can’t keep doing this. We’ve been together for three years now. And I know we agreed on not being exclusive. Neither of us has been with anyone else. Not in those entire three years, and I don’t want to be with someone else.” He looked at me, big hazel eyes catching the light from the floor lamp. “I don’t want us to be a secret anymore.”
It was a simple sentence that triggered a chain reaction of repressed bullshit and anger inside me. Truth was, I felt the same. Over the three years of secretly running off to fall asleep in Austin’s arms, I’d come to realize that maybe I was also getting tired of keeping things secret. But… if we weren’t secret, then that would mean admitting to everyone—to myself, to my dad—that I was gay.
The anger and bullshit wound itself into a cannonball inside me, and I launched it through my words. “That can’t happen, Austin. We talked about this already. You know I’m not gay.”
There. A lie. Easier said than the truth. Said enough times and it becomes the truth.
Austin’s face cracked, jaw slipping open, but my mask didn’t slip.
Guilt shredded through me like a rain of bullets. I wanted to run—run away, far away, putting miles between Austin and me, countries, oceans. I didn’t deserve him. Not after what I said, the way I hurt him.
But I also wanted to run straight into Austin’s arms. He was the only person in the world who could take this pain away from me. The one person I hurt was the only person who could heal me. It was such a conflicting torrent of emotions. I couldn’t even look at him. At those same hazel eyes I could now remember filling with tears, overflowing, face growing red and head shaking.
I did that. I hurt him.
I fucked up.
I fucked up.
I fucked up.
“This is fucked-up,” Austin said. He looked like he was about to cry, but I couldn’t break. I couldn’t admit anything—because there wasn’t anything to admit.
I’m not gay.
I’m not gay.
I’m not gay.
The same three little words I’d repeat to myself in the mirror whenever I’d find my thoughts drifting. Like a fucking yoga mantra. I looked away from Austin and held on to those words like I was holding on to flotsam in the middle of the ocean for survival.
“Look at me, Charlie. Look at me!” Austin hit his chest, voice booming.
I still couldn’t look at him. “I’m not gay,” I said it again, out loud.
“Fine, you’re not gay. Then you’re bi, maybe pan, but you have to agree that you’re somewhere on the fucking rainbow. I’ve felt it. The way you hold me, and the way you kiss—”
“I’m not a fucking fairy, okay?” I stood, matching Austin, even though he was taller than me. A thousand-pound weight dropped on my head; it was filled with societal pressure, familial pressure, self-pressure. These words didn’t even feel like mine. They’d been placed there, through the shit I’d hear my dad say, or my uncle, or the kids in school, or the guys in the locker rooms.
Everywhere, I’d been steeped in homophobia. Like a fucked-up tea bag sitting in toxic water for years upon years. I absorbed it all, and now I spat it back out, wielding the same weapons I tried protecting myself against for my entire life.
