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“Stop!” My two hands are on my head.
“I can’t stop!” His voice is anguished. “I need out!”
“I like you!” I yell from my gut, from my heart. “I like you, Oscar!”
He careens back like I shoved him.
I’m combusting into a million little pieces, but I push forward from the door. “You’re right, I’m not upset by the set-up. Because I like you.” I speak from the core of my being that I never reached until recently. Until I was twenty-seven and fell for him. Maybe I’ve been falling for even longer. I just couldn’t piece it all together.
He shakes his head slowly.
I take another step forward. “I like you so fucking much that the idea of losing what we have makes me sick. I don’t want to shut the door on possibly the greatest opportunity of my life, and it’s right here—it’s you.”
I never considered being in love, falling in love, finding love a sky-high opportunity that I should chase. But I guess I just never found someone worth chasing.
I extend my arms and let them drop hard at my sides. I’m breathing like I’m running marathons around the library.
And Oscar is hardly breathing at all. “You said you’re straight.”
“I did say that,” I inhale, exhale. “But I don’t really know….I don’t know what I am other than really, really attracted to you.” My eyes well up with emotion that stings. “I can’t fight or change what I feel.” I add, “I think about you all the time—I think about what it’d be like to kiss you. I’ve imagined kissing you, and more—way further.”
My body blazes, but I stand my ground. So he knows I’m serious and not just stringing him along.
He keeps walking backwards until his ass hits the reading table. Leaning against the edge, he clutches the sides with a tight grip. His eyes plant on the floor.
I shift my weight. God, what I’d give to be in his head right now. “Oscar, I’m sorry,” I tell him, breath caught short. “I’m sorry about Anacapri—”
“Stop,” he says roughly.
It almost pummels me.
And then he says, “You don’t have anything to apologize for.” His gaze lifts to mine.
I swallow down a rock, trying to muster a smile but it’s weak. “I’ve been less than fair to you, dude.” I run my hand back and forth across my head, then down my jaw. “It’s my fault for not explaining this sooner. So many times, I could’ve told you I was confused, and I didn’t.”
He rubs his mouth, looking me over like he’s seeing me clearer. “No, you didn’t owe me that, Highland. You have a right to sort through things on your own and on your own time.”
I nod slowly, more to myself. “I’m actually still trying to sort through some shit.” I focus on his brown eyes, and with a small warm smile, I throw out a life raft, “You want to help me?”
“Help you…?”
I’m drowning here. “I just—I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. I don’t know if I’m gay or bi or pansexual or something else or nothing at all, and then on top of the labels, I’ve never been physically intimate with a guy before.”
Oscar processes. “You don’t have any friends that could help?”
I run my tongue over my teeth as I shake my head. “No. No one I’d want to confide in other than you.” I find myself beginning to smile at him.
His eyes trace my lips, his clutch loosening on the table. He starts to grin, and he shakes his head, a groan caught between his teeth. “Highland.”
I think he needs a stronger pitch, so I keep going, “My friends aren’t like yours. I don’t have one that can shit on my lawn and we laugh about it a whole ten-years later. Not even my fraternity brothers—”
“You were in a frat,” he realizes with wide eyes.
“Yeah. All four years at Penn.” I study his reaction. Shit. My chest caves. “You hate frats, I take it.”
“I’ve just never been into a frat bro before…” He nods to me. “Sorry I cut you off.”
Lungs on fire, I speak up. “I was just saying that none of my friendships were deep. The ones now are I-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine. People call me up because they need something from me down the road: a connection to a producer, a director. All I am is a useful contact, and I’m just as guilty of forming surface-friendships.” I take a breath. “And I think Akara is one of the few genuine friendships I do have, but even then, there’s topics we won’t touch because he’s security, I’m production.”
Sulli.
She’s off-limits, and I understand he’s protective of her.
“I’m security,” Oscar reminds me.
I’m fumbling left and right around him. “You’re the only one I want to talk to about this, Oscar. I don’t even know how’d I go about telling Akara. Do I say the truth? That there’s this extraordinarily hot guy who I’ve pictured sucking me off until my eyes roll back—who I’d drop to my knees for, and I’d love to find out what it’s like to take him in my mouth today, tomorrow, weeks from now.”
