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Or at least one man. Me.
While I would still try to be understanding, I was done with being patient.
Since he had stopped beside me on the wide sidewalk, I stepped in front of him so I could face him. This was a serious conversation and we probably shouldn’t be having it where we were.
I should have waited until we were in the privacy of my room since Dom was off visiting his girlfriend until tomorrow, but it had been bugging me. Plus, I was worried that if I got him up to my room and we got naked, I’d let it go once more.
I couldn’t. Not any longer.
The problem was, all I thought about while we ran side by side through the streets and pathways in and around campus was how Tate hadn’t done it yet.
And why.
Tate’s gaze swept the immediate area to make sure no one would overhear us. An obvious sign before he even opened his mouth that he didn’t want anyone to know what was going on between us, that we had slipped from friends to lovers.
“Can we just keep this between us for now and let me ease into it? I’m not ready to take any slack from my family or my roommates. Even our classmates. It’s not new to you but it’s new to me and I’m not ready to come out and be labeled yet. I’m not even sure what that label should be, Roe. I want to make sure I have things figured out before I come out, if that’s even what I need to do. I’ve never been attracted to other guys before. And if I have, I hadn’t given it much thought.”
And there it was, the most worrying part: If that’s even what I need to do. That meant he was thinking about possibly denying who he was. Because I knew who he was whether he denied it or not.
Men had been known to renounce their true selves their whole lives, even go as far as marrying a woman and having children to convince themselves that was who they were, and then they ended up living a miserable life full of pretending.
Some even ended up going so far as committing suicide because of it. They couldn’t come out of the closet and they also couldn’t stay locked inside. They relieved their agony in the only way they knew how.
I knew who I was for years. But in the beginning, I questioned my thoughts and feelings, too. I was also wary to come out at first. I knew it was a risk because once I stepped out of that closet, it would be hard, if not impossible, to step back in. I had to be either in or out. Stepping one foot out while keeping one foot in just wasn’t realistic.
Right now, that was what Tate was doing. He had one toe in my world and a whole foot in the other.
But if he didn’t plant both his feet on one side or the other, or even one foot solidly on both sides if he was bisexual, he’d eventually lose his balance.
While I understood where he was coming from by being cautious, I also didn’t like it because that meant we couldn’t be “out” together as a couple. We had to hide behind closed doors. We had to hook fingers under desks. We had to pretend we were studying when what we were actually studying wasn’t in our textbook.
I also understood we all had to travel our own path of discovery, in our own way and time, and I wasn’t going to force him to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with.
However, him not telling the truth to Dahlia was the biggest issue I had with all of this. What was between us, while maybe it had started out as experimenting for him, was now long past that. The sex had gotten more serious. Our bond had also grown a lot stronger. We were now inseparable.
Tate and I spent more time together than he did with Dahlia.
“Tate, I’m okay with giving you that time, but I’m not okay with you stringing Dahlia along. And that’s where I’m taking a stand. We’re not having sex again until I know you’ve broken it off with her. And if you don’t want to do that, then we need to break it off.”
One of my worries, something I thought about too often, was that if he could lie to Dahlia, he could lie to me just as easily. That concern was why I was no longer going to sit back and let him do it.
If he wanted to keep his sexuality from everyone else for now, fine. But at the minimum, he needed to stop stringing Dahlia along, letting her think that everything was okay between them.
It wasn’t.
