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When he was done, he closed the kit and put it on the table beside his bed. I stood up so he could climb back into his nest of blankets.
“Want to stay in here tonight?” he asked, holding the blanket back to make room for me.
I slid into the bed beside him, another hiss leaking from my lips when the blankets fell against my aching side. Wes rolled, body facing me while I lay on my back to stare up at the fading stars.
I didn’t look but felt him tug the weight of the covers away from the tender spot.
“I hate him,” Wes whispered.
“Me too,” I whispered back.
When he reached for my hand to lace our fingers together, I didn’t pull away. Wes was an affectionate kid, but affection wasn’t something I was used to. Hands clasped, he laid them on my stomach, scooting a little closer across his pillow.
He fell asleep first, and I lay there listening to his even breathing while feeling the warmth of our clasped hands soaking through my shirt and into my stomach.
Eventually, I slept too.
1
Life is a matter of choice,
and every choice you make makes you.
—Author Unknown—
Wes
Really,though? Is lifereallya matter of choice?
For me, choice might as well be a wish.
My parents died from a fiery car crash when I was barely sixteen.
I’m gay.
I’m also totally in love with my brother.
I didn’t choose any of that. In fact, I tried like hell to deny most of it. But there I was in all my gay, brother-loving, no-parentals glory.
So if you ask me, what really makes a man is the way he reacts to the hand he was dealt, to the choices he didn’t get to make but has to live with. Would those actions be choices? I couldn’t tell because most of the time I was ruled entirely by emotion.
Hence the in-love-with-the-brother thing.
Okay, fine. Technically, Max was not my brother. Not by blood anyway. That should make it lessick,right?
Nope.
And technically, he wasn’t adopted by my parents either, at least in an official capacity. However, he did move in with us when I was thirteen. And before that, he was at our house more than his. We don’t share the same last name, but when my parents died, their estate was split three ways—between me, my older (biological) brother, and Max.
Pretty sure that was actual proof my parents thought of him as their son. There was also the fact he called them mom and dad.
Go ahead. You can judge me. I judged myself every day. Even my own harsh judgment didn’t stop my heart from flipping over when Max’s eyebrow ring glinted in the sun or he leveled his opaque eyes on me with an intensity matched by nothing else.
I always knew I was gay. Liking girls never even occurred to me, so it was more of a shock to realize people expected me to like them andnotboys. It also never really occurred to me to hide who I was until I realized people thought my “choice” was wrong.
Notice the quotations? Yeah, it’s because being gay isn’t a choice—it just is, despite what some would like us to believe.
After an epic ass-beating and hospital stay, I decided to maybe keep my sexuality to myself. A choice or something I was forced into out of a sense of self-preservation?
