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“And the guac. But someone forgot to buy cilantro.” Dylan playfully swatted at him.
“Was it on the list?” Apollo countered. “You keep forgetting to add things to the list and assuming I’m a mind reader.”
“Cilantro is like a staple around here. Like flour.” Dylan rolled his eyes.
“Real mature,” Dustin observed. “And geez, you guys are already fighting like you’ve been married a decade or something.”
“Yup. This is the glamorous married life. Earlier I washed all the towels, and that is not a euphemism for anything fun. And later, we’ll take out the trash together. Ridiculously happy though.”
Apollo joined Dylan’s laughter, reaching over and ruffling Dylan’s hair. “You’ll see someday,” he said to Dustin. “When the right woman finally comes along, you’ll find yourself fighting over the stupidest shit.”
Go find yourself a bossy guy or girl, Wes had ordered. Dustin still had no interest in that—hadn’t even opened up the Joe4Joe app. Even cheap, fast sex had zero appeal to him these days. Only thing that interested him was finding out how Wes was doing.
“Ha. Dustin’s never settling down. Different girl every damn season. But not this year. This is the year of the recluse apparently. What’s the matter? Lose your touch with the ladies?”
All of sudden, Dustin had had enough. Like thirty odd years of enough. A decade plus of pretending, all the years he could have said something and hadn’t. All the weeks and months of keeping Wes a secret. Enough.
“I’m bisexual,” he blurted.
Dylan blinked at him, and all the oxygen seemed to leave the room, a roar in Dustin’s ears sounding as loud as when the hatch opened on a plane.
“Since when?” Dylan’s head tilted to the side.
“Since when?” Apollo lightly thumped the back of his husband’s head. “Since always. Apparently.” There were years’ worth of friendship in that word, dozens of times Dustin could have told him and hadn’t, and he wasn’t surprised at the hurt in Apollo’s voice.
“I meant you just recently figured it out?” Dylan clarified. “Is that why you’ve been such a class-A jerk the past year?”
It would be really easy to lie, remove some of the hurt from Apollo’s eyes and confusion from Dylan’s face. But he was done with lies and half-truths. “No. Not something new. But I um...met someone. For the first time.” His skin heated.
“Ah.” A world of understanding in that syllable from Apollo. “Well. Good for you. When do we meet him?”
“Just like that?” Now it was Dustin’s turn to blink. “We’re cool?”
“I’m not.” Dylan inserted himself back into the conversation. “You could have told us. Me. Him. Both. Anytime. Did you really think we’d care?”
“Not you so much.” Dustin sighed. God, this was hard to explain, even to himself. “More... Dad, maybe? Not even that so much as expectations. Mine. Other people’s. I probably made it harder than it needed to be,” he admitted.
“Ya think?” Dylan stared him down. “You seriously do love to get in your own way, don’t you?”
“That he does,” Apollo said mildly, two of them talking now like Dustin wasn’t even there.
“Still here, guys.” Dustin leaned against the counter, not sure he trusted his wobbly knees after this confession.
“So when do we get to meet this Mister Right you met?” Dylan’s eyes gleamed. “Because yeah, I’m with Apollo on this. That’s the important thing. We need to hassle him pronto.”
Loss, swift and sure, ripped through Dustin, a crackling det cord to the center of himself. This shouldn’t be happening. He should be able to smile, name a day and time, message Wes and tell him how he’d been totally right that this wasn’t that huge a deal to Apollo and Dylan. Instead he couldn’t hold back his grimace. “You can’t.”
“Can’t like you broke up or can’t like you’re going to be a dick about this?” Dylan shook his head. “Let us be happy for you, man.”
Let us be happy for you. God, if only it were that easy. Them giving Wes a hard time. Wes not taking their shit. His eyes meeting Wes’s in silent apology, a promise for later... Never happening. “Both. Can’t. It’s complicated.”
Apollo’s eyes narrowed. “How complicated? Like younger than Dylan complicated—”
“God, no. I mean he’s younger than me, but that’s not... Look. I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you. I just... I got pissed. Everyone wants to slot me in a little box, and I don’t fit, okay? I don’t fucking fit.” He smacked the counter next to him.
His throat burned with the force of his frustration and now his palm smarted too. He didn’t fit anywhere anymore. Not here with his best friend and brother. Not on the team where he’d been lucky that his distraction level hadn’t created a hazard. Not surrounded by family at the wedding. Just with Wes. He’d fit with him. Perfectly. And if Wes were here—anywhere really—then he’d fit there as well, because that was his place. With Wes.
