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He puts the glass down. “It’s called two truths and a lie. Not two truths and an interrogation.”
Like that, Donovan’s walls are up again.
He fiddles with the leather band around his wrist, rubbing it. “It’s your turn, by the way.”
My lips buzz. The pressure is on. Donovan is still closed off, sure, but he’s opening up. Bit by bit. We’re talking about real things now. Maybe it’s the late hour, but it’s that anything-goes vibes that comes at the end of a really good sleepover. That feeling that you can confess anything at all and, in the morning, we’ll never talk about it again.
So I think hard about what I’m going to say next, even though in my gut, I know what it is. “Okay,” I start. “I’ve seen every Batman movie. I once blew 10K on Nadine’s birthday party, and then she got mad at me about it.”
And now for the lie. I know what I want to say. I know what I’m dying to say. But the words feel stuck on the tip of the tongue. It’s now or never, a leap of faith, and I finally spit out my lie, “…I’m one hundred percent straight.”
Donovan’s reaction surprises me. I don’t know what I expect exactly—shock? Derision? I’ve never said something like that to anyone before, so I’m bracing for whatever he has in store for me.
Instead, he lets out a noise that’s half a laugh, half a scoff. “No one,” he says, “is one hundred perfect anything.”
I knit my eyebrows at him, because that confuses me. He’s always been open about being gay—proud of it, I guess. Not exactly the going-to-pride-parades type, but he’s the kind of guy who will look you right in the eyes and say: Yeah, I’m gay. Also I can break your nose. What about it?
The guy is a full head shorter than me, but he packs the intensity of a man taller than God.
There’s oddly some peace in his reaction. I’ve told him something I’ve never said out loud before and he shrugs it off like it’s nothing.
Maybe it is nothing. How freeing would that be?
Donovan continues the game. “I’ll go. I have blown a full paycheck on house plants. I think Christmas is overrated. I had sex tonight with a man who wanted me to call him Daddy.”
I can’t help it—a strange heat creeps up my neck at the way Donovan so candidly talks about being with other men. I have to focus on my drink for a second, turning the glass in circles on the bar between my fingers, before I guess: “The house plant one?”
Donovan shakes his head. “No. The first two are true.”
“So you didn’t get laid tonight?”
“Oh, no. I did. I just made up the Daddy kink.”
“Good for you. Up top.” I lift my palm, because I’m used to getting laid being a badge of pride. Frat boys and their conquests. Donovan, however, just glares at my open hand until I lower it.
“He was old enough to be my dad,” Donovan continues. “But attractive, though. In a silver fox way. Sort of…sad eyes.”
I nod lightly. Donovan is opening up to me, slowly, and I don’t want to startle him back into his turtle-shell. So I gently encourage him to continue with, “Did you get his number?”
“His number?” Donovan snorts a laugh. “I didn’t even get his name.” He’s half-swaying, so he wraps his hands tighter around his beer as though to anchor himself. He admits: “I think he was married.”
He looks so low now. Hollow behind the eyes. I run my hand over his back and squeeze his shoulder.
“Hey…are you okay?” I ask him finally, because I can’t keep trying to pretend things are okay when they’re not. I’m not that guy who can sit comfortably in an uncomfortable situation. I have to point out the elephant in the room, every time.
Donovan scoffs. “Look at you. Trying to take care of me.”
“That’s what friends do.”
“Friends?” he practically spits the word. “We haven’t been friends since we were sixteen.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I feel myself say, but then I stop my tongue before it can go any further. Because opening up that can of worms means talking about that night, and we haven’t spoken about it in over a decade.
Which isn’t to say I haven’t thought about it. Because I have. That night in the belly of the boat, with Kenzi underneath me. Donovan in my mouth, his moans filling my ears.
The memory is suddenly all too lucid and it sends a quick lick of want down the center of me. I grip my beer a little tighter and shut my mouth.
But I can feel Donovan’s eyes on me. Measuring me.
