Games Boys Play (29 page)

“No.”

“Should be towels under the sink.”

He thought Dylan was on his way out, but a rap came at the bathroom door as he flushed. The door swung a little wider open, and Dylan’s arm reached in to set a pair of plaid chill pants and a T-shirt on the edge of the sink. Dylan looked in. “I figured there was no sense taking a shower if you were just going to put sweaty clothes back on.”

“Thanks.”

Brian heard the blinds hanging over the kitchen door’s window bang against the glass as the door shut. He leaned over to start the shower. Clean, if threadbare, towels were where Dylan had said. While he waited for the water to get hot—and on the third floor it seemed to take a while—he looked in the mirror.

Ouch.

He touched his cheek gently. Just a bruise, and a small one at that, but a purple so dark it was almost brown. He stripped out of his shirt and looked for the other bruises on his upper body, locating most of them more by feel than sight—tender spots that pinged when he shifted or tightened a muscle, or hurt when he pressed on them.

He stepped into the shower and let the hot water loosen his muscles, strip the sweat from his skin. The shampoo on the ledge smelled like Dylan when he rubbed it between his palms. The soap too. He lathered himself with Dylan’s smell and let it wash away from him before cranking off the water.

When he walked into the kitchen in Dylan’s clothes, smelling like Dylan, Dylan was already back, laying strips of bacon in a cold frying pan.

Brian pulled out a chair at the table and sat.

“Feeling better?” Dylan asked.

“Cleaner, at least.”

“Orange juice?”

“I’d kill for it.”

He drained the first glass, its cold sweetness too overwhelming for him to be able to stop. The bacon started to sizzle and pop, Dylan poking at it with a fork.

“If you want a shower, I can take over,” Brian said.

“You sure?”

His stomach growled. He pushed his chair back. “Yeah. Go.”

He was at the stove, cracking eggs into a pan, when he heard Dylan step out of the bathroom and pad across the linoleum to the bedroom. After a few more minutes, he returned to the kitchen, his wet hair slicked back, fresh jeans and socks on, a T-shirt tossed over his bare shoulder. His small nipples were hard nubs, like air-gun pellets. File that under
Things I Hadn’t Noticed Before
too.

He dragged his eyes away and poked the eggs with the spatula.

Cooking wasn’t his strongest suit, something they both knew. Dylan moved him out of the way to finish up, taking a second to pull on his shirt before portioning bacon and eggs across two plates while Brian got them some forks.

They ate in mostly silence, until Brian’s plate was clean and his glass was empty again. Dylan had pushed his plate aside, a strip of bacon and his picked-at eggs still on it.

He sat smoking, fiddling with the filter end of the cigarette, fidgeting with his lighter.

“Everything okay?” Brian asked.

Dylan let the lighter slip through two fingers till its bottom tapped the tabletop. With a flick, he spun the bottom to the top and let it slide through until the metal wheels clicked on the wood. He closed his fingers around the lighter. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Okay…”

He drew on his cigarette, the lighter still gripped in his fist. He put his forehead against the thumb of his cigarette hand, its elbow propped on the table.

The bottom of the lighter tap-tap-tapped the table.

Brian pushed his plate out of the way.

“When you asked me something, I didn’t tell you the truth,” Dylan finally said. The lighter lay on the table, and the hand that had clutched it shielded his face, but Brian could see through the fingers that his eyes were squeezed shut.

“Okay,” Brian said quietly. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be
that
bad. How could it be that bad?

Still, he had to press the tips of his fingers against the table to stop the nervous thrumming in them.

When Dylan buried his face in both hands instead of answering, Brian said, “It’s okay. Whatever it is. I mean, how bad can it be?” His heart thudded as he touched Dylan’s forearm.

Dylan took a shaky breath in, lifting his head but pressing the tips of his fingers to his lips.

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Dylan finally said, “kind of all along.” His chair knocked back as he rose to his feet.

All along? All along through what they’d been doing together? “About what?” Brian watched him pace toward the counter, pace back, the fingers holding the cigarette twitching nervously.

What
already? They knew each other better than anyone else in the world—what kind of major big-deal lie could he have been getting away with in those conditions?

Dylan turned away, raking his fingers through his hair. “Uh… Shit. This is hard.”

“So just fucking say it already.”

“When you asked if I’d been with a guy.”

Oh.

“You’d just said you hadn’t, you know? And then you asked me, and… Shit. I felt like if I said I had, if I’d said, ‘Well, actually…’ I mean. Fuck, you’d just said you’d hadn’t, and I didn’t want to freak you out.”

Brian looked at the table, blinking. It actually… Okay, so yeah, he wouldn’t have guessed, but…so what? “Okay,” he said. “So. You’ve fooled around with a guy before. How I didn’t know this, I don’t know, unless it happened before we met.”

Dylan’s short laugh sounded more like an almost hysterical yelp.

“What?”

“Guys. Guy
s
. I’ve been with— Fuck. I mostly only sleep with guys.” He’d turned around to face Brian, gripping the counter behind him, but he was looking at a spot somewhere in the center of the kitchen floor, his shoulders hunched up tight.

“I don’t get it. You— What?”

“I haven’t slept with a girl in years.”

Brian tried to work this through his head. It didn’t make any
sense
. “How could you…? I mean. Without me knowing? Or even
thinking
…? I mean, like, lots of guys? I’ve
seen you
with girls.”

Dylan closed his eyes.

“It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, you…you’re…” He was
Dylan
. There was no word for that. Brian’s hand hung out there in the air, midgesture. He’d
met
Dylan’s fucking girlfriends. There’d been…that Debbie chick. And…fuck, whoever.

“How could I not fucking
know
?” Brian said, as much to himself as Dylan.

“Yeah, that’s… Shit. You were my canary.”

“What the fuck is a canary?” His hackles came up. His chair scraped against the floor. What the
fuck
was a canary?

“Like in the coal mines. If anyone was going to figure it out, it’d be you. So if I could keep
you
in the dark, I could keep anyone in the dark. If you looked like you might be getting suspicious, or at least thinking something was off…I’d correct for that.”

“What, like—” Like pretending he was dating someone? What the fuck? “I could have
helped
you if I’d fucking known. I can’t believe— Fuck!”
FUCK
. “You knew this, and you fucking
did
this shit we’ve been doing? You
knew
how you were, and yet you volunteered to— You fucking decided it would be a good idea to tie me up and shit?” His head felt hot, pressed in upon, clamped in a vise. He paced the kitchen—
his
end of the kitchen, going nowhere near his cousin, who’d gripped the counter behind him again, eyes clenched shut.

“I can’t believe you fucking did this to me,” Brian said.

“I’m sorry.” It was almost a whisper.

“You—” All the words he could say crowded his throat, jamming together in an unmovable lump. Twelve years. Twelve
years
and Dylan had kept this from him, of all people. Brian turned to face him. “We’ve slept in beds together. We slept in cramped fucking backseats shoved up against each other. You didn’t think I might have liked to have
known
?”

“I almost told you. I don’t know how many times.”

“Fuck you.
Almost
doesn’t get you any fucking points. I’d
almost
like to knock your fucking teeth out. “ His face was on fire at the memory of Dylan touching him, tying him up, pressing his gay dick against Brian’s hip as they played games he in no way would have played if he’d known Dylan was keeping this secret. “Until you taste fucking blood,
almost
doesn’t. Fucking. Count.”

Dylan moved to the table to pick up his cigarettes with a shaking hand. He lit one with his lighter hand trembling.

“Fuck you,” Brian said. “I didn’t
almost
suck your fucking dick. You asshole.” Brian shoved him, and Dylan let him, backpedaling from the momentum. “You fucking
asshole
.” He shoved him again, Dylan’s shoulder bumping the edge of the living room doorway, Dylan mumbling, “I’m sorry. I hated not telling you.”

“
Fuck
you.” Disgusted, he didn’t even shove again, just turned away.

“I just didn’t want
anyone
knowing.”

“Except the guys you fucked, right? Did they know, or was it a surprise for them too when they found your dick in their mouths?”

“No, that— This was different, Bri. This was—”

“This was fucking bullshit.” He punched the wall beside the bathroom door. His knuckles left a dent in the plaster; the plaster left a satisfying pain in his knuckles. “Fuck!” he yelled, betrayed, bending with the force of it, his throbbing hand clutched against his stomach. “Fuck!”

Someone next door banged on the wall.

Fuck!

Dylan hadn’t trusted him with one of the most important things in his life. And then he’d put Brian in a situation where he’d wind up aching for the same thing Dylan was into, until he couldn’t help but grab the relief closest to him. Until he was so out of his mind, he thought it was all his fucking idea.

Of
course
Dylan hadn’t pulled away from the kiss.

Of
course
he’d had no qualms about clipping clothespins to Brian’s nipples or shoving a phallic popsicle in his mouth.

Or swallowing his fucking cum.

“Bri. Listen.”

“Fuck off.”
Shit
. He’d opened the skin at one of his knuckles. Blood trickled down the side of his finger. He jammed his knuckle in his mouth.

“Listen. You’re pissed.”

“No shit?”

“And I understand why. If you want to sit down and talk about it…
I
want to sit down and talk about it.”

“Oh? Now?
Now
you want to talk about it?” His knuckle throbbed, still bleeding. He grabbed a paper towel. “Not last month, when it would have been good to know going into this, or anytime in the last
twelve fucking years
, but now.
Now
you want to talk about it.”

“If you need to take some time and process it and maybe hit a few more things over at your own place…”

“Fuck off,” Brian breathed, bent with his hands on his thighs, eyes flicking across the pattern of the kitchen’s dull linoleum.

“I can take you back to your car,” Dylan said. “It’s not that far. I mean, I drove in a big circle last night to—”

“No shit. I know where I left my car and where I am now.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Change back into my fucking clothes and get out of here.” The bathroom door slammed when he threw it shut. He leaned against it. His sweat-stiff clothes sat in a heap against the wall. He thumped his skull against the door. God
damn
it.

He closed his eyes and saw the Dylan he knew as a complete stranger all of a sudden—some guy who creeped on guys, some guy full of unfamiliar desires and hidden secrets. His mouth sucking a parade of cocks. Grimacing, Brian cranked the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to wipe it away, wipe the whole fucking month away.

This was as much his fault. He never should have agreed to do it. And he never should have crossed that fucking line himself—twice.

He
wasn’t
into guys. He should have put a stop to what they were doing at the first twinge of trouble, but he’d been too fucking greedy. Too into it to think straight.

He felt sick, his face clammy, cold. Spots danced in his vision. He was maybe on the verge of hyperventilating. Maybe on the verge of experiencing an encore performance of his bacon, eggs, and orange juice. He tugged off the shirt Dylan had lent him and pulled on his own, its smell sharp and acrid, and he didn’t give a shit. He pushed the pants down and stepped out of them, stepping into his own underwear, then his jeans, working them over his hips, yanking up the fly, fastening the button just below the little lip of tour fat that still spilled over. Fuck that too.

He sat on the toilet to pull on his socks and boots. His jacket was out in the kitchen. Fuck
everything.

“I don’t need a ride,” he said, striding out of the bathroom, sweeping his jacket one-handed from the back of a chair on his way to the door.

“Are you sure? I can take you.”

“No, you have a van and a shitload of shit to return to your storage unit. If you need help getting back after you drop the van off”—he stopped in the doorway and looked at Dylan, who looked as sick as Brian felt—“call a fucking cab.”

“My bike’s at the rental place. I’m good.”

“Whatever.” He dragged the door shut, hard, the blinds banging against the other side of the window, and launched down the steps two at a time.

Chapter Thirty-One

So what next? he wondered as the morning sun warmed his back. Did they even have a band anymore? Did they still work together after this, cold shoulders onstage, each writing in his separate corner, releasing albums full of separate songs because it was the smarter financial move than splitting up? Or did he call some of the musicians they’d worked with, some of the musicians they’d toured with, see who was interested in getting something new together? Some of the fan base would come along, and those musicians might bring their own. He probably couldn’t keep the name. They owned that fifty-fifty.

Jesus Christ. Was he a
complete
fucking moron?

How did you not even have an inkling your best friend was gay?