It's Like This (10 page)

“Fuck, Niles,” he whispers desperately into my ear, and my dick twinges wantonly in response. He’s quickening the pace, and fumbling for my cock, and his thrusts are becoming more shallow and his finger nails bite into me again, and he thrusts so so so hard, one, two, three, four and I feel him coming inside me, one-two-three-four and he holds there, in me, where he strokes me to completion, knowing I’m full of him. He collapses on me and we breathe together for a long moment before he pulls out and wipes himself off and pushes me against the wall, his cum seeping out of me, and kisses me, lips drawing me into him, then forcing me backwards. And I’m naked and he’s clothed and he’s kissing me still until finally he whispers that I should go shower, and me? I obey.

My whole body is zinging. I can’t concentrate on anything for long. In the shower, the water washing down the drain is light pink at first from the scratches on my chest and stomach. I turn the heat way, way up and just let everything hurt. I dry off and pull on some underwear but I don’t get dressed. I’d just get little sticks of blood on a shirt right now anyway.

When I come back into the room, Rylan is sitting on the far bed, something in his hand. He looks up. I walk over to him, too simultaneously relaxed and energized to feel self-conscious. I sit next to him. He holds out a tube of antibacterial goop.

“Here. For your battle wounds,” he explains, fingering one of the tiny lines of blood droplets forming on my abs.

“You do it,” I say, flopping backwards on the bed. “You made them, you fix them.” It’s so amazingly liberating to talk like this, to acknowledge what happened just actually happened—that mentioning it is somehow allowed.

He applies the greasy gel studiously to each one of the numerous scratches individually. It doesn’t sting or anything, but I’m guessing they will start to by tomorrow.

“Sit up and I’ll do your back,” Ry offers.

“They’re on my back?” I didn’t know, I have no recollection of…but I was pretty distracted. I sit up, granting him access. I can barely feel his fingertips as he carefully smoothes the cream into my skin. Finally, his fingers pause. He drops his forehead onto my shoulder. I’m almost positive he’s about to speak, so I stay quiet. I hear him lick his lips and sigh very softly.

“Niles,” he says, and I can feel it in my stomach, this is going to be something big, something we’ve never said before. “Look. I…I would never cheat on you.”

I don’t have a ready response for that, so he plows right on. “Just in case, you know, that’s what the condom thing was about. I know I reacted shittily but. I don’t know. It hurt that you thought that I would cheat. I would never cheat.”

The words are there and I know I shouldn’t say them but for some reason I can’t stop myself because I’m angry. Because he’s got all the cards, he’s always had all the cards and I’m always guessing. “You can’t cheat. That would imply that we were in an actual relationship.”

There’s a pause or beat or something. Like in a script. Like…
beat
.

“What do you…mean by that?” he asks carefully. Trying so hard not to accuse that it comes out suspicious anyway.

What does he mean what do I mean? I don’t know. It would mean that we had something that we don’t. So far as I can tell. At least nothing he’s admitted to and that’s fucking shitty of him. But I’ve already used up my courage and I’m already unravelling and terrified that I’ve gone and done a thing that will make him leave and I don’t want that, I just don’t—and so I chicken out.

“What do you think I mean?”

“Um. That you don’t think we’re in a relationship?” His voice is firm. Or scared. Or an obscure mixture of both.

“Well. We’re not. Not really.”

He lifts his forehead off my shoulder and my body mourns the loss and a detached sort of nausea settles in.

“Oh.”

He stands, wipes his hands on his jeans and then slides them into his pockets. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are on the window. This isn’t what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting. Probably for this conversation to never happen. Or for him to be the one telling me that we weren’t actually together and not the other way around. But I went and said it, the truth, and he’s just standing there, spine slumping and—I’m almost positive—defeated.

And even though I don’t know how I wanted this to go, or if I wanted it to go at all, I
do
know that I don’t want it to go like this.

“What?” The word is a whisper because I don’t know what else to say.

He doesn’t answer.

“Ry, what?” There is a note of pleading in my voice that I hate but can’t shake.

He still just stares out the seagull-shit-stained window.

“So, we’re not actually together.”

A definite edge of coldness. I’m in uncharted waters here. Possibly drowning. So instead of answering I shrug.

“So the last three years have been…what?” he pushes.

Again I haven’t got any sort of answer.

“Like…a joke? A game? Some sort of experiment?”

Fuck! I don’t know! He’s the one who’s been in charge here. I’m just…along for the ride. I mean. This is what I wanted, right? Wanted him to say we were really together, that my fears were pathetically unwarranted. That I’m an idiot and he loves me and I really have nothing to worry about. But for some stupid reason I can’t say that. I can’t tell him what I want to hear, even though now because I’m petrified and my tongue is useless in my mouth and I just
can’t
.

“I don’t know,” I murmur.

“You don’t know.” I watch his shoulders tense in silhouette.

“Ry…” I offer, helplessly.

“What?” he snarls and turns on me, finally, his face screwed up with anger and making me wish he’d stayed looking at the window because I’ve never seen him like this, except maybe for the condom thing and I hate him like this. He’s not
him
like this.

“I…” Can’t speak. I can’t.

“What the hell are you doing with me, then?” He’s livid now, with a fearsome quality to his eyes that I’ve never seen, even when he’s holding me down.

“I…”

“You,” he echoes nastily.

Fuck. He’s going to walk out. He’s going to turn and leave before I ever can spit out what I’m trying to say.

“I don’t…” I try again.

“How many people are you sleeping with?” he hisses, leaning into me. “All this time, I thought you belonged to me, with me, but maybe you’ve got a dozen others hooked in to your fucking little innocent, untouchable, unreachable scheme. Have them all fucked up and in love with you, just like me. You think it’s a good game, hey? Fucking with people?”

“No! I…”

I want to explain. I need to tell him. But I don’t know what I need to tell him, I can’t remember what’s the truth. If I’m the one that loves him or he’s the one that loves me and who’s been keeping what a secret all this time. I can’t keep track of all the shit we don’t tell each other.

“How many!” he demands. He jerks his hand as if to grab my arm but stops himself, arm suspended in mid-air.

“You!” I gasp out. “Just you. Fuck, just you.”

He turns away again. “Put on some fucking clothes,” he orders. “I can’t concentrate with you sitting there like that.”

I remain frozen, dumbfounded for a minute, waiting for him to recant that, he can’t mean it. He waits, then turns and watches me as I slide on some jeans and one of his T-shirts, one that obnoxiously hangs off him like some ’90s relic, but fits me. Shit.

“OK,” I say, quietly. I don’t even know.

“OK,” he echoes, voice hollowed.

Fuck. I need to fix this. I never fix anything. I’m an adamant disciple of avoiding an issue until it goes away, but I know I can’t do this this time. It’s too goddamn important. I
need
to fix this. I walk to him and stand uselessly in front of him like some shy, dopey sixth grader who doesn’t know what to do with his hands on a first date.

“I…didn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh, really.” His voice is cold, sarcastic, detached. “Because there are so many ways ‘we’re not in an actual relationship’ can be taken.”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry, I’m stupid, it’s stupid. I’m sorry.” I can’t tell if I’m talking or sobbing, my breath is so shallow and desperate.

“What’s stupid?” he answers, and I think there’s a tinge of generosity, or compassion there—or at least something more than anger.

“Me. I’m an idiot. A huge idiot. Colossal, even.”

He waits.

“It’s just…Fuck, Ry. We don’t…talk. About it. So I didn’t know, because…you never say…”

Shock clouds Rylan’s expression. “
We
don’t talk about it? WE? You’ve got to be kidding me, Niles.
You
don’t talk about anything! You don’t initiate ANYTHING. You leave me hanging here in limbo. Permanently wondering if you’re going to answer the next time I call, if you even want me to call, if…if fucking EVERYTHING. I don’t talk because you so obviously can’t handle it. And I am trying to be patient, just give you some fucking time. I mean, coming out and everything is a big thing, and I know that, and you’ve got family you didn’t want to disappoint, but they don’t care. And we’ve got straight friends, but they don’t give a shit, and so I’ve just been waiting and waiting and fucking waiting for you to tell me the capacity in which I exist to you, and you never, ever do. And this has been going on for three fucking years! I’ve been waiting for three years for you to just be able to say it, and you haven’t! All you can tell me is that you didn’t know we were even a thing? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? Are you seriously just trying to—to wreck me?”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. It’s all I can come up with.

“Don’t,” he says, “Please don’t. Don’t be sorry. Don’t just sit there and say useless things. Tell me what is going on or how it got to this, or fucking anything, really, but please don’t just not talk. I can’t stand another minute of not talking.”

And…it’s actually terrifying? Because I want so, so much to just lie down and close my eyes, stop thinking, stop moving, even, because somehow I know if I did, no matter how much he’d want to get up and leave, eventually he’d lie down too and hold me up against him and we’d never have to say a word about this again. But I can’t do that. He…fucking…bought my little sister a book about sharks, and gives an actual shit about my family, and he takes me to the symphony and he can read me, in sex and life and sleep, and he knows what to do with me even when I don’t know what to do with myself. So I say it. It’s thick and bulky and unused, but it’s true.

“I love you.”

His eyes bore into mine—I wanted it to be enough but he’s still waiting.

“I seriously do,” I insist. “I love you so much that mostly all I can think about is what will happen when I lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” he says incredulously. “Where the fuck would I go?”

“I don’t know! I just know that…I don’t know. Fuck. Like…the girl. Woman. The bride, you know, at the club?”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“What? Why?”

“The bride, Niles? Seriously?”

“Yes, the bride, seriously! She was all over you and you were all over her and it was like you were putting on a show about how much you didn’t need me.”

“Jesus Christ, Nigh. You have it, like, absolutely ass-backwards. Can I tell you what was going on there? Which I would have told you if you’d asked. Or I would have told you if I thought for even a second that it would have crossed your mind that I want anyone other than you?”

I don’t give him an answer and he doesn’t wait for one.

“Look. She comes up to me and is all, ‘So…I know this is totally un-PC of me, but my girlfriends dragged me here and said I needed to find a man on my so-called last night of freedom, and I know it’s stupid, but I don’t want to disappoint them, because they put all this energy into this thing and I’m actually a total people-pleaser, but I’m really not that interested in like, you know, hooking up with anyone, so…Are you gay? And I’m not asking that because you are flamboyant or anything, not that there’s anything wrong with being flamboyant, it’s just I saw you kissing a dude, so I’m hoping you won’t hate me for asking to participate in a little charade?’ And I said something like, ‘Happy to help a lady out!’ And then we danced and hung out long enough to satisfy her friends. Do you see where I’m going with this, Niles? She was dancing with me because I am gay and she didn’t want to feel like she was cheating.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh, and by the way, Nigh, I’m gay. Really fucking gay. I am into men. Not women. Men. And not just any men, but a specific one in particular, namely, in case you haven’t noticed,
you
. Do you get me?”

I nod and feel like a general idiot-freak.

“Do you hate me for being such a douche?” I mumble.

“I believe the term is douchius,” he corrects, smiling a little. “And no. Never.”

He puts his arms around me, finally, letting me hide my stupid face in his bony shoulder.

“You OK?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I breathe. “It’s just…fuck. There’s so much stuff we’ve never talked about, so much stuff we’ve avoided…”

“Like what?”

I lift my head and step back enough to see his face. Rylan’s arms slide down mine ’til we’re carefully holding each other’s forearms. “I don’t know…anything my apparently neurotic brain deemed taboo?”

He looks at me curiously. “Like…?”

“I dunno! Like sex. Or us. Or how we started, or when we started, or what we do, or what we’re doing.”

“Do you want to? I mean, I’m happy to, but talking doesn’t seem to be your absolute favourite thing.”

“Well. Yeah. I guess I think I do. Like…I don’t even know how you decided to…make a move that first morning.”

Rylan snorts. “I have no idea how I decided either. I was terrified I would permanently screw things up between us. Thought you would shove me off, or knee me in the balls, and I’d be lucky if you passed it off as us being drunk.”

“I thought about it,” I offer, and then clarify, “The drunk thing. Not the other stuff.”

“Ha. Thanks.” He pauses. “I’m pretty glad you didn’t.”

I shrug. “One of the smarter things I’ve done in regards to you, apparently.”