25
STEFAN
The car ride to the diner was tense. The dinner itself was worse. And the ride home is the worst.
“You alright, bud?” I try again, staring at the side of his face while he drives.
“Yeah,” he responds, his voice as cold and dry as it was the last five times I’ve asked since we left.
“You’ve been weird as shit since we left,” I point out again—just like the last five times.
“I’m fine.”
I don’t let up at all. “No, you’re not.”
“I just didn’t realize it’d go down like that.”
I already know what he’s pissed about. I knew it since we left the stupid place. I just want him to man up and say it. I want to hear it from his lips and not from my assumption-making brain.
“Like what?” I prod.
He sighs. “She already knew that I’m gay, apparently. Or at least she strongly suspected.” Ryan’s voice is as deadpan as a … pan. He’s got no life in him. He’s driving on autopilot.
I don’t take my eyes away from his face. “You mean Dana?”
Ryan just rolls his eyes at that and says nothing, driving.
“Alright. So she knew. Big deal. Now you don’t gotta worry about her assaulting your nuts every day at school.”
He doesn’t laugh. Humor’s not working. I need a new tack.
“You know I meant all of that,” I tell him. “What I said.”
He smirks, not taking his eyes off the road. “Which part?”
“About you being my mate. You’re my buddy, my bro.”
“Your bro.” He sighs at that, his jaw tightened. “Just two … totally normal guys, huh? That’s what we are? A straight mate and a gay one. Buddies.”
And there it is. “Is that what you have a problem with? That I said I was straight? In front of two women I don’t really know?”
His face wrinkles. “Is that your problem? Afraid of people knowing the truth?”
“Truth?” I chuckle. “You’re acting like there’s some dark thing I’m keeping from the world.”
“You don’t identify as straight.”
“I don’t identify as gay, either. We’ve talked about this.”
“Yet when we broached the subject in front of those women,” he points out, “you were so quick to slap that ‘straight’ label on yourself. God forbid anyone thinks you’re a homo.”
“Bromo,” I correct him with a smirk.
Again, the humor isn’t working on him. Not tonight. I don’t know why I keep having to make jokes about everything. He’s got me all fucking nervous suddenly, like it’s not okay anymore to just be myself. I feel guilty for something and can’t even identify it yet.
He must have had a lead foot on the way home because we’re already pulling into his driveway. After he kills the engine, he’s out of the car in an instant and heading for the front door.
I get out of the car myself and call out at him. “Seriously?”
He vanishes into the house without a word.
I follow him, frustration sitting heavily on my chest. I pull open the front door and let it shut loudly at my back as I pursue Ryan into his bedroom where he’s getting out of his nicer clothes. “Ryan. Did a hedgehog crawl up your ass or something? You’re being a little bitch right now.”
“Why?” he fires back, not even facing me as he peels off his shirt and fishes through the closet for another. “Because I’m in a relationship and I’m the only one who knows?”
“Relationship??”
“What else is this?” He spreads his hands, as if indicating the bed, the rest of the house, him, and me all at once. “We kiss. We show affection. We do sexual stuff that involves lubrication. We share our lives with each other. We live under the same damned roof, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m staying at your house,” I correct him. “Temporarily. Until I get my shit figured out. I don’t pay your bills. I didn’t pick out … fucking paint colors or whatever. And we show affection with each other because we care about each other.”
“Yeah?” He pitches the shirt he was about to put on toward the bed (it misses and falls lazily to the floor) and then he faces me challengingly. “Do you care about Parker?”
“Of course I do.”
“So you kiss him, too? You let him suck your cock?”
I shuffle my feet uncomfortably, narrowing my eyes at Ryan. “Dude. He’s married.”
“And if he wasn’t?”
I stammer two or three words before shutting up. Blood is boiling in my cheeks and my hands keep opening and closing. In an instant, I want to smack that superior look off of Ryan’s face and tackle him to the bed to kiss him. I don’t know whether I’d kiss him just to shut him up or to show him how much I feel for him.
Instead, a completely different string of words come out of my mouth. “You just can’t fucking accept me for what I am.”
That knocked the look off of his face as if I did smack him.
“You can’t,” I reiterate. “You keep trying to bend and twist me into something I’m not. What do you think I am? Your lover? Your boyfriend? When the hell did I ever agree to become that?”
“I …” Ryan’s eyes glaze over as he fights for words, his throat tight.
Ryan looks so vulnerable, standing there in just his pants, no shirt, and all his feelings out on the table. And here I am, the dutiful best buddy, shitting all over them.
“You picked me up from the bar that night a few weeks back. You took care of me. You got me on my feet. You saved me from … whatever fucking fate awaited me.”
“Because I care about you,” he mumbles miserably, his voice shaking with the threat of tears.
It should affect me. I should back down. But I don’t. “If your intention was really just to help me, then where’s this anger of yours coming from?” I ask him. “You helped me. And now you’re expecting me to pull myself inside out, to announce what I am, to admit to two random chicks I just met what’s going on in my head, to say that I’m your boyfriend or some shit …?”
“I never said that.” He grinds his teeth as he speaks. “I never called you my boyfriend.”
“Face it, Ryan. You can’t accept what I am.”
“Stefan, you don’t even know what you are,” he retorts, his voice gathering strength as he takes a step toward me. “You need some ridiculous term to cover it up. Bromo. You can’t even say it, can you? It’s like yet another stupid uniform you can wear in your life to hide what you are. Without it, you’re just an idiot with a stick swinging at balls in a field of grass.”
“There we go.” I set my jaw, feeling my heart pumping with anger. “There’s the old senior-year Ryan I was waiting for.”
“And you know it’s true.” He dares to come right up to me, all his anger radiating out of his eyes like smoke from a fire. “Why can’t you just back down and give yourself an honest look? You’ve been showing me things my whole life. Swinging bats. Throwing balls. Why can’t I do the same for you?”
“I don’t need my hand held in the bedroom.” The force of my words makes the front of his hair dance. “I’ve been just fine in that department my whole life, even before I met you.”
“Before you met me, you were just a cocky little bitch. I’m the one who made your heart race. Admit it.”
“You were my friend.”
“Admit that I made your heart race,” he persists, knowing his words are getting to me, knowing he just has to push a tiny bit more before I lose my cool. “Just like you made mine race.”
“You were nothing but my friend. Nothing.” I feel tears sting my eyes.
“Tell me those two women tonight made you feel an ounce of what you feel when I’m standing this close to you.”
“Back the fuck off, Ryan.”
“You want me. Even right now.”
My voice turns into something between a hiss and a hair. “You were just my fucking friend and teammate. That’s it.”
With his eyes locked to mine, Ryan reaches down and grips a handful of my dick through my pants. It’s swollen hard and flexes against his fingers. “Tell that to your cock,” he whispers back.
I grip his arms tight, furious in an instant, even with him still holding my cock through the prison of my pants and his five firm fingers. I don’t know whether I want to pull him into me or throw him away from me.
All of these words fire back and forth between us so quickly, I’ve lost track of what it is that I was mad about in the first place. Him being all pissy that I told those women I’m straight? The idea that Ryan looked at our weeks together as the start to a boyfriend-boyfriend relationship, where I saw it as the rekindling of the only friendship that’s ever meant anything to me?
It was just days ago that Ryan and I swore off labels. We just wanted to let this “thing” be whatever it is.
“What changed?” I hear myself say, my thoughts turning into words. “Why can’t you just let it go and let us be whatever we are? I don’t care what it actually is.”
He still doesn’t let go of my dick. “I’ve played the denial game my whole life. Pretending I’m straight. Excusing our friendship as just … a friendship like any other. I can’t keep doing it … especially not with you. I need you to be mine in the real world. Not just in this safe bubble we’ve made where no one can know.”
“I can’t do that.”
He lets go of my crotch and brings his hands to my face, pulling me into his for a kiss. It’s an aggressive kiss. Our mouths lock so powerfully that my teeth hurt.
When he pulls away, there’s tears in his eyes. “The worst part is …” he starts to say, then chokes. “The worst part is that I think I’m in love with you, Stefan.”
His words show me just how much of a man I am. I cower. I feel my knees weaken. I feel sick. I feel terrified.
“What do I do with that?” he asks, his voice quivering. “What am I supposed to do with what I feel for you?”
I bare my teeth. Frustration crawls up my stomach and settles in my words, turning them to acid. “Why do you have to go and do that, Caulfield?”
His eyes narrow. “What?”
“Why …” My own words are choked and angry. “Why do you have to go and fucking ruin everything?”
Ryan only stares at me, his lips parted, no words coming out.
I let go of him and leave. I don’t even grab anything from my room, or the boxes I stored in his garage, or my toiletries. I just swipe my keys off of the kitchen counter, push through the front door, then get into my truck and make the engine roar.
For a moment, I expect to see Ryan’s shape at the front door, whether to watch me go or to stop me. But when I pull out of the driveway and give one last look at his house, I see no one there.
A sad, weak little part of me wishes he’d fought harder and let out all the ugliest words that he could. That would make this so much easier.
Instead, he goes and says he’s in love with me.
And here I am, running the fuck away.