Chapter Two

Conrad

Mason basically knew everything about me.

All except that I was in love with him.

At first, I thought maybe it was just Mason. But it turned out I found myself wanting to kiss and touch other guys as well. But lately, it had only been Mason that I had wanted to touch. I had yet to tell anyone that I liked men. Let alone tell my best friend who I fantasized about.

Fantasized of the things we could do together.

Before I told anybody, I wanted to make sure that I was comfortable with myself. But I knew the time was coming soon.

I had to be the real me.

But with Mason, we were best friends. I didn’t want to ruin our relationship. But when his hands were on me, I had never been so hard in my life. And when I sat straddled on him, I almost couldn’t control myself. I had such a strong urge to pull down his pants and take him right there. The thought of pushing deep into him almost made me come in my pants. So maybe it was time for me to say something. But saying my feelings out loud was something I was never very good at.

Neither of us spoke as we lay there. His arm brushing against mine, that bit of skin on skin contact, igniting my hard-on again.

“Hey,” Mason said after a while, turning on his side and propping his head up with his hand. “Want to go grab a bite to eat?”

I looked up into his midnight-blue eyes. “Sure.”

He smiled, showing me his perfect white teeth. “Good, because you’re paying.”

“You’re a mooch.”

“You know you love it,” he said, poking me in the ribs.

I grabbed his hand in my fist and squeezed all of his fingers together.

“Ow.”

“Sorry,” I said, letting go.

“Like this,” he said, taking my hand and pushing his palm against mine then entwining our fingers.

We both looked at our interlocked hands.

Mason smiled, and I knew I wanted him to be mine forever.

If I could only somehow let him know.

 

Neither of us spoke of our massages the day before or how we lay together afterward or how when we went out to eat that day we couldn’t take our eyes off each other.

That he fed me French fries and let me lick the salt from his fingers, and that he gasped and grabbed the edge of the table as I sucked on them, working them in and out of my mouth.

Or how I squeezed behind him in the doorway earlier, and stood there for a moment, grabbing his hips, my erection pressing against the top of his ass. How I might’ve licked and sucked on his neck, leaving us both panting and breathless.

I squirmed in my chair thinking about it, knowing there were only a few minutes left in class and that I probably needed to stay seated until the excitement in my pants went down.

“Conrad,” someone called.

I looked up and this girl Jill, who I went out with a while back, smiled at me. I guess we were still friends. She was tall with long red hair and a smattering of freckles across her face. I still thought she was beautiful. But now when my mind would think of someone’s looks, I always ended up comparing them to Mason and how no one was as beautiful as he was. His long lashes, his full bottom lip, his flawless porcelain skin. Every inch of him was beautiful, from his golden-brown hair down to his thin waist and perfect round ass.

“Hi. What’s up?”

“I’m meeting up with a few other sports medicine majors and thought maybe you’d like to come. I told them that I knew you, and they wanted to talk to you.” She hugged her books to her chest and smiled.

“They want to talk to the washed-up pitcher of Ohio Valley University?”

“Conrad, you injured your shoulder. Never being able to play baseball again because of it is not washed up.” Perhaps what she said was true. But I still had some troubles grasping it. Going from being this hotshot pitcher that had pros scouting him to just any other guy in class came as a bit of a shock to my system.

I had become ordinary.

“People love to remind me about the not being able to play again.”

Jill scrunched up her nose. “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s okay. It’s not like it isn’t the truth. Let’s go hang with these sports medicine people.”

 

“Hey, guys, this is my friend, Conrad,” Jill said, introducing me to a group of about five others sitting around a table in one of the student lounges.

“Hi,” I said, shrugging off my winter coat.

“Have a seat, man,” a guy wearing a button down and a baseball cap said.

I took a seat next to Jill. “So, ask me anything.”

“How did you injure your shoulder? I’m Dale by the way.” Dale stood up and shook my hand over the table.

“Conrad, but I guess you all know that. But I tore my rotator cuff.”

“It wasn’t just some little tear. He tore it all the way. And twice, right?” Jill asked.

“Yes, but it was the second time that did me in. Never the same after that surgery.” I tore it halfway through the season last year. The first time was back in high school. Maybe because I was younger then, more elastic or something, I was able to bounce back. But now, the speed I can throw at is just kind of sad.

“Well, that sucks,” Dale said. A few of the others nodded.

“It does. And now you want all the boring details about rehab?”

“You know we do,” said another guy who wore an Ohio Valley University baseball shirt.

“That’s where I met Conrad, actually,” Jill said. She was the beautiful young intern deciding if she wanted a career in sports medicine, and I was the sad guy with an injured shoulder who needed some attention and reassuring.

I then filled them in on all the stuff only aspiring physical therapists would find interesting. And we seemed to be getting along fine until Dale opened his mouth and spewed out words that made me want to punch him, cause him serious harm.

“You’re always hanging around that fruity little fruitcake,” Dale said with a laugh.

“Yo, shut your fucking mouth,” I said, shooting up to my feet.

“Sorry.” He held his hands up in the air like he was under arrest. “Just saying, he’s like super gay.”

“One, that’s goddamn offensive, and you can’t be super gay, you’re just gay. It’s not like you achieve some sort of level. Gay, a bit gayer, super gay. And stop stereotyping people. There’s no one way to be gay.”

“Actually, there is a scale to measure gayness,” a girl with a blond ponytail pointed out.

“I don’t give a shit,” I said, glancing over at her and then refocusing on Dale. “Why do you have to even mention his sexuality? If I saw you across the quad, I wouldn’t be like there’s that super straight guy. Homophobic, perhaps that’s what I would say. There’s that guy who makes fun of gay people.”

“Well, thanks for ruining our afternoon.” Dale sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You ruined it yourself. I’ll see you later, Jill.” I gathered up my backpack and coat and took off.

“I’m coming with you,” Jill said, getting up.

“Me too,” said the blond girl who had yet to introduce herself.

“You mentioned a scale?” I asked the blond girl as we walked away, taking a few breaths because I was still a bit riled up.

“Yeah, it’s called the Kinsey scale, but a lot of people don’t like it because it’s putting a label on your sexuality and kind of erases some sexual identities. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it, but what do you think it’d say about you?” She took her ponytail and wrapped it around her pointer finger.

“I gotta go.”

 

I went back to my room, thinking about what it would say about me. I knew I liked guys.

But I had never been with one.

Never kissed one.

In high school, I dated a couple of girls, and then in college, one, who was Jill who also was the only one I ever slept with. But I didn’t want to be with girls. So did my past make me not all that gay? Could that be a thing? Maybe I was bi, but then I didn’t want to date girls anymore. All I knew was that I wanted to be me, and me at that moment was a guy who wanted to be with another guy.

Maybe I could start small. Tell one or two people to see how it felt to finally let it out. But I’d skip over the how bad I wanted to make love to my best friend part.

How I dreamt about how good we would be together.

How wonderful he smelled, like how the air smelled after a rain shower, so fresh and sweet.

But I didn’t even know who I could confide in, so I said nothing, and over the next day, I just watched Mason.

His delicate way of moving.

The way he shook his head to get his bangs out of his face.

The intent look he’d get when he read. Even when he read those boring classics for his lit classes, he’d get just as into it. Biting his lip, jotting things down in the margins, reading certain passages out loud, and I found it so goddamn sexy. So many opportunities passed where I could’ve said something about how I felt, but every time I chickened out. But he must’ve known. There was no denying something was starting between the two us.

***

“Sorry about the other day.” It was the blond ponytail girl from Jill’s group of sports medicine friends. She came running up to me after I exited the classroom. Jill walked out of class behind me and gave her a wave.

“I had no right to ask you that, and I’m Margo.” She held out her hand, waiting for a shake.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a shrug, shaking her hand after staring at it for a few seconds too long.

“I went out of town.”

“Okay.” I started walking down the hallway through all the other students leaving classes and rushing to their next ones.

“I should’ve apologized that day. But if it makes you feel any better, the scale says I’m one hundred percent gay, which I kind of knew already before I took the test.”

“So can you be like ninety-five percent gay?” I asked, scratching the back of my neck. Jill looked over at me.

“It’s not full on percentages. It’ll say like mostly gay, half gay/half straight,” Margo said.

“So it doesn’t use bi and stuff like that?” I pushed open the doors, and we walked into the chilly winter air.

“No, another reason some people don’t like it.”

I let out a shaky breath. “So would it say like pretty damn gay if you knew you wanted to be with guys but might’ve been with girls in the past or not that gay at all?”

“That sounds pretty damn gay to me,” Margo said. “Maybe bi.”

“But what if I knew I didn’t want to be with girls?” I bit the corner of my lip and looked at the ground.

“Back to pretty damn gay then,” Margo said.

“There are different kinds of attraction, too,” Jill said. “You could be romantically attracted to women but sexually attracted to just men.”

“Can I also be romantically attracted to guys, too?” I asked. It all sounded kind of confusing.

“Yes, there are no rules when it comes to your sexuality,” Margo said.

“So am I gay or not?”

Jill bugged her eyes at me and then grinned. “How do you feel? You don’t have to identify yourself a certain way.”

“Okay, so when I think about myself and being with other people.” I put my hands over my face. “Sorry, Jill. Why am I talking about this in front of you?”

Jill stopped walking. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“You’re not mad because we dated and well…” I dropped my hands to my sides and looked at her.

“You mean sex? We had sex. But I have no reason to be mad at you. Is this a recent thing?”

I ran a hand through my hair. “No. I think I’ve known for a while, but I wasn’t totally sure until more recently.”

“So, when we did it? Wait can I ask this in front of Margo?” Jill glanced over at Margo. The three of us stopped in the middle of the front sidewalk to the building and huddled together as a breeze sent shivers down our spines.

“Go ahead.”

“You seemed to really enjoy it.”

“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I know I’m awful, but when we…” I winced, waiting for … I don’t know, yelling, her slapping me.

“Had sex. You’re allowed to say it, Conrad.” She looked up at me, and our eyes met.

“I’m just worried it sounds like I used you. I knew I didn’t want to, but I went ahead and had sex with you anyway.”

“Did you ever like sleep with anybody else besides me?” Jill asked.

I shook my head.

“I didn’t know that. Why did I think you’d gotten with a lot of girls?” Jill asked, pulling her coat closed as another breeze blew.

“Because I let everyone think that. I was the only one on the team that I knew of who might not have been straight, and I was so worried if people knew. And I’m really just getting comfortable with it now. I haven’t told anybody, but Mason kind of knows.”

“How does Mason know?” Jill asked with a smile on her face.

“Stuff that’s been going on between us,” I said, biting my thumb.

“I think maybe I knew that you liked him. You never stopped talking about him. Are you sure he knows?”

“I haven’t necessarily said it to him, but we’ve had these moments, kind of intense moments. But I don’t know if I’m ready to say it out loud to him yet. He’s my best friend.”

“Question,” Margo said, raising her hand like she was in class.

“Yes.”

“How long did you two go out for and why did you break up?” Margo looked back and forth between Jill and me.

“It was only like a month, and he was never there,” Jill said. “After that one time we had sex, he began leaving once we started kissing. I thought at first, he was cheating on me. Now I know that it turns out he didn’t want to be kissing a girl,” Jill said.

“So you did the breaking up?” Margo asked, pulling a hat out of her pocket and slipping it on over her head.

Jill shrugged. “Yeah, he didn’t even argue. Just said okay.”

“And you guys stayed friends?”

“Yeah, we did,” I said. And I was happy we stayed friends because without realizing it, I found people to confide in. I told people that I liked men and that I wanted to have sex with them. My chest began to tighten a bit thinking about it. I made it past a hurdle in my life that had been in the way for quite a while.

“Okay, Conrad, you are definitely not straight,” Margo said, punching me gently in the shoulder.

I took in a deep breath and slowly let it out, closing my eyes for a minute. “No, I’m not.”

“You okay?” Margo asked. “You did just come out to us and all, and I barely know you.”

“Um, yeah. Holy shit.”

Jill threw her arm around me. “We should all do something. Me, Margo, you, Mason.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll give you a text.”

“Okay, cool.”

“I’m proud of you, Conrad,” Jill said, squeezing me tighter in the hug.

“That means a lot, thanks.”

I felt I was ready to go back to my room and pass out.