Knox #2
Maverick came into my life our freshman year of college like a burst of sunlight that just needed the cloak removed.
We were roommates, and when I first looked in his eyes, I could tell he was new and figuring life out.
At the same time, I was always running my mouth, always moving fast. He was quieter, steady—a football player who wanted to pursue a nursing career.
His unique nature was coupled with a gaze that could cut through steel.
We hadn’t known each other for five whole minutes before he blurted out he was gay as if I would be disgusted.
I simply smiled and looked at his emotional support plant, which I learned to know as Quincy.
I was the first everything. After years of hiding himself, he bloomed for me, and I never took his trust for granted. We kissed without feeling like I was breaking some invisible rule. I was the first person to tell him, “You don’t have to hide who you are with me.”
I still remember that rainy night in our dorm when we confessed our feelings for each other and made love. We were young and reckless, and maybe a little scared, but mostly we were in love.
Our families were from different worlds. Maverick was estranged from his family. But my parents? They welcomed him like their own. Mom cooked us dinner, and Dad gave us that “look” that said, “You better treat my boy right.” That kind of support held us steady through everything.
We stayed together through those years, through late-night debates, road trips with no maps, and dreams bigger than we ever thought possible until life pulled us in different directions.
I got a chance to apprentice with a world-renowned chef in Santorini, Greece, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t pass that up.
Maverick was finding his footing as one of Winston Hills Memorial’s best nurses.
The night before I left, we argued like the world depended on it.
He said, “You’re running.” I told him, “You’re settling.
” Maybe we were both just scared of what leaving each other meant.
We didn’t have a clean break, but it also wasn’t messy and bitter, more like a slow unraveling of two hearts stretched thin by distance.
But every time I come back to the states, I would make my way to Maverick, and he would make his way to me, and we would find each other every time. One text, one glance, and suddenly, no time had passed. He still kisses me like I’m the only man he’s ever loved, and honestly? Maybe I am.
Maybe I always will be.
Sexually Maverick and I always created fireworks. The way we learned each other’s bodies, then each other’s wants, and eventually, our boundaries. Or lack of them.
We were twenty-three the first time it happened.
Her name was Tasha. She was fine as hell with a smart mouth, curves for days, and eyes that burned through bullshit.
I met her first. I wanted to explore her, taste her, but I refused to betray Maverick, so I told him what I was feeling, and I laid my wants on the table.
Mav and I had already been together 5 years by then.
Our love was solid, magnetic, but we always played with the idea of polyamory.
We were never quite sure how to define the terms, me being bi and him being gay.
I remember the night I tossed out Tasha’s name, him raising an eyebrow, and then that night, everything just aligned.
I remember leaning over to him at the bar and whispering, “If I asked her to come home with us… would you be down?”
He didn’t even blink, just sipped his drink and said, “You’re already asking.”
There was something about the way he was invested in pleasing me, creating space for me to explore and satisfy both sides of my sexual self, because I wanted it and deserved to be fulfilled. That night was the first time I realized love didn’t have to mean limits.
It was never about filling a gap, and we weren’t looking for what we lacked.
At other times, it was spontaneous, where I’d lock eyes with a woman who stirred something in me, and Mav would catch the shift in my energy before I even spoke.
We were so in tune that he always knew, always listened when I needed room to breathe inside my fluidity.
There were others after Tasha, some of whose names I remember, and some I don’t.
The experiences were never just about sex; they were about exploring, unlearning shame, letting desire take up space without apology.
Mav never showed any indicator that he was sexually attracted to women outside of threesomes; instead, he showed signs of attraction to erotic experiences that didn’t live within the confines of society’s box of norms.
Maverick never flinched; he never made me choose between who I was, who I loved, and what I desired.
He didn’t just tolerate my bisexuality, he embraced it, encouraged it.
He never made it a phase or a threat to what we shared, and the more we leaned into that freedom, the more natural it felt.
We had long planted the seed for polyamory, but we never fully nurtured it, so it never blossomed into the beauty it could be.
The space to say yes to more, to evolve without breaking, had always been present.
People think loving more than one person at a time means you’re not loving deeply enough, but that’s a lie born from fear. I love Maverick with everything in me, and because of that, I planned to love the new life we could choose.
The openness, the honesty, the heat.