7. Brandon
SEVEN
brANDON
Brandon parked outside of a somewhat shabby two-story craftsman with a bench swing on the front porch and shot Gabe a text.
He only waited five minutes before Gabe pulled up behind him in a blue Prius.
They got out of their cars, and there he was.
He had a beanie on, burnt-orange hair sticking out of the bottom, and he also wore an olive-green jacket with a fur-lined hood.
His jeans had holes in the knees, and his red Converse were not appropriate at all for the weather.
Still, that sharp smile Brandon couldn’t stop thinking of spread across Gabe’s face, and Brandon had to internally coach himself in order to keep his cool.
“Hey, man,” Gabe greeted, body loose and casual, like he was comfortable meeting new people.
“Hi,” Brandon forced out, offering a hand along with it. Gabe grabbed his hand and pulled him in, giving him a slap on the back.
“I gotta be honest with you, I haven’t gotten the chance to actually print the remainder of your prints, but it shouldn’t take long,” he said, leading Brandon into his house through a door that had vintage-style letters that said SLATER HOUSE on the window in shiny gold and black paint.
While Jackson and Ryan’s house looked lived in, it looked like it was lived in by rich grown-ups.
Gabe’s house looked like it was lived in by a dozen college students.
It was clean, even if the furniture didn’t match, but was all well-worn.
It won for house character, though. Rich wood at every turn, leaded glass in tiny windows, a built-in bar and bookshelves.
“What is ‘Slater House’?” Brandon asked, trailing behind Gabe as they made their way through the living room.
“My roommates Mac and Parker own the house. Mac and Parker Slater. Pretty straightforward. You want a drink?” Gabe offered, pulling open the fridge.
“Holy shit, what is that?” Brandon asked. The inside of Gabe’s fridge was lit by a string of Christmas lights instead of a standard bulb.
“What?” Gabe asked, turning cans to face front, since he had a few different seltzers on offer.
“The lights?”
“Oh, yeah. I don’t actually know the origin of those. Maybe Mac did it. He’s handy and creative. A bit whimsical, as long as what he makes is still functional. I only have store-brand drinks. I hope that’s okay.” Clearly, the fridge was normal for Gabe—or old news.
Gabe handed him a generic can of lime sparkling water, and they headed upstairs to Gabe’s room.
“It’s messy, but…I’m an artist. I don’t know.
Is there a good excuse?” he asked, carefully pushing his door open like something might be behind it.
There was a black-and-white cat on the bed who—the second it saw Brandon—bolted out the door and straight into a cutout in the door across the hall fr om them.
“Otis doesn’t like new people. You can sit on my bed if you want.
Unless you’re allergic to cats, in which case, I guess I don’t recommend it. ”
“I’m not allergic,” Brandon said, gingerly sitting on the edge of Gabe’s bed.
When he still lived in Utah, having friends with cats had been complicated, since Ashley was so allergic.
Now, he could pet as many cats as he wanted, and it wouldn’t affect her at all.
It was a bittersweet feeling to know that his choice wasn’t putting her in danger, but only because he was so far away now. Gabe closed the door behind them.
“Nosy roommates,” he explained, riffling around his messy desk for something until he found a sleeve of paper. “Here’s what I have so far, if you want to look.”
Brandon slid the prints out and looked through them as Gabe got the printer set up on his desk.
He had some still lifes and some cartoony portraits.
There was a print of who he now recognized to be Gabe’s cat in several different stretches.
They were all in his refined, messy-on-purpose pen and ink style that Brandon found to be magnetic. Down to earth.
“You are so talented,” Brandon said, letting himself soak up Gabe’s drawings. Brandon wasn’t an art guy. He didn’t know how to appreciate it properly, but he liked looking at it, and that had to count for something.
“Thanks,” Gabe said, getting on the floor to plug his printer in under his desk. He had to unplug the lamp in order to do it, then got up to flip the room’s overhead light on. “Only one plug in the outlet works. Old house.”
Brandon thought that sounded like a fire hazard, but what did he know?
He kept flipping through the prints as Gabe got a packet of paper out and opened his laptop.
And then he realized that all the sexy prints were missing.
The ones that Gabe was about to print out right in front of him were the sexy ones.
Fuck. He hadn’t thought this through. Why did he buy them in the first place? But if he darted out of here with only these “appropriate” drawings, that would probably be as weird as waiting for Gabe to print them.
And he wanted the prints.
Internally, he ran through the pep talk he always gave himself when things were hard. He had to push through. There was only one way out. Soon enough, he would be on the other side of it.
Gabe sat perched on a wobbly stool in front of his desk as he tried to balance his computer on top of the printer, and he continued to click around, opening file after file.
The printer spurted to life with jerky mechanical sounds before it finally started to spit out prints, centimeter by centimeter.
It shook his whole desk, and some of the papers taped on the wall above his desk fluttered slightly.
Some of them looked like the originals for several of the dirty drawings.
“How long have you been drawing?”
“My whole life, I guess. Since I could hold a crayon. Probably started when you started playing hockey.”
“Yeah,” Brandon agreed. “Young.” He wasn’t the best conversationalist. Especially when he was nervous.
“Here are a few to start,” Gabe said, taking three prints off the tray. One of them was a nice safe-for-work landscape of downtown Minneapolis. The other two…were not.
One depicted two men having sex, but from the waist up. There was nothing technically obscene, but the bliss on their faces was obvious. It was hot. The other was of one man holding the back of another man’s head between his legs, like he was keeping him in place as he took his pleasure .
Brandon had to focus hard not to get an erection. When he finally looked up, Gabe was giving him a curious look. Fuck. He’d been staring at those prints for longer than was wise.
“If you bought those to be polite or something, I can refund you—” Gabe started. Brandon wondered what his face looked like. Maybe horrified. The presence of clearly depicted sex acts between two—and sometimes three—men wasn’t what was scaring him.
“No,” Brandon said. “I’m sorry. I’m not weirded out or scandalized. And I didn’t buy these to be polite. I kinda bought the other ones to be polite. Or to look less…” He couldn’t figure out how to finish that thought.
Gabe bit his lip and let the moment hang in the air for a bit, not rushing into what he asked next.
“Brandon, you bought those for you, right?”
“Yes,” Brandon said, voice tight. He felt like he was saying yes to a different question. His hands were getting so sweaty that he put his prints down on Gabe’s bed so he didn’t fuck them up.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Gabe promised. “I mean, I told my roommates I sold one of every print because I nearly peed myself in excitement when I got that order, but I’ll tell them to keep their lips zipped too.”
Brandon thought about Jackson and Ryan. How happy they were together. Out and open about their relationship. The life they’d built around their love. Brandon wanted that. He wanted it so badly. And if he kept being a chickenshit about his sexuality, he would never get it.
“I’m gay,” he said, the words coming out softer than he thought he was going to say them.
“Me too,” Gabe said, smiling encouragingly at him. “If it wasn’t obvious. ”
“I’ve never told anyone that before. Not even my sister.”
“Oh. Oh, Brandon. C’mere,” Gabe said, getting off his stool so he could pull Brandon up and into a hug.
Gabe nearly disappeared into his body as Brandon pulled him tight, this man he barely knew and came out to on an impulse.
Gabe fit so neatly under his chin. He’d wanted to tell someone for so long.
And here Gabe was, gay, proud, happy, and talented, and so disconnected from Brandon’s real life that it didn’t seem like he could lose anything by telling him.
“I’m so proud of you. It can be scary to come out.
Especially for the first time. I’m so honored. ”
Gabe spoke his words right into Brandon’s chest, and he could swear he heard them in his heart.
“I don’t know what to do,” Brandon admitted.
“Do you want to come out?” Gabe pulled away from the hug so they could look at each other while they talked.
“Yes,” Brandon said. “I also just…don’t want to tell anyone.”
“I get that. It can be such a fucking process. But you want people to know.”
“Yeah. And it’s so stupid that I’m so scared. My roommate in Iowa—my teammate—is gay. Out and proud and all that. The guys I’m staying with up here are gay.”
“Wait, who are you staying with?”
“Jackson Harper. He’s the captain. He’s famously gay by now.”
“That’s so funny. A few weeks ago, Parker, my roommate, got it in my head that I needed to get a sugar daddy to pay my bills and buy me luxuries like tuition, and so I looked up a bunch of pro athletes and DMed them on Insta.
When I found Jackson and saw that he actually was gay, and married, it blew my mind. ”
“You messaged athletes?” Brandon felt a prick of something. It couldn’t have been jealousy.