19. Ryan
RYAN
S o, I might have made a slight miscalculation when it comes to Malcolm, but in my defense, he seemed fine at work yesterday. Better than right now anyway. Right now, he’s breaking my fucking heart.
I’ve never liked seeing him sad. It’s just that I haven’t seen him like this in a very, very long time.
I assume it’s because of me, but it’s possible something else happened.
I knew I was going to see him today—we’ve had this meeting planned since Monday, and I also knew ignoring his calls and texts was kind of a dick move, but every time I thought about responding or reaching out to him, my phone was basically a hot pan I didn’t want to touch with my bare hand.
So I figured—wait until Saturday, but it looks like that was too long.
In my defense, I haven’t talked to anyone this week. Calyx has been out of town, and I haven’t spoken with Norah either. Sometimes I just need some alone time. I don’t mind it. It’s helped clarify some things for me.
Namely that I have an apology to make. I squeeze Bailey’s shoulder as I follow Malcolm out .
“Wanna grab some food?” I ask from behind him as he’s walking down the stairs.
“Not really.”
I should probably know better than to ask this, but, “You want a drink?”
“Nope.”
Good. He’s hard enough to deal with when he’s sober.
“Wanna come home with me?”
He stops at the foot of the stairs and turns around. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He puts his hands on his hips. “You don’t talk to me for four days, and now you’re asking me to come home with you? What do I look like? A Tinder hook up?”
“I need to talk to you Mal?—”
“Could have fucking fooled me.”
“Okay, listen?—”
“Is this payback?” he asks. “For high school?”
I have to take a deep breath because yes , there’s a part of avoiding him that was, maybe a small percent, spiteful. Do I want to admit that? No. But do I want to move past this? I do. “Not completely.”
“But some,” he says.
“Maybe.”
“Nice.”
“Sorry,” I say because I actually am sorry. It was immature and stupid, and I wanted to know how much he’d care. I wasn’t trying to hurt him, but I didn’t mind if it hurt, if that makes sense. Seeing it up close is different. “I needed space, but…I should have just said that.”
Malcolm drops his head and rubs his face with his hands. “You did. I just…Ryan, it might not seem like it, but this means something to me. ”
“What?” I ask.
“What?” he says, his face blank.
“What does it mean to you?”
“Oh. Well, I feel like you think I just want to get off with you, and I mean—that’s not a small part of it, but I want it to make us closer, not push you away.”
“Okay.” I guess I can accept that. For the moment. “But it’s kinda overwhelming.” Not to mention out of character. Out of the blue. Driving me out of my mind.
“I get that,” he says. “And it’s the same for me, but you shutting me out fucking sucks.
And I know I did it to you—worse—I know there’s a lot of really bad, shitty history between us, but this isn’t some random idea I had—this is who I am .
Whatever you thought you knew about me in high school, I can guarantee you got it wrong. ”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like—” He lowers his voice. “Like if you thought I was happy. I wasn’t. I was miserable.”
Fuck. Of all the things he’s told me, that resonates. It makes a lot of what he did back then make more sense. If he’d been happy, he might have been kind and understanding. Instead, he was the opposite—angry and cruel. His confession gives me the soft urge to hug him, but I don’t. “That sucks.”
He rolls his eyes and lets out a huge sigh. “I’m not trying to say I had it worse?—”
“I get what you’re saying,” I tell him. “It’s not a competition.”
“I’m really fucking sorry, Ry.”
“I know.” I take another step down, another step closer.
One stair remains between us. “It’s hard for me, though.
Trusting you is hard for me.” I want to be clear.
I need him to know that whatever it is he wants from me—friendship—a hook-up—any kind of relationship really—needs to start from scratch.
I have to accept what happened to me after he threw me to the wolves, but I’ve also got to understand why he felt like he needed to hurt me.
Even if it was pure malice, I deserve to know that.
I need to know who the fuck I’m dealing with.
It’s the only way we can wipe the slate clean and move on.
He looks up and meets my eyes. His are so blue with the sky reflecting in them. “I want to work on that,” he says. “Trust. You mean so fucking much to me, but I want you, too. I want you like crazy. I don’t know what to do with how much I want you.”
In terms of things that turn me on—this whole moment ranks pretty high.
“I’m gonna ask you this one more time,” I say, taking the next step, literally and figuratively as I slide my hand into his. “Can I buy you dinner?”
He shuts his eyes like the question itself hurts, but then he nods. “Yeah.”
We’re one of many same sex couples in the quiet seafood restaurant I picked for dinner.
Bailey lives in the Castro District, which is widely known as the gay part of town.
It’s actually awkward for me to be here, having identified as straight with the one exception for so long.
Malcolm doesn’t seem to notice, but then again, he’s rarely awkward—at least from what I can tell on the outside.
He orders a beer, and I order water.
“Do you not drink?” he asks.
I force myself to be honest. It’s what I want from him, so I’ll lead by example.
“I don’t want to say anything out loud I didn’t mean to say.
I’m just being overly cautious. When we decided to team up, I decided I wouldn’t drink.
It’s not a huge sacrifice for me. I always liked weed better anyway. ”
“When did you stop doing that?” he asks.
“When I had to pass a drug test.” I smile.
“How’s that going?”
“I’m less hungry.”
“You don’t have to be careful what you say around me,” Mal says just when I started to think we’d be moving smoothly past that part.
“I’m also kind of an asshole when I drink,” I add.
He snorts a laugh. “Would anyone be able to tell?”
“Funny,” I say flatly.
Malcolm leans back in his chair and looks around the restaurant. It’s a low lit, narrow space with shiplap walls and atmospheric fairy lights. There’s a fake candle flickering between us on the table. “This feels like a date, and I look like shit.”
He doesn’t look like shit. Not at all. He doesn’t look like himself with his disheveled hair, facial scruff, and the tank top, but in terms of how sexy I find him in comparison to anyone else in the room, he’s number one.
But I’m beyond biased. He’s sexier to me than anyone on the planet.
If I thought I had it bad for him before I had sex with him, I’m a fucking goner now.
“You’re fine,” I say. “So how did people on the Discord figure out we know each other?”
“Bud and Stephanie.”
“On my bed?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Shit. They don’t know we’re in San Francisco, do they?”
“Yeah. Someone guessed, and I confirmed.”
“Why?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Why not? It’s a big city. We’re not criminals.”
“Do they know this is like—a scheme though?”
“No. They’re just genuinely curious. Don’t worry, they like you. ”
“I wasn’t…” Okay maybe I was going to ask what they thought about me. “Good. I’m always kind of insecure about how I come off.”
He looks closely at me for a long moment. “Intimidating,” he says.
I scowl. “How’s that?”
“You know—the surreal good looks, the nearly creepy but very sexy eyes, the little frown line…” He draws a line down the space between his eyes. “That makes you seem annoyed, but really you’re just concentrating. The constantly perfect hair.”
“It’s not,” I assure him.
“No?”
“No,” I say running a hand through it. “I work hard on this. It’s very well trained. Like Stephanie.”
“Don’t make me name your hair.”
“Yeah, don’t.”
“I might,” he says.
“What would you call it?”
“Alex.”
I laugh—hard. If I had water in my mouth, it’d be everywhere.
His smile is huge, and that’s its own reward.
Without putting too much thought into it, I lock my calf with his beneath the table.
His shoulders drop, and he lets out a breath, his smile going soft.
His relief becomes my relief. Touching him comes with a set of complications I’m not sure I’m prepared to deal with, but it also comes with a peace I can’t find anywhere else.
If peace can be scary, though, this particular brand of it is .
Still, what he said earlier, about how much I mean to him?
That was the lifeline I didn’t know I needed.
To change the subject, I hope, I look down at my menu, waiting for the words on it to make sense.
In terms of dates I’ve been on, if we’re going to call this a date, it’s definitely less awkward, and the butterflies or whatever in my stomach aren’t something I usually have to contend with.
Has Malcolm always been a flirt? Is he this quick and easy with Kaylin?
Am I going to keep thinking about her every time I’m with him, because I wish I wouldn’t.
I also wish I could take his word for it when he says he’s ready to move on from her, but this whole “we’re on a break” thing implies that at some point the break will end. Does that happen when she comes back from her trip? Will he be done with me by then?
These are all questions I want to ask, but now doesn’t feel like the time. He’s smiling, and I’m fucking smiling, and his leg is warm against mine, and I like us like this. Not because it reminds me of old times, but because it feels new and fresh and like something I want to try.
Try being the operative word. Not invest .
He’s way too risky. He’s like a shiny new stock on the market that everyone’s talking about, and I have this chance to get in on it early when I know the smarter thing to do is sit back, wait, and watch to see if it’s really going to perform—live up to the hype.