22. Ryan
RYAN
I t’s too soon to reconsider everything I planned for my life, and much too early to tell him I still love him.
I always knew my feelings for Malcolm ran deep.
Bone deep. He’s in my marrow, and over the years he’s made me, and he’s broken me.
Love, hate, it’s all passion. When he hurts, he hurts like being eaten alive.
But when he feels good—Jesus. Pure euphoria.
Worse, the capacity for me to hold these feelings is limitless.
I know because I love him even more for everything we just experienced together—everything we just said.
What it feels like he and I found tonight is beyond any closeness or connection I’ve ever experienced.
Because of that, touching him feels spiritual.
The next time we have sex might be fucking transcendent.
And this is all so dangerous. Delusional maybe.
I don’t want to become my own cautionary tale but just fucking look at him.
Sleepy, hooded eyes, the mess of his hair that somehow looks perfect.
The light stubble on his cheeks and jaw.
The anxious chewing on his lip and the small crease in his brow.
This must be how Bud feels about catnip. I want to lie down in a field of him.
I wrap a hand around the back of his neck and maneuver him onto his side, facing me. “Don’t overthink it, okay? Nothing good happens when you overthink something.”
Malcolm grimaces. “It’s kind of my brand, though.”
“I’m not sure I knew that about you.”
“You should by now,” he says.
“The picture’s clearing up.”
“Do you hate it?” he asks.
Hate it? Vulnerable, beautiful, pouty, fawning, gay Malcolm?
“No.” I press my lips to his. “But it definitely looks different up close.”
“Sounds like you hate it.”
I shake my head slowly, staring at his face.
“Would you rather I was straight?” he asks.
“No,” I say, surprised by the question. “I just hate that you thought you had to hide this from me. From everyone.”
“I would do a lot of things differently if I got a do-over.”
“Like what?”
“Like not treated you like shit,” he mumbles.
“If you can forgive me, I can forgive you,” I tell him, meaning it. Or at least, willing to attempt it.
He sighs. “You shouldn’t.”
“I think I might try anyway,” I tell him. “If that’s okay with you.”
His hand wraps around my arm in a soft caress. It gives me chills. He says, “I wanna ask if trust comes with forgiveness.”
“Trust is…” I stare into his amazing eyes. Do I know what trust looks like when it comes to him? It’s not something that comes naturally to me in any circumstance. I’ve been made a fool of too many times. “Complicated for me.”
“I trust you ,” he says, not like it’s a competition, more like an assurance. “Thanks for being honest with me about the summer.”
“Thanks for saying…everything. ”
His gaze drops away from mine. “I know it was weird.”
“Not for me,” I tell him. “It’s just hard to imagine what it was like for you.”
“You shouldn’t overthink that. ”
“I’m relieved no one hurt you.”
“No. I only ever hurt myself,” he says.
His words give me a sense of unease, like the first rumble of an earthquake. “Is that what you’re doing now?”
He sighs, his eyes blinking a few times before meeting mine again. “I don’t know, Ryan. Is it?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Are you planning to keep hooking up with me?” he asks.
“Obviously I’d like to.”
“It’s not obvious,” he states. “Nothing about you is obvious. So, what does it look like in your head? A summer fling or whatever?”
The idea of Malcolm Walsh thinking I can reduce him to something as fleeting as a fling makes me think I haven’t shown him how important his willingness to spend any amount of time with me outside work is.
However—I’m not ready to call this a relationship.
Not even close. Right now, I want my best friend back, and I see him in front of me again for the first time in too many years.
And if sex is part of our new dynamic—the evolution of the innocent snuggling we used to do? Fucking bonus.
I get how friends with benefits is portrayed in general. That someone’s always more invested than the other. But I’m a cautious investor. Risk isn’t something I like to dabble in. The idea of putting my love out in the open again is a risk I’m not willing to take—not while he’s in flux.
I’m not without misgivings either. I’m certainly in love with him, but there’s a part of me that wonders—and this is the part of me that’s only ever been with women—whether being with a man will be enough for me.
While I’ve never had a long-term, romantic relationship with a woman, this thing I have going on with Norah has managed to heal a lot of old wounds.
Wounds inflicted by boys and men and high school mean girls.
The opportunity to develop a relationship with a mature woman who’s probably never been any meaner than an occasional private gossip session, fells like a real chance to move on from this old, doomed crush.
I haven’t been pining , per se. I’m a fucking realist. But when he’s right here—looking at me like this—my goddamn soul wants to intertwine with his.
There’s a sense of never being able to be close enough.
But is that really what I need ?
I can want him. I can even love him. But in order to change my plans, my future, I shouldn’t be able to picture my life without him in it, but something in my mind won’t let me go there.
I keep coming back to Kaylin. Their decade long relationship as evidenced by the dog who’s now sleeping on the beanbag chair because Mal left her there staring after him longingly.
At any rate, I can’t think past tomorrow, much less the rest of the summer. I’ll see how we get along if he agrees to hang out for the day, and then maybe I’ll have a better sense of what’s possible.
But in terms of the other question he keeps asking me—what do I want? I want to be sure of him. Even if it’s just as a friend, I want to be sure I can count on him to be there.
“Can we play it by ear?” I ask.
“Are you always like this?” is his follow up question.
“Like what?”
“Like afraid to commit to anything? I only ask because—well—it sounds like it, and I’m the same way.”
“I wouldn’t say I fear commitments, no.”
“Just me, then.”
“I’m not afraid of you either,” I say, before realizing it’s not true.
He’s got a piece of me. A chunk, really, but when we’re lying here like this, it doesn’t feel like it’s missing.
If we were to lose touch again, or worse—turn on each other again—I’m not sure I’d ever feel this complete.
“Okay—maybe a little. What do you want me to commit to?”
“Just be honest with me,” he says with a defeated sigh. “And if you ever find yourself doing something because you’re feeling sorry for me—like buying me dinner for instance—don’t.”
“Hey,” I say. “Is that fair? That’s not what that was about.”
“So, if I’d shown up at Bailey’s wearing normal shoes and acting like nothing was wrong, you still would have wanted to have dinner?”
I hate that I don’t know the answer to that.
The bottom line is, dinner was great, and it was something I really needed.
I let his neck go and roll onto my back.
He doesn’t make a move to get closer. Fine.
Whatever. We can see what this looks like in the morning— if he stays.
I’m not gonna fucking force him. God forbid he thinks I feel sorry for him—that I have an ounce of compassion.
“I had a good time at dinner,” I say to the ceiling. “If you didn’t, just say no next time.”
“There’s gonna be a next time?”
“Oh, fuck off, Mal.” I flip over again, giving him my back.
“I did have a good time,” he says.
“Then why are you acting like I was bending over backwards to do some favor for you?”
“Were you?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because,” he says, sounding as frustrated as I am. “You’ve been really hard to read, and I don’t want you thinking you need to throw me a bone because I had a rough few days.”
“No? So you’d rather I didn’t go pick up the dog?”
“No. I love that you picked up the dog. I’m pretty sure I let you know how much. ”
If he’s referring to having him on his knees sucking my dick while I sat on the edge of the bed thrusting into his throat, then yes.
He showed more than enough gratitude. I wish he hadn’t brought that up.
It’s gonna make me hard again, and I’m determined to prove I can sleep with him in the same bed. “Then what is this about?”
“I guess what I’m saying is you scare the shit out of me. Meaning you make me really fucking nervous, so don’t be surprised if I keep fucking up.”
“You haven’t fucked up at all,” I argue.
“That’s not what it feels like.”
I groan. I’m done talking. This is going nowhere. “Look, I turned over because I don’t know if I can sleep with you all up in my face.”
“Does spooning count?” he asks.
Spooning requires a cock against an ass. Pants or not, where there’s friction, there’s fire. But if it shuts him up…
Without a word, I turn toward him again, give him a look, and he turns away from me. I stuff one arm underneath his pillow, wrap the other around his waist, and tuck my bent legs against his.
He slides his hand up and down my forearm and lets out a long breath.
There’s a shakiness to it that makes me believe him when he says I make him nervous.
I don’t mind because it levels the playing field.
I wouldn’t call the way I get when he’s around anxious, exactly, but out of sorts, maybe? Fucked up? Confused.
And now, as I very much suspected I would be once I got this close to him, aroused.
It doesn’t take much. My dick against his ass. One slight squirm of him getting situated in my arms, and I’m ready to dry hump him.
He turns his head to look at me, and I stare back with narrowed eyes. “What? ”
“Nothing,” he says. “Good night.”
“You good?” I ask.
“Yeah. You?”
“Sure.”