Chapter 12 Callum
CHAPTER TWELVE
CALLUM
Apparently, I’m a tired drunk. That’s what Ian calls me, at least. We’re both sitting on the couch that’s my bed, and I’m hugging a pillow, trying to keep my eyes open.
“You’ve had four drinks, Cal. You can’t fall asleep on me,” he says, slinging an arm around my shoulder.
I break into a stupid smile. Cal. God, that nickname is so silly, but it’s affectionate. Ian calling me that adds to the warm feeling that’s sloshing around inside of me, and I don’t know where it came from or what to do with it.
It could be the alcohol.
Who am I kidding? No, it’s not. The alcohol is making me tired and smiley. Ian being nice and side-hugging me is making me fuzzy.
Wait, why is he being nice all of a sudden? He was avoiding me until a couple of hours ago.
“Bro, why do you think I’m avoiding you?” His voice cuts through my alcohol-fueled fog, and I jolt upright.
“Shit, did I say that out loud?”
“Yeah, you did. And I’m not avoiding you.”
“But…the schedule, and the knocking, and the texting that you’re coming back?”
Ian tilts his head, running his tongue along his teeth. “Yeah, I’m doing that to give you privacy, not because I’m uncomfortable.”
What? “Why? This is your house.”
“I know, but you still need alone time. Besides, don’t you need space for, like, dude needs?”
“Dude needs?”
He hesitates but regains his confident expression almost immediately. “Yeah, like, jerking off and hooking up.”
I choke on my sip of beer and sputter into my almost-empty glass. “Sorry, what?”
Ian doesn’t seem to register my confusion. “I mean this in the least homo way possible, but someone who looks the way you do has gotta be balls-deep in…options.”
My body is frozen, except for my blindsided, blinking eyes.
Does he seriously think I’d hook up with someone in his living room? Is that something other guys would do? Is he confused that I'm not doing that?
“I don’t hook up,” I clarify. “And I’m not gonna disrespect your space by jerking off in your house,” I say, lying through my teeth and purging the quick flashback to yesterday afternoon's shower out of my mind. Sure, I might have been a little weirded out about taking care of myself when I first moved in here, but he’s gone a lot.
Besides, I have “dude needs,” as Ian calls them, and I’m a lot less weird about those now.
At least when I manage to keep thoughts of him separate, not like what happened in my sleep this morning.
He sucks in a tight breath, bringing my attention back to him.
“Okay, man, I never thought I’d say this, but you’re a dude.
You have my full permission to jerk off and bring someone home while you’re living here.
Like, discreetly and whatever.” He lets out a weak chuckle.
“Jesus, why’d you think I’d have a problem with that? ”
“I thought that’d be impolite.” I take a swig from my water bottle, hoping the switch away from alcohol brings my brain back to earth. I might be buzzed, but I could stop and change the subject if I wanted to.
Then again, I'm supposed to open up like I said I would. I just never imagined it’d be about this.
“Stop me if I say too much, but my parents believed in some messed up things. It was almost like they had their own brand of religion, and even their church didn't go as far.” The alcohol’s helping me loosen up, that’s for sure.
“But hey, they started reading some extreme stuff online about living purely and saving your kids, and then there was no stopping them. ”
Ian's lips are pressed together, his expression unplaceable and his eyes soft. Even with my limited experience, I can tell there's an absence of judgment in his gaze, a lack of the kind of pity I'm trying to avoid.
There's nothing but sympathy. Care, the kind I've never seen before, deep in the warm hazel.
That's all I need to keep talking. Or rambling. “It was as if I wasn’t allowed to feel good, like positivity was a temptation I had to fight.” I grab the beer from the coffee table and take a sip, before remembering that it’s Ian’s, but he simply shrugs and gestures for me to keep it.
“Like, it was mostly my mom who went all gung-ho with the weird stuff. My dad didn’t seem to be as extreme. ”
He sucks in a hiss through his gritted teeth. “But he still went along with it, right?”
“He did.” I pause, debating whether to allow childhood memories to enter my consciousness, or to shut them out like usual.
I let them in.
“Still, he tried to get me out of the house and stuff, even when my mom took me out of school to ‘preserve’ me after they committed the unforgivable sin of having sex ed classes,” I continue.
“My dad was the one who convinced my mom to let me go to community college in the first place, saying it’d help me provide for a future wife and whatnot.
He didn’t say anything about what my mom did, but at least he was nicer to me, and the only fun I ever had was going hunting with him once in a while. ”
“The only fun you had?”
“I mean, my parents encouraged me to work out, probably because it’s a ‘guy’ thing or whatever, and I’d sometimes go shooting with my dad.
But everything else I could have liked was demonized.
Books, TV, games, imagining shit in my head that let me escape for a second, and yeah, sex too. That was a huge no-no.”
“Yet somehow, you came to be,” he mutters. “I wonder how that happened.”
I scoff, a smile somehow finding its way onto my face. “Tell me about it. There were always exceptions for them and never for me, hence my hang-ups about everything to do with sex.”
“Jesus, that fucking sucks. So you just didn’t? At all? Even with yourself?”
“Nah, I'm an outlaw,” I joke, letting out a breathy chuckle. “Not that it was easy, or pleasant, but I kept my, uh, solo activities under wraps. My mom would have flipped if she knew, and I didn’t dare try to find anyone else. Not like I had options in that tiny town.”
Ian’s face is scrunched into a concerned frown, his eyebrows raised at their inner corners. I expect him to say something, but he shakes his head instead, staying silent.
Not that I necessarily want him to keep this topic active—he’s gotta be at least a bit uncomfortable with talking about sex.
Pressing his hands together, Ian sighs. “Look, I’m just gonna say it out loud: your parents are pretty messed up for that. I’m glad you got out.”
I chuckle. “Ha, yeah. It only took running away from home to change things.”
Oh. I went there. Oops.
His head jerks, and he shuffles upright to face me, sitting cross-legged and wide-eyed. “You ran away from home? Like as a kid?”
The truth hangs on my tongue for a moment before rolling off it with way more ease than I thought was possible. “No, in January. I transferred colleges in secret and climbed out of my window at one in the morning to catch a bus.”
A slow twist of unease circles my gut as Ian's mouth hangs open, intensifying with every second of sustained silence that passes. Is he judging me? Is he going to make fun of me? Is he going to kick me out because he doesn't want to host a fugitive?
Oh, god, he's—
Hugging me.
Ian is hugging me again. The gnawing in my stomach dissolves. He’s almost a foot shorter than me, yet he's the one wrapped around my shoulders like I’m small.
“Fuck, Callum,” he mutters. His grip tightens, grounding me to the point where I almost don't care about the pity that's about to follow. “It’s so fucked that you had to go through all that. It sounds awful.”
There it is.
“But that was so brave. I'm glad you made it here.”
Like an idiot, I melt into Ian. I don't even care about how weird it is for me to feel as safe as I do when I'm with him like this. He said I needed a hug when I first moved in; I did back then, and my god, I still do now. I’m getting everything I never had and always missed.
He pulls away after a while, and I have to fight the urge to keep my arms around him. His mouth is pressed shut, we’re staring into each other’s eyes, and this is nothing other than intimate. Too intimate. His face, his lips, are so close to mine, and something primal is begging me to lean forward.
And kiss him.
I want that so bad, but Ian surely doesn’t, and I can’t let myself get carried away.
“So yeah,” I say to break the silence, “I’m here now, and I’m loving it. Freedom and all that.”
We’re both quiet again, and nerves prickle in my core—Ian wanted to hang out with me tonight, not listen to my sad origin story.
“Anyway, that’s how I got here. Should we talk about something else?”
“Sounds good, man,” Ian says, grabbing two seltzers from the mini fridge and handing me one. “On a much lighter note, how are you liking college so far?”
“It’s freaking awesome,” I reply. “Like, academically, it’s hard, but it’s so different from back home. It’s exactly what I needed.”
Ian taps the edge of his can against mine and takes a sip. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Yeah. It’s eye-opening, like how the flashy application pamphlet said it would be, since it’s diverse and whatever.”
He snickers. “Ooh, sounds scary.”
“Shut up,” I reply, laughing back at him. “It’s not scary. I like it. I mean, look at Sabrina and Laura—it’s so cool that they can be, you know, open.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Uh-huh. I love it. Not just for them, but everyone.”
Ian digs his fingers into the side of his can, leaving a dent. “So, you’re cool with…that stuff?”
“Uh-huh. Of course. I mean, I’ve found that everything my parents hate is actually completely normal,” I joke, even though it’s true.
I was avoiding eye contact purely out of instinct, and when I return my gaze to him, he’s smiling gently.
“On that topic,” he starts, “I don’t remember if it ever came up, but I’m bi.”
Wait.
Wait.
I don't know if Ian kept talking after dropping that on me, and I can't claw my attention back.
Ian is bisexual.
Ian likes guys too.
Ian and his kind eyes and fluffy hair and charming smile and bulging arms and his everything…likes guys too.