18. Samuel
SAMUEL
I REFUSE TO BELIEVE ANYONE—MYSELF INCLUDED
When I woke up, a single sunbeam tried to reach my face, but it couldn't get through the comforter. I pulled it over my head, breathing in the last faint trace of Benji still clinging to the fabric, grinning at the reminder of what we’d done only hours ago.
Rolling onto my side, I wrapped my legs around my blanket, pretending it was him, tucking it deeper between my thighs.
The pressure was strangely satisfying, and I caught myself wondering if that was just me, or if it was one of the things that came with being gay—that you love to have things stuffed between your legs.
I chuckled at the thought.
Benji and I hadn’t even gone that far. Nothing got stuffed into anyone, not that I minded.
The one time I tried it before, it hurt enough to teach me that you can’t just let someone waltz into your ass without any preparation.
What he and I did was already hot enough.
I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Maybe I was delusional, but that he stayed a little after, the hugs, the goodbye kiss before he left—he must’ve felt something.
Not that I could change it, if he hadn’t.
There was always the chance this had been a one-time thing, that he’d wake up today and tell everyone I’d bewitched him into it.
But I shouldn’t worry about disasters that hadn’t happened yet.
For now, I was allowed to let myself ride the happy wave a little longer and enjoy that my sheets still smelled like him.
And I did—until nature called and I had to get up.
Some part of me had hoped I’d wake to a message from Benji, but my inbox was empty as usual—just a system notification urging me to look at a picture of a stray cat I’d taken last year.
Benji probably had a lot to think about. He’d asked so many questions about his sexuality when we sat in the grove; I could only imagine how many more he had now.
So, I went about my day: breakfast on the balcony before the sun fully broke through the clouds and turned it into an oven, my favorite science podcast (this time about why rats feel peer pressure), and cleaning my apartment.
Sunday was cleaning day for as long as I could remember, and that didn’t change after I moved out of my parents' house.
Usually, I finish the bathroom as the podcast wraps up.
Today, the hosts thanked me for listening while I was still on my knees, scrubbing tiles like they needed to be punished, and I still had no clue why mice cared what their friends thought.
I was sure they explained it; I simply hadn’t listened.
By eleven, Benji still hadn’t let me know he was even alive.
I debated writing him first, to check if he was okay, to reassure him I wasn’t going to tell anyone about what happened between us, if that was something he was worried about, and after ten whole minutes of pacing between the bathroom and my nightstand—never actually picking up my phone before going back to scrubbing the toilet, only to repeat the process for a total of eight times—I finally gave in.
Me
Hey, how are you?
That was what I sent him—nothing too incriminating, something easy to ignore, if he wanted.
Five minutes later, a ping made my heart jump, then sink into my stomach.
Benji
DON’T ASK.
All caps. That stung. I sat on my bed, not giving a crap that I was still in my dirty cleaning clothes.
Then came the second message, which somehow stung even more:
You forgot your lunch box, by the way.
I’ll bring it tomorrow.
My head snapped toward my kitchen as if I needed proof, then back to the screen.
No worries about the lunch box.
See you tomorrow then.
Yeah.
Sorry.
That last sorry cut the deepest. Sorry for what? For still having my box? For not wanting to talk? Or sorry that, thanks to my forgetfulness, we had to speak tomorrow even though he’d clearly written me off like some drunken experiment?
My head dropped to my chest.
I’d always told myself not to expect much if I ever got with a guy again.
In Red Creek, one night was usually all someone like me got, and no one had proven otherwise yet.
Still, it hurt. Some part of me wanted to believe there’d been a chance for more— another week, a few days, even just one more hour.
But only a fool would miss what his reserved texts already spelled out: this was already over.
I could do nothing but accept this. Rejection was part of life, after all. But I could really do without the daily reminders.
When Monday morning came, I couldn’t recall what I’d done with the rest of Sunday. I’d been in auto-mode, and still was when I dragged myself out of bed.
I dressed, finished the last bit of the cereal Mom had bought me last week as a motivator for the job, carried my bike down, and rode to work.
At the farm, my eyes were everywhere, scanning for Benji, but he wasn’t there—not when the morning briefing began, not when I got paired with Mosquito-Net-Luis, not when I walked out into the orchard.
I feigned a bathroom emergency during lunch to have a reason to swing by the barn.
Even if he was at work, the odds he’d be there were low.
Benji never went back during breaks. Yet, hope being what it is, I tried anyway and still didn’t catch a glimpse of him.
By the time the evening briefing ended, there was still no sign of him, and by then, I’d built twenty stories in my head about where he might be—the loudest being that he’d quit to avoid seeing me, and my missing lunch box would arrive in the mail in three to four business days.
I finished the shift, said goodbye to everyone I passed on my way out, and walked into the farm's backyard, my gaze still roaming. Halfway across the gravel, when I could look past the tractors, I froze. The familiar metallic car— his car —came into view. It stood right there, staring back at me. He was here. Somewhere. He hadn’t quit.
He’d simply become a ninja, so he wouldn’t have to talk to me.
What a move . He could at least have given me my lunchbox back.
I rushed back in, my feet in overdrive, determined not to let him off the hook that easily.
If he wanted nothing to do with me anymore, fine, but I wasn’t going to be ghosted again without getting some closure.
I scanned the locker room, nothing , ran into the barn, nothing , out toward the orchard, and?—
There he was, lifting a ladder onto the rack.
It clanked against the contraption, the second rung from the top catching in the frame.
He sighed, tired as if his whole day had been like this, lifted the ladder again to give it a second chance, and this time it landed where it was supposed to go.
He turned toward me (or more likely toward the door behind me) and paused when he spotted me.
A bleary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but he couldn’t hold my gaze.
“Hey, Sam,” he said, staring at the ground.
“Hi,” I replied a little too sharply.
He made his way over, and once he stood in front of me, paused, his shoulder down, still not looking. “I was worried, I’d miss you. Thanks for waiting for me.” He lifted his gaze but could manage only a sidelong glance. “Can we talk?”
My chest tightened. There wasn’t much left to say. The tone of his voice had already confirmed my worst fears. But at least he wasn’t running. He wasn’t just leaving me on read. At least, not yet.
I shouldn’t have agreed to let him drive me home, no matter how reasonable it sounded when he said we shouldn’t talk at the farm.
But here I was, in the passenger's seat, sweating like I’d been thrown into the fires of hell.
I couldn’t tell if it was the day’s heat trapped in his car or the fact that I already knew where this conversation was going.
The car shook as we rolled off the gravel before the farmhouse onto the main road. I tried to fix my eyes on the trees.
“I have to,” Benji said, pointing at the window controls. “Sorry.” With a whir, both front windows lowered, and air roared in so loudly it drowned out the radio.
We drove for a mile without saying anything, not that we could’ve with the wind blasting our ears.
At least, the breeze did its job and cooled the car down enough to be bearable.
I leaned my head back, held my face into the stream, and closed my eyes.
This was better than talking. This way, I didn’t have to face the rejection that was coming.
In his defence, though, at least Benji had the decency to offer a conversation—albeit only after I hunted him down—and not just ignore me and pretend I never existed. I would hold it in his favor if the anticipation alone wouldn’t make me wanna unbuckle and jump out the window.
Some words hovered in the air, but never reached my ears as the wind carried them straight out the window. I hesitated, stalled a little, but then more words tried to find me, enough to make me look his way, even if only at his hands clinging to the wheel.
“What?” I said, my voice refusing to work.
His left hand moved to the panel, pulling the two top switches at once, making the windows slide up. Three seconds later, only the radio screamed a stupid pop song at us, but he pressed the round button right in the center console, and left us with only the engine.
“I asked if you are okay?” Benji said again, a little too loud, his voice still tuned to the noise.
“Are you ?” I said, my voice hitching as I dropped my gaze to my hands. I probably should’ve just answered like a sane person, but I couldn’t.
We drove another fifteen seconds before the whole car started shaking like a bumper car, and I looked up. Benji pulled off the road and into a small pullout in the middle of the orchard. We came to a halt. The blinker clicked three more times before he turned off even that sound.
“Sam,” Benji said, taking a deep breath, “I need to say something, and I want you to look at me when I say it.”
“Why?”
“Please.”