19. Gabe
19
GABE
“ H ey, um, are you home?”
I stepped into Brooklyn’s apartment and shut the door quietly behind me. Not because I was trying to sneak in, obviously, but because I sort of felt like I was walking into a lion’s den.
I hadn’t heard a word from him since his last text telling me to get home. Not when I told him I was finally boarding my flight. Not when I told him I’d landed. Not when I’d told him I was in a cab, ETA five minutes away. Nothing.
I’d stood outside the door for a full minute before turning the key in the lock. I knew I had to go in. We had to talk. I just hated feeling like I was walking in blind.
“Brooklyn? You there?”
I stepped further into the apartment, dropping my bag at the door. I heard a noise in the kitchen, turned the corner, and just barely managed to avoid crashing into Brooklyn as he headed out to meet me.
“Drink this.”
He pushed something towards me, and I grabbed it reflexively.
“A shot?” I looked down at the amber liquid in the glass.
“Jameson.”
“But why do I—?”
“Because I’m three shots ahead of you.”
“But—”
“Drink.”
So I did. I tossed the shot back, and let the whiskey burn my throat, the sweet aftertaste mellow on my tongue. Brooklyn took the glass out of my hand and refilled it from a bottle on the counter. He shoved it at me again.
“Another?”
“You’ve got two more to go until we’re equal.”
“Yeah, I get that, but here’s a question: why’d you start drinking in the first place?”
“Because there’s no way in hell I’m having the conversation we’re about to have sober.”
Fuck. I drank the second shot and didn’t even protest when he filled it for a third time. I didn’t want to be sober for this conversation either, not if it was going to be that bad. I tossed the third shot back without question and handed the glass to Brooklyn, waiting for him to speak.
“We should probably go sit down or something,” he said after putting it in the sink.
Yikes. That didn’t sound good. You didn’t tell people they needed to sit down unless you were going to tell them something that might make them faint. I followed him mutely to the couch.
Since I hadn’t heard from him in over two hours, I’d naturally started spinning all sorts of scenarios on the way home. He was kicking me out of the apartment. Never speaking to me again. Divorcing me.
I had to stifle a shrill laugh at that last thought. The idea that I was in a position to get divorced at all was laughable. The fact that the possibility made me so sad was terrifying. Because I’d realized something on the way home.
I liked Brooklyn. Not just as a hookup, or a friend, or a roommate, or even as a weird, real-fake-husband. I liked him the way you liked someone in a relationship. And I had fuck-all clue what to do about it.
I’d avoided relationships so studiously that I was paralyzed by the realization that I was, for all intents and purposes, in one. And even more confusing, the relationship seemed to be working. It was healthy, I didn’t want out, and neither one of us hated the other.
Or at least, that had been the case up until today. Because of course, as soon as I realized that I liked what I had with Brooklyn—as soon as I realized what I actually had with Brooklyn—I’d managed to fuck everything up.
I sat down on the couch next to him and chewed my bottom lip, waiting for him to start talking. I wasn’t going to tell him, I decided. It would only confuse matters. And if he was breaking up with me, I didn’t need him to know he was actually going to be breaking my heart.
Brooklyn’s hands fidgeted as he turned and looked at me.
“Gabe, we have to t—”
“I like you.”
Fuck. Where the hell had that come from? So much for not saying anything.
“What?”
I sighed. It was too late now to take it back. And there was no way out but through.
“I like you, Brooklyn. As more than—well, more than whatever we are. Whatever we’ve been pretending to be. And I’m sorry about everything that happened, and I understand if you never want to see me again, but I guess—I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to tell you.”
“But this wasn’t supposed to be—I mean, we’re not supposed to—fuck, Gabe.” Brooklyn looked stunned. “Really?”
“I know it’s not supposed to be real. I know. Trust me, I feel like such an idiot. I know what I said, about not wanting a relationship. I promise, that’s not what I went into this looking for. And even without this whole Instagram fiasco, I’d get it if you didn’t feel the same way. This is changing the terms on you. So I’ve been thinking. If you want to break things off right now, it’s fine. But, if you don’t want to lose out on the money, we can stay married, and I’ll just go back to using the air mattress. I just—fuck, I’m so confused. This is all completely new to me.”
“I know, Gabe. Believe me, why do you think I’ve been going so slowly with—”
“No, not just the sex stuff. The feelings part of it. That’s what’s freaking me out. I don’t get attached to people. I’ve always been perfectly clear with all the people—well, all the women—who I’ve hooked up with that I’m not looking for anything long term. But when I thought about you ending this, whatever it is that we have—I realized that I couldn’t stand the idea of not being with you anymore. And I’m not telling you this to guilt you into anything or to try to change your mind. I just, I don’t know, it seemed like I should be honest. So now you know. You can go back to hating me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Well you could’ve fooled me, making me drink and pulling me over here like you’re about to tell me that my dog died.”
“That’s because I thought—God, I was so sure that you were going to—fuck.” Brooklyn ran a hand through his hair. “Gabe, I like you too.”
It took a second for the words to sink in, for me to process them. And then I smiled, for what felt like the first time in forever.
“Really?”
“Really.” He smiled right back.
“I thought you were mad at me. I thought you’d never want to see me again. You sounded so angry over your texts.”
“I—yeah. I mean, I was.” Brooklyn looked down for a moment before squaring his shoulders and looking me in the eyes. “There’s some stuff I should probably tell you.”
A bolt of fear stabbed into my stomach. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was scared of. I’d barely gotten used to the idea that Brooklyn liked me, but instead of looking happy about that, he looked like he wanted to throw up. The foot of space in between us felt like an ocean.
“I don’t really date,” he began. “I know I told you that. But I didn’t tell you why.”
“Okay.”
I couldn’t imagine what was coming next. Brooklyn didn’t date because he was a spy and forbidden from forming long-term emotional attachments? He didn’t date because he was actually undercover royalty and had been engaged from an early age to his second cousin? Or maybe he didn’t date because he was a serial killer and had a secret freezer full of heads somewhere?
“This is probably going to sound pretty stupid, but I haven’t actually dated anyone—not more than two dates in a row—since college.”
“Yeah, you sorta mentioned that.”
“There was this guy. Cal. He was my roommate freshman year, and we became really good friends. I came out at college, and he was always really cool about it, he wasn’t a dick like some of the kids I went to high school with. He used to joke about the two of us being platonic life partners, and after he and his girlfriend back home broke up, he started joking about it a lot more.”
“That sounds…confusing.”
“Yeah, well, eventually one night, senior year, we were kind of drunk, and he asked me if I’d ever been attracted to him. And even though all sorts of alarm bells were going off, I was drunk and stupid, and he’d finally broken up with Molly, so I just told him yes, honestly, I had been. And one thing led to another, and suddenly we were in bed together.”
“Oh.”
The thought of Brooklyn in bed with someone else wasn’t something I enjoyed thinking about, but that didn’t really matter right now. He needed to get this off his chest. What bothered me more was that this story obviously wasn’t going to have a happy ending, and I really didn’t like thinking about him getting hurt.
“For a while,” Brooklyn went on, “it was really good. Like some kind of gay fairy tale that you never thought would come true. Your straight best friend falling for you—how likely is that? But it did come true for me. Cal couldn’t stop talking about how hot I was—”
“At least he got that right.”
Brooklyn rolled his eyes.
“—And he even convinced me to let him take a video of me sucking him off.”
I stared at him in shock.
“I know. I realize now that it was idiotic, but you have to understand, Cal was my best friend. I was more than just infatuated with him. I was in love. We talked about moving in together after college, about him coming with me wherever I went to grad school. I had completely bought into the happy ending.”
Brooklyn squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and when he opened them, I could see tears.
“But then Cal’s mom got sick, and he decided he was going to move home to Kansas to help take care of her. And I didn’t just support that, I was all set to move with him. I would have given him anything, so I didn’t think twice about telling the PhD programs that I’d gotten into that I wasn’t interested. Hell, I was even planning on proposing to him.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “That would have been…permanent.”
“Yeah. And then, right before graduation, Cal sort of went off the rails. Disappearing on me, getting drunk a lot, lashing out and pushing me away. I thought he was just upset about his mom. Until his ex, Molly, came to campus, looking for him, demanding to know why her boyfriend wasn’t answering her calls.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Apparently, they’d gotten back together when he’d first gone home to visit his mom. And he didn’t know how to tell me, so he just didn’t tell me at all. Until I confronted him about it.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He broke up with me that day. A week before graduation, a week before I was supposed to move to Wichita with him. Turns out he’d never told Molly about him and me, never told his family, and had never actually planned on me coming back with him.”
“Oh my God, Brooklyn. I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
“It, uh, wasn’t great. And then, somehow, that fucking video of me sucking him off ended up online. Cal said he’d never shown it to anyone, but either he was lying, or Molly found it on his phone. Regardless, pretty much my entire graduating class saw it. And of course, no one could tell that it was Cal. Just me. Swallowing a dick. On camera.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I kind of lost my shit after that.”
“I can imagine. Brooklyn, that’s horrible. Can’t you sue people for that kind of thing?”
He shrugged helplessly. “Maybe? But once something’s online, it’s there forever. My only consolation was that it wasn’t a good video. The quality was kind of shitty, and he kept moving the camera around, so you get kind of seasick watching it. I doubt people are jerking off to it these days. But I just couldn’t stand to face anyone after that, so I basically hid from the world.”
“Holy shit. I don’t blame you. I don’t know what I would do if something like that happened.”
“Well, hopefully it never will happen to you. Anyway, after moping for months on end, I realized what a huge mistake the whole thing had been. Not just the video, but getting involved with Cal in the first place. He’d never gotten over Molly. And he was never comfortable with us being together in public. There were all sorts of signs, I just didn’t want to see them.”
“Fuck. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
Brooklyn smiled wryly. “Yeah, I’ve had prouder moments. Oddly enough, though, the specificity of what happened came in handy when I contacted all those grad programs and asked if any would re-admit me. Jeff said that he remembered my application and had wondered why I’d rejected their offer. And I knew he was queer—it’s a pretty small field, and he’s a relatively big deal—and I just figured, what do I have to lose? So I told him what had happened, and he pulled strings to get me back into Chatham University’s PhD program.”
“Damn. That was really nice of him.”
Brooklyn nodded. “It was. He went out on a limb for me when he didn’t have to. And sure, as an advisor, sometimes he’s a little too opinionated about my non-academic life but, frankly, he’s earned it.”
“I still can’t believe that happened.” I shook my head, my hands clenched into fists. “What a fucking dick that guy was. He doesn’t live anywhere around here now, does he? Close enough that I could go find him and punch him?”
“Sadly, no.” Brooklyn laughed.
“On second thought, maybe don’t tell me where he is. I have enough airline miles that I might book a ticket to go hunt him down before I thought better of it.” I gave Brooklyn a small smile. “Thank you for telling me, though. I get why you didn’t, before. It’s not a story I’d go around broadcasting either. But thank you for trusting me with it. And I promise, my lips are zipped.”
He smiled, his eyes clear. “I hope I make a little more sense now. I know I’ve been taking things slow.”
“It hasn’t been that bad,” I protested.
“Gabe, glaciers have moved faster than we have. And the thing is, it’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just hard for me, I guess, to put myself out there again.”
He let out a huge breath when he finished speaking, like he’d been holding it in for an eternity, and his shoulders slumped. I had to fight the urge to lean in and snake my arms around him. To hold and be held. Instead, I reached out and brushed the back of his hand until he flipped his over and squeezed mine.
“I get it. I really do. And we can do this at whatever pace you want. Just please know that I would never do something like that, no matter how new this is to me. I hope you know that about me by now.”
“I do.”
“Good. Because I really like you, Brooklyn. Like, a frightening amount.”
The tremulous hope in his eyes made my heart tighten. “Really?”
“Really.”
He pulled me in for a hug, and I tried to put all the warmth in my heart, all the affection I felt, into my arms as I squeezed him back. I didn’t move away when he let go, either. It felt too good to be touching him again, so I pulled his left arm around my shoulder and snuggled up to his side.
“I’m sorry I freaked out about the Instagram thing,” Brooklyn said after a minute. “Looking at it now, I was overreacting.”
“I was just going to say that looking at it now, you weren’t overreacting at all. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have strangers pouring over details of your life after what you’ve been through. It must feel like such a violation. I really am sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He brushed his fingers up and down my arm as he spoke. “You didn’t know, right?”
“God no. I really didn’t. I promise.”
“I believe you.”
“It was just Aiden being, well, Aiden. He said that looking at those pictures of us made him happy and one night he got drunk and decided to share them, in case they made other people happy, too.”
“Well, it worked.” Brooklyn snorted. “I don’t know if he’s gonna make it as an actor, but he’s some kind of social media genius. Did you see that Tyler Fucking Lang tweeted about us?”
My shoulders shook as I laughed. “People keep saying that like it’s some kind of huge deal.”
“That’s because it is. Do you really not know who he is?”
“Not a clue.”
“We’re going to need to remedy that. I’ve got some movies for you to watch.”
“I thought he was on a TV show.”
“When he was younger, yeah. But his more recent career has been a bit more…mature. To put it mildly.”
“Please tell me he’s in some kind of BoatBoners video that I missed.”
Brooklyn laughed. “Not that company specifically, but you’re not too far off.”
“Color me intrigued. But listen, we can ask Aiden to shut the account down. He promised he would if we told him to. If I were in your position, that’s what I’d want, I’m pretty sure.”
“I don’t know.” Brooklyn sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t love the idea of being the poster children for some ‘ Love Wins ’ campaign. Letting people like pictures of us so they can congratulate themselves on being open-minded. But at the same time, I read some of the comments that people were leaving, about how we’re giving them hope, and how they wish they could feel safe enough to come out someday, to be open about their relationships, and now I’d feel crappy taking this away from them.”
“But you shouldn’t put random internet strangers’ needs above your own. You should do what you want to do. And whatever that is, I’ll support it.”
“Do you feel like it’s shitty at all, to be putting these pictures up and getting people all excited about something that isn’t real?” he asked. “That’s what I keep wondering. Because yes, we’re married, but what people think they’re seeing in these pictures, what they’re projecting onto us—I can’t help feeling like we’re manipulating them by faking this relationship.”
“But that’s what I was trying to say.” I turned sideways so I could look at him. “This is real for me now. I don’t know what that means, because I’ve never done any of this before. But this is realer than anything’s ever been for me.”
“Good.” Brooklyn smiled. “Because it’s real for me too.”
He pulled me close, and our lips met, a soft kiss full of the longing that had built up all week. His lips were gentle, his movements furtive at first, as he stroked a hand through my hair. I opened my mouth and let him push his tongue inside, caressing mine with quiet purpose. Goddamn, I had missed this.
“Oh, wait.” I pulled back. “There’s something else I should tell you. In all this craziness, I’d almost forgotten. I got my test results back. Negative on everything.”
Brooklyn’s face broke into a wide grin. “Right, you said you had good news. Well, me too. STI-free. Are you still in the mood to celebrate?”
“Good news?” I blinked. What was he talking about?
“You said in your text that you had some.”
“Oh! The promotion.”
“Promotion?” He cocked his head to the side.
“I found out today, at the airport,” I added. “I might be up for a promotion at work. It’s not a sure thing yet, but it’s possible.”
Brooklyn’s eyes lit up. “That’s really awesome. You deserve it. You’re the best management consultant to ever consult managementicly.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” I rolled my eyes.
“Well, top ten at least. You work really hard. You’re constantly on the phone with Niya about something. It’s almost enough to make me jealous.”
He grinned, but I still wasn’t sure he was joking.
“Brooklyn, there’s nothing there, you know. Between me and Niya. She’s my boss.”
“You sure?” He laughed lightly. “She’s pretty, from what I’ve seen of your Zoom calls. And you do talk to her a lot.”
“I’m sure. Trust me. If I work all the time, that’s just because I’m trying to get out of there sooner. And also, Niya’s a workaholic. I can’t leave her in a lurch.” I frowned for a second. “You don’t think this is a bad idea, do you? Taking the promotion?”
“Why would that be a bad thing?” Brooklyn frowned.
“I don’t know, just, getting more enmeshed in the company. Could make it harder to leave, eventually.”
“But you have a plan.”
“I guess so.”
“And I still think it calls for a celebration.” He shifted and slid off the couch, holding his hands out to pull me up. “Follow me.”