Chapter 15 Connor
Connor
In Dane’s room, I sleep light as air. It’s difficult to give myself to slumber after I’ve just given myself to a man.
To Dane. What happened the night of that ritzy rager was nothing compared to last night.
Last night was pure epiphany, unlocking chambers in my mind that had been lying dormant for twenty-three years.
I’d never been so close to a man in my life.
Physically, emotionally, mentally. In the moments when my pulsing cock and fluttering heartbeat draw me into semi-consciousness, I wonder if maybe it was destiny after all that I should move to San Diego.
That I should move into this house, with this boy, so that I could know what it’s like to spend the night naked and tangled around the most beautiful person my eyes, and my lens, have ever seen.
A few times throughout the night, I stir to the sensation of myself humping Dane’s warm body or the other way around, but neither of us achieve enough wakefulness to do anything purposeful with our erections.
That Dane’s boner gives me a boner is a mind-fuck in itself.
The consequences of that mind-fuckery don’t occur to my jumbled brain until something else pulls me from shallow sleep—the sound of Thalia’s party heels clapping down the hallway.
I jolt up, sucking the drool back into my mouth and swiping the rest off my chin while I gauge my surroundings.
The teal of Dane’s underwater nightlight is paler than it was during the nighttime hours.
Now, dawn light seeps through the blinds, bathing the room in a gray-blue haze.
The numbers on Dane’s clock read half past six o’clock.
Dane’s asleep, snoring softly with his arm around my waist. I shimmy out of his hold as carefully as I can, then I search the room for clothes. What I come up with is a pair of sweatpants and the first t-shirt I can scoop off the floor.
Stress replaces bliss, and my heart is thumping for a different reason. I hold my breath and leave this sanctuary in favor of my doom.
I turn on the bathroom light and close Dane’s door behind me. As soon as it clicks shut, the door across the room pushes open.
“Shit,” Thalia gasps, eyes bugging and with a palm to her chest as we come face to face. “Connor. You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I say, even though startling her is pretty low on the list of things I ought to be apologizing for. There’s a bead of fresh sweat on my back for each apology I owe Thalia, but it still wouldn’t be enough.
How do I even begin?
“I, um…” Thalia starts and stops, leaning against the counter.
She’s in a black skirt and her glittery singlet top, slightly askew just like the rest of her—hair tangled, eyeliner smudged, and her plum-colored lipstick a mere figment on her lips now.
She looks down and all around, but not at me when she says, “I fell asleep at a friend’s place.
Had too much to drink last night and didn’t want to get into an Uber drunk, so I just… crashed with a friend.”
Yesterday-Connor would have ingested this news differently, but today-Connor is someone else. I feel it…like my molecules have mutated and evolved me into a brand new person. Apparently, it’s a brand new person who’s half brain-dead—incapable of thinking up any follow-up questions.
“Okay. Glad you’re home safe.”
“Yeah.” She nods, folding her lips and scrunching them toward the side of her face. When her eyes finally dare to take me in, she asks, “Were you coming from Dane’s room?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I gulp and glance at the door behind me, imagining the sleeping angel on the other side and how badly I want to crawl back beneath him. “I, uh, fell asleep in Dane’s room. We got home earlier than expected from Margot’s and played GTA for a bit. I must’ve passed out during his turn.”
Thalia nods slowly, eyes floating down toward my bare feet, then back up to my face. “He’s gay, you know?”
I’m surprised only because I didn’t know Thalia knew. I’d even asked her the week that we arrived here, and she’d said Dane was as straight as a thorn in her side.
Sticking my hands in the pockets of Dane’s sweatpants, I force a nonchalant shrug. “So?”
Thalia stares at me for an uncomfortable amount of time before she answers, “So, you should be careful. Falling asleep in a gay guy’s bedroom…”
Before I can get words up my dry throat, Dane’s door swings open. Startled, I jump halfway across the room to wind up standing beside Thalia.
“What the—” Dane starts in a sleepy mumble, finger itching at the corner of his eye.
“Dane!” Thalia shields her eyes with her hand and turns away. “Why are you naked?”
“Wh—why is everyone in the bathroom?”
“I have to shower,” Thalia exclaims.
“I gotta shower too. I have a match. I gotta be at school in—”
“I was in here first!”
“I’m gonna be late!”
“Dane,” I cut in, trying not to look at him. I’m not sure I can cope with seeing his dick right now, with Thalia in the room. “Just let her shower.”
It takes a few agonizing moments of silence for Dane to mutter, “Fine. You have five minutes,” before dipping back into his room and shutting the door.
“God, he’s a nightmare,” Thalia mutters, and I’m too dumb to respond.
While she gets the shower going, I retreat into our room and hide out in our bed like another hour of sleep will cure all the turmoil in my life.
The next time I lift my head off my pillow, the room is bursting with sunlight, and the clock reads nine o’clock.
Dane’s match starts at nine.
Shit!
I scramble out of bed and bolt for the bathroom.
After the quickest shower of my life and a haphazard brush job on my teeth, I leave Dane’s pajamas in a pile on the floor and run into my room to find real clothes. I hadn’t realized Thalia was asleep beside me, but she’s sitting up on her side of the bed now with her hair up and yawning.
“Where are you going?” she asks as I grab a shirt and a pair of jeans from my dresser drawer.
“Dane’s match. I’m late. It’s already started.”
“They don’t start him anyway, do they?”
“No, but maybe they are today. I dunno.” I whip off my towel and leave it on the foot of the bed to tug on a pair of boxers before my jeans.
“I thought we could grab breakfast.”
The noticeable pout in Thalia’s tone triggers a guilt reflex that stalls me in my tracks.
I have one leg in my pants, one leg free, as I stare at my girlfriend, and everything that happened last night passes in front of my mind at warp speed.
Not just the sex, which is damning enough, but the way I had sex.
The way I unraveled myself completely for someone else, put myself at the mercy of someone else, simpered and swooned in a way I’ve never done for anyone, and I did it for a man. I did it for Thalia’s brother.
It’s not just that I cheated. It’s that I gave myself away to Dane, and I don’t think I can get that back. I don’t think I want it back, as much as that notion scares the shit out of me.
The very least I can do is buy Thalia breakfast before I implode her trust in me, but I’m not even man enough to do that.
“I’m sorry.” I tug my jeans the rest of the way on and grab a t-shirt. “If his team loses today, this’ll be his last match until next year. I can’t miss it.”
Thalia chews the inside of her mouth, looking me over with an expression I can’t place. As soon as I resume dressing, Thalia slides out of bed. “Alright, I’ll come with you.”
My body stills again with my t-shirt hung around my neck like a scarf. “Y-You what? You wanna…come? To Dane’s match?”
“Not really, but we can get brunch after.”
Thankfully, I’m just smart enough to stop myself before telling Thalia I normally hang out with Dane after a match.
If he wins, there will be a celebratory something somewhere.
A cookout at Lyle’s parents’ house, or maybe a trip to Dave & Buster’s.
If he loses, he’ll need cheering up. A drive along the coast would do the trick, blasting Dane’s whiny electropop and stopping for tacos somewhere along the way to nowhere in particular.
Now that I’m thinking of it, that sounds even better than Dave & Buster’s.
It sounds better than anything else in the world.
Guilt overpowers the niggle in my gut that says this is a bad idea, and the guilt only grows as I’m compelled to ask Thalia not to take too long getting ready.
“Don’t rush me, Connor,” she says over her shoulder.
“Okay, sorry.” Holding back my sigh, I finish dressing and slip out of the bedroom in time for Thalia to strip out of her sleep shirt. “I’ll heat up some toaster waffles,” I say before shutting the door.
Checking my phone, there’s already a text from Dane, sent ten minutes ago.
Dane:
Are u coming?
He probably won’t see it, since his coach will tear him a new one if he’s caught texting during the match, but I shoot him a reply anyway.
Me:
Yes! Just running late ):
Hopefully, the frowny face sells how disappointed I am not to be in the bleachers already.
As soon as Thalia is ready, I offer her a lukewarm Eggo, and I zip us down to the SDSU sports plaza.
When we get to the soccer stadium, the ticket seller lets me and Thalia through without paying the non-student fee, saying the match is already into the halftime break.
I curse under my breath, anxious about being late, but also anxious about a lot of other stuff too.
There’s so much to be anxious about that I can’t wrap my head around it all, so I stay focused on the one where I’m late.
“You need to relax,” Thalia says, following on my heels as I beeline for seats in the middle of the bleacher block.
When I find us a spacious length of bench to sit on, Thalia stays standing long enough to get into a conversation with the people on the next bench up.
“Hey, do you guys know if they’ve played Dane Calvo yet? Tall, skinny, kinda goofy looking—”
“He’s number 14,” I say over my shoulder.
At that, one guy shakes his head. “Nah, don’t think so.”
“See,” Thalia chirps at me, like all is well now.