Chapter 15 Connor #3
Strangely, this doesn’t anger me at all. It just makes me sad, and it makes me wish I’d stuck around at Dane’s match so I’d be there at the end. To apologize.
“You should come out with all of us sometime,” either Lisa or Valarie tells me, an attempt to lighten the vibe before she and the other one hug Thalia goodbye.
We retake our seats in silence, and neither of us speak again until our server comes back with Thalia’s juice and my water.
“Ready to order?” the kid asks.
“A few minutes,” Thalia answers, and after the kid has scurried to his next table, Thalia finally looks at me and says, “I’m sorry, Con.”
My head shakes, not believing it.
“It just never came up,” she says. “I wasn’t intentionally hiding the fact that I have a boyfriend. Do you want me to wear a big sign around my neck that says, ‘I’m Thalia Calvo, and I have a boyfriend?’ When it comes up, I mention you.”
“So, with whom has it come up? Who in your life knows about me, since the people you study with and party with don’t?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” I slump back in my chair and bring my ice water with me. A single sip is all it takes to make me queasy again.
“Do you tell everyone about me?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“You told your little friend, Margot, about me?”
My eyes roll involuntarily. “Yeah, actually. It was one of the first things I said to her, that I have a girlfriend.”
“Well, congratulations on being such an immaculate boyfriend. I feel like the luckiest girl alive.”
The sarcasm is thick in Thalia’s tone, but I know from experience that she grows snarkier the more insecure she feels. She and her brother have that in common.
“I’m not immaculate. I’m not even good.”
Expression drifting to something somber, Thalia says, “You’re fine, Connor. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It is what it is.”
“What does that mean?”
What does it mean?
Before I can answer, Thalia leans forward again and says, “Things are going to be different. I’m going to spend more time at home, and with you.
It’s not fair to you that I’m gone all the time, and those study groups are toxic.
It’s like an hours-long circle-jerk of pathological superiority complexes.
I’d much rather spend time with you. Hey, maybe we can go somewhere for the Thanksgiving weekend.
Laguna is super cute, or we can go to the mountains. ”
“I was gonna go back home for Thanksgiving. I already told my parents I’d be there, and I need to get an oil change.”
Thalia glances this way and that way, like I’m being impossible. “You want to drive all the way up to Sacramento and back just to spend three days with your parents and get your oil changed?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on. You can see your folks for Christmas, and you can get your oil changed down here. I’m sure my dad knows a good shop.”
“I get a good deal at my uncle’s spot in Sacramento.”
“You’ll spend way more money on gas driving to and from Sacramento than you will getting a full-price oil change down here.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same.”
We hit a stalemate, and it’s not until our server comes back that either of us speaks again. Thalia orders a tofu burrito thing, and I order eggs and toast, because that’s about all I think I can stomach off this funky menu.
The space between me and Thalia becomes the quietest place in this restaurant. Minutes pass with us doing nothing but shifting our gazes around the room and sipping from our glasses.
It’s uncomfortable, but I don’t mind it, because it beats talking about all the stuff I’m too scared to. Things like:
I think I’m bisexual.
I slept with someone else.
It was your brother.
Not the sort of shit to blurt out when there’s a knife sitting on a napkin six inches from my girlfriend’s hand.
Getting stabbed isn’t even my biggest fear, though.
It’s that she’ll blame Dane. My heart hurts enough thinking he might never speak to me again.
I can’t pile on the weight of betraying him twice in one day.
“I can’t believe you want to drive eight hours to get your oil changed,” Thalia mutters just loud enough for me to hear. It’s the only thing either of us say until after our food comes out.
Before leaving the restaurant, I check in on the score of Dane’s match and see that the Aztecs squeaked out a win, 3-2.
It’s amazing news, not only because it guarantees them a spot in the first postseason match next week, but it also means Dane has no reason to nosedive into another man’s ass just to get back at me. Hopefully.
When he’s not at the house by the time Thalia and I get home, I try texting.
Me:
You won! Congrats!
I’m cringing at myself as I tap send. It’s a text that screams I don’t know what I’m doing! at the top of its lungs.
“I think I’m going to take a nap,” Thalia says. “Wanna come with?”
Napping sounds great. Not sure my mind can quiet itself enough to find sleep, but resting my eyes under a bundle of blankets would hit the spot.
It doesn’t dawn on me how dangerous it can be, going for a nap in my own bed, until I’m tucked into it with Thalia and she isn’t sticking to her side.
She slides in close enough to rub her legs against mine and latch her mouth onto my neck.
All it does is remind me of last night, and I’m half-hard by the time Thalia turns my head and kisses my mouth.
All my energy goes to my reveries, not even enough left over to kiss my girlfriend back. Instead, I whine and inch my head back.
“I’m exhausted, and my head really hurts.”
A cold hand nuzzles its way under my waistband. “You don’t feel exhausted,” Thalia whispers before returning her mouth to mine.
Flinching, I grasp her wrist and ease her off my dick before I end up feeling even shittier about myself. “If you don’t touch it, it’ll go away.”
Thalia huffs an exasperated sigh, tugging her hand back and flopping over onto her opposite side, putting some much-needed breathing room between us.
Turning toward the wall, I check my phone and find not a single text notification. The disappointment alone shrivels my dick enough that I can sleep.
I wake up three hours later in an empty bed, and the only messages sitting in my phone’s inbox are from my family’s group chat, saying how much they missed me on Halloween.
After five months, I can tell when Dane is home just by a feeling in the air, like knowing a muted TV is on in the next room. The absence of that knowing is loneliness.
I text Dane again.
Me:
Hey I’m sorry I brought Thalia to your match. She asked to come and I wasn’t thinking.
Through sheer neediness, I send another text.
Me:
Where are you?
Agonizing minutes become unbearable hours. I go for a drive to get away from Artie, and so Joselyn won’t try to feed me something I can’t keep down. I drive until the sun is well and down, and I run out of routes to meander, then I head back toward the house.
It’s almost nine when I pull into the driveway. Seeing Dane’s little white Beemer in its usual spot perks me up. Spotting him coming down the front walkway sends my heart into a frenzy.
Optimistically, I think Dane is coming out to talk to me, but when I hop out of my car, he swerves toward his own, not paying me a single glance.
“Dane!” I rush after him, catching his arm before he reaches his door handle.
He doesn’t curse me out, which I take as a win, but he shows me a look laden with so much misery, I’d almost prefer he spew anger.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He smells like a fresh shower, and I can’t miss how sheer his shirt is between the gap of his jean jacket, see-through enough to show off his piercings and the contours of his chest and abs. But there’s no time to fully appreciate how stunning he looks when he asks, “Do you hate me?”
“What?” I look from his body to his face and see the same pain I’ve been feeling all day. “No. Of course not.”
“Were you trying to punish me? Get back at me? Make yourself feel better about sucking a dick by humiliating me?”
After a reflexive head jerk toward the front door to make sure no one’s eavesdropping in the shadows, I send Dane a look as wild as my heartbeat. “No, Dane. What? I wasn’t trying to do any of that.”
“I don’t believe you.” He turns away and tugs on his door handle.
“Wait.” I squeeze his arm and snatch his waist, urging him to face me. “My head’s been fucked up all day. Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?”
“Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? Why would you show up with her to my fucking match?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t bring her to hurt you. I did it because I’m an idiot. I just wanted to see you play. I wasn’t thinking.” I’m talking so fast, I barely catch my own words as I speak them, and they don’t seem to have much of an effect on Dane.
He waits for me to finish, then mutters, “Whatever,” while pulling open his car door.
“Where are you going?” I ask desperately. Don’t say you’re going to a guy’s house. Don’t say you’re going to a guy’s house.
“I’m going to a club.”
Somehow, that answer doesn’t sound like a better choice than the one I was hoping to avoid. “What club?”
“You don’t know it.”
“Wh—what’re you gonna do there?”
His eyes roll, and so do his lips. They’re shimmery, like he smeared something on them. Chapstick or Vaseline, or maybe he’d been sucking on his bottom lip the way he does sometimes. Either way, it makes his mouth pretty and inviting, and like he’s hoping someone will kiss him tonight.
“Dance,” he says. “Drink. Do whatever the hell I want.”
One of those doesn’t sound like a great idea, and another one sounds like my soul shattering into a million pieces.
“Men?” I ask with an ember of anger in my chest.
“It’s a gay club, so I’m sure there’ll be lots of men there.”
“Dane—”
“Does that make you jealous?” One half-step is all it takes to close the gap between us. Dane’s shoes knock against mine as his face leans in so close I can smell the toothpaste on his breath. “Did you have a fun day with your girlfriend? Did you fuck her to forget about how good I made you come?”
“No,” I mutter, flustered and pissed that Dane is going to a gay club at all. Why go to a gay one instead of a straight one unless he wants to do more than just dance and drink?
He stares me down, eyes roaming my face like he’s searching for something. In a hoarse, haunting tone, he says, “Maybe you should.”
“Dane—” I try again, but he slips into the driver’s seat faster than I can get anything else out.
He shuts the door before I can tell him all the selfish reasons he shouldn’t, like that I want him to spend the night with me instead.
But what’s the use when he’s already made up his mind?