Chapter 10
Two weeks later, Foster sat in a booth at the very back of McMurphy’s Tavern, nursing a beer as he waited for Cary to arrive.
Cary had left two days after the party and been away on a couple of his repo jobs.
Earlier that morning, he’d texted he was headed back to town and wanted to meet up.
When the door opened and Cary strode through, he grinned and waved him over.
Cary stopped at the bar, ordered himself a beer, and wandered over once he had it. He slipped across from Foster in the booth. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going. How was your business trip?”
“Uneventful.” Cary took a sip from his glass. “Any news on the attacker front?”
“I can’t imagine who it might be. I dug my old yearbooks out of the garage and couldn’t find anyone there. I don’t know where else to look.”
Cary sighed. “I hate to ask this, but… could it possibly be Jude Margulies?”
Foster winced inwardly. As far as he knew, no one but Rick was aware he’d been the second guy in Jude’s coming out party—so why would Cary suggest that name? “Why would it be Jude?”
Cary stared at him, an odd look in his eyes. “I was in the locker room that day. You know… with you and… Jude.”
Foster froze. He slowly lifted his gaze from his glass and met Cary’s.
“Still a sore spot, hmm?”
“I don’t know what you think you saw…” Foster let the words trail off. He didn’t feel like lying. Not to Cary.
“Have you been denying it so long you can’t even admit it to yourself?”
“I…” Foster winced. He paused a few seconds. “I wasn’t aware there’d been anyone else there that day.”
“I never said anything. To anyone.”
Foster was suddenly right back in that locker room with Jude staring up at him. “I regret a lot about that day. And what happened to Jude after it all went down.” He wet his suddenly dry lips. “It was all my fault. What he went through… yet I felt powerless to stop it.”
“He really did go through a few months of hell. I felt bad for him.” Cary sighed. “But it wasn’t your fault. It was Rick.”
“I wasn’t harassed. It wasn’t fair that I didn’t get the same heat.”
“Maybe, but that still doesn’t mean you were responsible for what happened to him,” Cary said. “If you’d intervened, Rick might’ve added your name to the shit list.”
“Maybe it belonged there,” Foster said.
“Neither one of you should’ve been bullied for what happened.” Cary shook his head. “Not gonna lie… witnessing his torment probably kept me in the closet longer.”
Foster sat in silence a moment, wondering if it had locked him in the closet. Was that why he’d allowed Ashley to draw him into a life he’d never wanted?
“I wondered if it might’ve been Jude myself. I looked him up on social media and found a photo. I don’t think it was him. Jude’s shorter and heavier than the guy I was with—and he has a thick beard.” Foster took a sip from his glass. “I’ve crossed him off the list.”
“Ah,” Cary said. “Well, that’s the only person outside of Rick I could think of, and we know it wasn’t Rick.”
“I went over to Jude’s shop,” Foster said. “A couple of weeks ago. It was Sunday, and they were closed.”
“To see for yourself if it was him?”
“Not really, but confirmation wouldn’t hurt.
I went to apologize for everything that went down,” Foster said.
“I keep telling myself to go back, but I can’t seem to do it.
What could I possibly say to make anything better?
Nothing. There are no words that’ll convey how terrible I feel about what he went through. ”
“I don’t think you have anything to apologize for—but if it’s something you feel you’ve got to do, then do it.”
“I should’ve defended him. I should’ve called out the bullies.”
“We all should have defended Jude, but we were all too young and too stupid to realize Rick didn’t really have any power over us.
Had we banded together and fought against him, he never would’ve had the influence he did back then.
” Cary scoffed. “Half the guys who bullied Jude were probably only doing it because they didn’t want Rick coming after them. ”
“That’s almost worse,” Foster said. “Bullying because they’re afraid of being bullied? That’s no excuse. Just like there’s no excuse for me letting him go through all that, either.”
“You were a scared kid, caught with his pants down. You freaked out. I might’ve done the same thing in your shoes.”
“My pants weren’t down,” Foster corrected.
Not yet. But they might as well have been. Foster had been hard as fuck, nearly creaming his pants just from the idea of Jude wrapping his lips around his cock. They’d both lost their minds doing what they’d done where they’d done it.
But it had just happened.
Spontaneous.
A spark had lit an inferno.
After he’d pushed Jude away, he’d seen pain flare in the guy’s eyes.
He’d known in that instant that he was the worst human being on the face of the planet…
one too terrified to tell the truth. He’d been scared to stop the taunting and bullying Jude experienced those last few months before he quit school.
Christmas had come and gone. School started again. There had been no Jude walking the halls in his skinny jeans anymore.
There was little surprise why. He’d been absolutely tormented.
Rick and his pack had started the ball rolling.
They’d spread it all over campus that Rick had caught Jude sucking some guy’s dick under the bleachers and it had been too dark to see who he’d been blowing.
Why the scenario had changed or why Rick had covered for him, he didn’t know.
He’d been too scared to ask.
Foster had avoided Rick like the plague, which was really hard when they played for the same team.
With its two best players at odds, the team crumbled.
They didn’t make it to state after all, which was probably for the best. Three games and they were done.
Foster never had to step foot into that locker room beside Rick again.
But his three weeks of playing beside Rick had been nothing compared to what Jude had lived through. Slurs had been screamed at him as he walked the halls. Someone had even spraypainted one of the worst ones on the side of Jude’s car for the world to see.
There were probably more things Foster didn’t know about.
“Coach had asked me to grab something from his office. Before I went back out, I heard the fight break out,” Cary said.
“At least, it sounded like a fight. I walked over to see what was going on. By the time I rounded the corner, you two were kissing. I was… awestruck. Foster Prince, of all people, was kissing a cute emo boy. One I’d thought was cute, anyway. ”
“He was cute,” Foster agreed, grinning. “And always wore those fucking skinny jeans showing off his ass. He got me hard a few too many times for my own wellbeing.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“I walked in and caught him going through my locker and pulled him out of it. He was looking for something Rick had taken from him. I told him to go before someone caught him, but he refused. When he went into Rick’s locker, I pulled him out again.
He shoved me, I shoved back. We wrestled a minute…
and the wrestling… turned into kissing.”
Jude’s body against his, squirming… It had done things to him.
Foster had simply had to kiss Jude. It had been so much different than kissing Ashley. The rougher lips. The stubble. The feel of a hard cock pressing against his thigh.
It had felt… so right.
And then suddenly, so, so terribly wrong.
“Ah… so you were defending Rick,” Cary said, rolling his eyes. “We see how much that’s benefitted you, hmm?”
“I was trying to protect Jude from being caught in there more so than protecting Rick’s shit. As I said before, he was a teammate. That’s all.”
“Sounds like an easy excuse why you kept shitty company.”
“Maybe,” Foster admitted. “But… I liked playing the game. I was good at it. I liked making people happy and… making them proud of me.”
Foster shook his head. “I’d always felt like an outsider.
Like I didn’t belong. But in this one thing, I excelled, and by excelling in it, I was just one of the guys.
It bought me cover and helped me pretend I was like everyone else.
” Foster cracked his neck. “Pretending eventually resulted in a loveless marriage to a woman I barely liked by the end of it.” He slid his glass forward with his forefinger.
“And me back at square one trying to start my life over again when I have no idea who I really am.”
“I think we were all pretty much pretending back then. We’re told boys don’t cry.
Don’t act like a sissy. Chase pretty girls.
Get a good job. Be the breadwinner. Marry pretty girls.
” Cary scoffed. “I got caught up in that bullshit, too. It’s why I became the manager for the football team.
I knew it was as close as a skinny nerd like me could get and it just might make my father happy that I was doing something he deemed manly.
And maybe, just maybe, that might throw them off the scent that I was gay. ”
“What did he think of your current profession?”
“I never told him,” Cary said, emotion draining from his face.
“Why didn’t you? I’m sure that might’ve earned a couple of points.”
“Fuck that motherfucker,” Cary said. “I stopped giving a shit about him a long time ago, well before he died.” He smiled cruelly.
“Though, I did get to tell him how big of a homo I was before he departed this earth—and how any chances of his gene pool continuing were dying inside a bevy of femboys across the tri-state area.”
Foster snorted and nearly spit the swallow of beer in his mouth. “Femboys?”
“Sometimes called sissies, though a lot of them don’t like that name.” Cary shrugged. “I like soft, pretty men, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I think I can guess how your dad took that.”
“Poorly,” Cary said, his smile getting wider. “But he’s gone now, and I don’t have to worry about him or his shitty opinions anymore.”
“And your mom?”