Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Griffin
I wish I could say I had worked up the courage to turn back on my heels. I wish I could say that something good in me forced me to turn around. But saying it would only prove further how incapable of telling the truth I had become.
What really happened was far less easy to define and impossible to fully understand.
Andrei didn’t ask me where I was going.
He was doing the very thing I had asked him to do. He was giving me the space I needed.
So, as I stepped toward the door, I heard him exhale, and I reached for the doorknob.
In one heartbeat, quiet and aching, it all made sense. For just one flash, for one instance in all of time, I saw clearly what lay ahead of me.
Andrei gave me the space that I would use to postpone the inevitable. Andrei let me go so that I could come back to him.
But I would never come back.
Coming back would require me to admit to my mistakes, admit to my fantasies, and admit to my newfound desires. Coming back would mean doing the very thing I was avoiding. And avoiding it forever meant never coming back.
As my hand wrapped around the door handle, I knew I was walking away forever.
Sure, I’d come back later tonight, hoping Andrei was asleep. I’d play hockey, I’d work out with him, but the gap between us would grow wider and wider until we both quietly understood that there was no bridge long enough and strong enough to bring us back together.
My tongue untied in the face of the most frightening vision of my future I’d ever witnessed.
Words welled in my chest, coming right out of my heart rather than any place that had anything to do with reason.
I abandoned reason. Reason had gotten me here in the first place.
Thinking and thinking again about a very simple thing.
“I already lost you,” I said, my voice deep and airy, as if someone had punched the words out of me.
They tumbled out, and I stood by them. I didn’t dare turn around.
Not yet, at least. I didn’t dare see the grief ravaging his face, and I knew that it would be.
“I might as well tell you the truth.” I bit my lip hard, preventing myself from letting out a sudden, inflating sob that choked me.
“I don’t…” But his words faltered, and he didn’t say more.
Then, I turned around, shoulders slumped and head hanging. I had pulled out the stitches quickly, and the damage was already done. “If I don’t tell you, we’ll drift apart quietly. Maybe it would hurt less.”
Andrei shook his head. “It would be hell.” His voice was small, childish, secretly frightened.
“I can’t keep lying,” I said. “I can’t keep pretending that the truth doesn’t matter.”
“Griff, whatever you think you know, you better ask me. Maybe I can explain,” he said, balling his fists in search of bravery. He thought I would accuse him of something. God, how innocent my friend was.
“But it’s not you,” I said. “And you might be chill. You might just shrug it off and say it’s no big deal, but I’m about to make things real awkward between us.
” Because it had crossed my mind that Andrei might just tell me to go out and try my luck with a willing guy.
There were plenty in college, both the type that knew well enough what their interests were and the more confused type, like me, trying to figure it out.
And when it had crossed my mind, I scratched it off the list of possibilities.
No matter what Andrei thought about me being a little gay or a little bi, I couldn’t see a world in which my sudden crush on him didn’t make it way too awkward.
Annoyance passed over his face, making the remainder of my spur of courage falter.
He took a step forward, closing the short distance between us.
As he stood a foot apart from me, his face revealed more than just annoyance.
There was disappointment and defeat. “I knew it was a matter of time before you figured it out,” he said.
“If you wanna call me out, just fucking do it and be done with it. I can’t keep playing this game. ”
“Game?”
He shrugged, his shoulders moving violently up and down as he tried his hardest to contain the welling anger. “Say it to my face, Griff. I can’t move on until you do.”
But I knew this defiant look. It was the same look he’d given his father when Mr. Sokolov tried to find a way to dismiss his photographs and refuse to buy him a vintage camera and the equipment to develop new photos.
I’d spent weeks planning it with Mrs. Sokolov until we surprised Andrei with all the stuff he’d wanted.
I knew this look of readiness on his face.
I knew that he just wanted to hear it. He was ready for the worst, and he would fight to cut the wait time short if he needed to.
He clenched his teeth and pulled his lips back, exhaling through flaring nostrils. “Say it,” he said. “You read the stories, and it finally made you see what they all seem to know. Don’t be a coward now, Griff. Tell me the truth. I already know you can’t stand me anymore.”
How fucking dare he? “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped.
But his eyes twinkled with unshed tears, and his cheeks were red. “I do, Griff. Fucking years. The fact that you didn’t see it sooner…”
“Christ, you’re making this hard,” I said.
“Say it. Say that you know,” he said. A challenge. His upper lip lifted, one side higher than the other, and sadness cast a gloomy shadow over his beautiful face.
My gaze swept across his face, and I understood. Nobody would be this frightened. Nobody would be this scared of a friend who had a problem to share. Nobody other than myself and Andrei. And I knew this fear all too well because it had plagued me for days.
Andrei…Andrei had been living with it for longer than I could imagine.
I swallowed and lifted my hands carefully to his face, looking into his eyes as my own vision blurred with tears. “It would be easier to show you,” I whispered, my voice strangled far too much to let me speak clearly.
He didn’t say another word. He didn’t pull away from my hands as they closed around his face and held him so gently. He didn’t frown when I leaned in a little.
Then again, he didn’t close his eyes either.
He watched me as if he couldn’t believe it, and my latest discovery proved itself truer with every passing heartbeat.
Because I had seen that frightened expression before.
I had seen the hopelessness in the eyes and the tightness of a clenched jaw and the fear of saying it aloud for the sake of friendship.
But the last time I’d seen it wasn’t on Andrei’s face. It was in the mirror just this morning.
I’d never claimed to be smart. I’d never promised anyone I would figure it all out at first try. But damn, I should have figured this one out sooner.
As I leaned in, Andrei blinked, opening his eyes as if not to miss it in case it flew by too quickly.
My insides fluttered with excitement, making me giddy and restless. The sensation climbed, tickling me from the inside out, filling me with the sweetest anxiety I’d ever felt. Even my toes tingled with anticipation, the distance between his lips and mine so vast and wonderful.
But then, as the corners of Andrei’s mouth trembled and ticked upward, I let my left hand slide to the back of his head, and I closed my eyes, letting myself be immersed in the physical sensation like no other.
This impossible, frightening, defiant elation that refused to play by the rules of physics and that lifted my feet off the floor.
It carried me through the fog and clouds, through storms and restless seas, until it led me to a sun-kissed meadow where only Andrei existed.
His lips were softer and warmer than anyone could have convinced me.
They melted against mine, wet and sweet and perfectly shaped for kisses.
He closed his lips around my lower one, sucking it gently as his arms came under mine and around my torso.
He didn’t freak out like I’d expected him to through all these days of torment.
He kissed me back, taking the lead at the very moment when I’d lost control.
He kissed me softly as I leaned down, my fingers moving over the hair on the back of his head.
I could feel the wild grace of his softly tangled curls and his fingers running through my shaggy hair.
And when the tip of his tongue touched the tip of mine, I thought my heart would just about burst out of my chest and kill the mood.
But it didn’t. It thundered inside my rib cage, performing its big drum solo, while I let my other hand move around Andrei and to the small of his back, where I touched him gently and made him moan.
He pulled away from me. “Griff…”
“That was…” I whispered, looking at the way his cheeks flushed and how his eyelashes fluttered when he blinked rapidly and looked away from me. He slouched, bending awkwardly just a little inward, and tried to turn away from me. “I liked it.”
The words felt small and irrelevant. I could have racked my brain and found a way to recite a sonnet to him about the way I would die without another taste of his lips, but it felt as though there weren’t any words in our language that could conjure just how true that statement was.
So I didn’t try it. I kept it simple, unlike all the other blunders of the past few weeks.
“You did?” Andrei looked at me.
Judging by the way he was hiding his midsection away from me, he very much liked it, too.
But I didn’t tease him. If we kissed again, I would know I could tease him.
For now, I just didn’t want to blow this up.
So I nodded. “Andrei, the truth…the truth I wanted to tell you…” I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. “I feel like I’m high.”
“You wanted to tell me,” he said softly, prompting the previous train of thought.