Chapter 17
Tean followed Jem out of the locker room.
The sounds of splashing filtered into their silence as they moved past the pool again.
The echo of their steps bounced off the tile.
Once again, the smell of chlorine met them; a middle-aged couple was soaking in a hot tub, while another man was laying a towel on a chaise, fussing with it, lining it up exactly.
A woman was trying to get sunscreen on her back even though: a) they were indoors, and b) it was snowing.
All of it registered only distantly for Tean.
He was still playing back fragments of the conversation with Quinn and Beckett.
The app on their phones. The interviews or one-on-ones, or whatever they wanted to call them, that they had with Gerald.
The threat of being outed or shamed. Of having their secrets and their fantasies exposed to the people most capable of doing them harm.
Of having what they wanted being turned against them like a knife.
The splashing.
The sound of water on tile.
The memory was so strong that, in the first fragment of a second, it blocked out everything else.
The first time with Ammon. In the apartment they shared in Lima.
They were both missionaries. They’d both been sent to Lima.
In the strange cognitive dissonance that had still marked that time in Tean’s life, when he had simultaneously believed and not believed, it had seemed like a sign.
Like God had meant for this to happen. The doors to the balcony open, and the sea breeze making the curtains move like smoke.
The shower running, Tean stepping under the spray, and then the door opening, and Ammon moving into the room: blond, leanly muscled, perfect.
He had tested the spray with one hand, like this was just another shower, and then he had moved into the water, and Tean had only been able to stare at him, at how the water ran over his shoulders like silver, following his chest, draining across his belly until he was looking at Ammon’s dick.
It was bigger than Tean’s. Hardening. Tean tried to say something, but he didn’t know what, and Ammon kept coming, moving into the water, and then Tean hit the wall, and there was nowhere left to go.
Literally. Figuratively. Theologically. Trapped, said a voice that sounded a little like Jem, between a dick and a hard place.
Ammon had touched his arms. Settled his hands on Tean’s hips.
Kissed his shoulder. Not his mouth, though.
At the time, that had seemed…all right. Understandable.
And Tean had been twenty, and his body had done what any twenty-year-old’s would have done.
Dicks bumping against each other. And then Ammon’s arms around his waist. Tean painfully aware of the awkwardness of his own movement, of how he kept humping into the crease of Ammon’s thigh, and the agony of knowing he was supposed to be doing something else, something sexier, and, at the same time, feeling better than he’d ever felt in his life.
In the dark, that night, from the bed across the room, Ammon had said, We can tell people when we get home.
Tean had forgotten, until that moment, that he had cried himself to sleep.
Quietly. So Ammon wouldn’t hear. For a moment, everything after that night opened up for him like a pit he was tipping into: the years of hiding, the years of loneliness, the years of wanting and hoping, and the years of being disappointed over and over again.
Years of being a fool. Years of the hurt that grew and spread until it was nothing but numbness.
And then he was back in his body, tense, shoulders aching and teeth gritted and his head like he had a fever. They’d left the pool behind along with the sounds of water, and now they were following a carpeted hallway with more windows that looked out on—well, at that moment, the blizzard.
Tean opened his mouth to apologize for disappearing inside his own head, but Jem was staring straight ahead.
His mouth was set in a tight line, and there was the faintest furrow between his eyebrows.
His hair, Tean noticed for the first time, was a mess in a way it almost never was with Jem—which was to say, a little mussed, bangs spilling over his forehead, a few flyaways in back.
For Tean, it probably would have been one of his top ten hair days.
But, then, of course Jem’s hair wasn’t in its familiar state of perfect control: they’d been on the run, almost literally, since the moment they’d gotten up.
And the hat, said that voice that sounded a little like Jem. Larsen made us wear those stupid hats.
“Are you okay?” Tean asked.
Jem didn’t say anything.
“Jem?”
“Hm?”
“Are you okay?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
They walked a few more yards. Their steps made whispering sounds on the carpet.
“Everything all right?” Tean asked.
This time, Jem’s eyes cleared. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?”
“You seem upset.”
“Just thinking.”
“Because it would be okay if you were upset. Your mom—” Tean almost said is involved in this. “—has suffered a huge loss today, and that’s after last night’s, um, disappointment, and—”
“Tean, I’m fine. I told you I’m fine. I’m trying to think my way through this.”
Tean nodded. “Right. I know.” But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I wanted to check.”
Jem stopped walking. He studied Tean for a moment. And then he ran one hand through Tean’s hair. Something about it made him smile. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.”
Jem gave Tean’s head a little shake.
Laughing, Tean said, “Not…great.”
“This whole thing is such a mindfuck, right?”
“Yes. It is.”
Jem’s eyes were almost gray in the weak light from the storm. His hand moved softly through Tean’s hair. “Is it too much?
“No.”
Jem waited.
“It brings up a lot of stuff,” Tean said. He leaned into Jem’s touch; it was grounding in a way he hadn’t known he needed, and pins and needles ran through him. “I’m working on it. I’ll be fine.”
Jem’s fingers scritched pleasantly. But then his mouth quirked, and he whispered, “You sound like me.”
“Good,” Tean said. “Now you know how annoying it is.”
“Teanakin Leon!” But he was grinning, and he gave Tean’s head another of those little shakes before releasing him.
“Do you think they were telling the truth?” Tean asked.
“For the most part.” Jem shrugged. “They don’t teach you this in psych school, but there’s something about getting caught mid-boink, your dick in the wind and your asshole still fluttering, that makes it hard to lie.”
“So the whole thing about making them stay naked, that was a mind game?”
“Well, that and the fact that it’s surprisingly hard to run with your wiener wagging.”
Tean took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“It is!” Jem insisted with a laugh. But almost immediately he added, “Beckett definitely held something back about Stephen, but I don’t know what.”
“But you think they were telling the truth about Tafton?”
Jem nodded slowly, but he said, “Not sure it matters, though.”
“Why not?”
“Everybody’s got a motive here. And Quinn can tell me being gay isn’t a secret he’s willing to kill for, but I don’t know if I buy that.
These people are either so desperate that they’re willing to pay a lot of money and give up pretty much all their privacy—or they’re being forced to be here.
Either way, they’ve got a lot to lose if Gerald starts telling everybody their secrets.
Ma and Pa might know you’re gay, but do they know that you’re mostly active in the footjobs subreddit and you’re a regular poster in tinypeenworship? ”
“Okay, but— Wait, those aren’t real subreddits, are they?”
A grin splashed across Jem’s face.
“No!” It was practically a shout, and Tean put his hands up in case that helped. “Don’t tell me!”
Jem’s grin faded as he said, “And the other reason it doesn’t matter is that everybody’s alibi has been bullshit so far. They all alibi each other, but with a crowd like this, that’s not worth jack.”
“Uh, I’ll take your word for it.” Tean considered the comment for a moment. “I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’s not only the secrets. I think—” He stopped again.
“I think there might be a lot of anger here. Buried anger. Maybe, in fact, so deeply buried that they don’t even know they’re angry.
But that doesn’t make it any less real.” The quicksilver flow on Jem’s face—understanding, compassion, pain—made Tean hurry on.
“Beckett’s parents making him come here, for example.
He can say he’s doing it because he loves them, and it’s only a few weekends a year, and then he goes and does whatever he wants.
But when you take a step back, what does that say about the beliefs he’s taken into himself for his whole life? ”
“Not to mention the fact that he can’t look at any porn,” Jem said darkly. “That’s just mean. What’s he supposed to do? Spank it to those YouTube videos of guys with big forearms?”
Tean’s eyebrows went up.
“Uh.” Jem held up one finger. Smiled. A little too innocently. “That came out wrong.”
“I’m sure it did.”
“I don’t even know about those videos. I heard something about them. At work.”
“Uh huh.”
“Plus I don’t need porn because I’ve got you.”
“Please stop.” Tean adjusted his glasses, not that they needed it, but because sometimes with Jem, that was the only thing he could think of.
Finally, he decided the best course was to keep talking.
“The same goes for all of them. Quinn won’t tell his parents the truth about himself because he wants so badly to be normal.
Tafton is basically a prisoner, living in fear of having Gerald share his secrets with everyone. ”
“They all are,” Jem said. “God, can you imagine doing this with a wife?”