14. George #2
He drags a hand through his hair. “That’s why I downloaded the app. I thought if I could meet someone, I’d know for sure if it was real.”
“And?”
“I went on the date,” he says, watching me like he’s waiting for judgment. “You saw how that ended.”
“Wasn’t your fault. It would’ve been fine if those guys hadn’t shown up.”
It’s not true—not even close. If I’d stayed there any minute longer, it wouldn’t have been fine. Would’ve found a reason to ruin it.
“And I thought I’d be fine, but this is different.
Talking to men I don’t know, trying to work out where I sit in it, how to be myself without overthinking every second.
I don’t even know why it’s sticking in my head like this.
I just know I want to see it through. Been there for a while now, not going anywhere. ”
I give in, move a little closer, enough to touch and enough for him to know I’m here.
Lance’s voice cracks just slightly. “I’m terrified I’ll do it wrong. That I’ll meet someone, realize I made a mistake, and Azure Tides was just some one-off fluke. Or worse, it’ll be great, and then I’ll have to rewrite who the hell I’ve been for twenty-eight years.”
“You’re just trying to figure things out,” I say.
His gaze sharpens on me, searching. “How are you so calm about this?”
“I’m not.” I lean back against the couch and stare hard at his ceiling, jaw tight. “Just trying like hell not to fuck this up by saying the wrong thing. You’re telling me something important. I’m listening.”
“You’re taking it really well.”
“What did you expect me to do? Freak out?”
“Maybe?” He tugs the sleeves of my hoodie down over his hands.
“I keep thinking about this patient I had a while back, the one I told you about. Guy came in with two dildos stuck inside him. We had to help him out, and the whole time I just kept thinking how free he seemed. Embarrassed, sure, but no obvious shame. He was real about who he was and what he liked. After that, I started reading. A lot.”
“You told us.”
“Yeah, well… the research included journals, papers…and gay porn.” He says it bluntly, no filter. “I watched a ton of it. Told myself it was educational. Medical curiosity. But eventually it wasn’t. It was me trying to figure out if what I was feeling was real.”
My chest feels too tight. “And was it?”
“Yeah.” His expression turns raw, stripped bare. “It was real. It is real. Then I met Adrian and I thought, that’s what I want. I want to know myself that well.”
He pauses, and it throws me off, again. Lance doesn’t do silence like this. He fills it, owns it. This feels unfamiliar.
When he speaks again, it sounds more restrained, like he’s already trying to take it back.
“It made me think,” he says, eyes not quite holding mine. “What it would feel like…to be on the receiving end.”
A short breath out through his nose, like he’s trying to reset.
“Not like I’m going to do anything about it soon,” he adds quickly. “Just… it’s been there.”
He gives a small, awkward shrug. Color creeps up his cheeks, more like embarrassment. But when he looks at me again, there’s something sharp under it. Heat, threaded straight through the discomfort. Lance is still fucking Lance underneath all that vulnerability.
I nod slowly, keeping my voice low and steady even though my pulse is hammering. “You mean you think you might want to bottom?”
Lance holds my stare for a long beat, then gives the smallest nod. “Yeah… that.”
“Mm,” I let out, heat hitting fast at the thought of him like that. I shove the image down hard. This moment is about him, not the way my body is reacting.
I’m trying to figure out why my first reaction is pure relief.
Relief that I’m not the only one unraveling after everything that happened.
It’s followed immediately by a sharp spike of panic, because he downloaded that goddamn app and tried to figure this out with strangers.
The idea of some other man touching him, guiding him through this…
it makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
So I say the only thing that actually makes sense. To me, at least.
“What if you figure it out with me?”
Lance turns to look at me, his eyes wide. “What?”
“You want to…know these things, see how you do with your attraction to men.” I swallow hard. “I’m a man.”
A beat passes and he just stares at me, completely still, like he’s trying to work out if I’ve fucking lost it completely.
“Uh-huh,” he manages to say, his gaze dragging over me, assessing, then comes back to my face like I’ve just proposed we rob a bank. “You want to help me to….explore.”
“We trust each other,” I say. I’m already in it now, so there’s no backing out. Nothing wrong with people using apps for that. It’s just not for him. I sure feel something else that spells along the lines of ‘never again’ and ‘not on my fucking watch’.
“And do what instead? Experiment with my best friend?”
“Why not?”
He laughs, but it’s the slightly hysterical, unhinged kind. “Because that’s insane? What if it becomes weird and we can’t come back from it?”
I turn fully toward him, voice low. “I’d rather risk that than watch you hand yourself over to strangers who don’t know you, don’t care enough to make it good or safe.”
Lance studies me, one eyebrow raised, but there’s a new edge of nervousness under the fire. “What do you get out of this?” His voice drops. “What’s in it for you?”
I can’t really answer that with something he can process tonight.
“I get to make sure you’re not stuck with some guy who thinks ‘discreet’ means he can do whatever the hell he wants.”
Lance’s face shifts from skepticism to a mix of confusion and reluctant amusement, like he’s fighting the urge to roll his eyes or smile.
“So if you’re going to figure out what you want with men,” I say, and this time I turn into him, shifting on the couch. My splinted hand comes up behind him, braced against the backrest as I lean in, boxing him in without touching him. “Do it with me. Not some stranger named Elliot.”