Chapter Thirty Confessions
After dinner, he insisted on washing the dishes, which was out of character.
Normally, I did them because my cleanliness standards were higher than his.
I supervised to make sure he was doing them up to code by standing behind him and holding him.
It felt good to hold him like that, and he took his time, which was nice because I didn’t want to let him go.
When he was done, he took my hand and led me to the living room.
On the way, he went for his coat, hanging on the hook by the front door, pulling me with him.
“What?” I said.
“Another present for you.”
“What is it?”
He pulled a bag of chocolate buttons out of his coat pocket.
“Buttons!” I’d mentioned once that I got a bag of them for Christmas when I was a kid, and he’d remembered.
I pulled him close and kissed him. “Thank you.”
“Come on. Let’s pretend to watch TV.”
We arranged ourselves on the couch, with me lying across his lap. I balanced the open bag of buttons on my chest and used the remote to channel surf.
“What do you want to watch?” I said.
“Whatever you want.” He stroked the hair off my forehead.
I settled on America’s Next Top Model. “This episode’s got male models.” I stretched and turned my head to rest on his belly. “You want a button?”
“They’re for you,” he said.
“You never treat yourself to anything.” I fed him a button, and he let me.
His hands wandered, and he started playing with my nipple through my shirt, teasing me.
“You want me to keep going?” he said.
“Yeah, or whatever else you wanna do to me is fine.”
He skimmed his thumbnail over my other nipple, which was seriously distracting.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I don’t think you were the first guy I was ever attracted to. I think I’ve always been bi, but I wasn’t ready to admit it till I met you.”
“Yeah?”
“When I was in my first year at university, I had this roommate, Greg. We spent all our time together, studied together, partied together, ate breakfast together. He bought me my first beer. He taught me to drive stick. Nothing physical happened between us—just the kind of physical stuff that happens between friends, but I really liked him. More than liked. One night, I got drunk, and I told him I loved him. And he said, ‘I love you too, man.’ He was drunk too, and we fell asleep in his bed. The next day, he acted like it never happened. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he didn’t understand what I meant.
I didn’t have the balls to say it to him sober.
Then he got a girlfriend, and she ended our friendship.
I didn’t want her to take him away from me. But she did. He was my best friend.”
He lifted the bottom of his T-shirt and wiped the tear off my face, but he didn’t say anything.
“But when I met you, I couldn’t pretend I wanted you as a friend. And I was afraid if I didn’t tell you, you’d walk out of my life like Greg did.”
On America’s Next Top Model, the judging panel were rating the contestants.
“Which one do you like?” I said.
“Models aren’t my type. They’re too tall.”
“What is your type?”
“You, wisenheimer,” he said.
“What’s your type about me?”
“Your body, your freckles, your cute lil face.”
I laughed. “Shut up.”
“You asked.”
When I was growing up, my sister used to make fun of my freckles. I was glad when they faded, but they always came back in the summer, and he must have noticed.
“Does your ex-boyfriend look like me?”
“Not really. He’s a little taller than you. His hair’s lighter, and it’s wavy, not curly. It’s a lot longer than yours too, and he wears glasses. You’ve both got the same body type, though.”
“Is he a dancer?”
“No, but he used to play soccer. He was pretty good at it when we were in high school. Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious. Is he married now?”
“He’s dating Edgar.”
“The Edgar you fooled around with?”
“It was only the one time,” he said. “But yeah, him.”
“Is Edgar why you broke up with Tommy?”
“Yeah, and he’s why Trish and I broke up too.”
“Wait, what? If you only fooled around with him once, how did he break up two of your relationships?”
“Tommy cheated on me with Edgar. I cheated on Trish with Edgar.”
“You cheated on Trish?”
“Yeah, and she cheated on me with her ex-boyfriend. I told you we had problems.”
“You don’t solve relationship problems by cheating.”
“I figured that out,” he said.
“I don’t understand. When I told you how I felt about you, you rejected me because you were with her. But you cheated on her with Edgar. Why him and not me?”
“It was a different situation. What I did with Edgar wasn’t sex—it was sexual, but it wasn’t sex.
I didn’t touch him. He didn’t touch me. I guess I told myself it wasn’t really cheating because of that.
And Edgar didn’t want a relationship. He just wanted to watch me get off.
You wanted a relationship. I couldn’t give you that while I was dating Trish. ”
“But having a fling doesn’t count?”
“You weren’t asking me for a fling, were you? And I never wanted to just have a fling with you. I knew that from day one. There’s no way I would have started something with you unless I was single.”
“But what if you want to have a fling with someone now we’re together?”
“No way. Won’t happen.”
“It happened with Trish.”
“Trish is a girl. I told you we had problems, and most of them were because she’s a girl. We were having problems right out of the gate.”
“So were we.”
“They’re different problems.”
“It’s just...finding out you cheated. I wish you’d told me sooner. I had this idea of you, and now it’s changed.”
“I didn’t cheat on you,” he said. “I’d never do that.
I know what it would do to you. Look, I was young and stupid when that stuff happened with Edgar.
I grew up. If I didn’t have any control of myself, I wouldn’t have blown you off when you first approached me.
If I was the kind of guy who went for a fuck whenever I felt like it, I’d have come here the day Trish and I broke up—I knew where you lived.
But I didn’t do that. Because I didn’t want to start something with you while I was on the rebound from Trish.
Then after I moved in, I waited for you to come around.
I slept in your bed for months, and I never put a hand on you.
I couldn’t have done that if I didn’t have any self-control. ”
“I figured it was because you weren’t into me.”
“Are you kidding? I had to jerk off every night before we went to bed. Sometimes twice a night.”
“Really?”
“Tapper, I was a walking hard-on for months. Didn’t you notice?”
“It’s not polite to check out another guy’s dick.” To be honest, it would have freaked me out to know how turned on he was back then.
“It’s okay to check out another guy’s dick if that guy is your boyfriend. Why do you think I stayed here this long if I wasn’t into you?”
“You never said anything.”
“I didn’t want to pressure you into having sex with me before you were ready,” he said.
“Oh. I didn’t know. Fuck, I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t realize what I was putting you through.”
“You don’t need to say sorry. I know why it took so long. It wasn’t your fault.”
I lifted myself up on my elbow and kissed him tenderly.
“I’m glad I waited,” he said.
“Me too.”
“So, how am I your type?”
I smiled. “I dunno. I clocked you the second I saw you. You looked so confident. Relaxed. You mentioned your ex-boyfriend like being bi was no big deal. You were out and totally fine with it. I thought that was hot.”
“I’ve been out for years. So, yeah.”
“But you also looked vulnerable. The way you held yourself. You looked like you needed someone to take care of you, and I wanted to be that person.”
“Take care of me, like a kid?” he said.
“Not like that. I didn’t think you were helpless. But you look a lot younger than you are, and I guess I felt protective. I wanted to be there for you.”
“What about girlfriends?” he said. “What’s your type?”
“Experienced. Forward. I never asked a woman out in my life, except for my first girlfriend, Deb. They always approached me.”
“What did you think of Trish?”
“Trish was exactly my type,” I admitted. “The day I met you, I’d been flirting with her all afternoon.”
“If she’d asked you out, would you have said yes?”
“If I’d never met you? If she was single? Yeah, and I would have slept with her too. I’m glad that never happened. Looking back on my dating history, I feel like a sleaze.”
“Why?”
“I had a lot of sex before I met you.”
“So did I,” he said.
“But only with three people, and with Edgar, you didn’t have sex. You’ve only had two relationships before me, and they were both serious. Off the top of my head, I don’t even know how many girlfriends I’ve had.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. If it’s good experience—if you learned what you like and what you don’t.”
“But I don’t know that I did. I got off, and I got my girlfriends off, but I think it was more because they knew what they were doing. I wasn’t with any of them long enough to do anything except straight sex and oral and hand stuff and kissing.”
“You’re good at kissing.”
“My first girlfriend—Deb—didn’t want to go any further than kissing, so that’s all we did for four months. And since kissing was all I could do with her, I got pretty good.”
“I think I’d get pretty turned on watching you getting teased like that.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I jacked a lot those four months—at home, not in front of her. Feeling turned on for that long and not being able to act on it can really get to you.”
“Yeah, I know.” He gave me a little push.
“Shit. I Debbed you for five months, didn’t I? But you know what? I was grateful to her. I really learned self-control. I never went off by accident when I was with her.”
“That self-control went out the window with me, didn’t it?”
“Well, maybe when you’re that attracted to someone, it’s hard to keep a hold of yourself. Especially when your partner doesn’t mind that you can’t.”
“No.” He stroked my face. “He doesn’t mind at all.”