12. I think I probably am
I think I probably am
The next day, when Colby woke up, Hunter was in the kitchen, making them both protein smoothies.
He asked Colby to go with him to the gym.
Leandra had left a shit ton of guest passes for the gym she worked at.
Colby still felt weird about what they did the night before.
It wasn’t regret that made him feel nauseous.
He had fantasized about doing this with a man since he started getting hard-ons, and it felt like relief to finally scratch that itch.
But he still worried they’d fucked something up.
Though Hunter really wasn’t acting like it, Colby agreed to go. Plus, the gym had air conditioning.
They did some running on the treadmills and then spotted each other for weights.
Hunter made jokes. Colby laughed. It was…
perfectly normal. Colby began to relax. They both took advantage of the showers, which were sectioned into private stalls with curtains, so they didn’t have that awkwardness of seeing each other naked and pretending not to be having flashbacks to last night.
Colby finally let himself ponder the night before as he showered.
Was it some weird lunar eclipse that brought them together like that?
Was it just the heat wave? The weed? Colby had thought Hunter was gorgeous from the second he’d laid eyes on him on that restroom floor at Trader Joe’s during the earthquake.
It was those big, dark eyes. They were such a deep brown, but they glinted like amber gemstones when the light hit them just right.
And his skin… it was pale and perfect, like he’d never had a zit in his entire life.
It had Colby obsessed. He had struggled with acne as a kid, and he didn’t have scarring from the acne, but he still saw the blemishes that had plagued him in his mind and went into a bit of a funk when a pimple randomly popped up.
And Hunter’s hands… They were wide and his fingers thick and strong.
He’d imagined them wrapped around his dick long before they actually were.
It felt even better than he could have imagined when it finally happened.
Great. Now he was half hard in his shower stall.
He lowered the water temperature and deliberately thought about his family instead.
That was a guaranteed boner-killer. His mom had texted at some point in the night.
She wasn’t much for sleeping regular hours.
She’d asked if he was free the third week of April next year because apparently that was when Atlas was thinking of getting married.
She said Colby would be needed for the entire week since he would be in the bridal party.
That was news to him. Atlas hadn’t asked him to be a groomsman, and he was certain he wouldn’t.
His mom was in for a shock. He hadn’t responded to her text because who the hell knew where they were going to be over a year in advance. Jesus.
For the first time in a long time, as he finished rinsing off, he allowed himself to think about why he wanted nothing to do with his brothers. Usually, he suppressed that memory, and all thoughts of the day his safe world ceased to exist, but after last night, it was hard to ignore.
Colby had been sixteen years old, Brodie seventeen, and Atlas eighteen.
It was Thanksgiving weekend, and Atlas was home from his first semester at college on a baseball scholarship, of course.
Brodie was an all-star first baseman and senior at their local high school, and Colby had coerced his mom into buying him a guitar.
He was saving up for lessons at a local music shop, but in the meantime, he was learning basics from YouTube videos.
Andy Keaton didn’t approve, but he had stopped grumbling about it.
Life was good, generally. Colby expected the holiday weekend to go as it always did—he’d help his mom in the kitchen while Brodie, Atlas, and Andy watched football games and some of the neighbors wandered over for snacks and drinks before the family sat down to a huge feast.
There were about ten people in the house when Colby ran upstairs to find his wallet so he could go to the store and get the vanilla ice cream and the whipped cream Bonnie had forgotten, but insisted they were required for the desserts, which were apple pie and pumpkin pie.
Homemade, of course. He was going to blow right by Atlas’s bedroom, but he heard something. Groaning? Moaning?
Looking back now, Colby could admit he was incredibly naive.
His first thought was that Atlas was ill.
His second thought was that maybe he was overdosing.
In his defense, they’d just had an assembly at school to discuss the serious risk of Fentanyl-laced recreational drugs and how they were infiltrating California.
Maybe Atlas had been doing drugs at college and brought them home and was dying on his bedroom floor.
So of course, Colby didn’t knock while opening the door.
Because an ODing college freshman couldn’t yell “come in.”
But what greeted Colby was Atlas on his knees, completely conscious, standing in front of his best friend, Foster, who had his pants at his ankles, and Atlas’ mouth around his dick. Colby froze, the only thing he could move was his mouth, which fell open as his eyes widened.
“Get the fuck out!” Atlas hissed, shoving Foster to the side as Foster covered his junk with his hand.
Colby blinked and shut the door, darted across the hall to his room, grabbed his wallet, and ran downstairs and out the front door.
When he returned with the required pie toppings a half hour later, his heart still pounding, his brain still fried, Atlas was on the couch next to their dad.
Foster was in the backyard talking with Briar and her mom, who had stopped by for the neighborhood mingle part of the day.
Colby hid in the kitchen until dinner. He purposely didn’t sit next to Atlas, who was his usual animated, happy self, sharing wild tales of his college baseball team.
It wasn’t until midnight, when their parents had gone to bed, that Atlas wandered out to the backyard where Colby was trying to practice chords on his guitar and finally get his mind off what he saw.
He sat in the chair beside the ottoman Colby was perched on.
The gentle light from the gas fire pit danced on his tanned skin. “It’s not what you think.”
“I have no idea what to think,” Colby replied. “But I know what I saw is what I saw. You and Foster—”
“Are friends. Like always. We just sometimes help each other…” Atlas’s eyes darted up to ensure all the windows for the bedrooms on the second floor were closed. “Get off. It’s not like a gay thing.”
“If getting blown by your guy friend isn’t gay, then what is?” Colby blurted out.
“Fuck off. I’m not gay,” Atlas snapped in a growl of a whisper. His whole body was tense, and the veins in his neck popped. His brows pinched together. His eyes narrowed angrily as he glared at his youngest brother. “I swear to God, Colb—”
“I think I probably am.”
Atlas’s eyes widened. His head reared back as if the words had physically slapped him in the face.
Colby felt every ounce of tension slipping from his brother into his own bones.
He’d never confessed that out loud. He had never expected to say it to anyone, ever, let alone his sibling.
But now that the thought was out… he didn’t feel all that bad about it. “I mean, maybe.”
“I thought you were dating Briar.”
“Everyone thinks that,” Colby replied and put his guitar down gently beside the ottoman.
The wind blew in off the ocean and rustled through his hair, which he had started to try to grow out.
It was just a wild mess of squiggly locks that required way more hair product than Colby liked.
“She’s my best friend, and she’s hot. I get that. But like, she doesn’t… do it for me.”
“Who does?” Atlas whispered, like he was scared to talk about this in a normal voice.
Colby shrugged. “I’m trying to figure that out, but like… I kind of get more of a reaction down there, from looking at stuff like what you were doing.”
Atlas blinked, and Colby could see his brain melting.
Colby felt a flood of heat rush over his skin.
“I don’t mean looking at you, because like gross.
You’re my brother, and Foster is… not for me.
But like I’ve seen that. I’ve watched that kind of thing on porn sites and yeah, it like…
It’s what I react to. It’s what I like.”
“But you’ve never?”
Colby shook his head. “With a dude. No. Nothing. I mean, high school is rough enough for a dude who likes poetry and playing guitar who also happens to be the son of a local retired baseball star and has two jock siblings. How much blacker does the sheep need to get, right?”
Atlas almost smirked at that, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. But then they fell, hard. “I’m not. It’s just like… something to do for me.”
“But you said dudes were good-looking and stuff before,” Colby said. There was a longing in his chest. He wanted to bond with Atlas over this so badly. He needed to feel less alone. “Do you remember? You told me—"
“That means nothing,” Atlas interrupted tersely. “I’m not gay. But it’s fine if you are.”
Colby’s chest grew tight, and his mouth pressed into a flat line as he stared at his brother and fought—and lost—the urge to argue. “You know it’s not okay. Not for Dad. Maybe not even for Mom.”
Atlas took a long, deep, slow breath. He gave Colby a short nod. “But like, he would get over it. Eventually. Probably.”
“He wouldn’t,” Colby said, what he knew Atlas already knew.
He also knew in his heart from that night on that his brother was as queer as he was, but was in denial.
He wondered if one day either of them would be out.
It was nice to know that if it happened, if he told anyone else this truth of his, that Atlas would have his back.
Atlas asked him to play something, and Colby did.
He went to bed that night feeling strangely okay.
But two nights later his father stormed into his room, pale-faced and shaking, holding up Colby’s iPad and asking why the fuck there were gay porn sites in his history.
Colby had no excuse. No response. No idea why his father had his iPad.
His parents were not controlling, helicopter types.
All the boys had been lectured about the perils of things, but not monitored.
They had freedom. Until now. For reasons Colby didn’t understand in that humiliating, visceral moment, Andy had his iPad and had looked through his browser history.
And he was looking at Colby like he was some kind of invasive pest who’d infiltrated Andy’s house without permission. Like a termite.
Now Colby wasn’t just the sensitive, artist boy that nobody in his family understood.
He was the queer boy that no one could accept.
And it was Atlas’s fault. He’d “borrowed” Colby’s iPad that night, without permission, and he’d been caught looking at gay porn when his dad walked into their basement gym.
Atlas immediately threw Colby under the bus.
Acted like he’d stumbled upon the porn in the browser history, and of course Andy believed his favorite son.
And after that night, Andy barely looked at Colby, hardly ever talked to him, and put parental locks on all the devices in the house, including the television.
But did anyone actually talk about it? Hell, no.
Colby stepped out of the shower, towel snug around his waist, and found Hunter was already gone, the locker he’d used was open and empty. When Colby grabbed his phone from his locker, he found a text.
Hunter
Meet you out front.
Colby forgot about his dysfunctional family and dressed. Tying his damp hair back in a bun and shoving his feet into his untied sneakers, he headed out of the locker room. He turned the corner for the lobby and found Hunter talking to Leandra.