2. Cam #2
“You should set up a booth at the Founders’ Festival dance,” Deacon said with a grin. “Take applications for his next boyfriend and put them through a thorough screening process.”
“Deacon, you’re a genius.” Levi sat up straighter on the couch.
Deacon looked over at me, a silent question in his eyes. I shrugged, shifting in the squeaky patio chair. I hoped Levi wasn’t serious, but the guy could be pretty protective when it came to his family.
“You know I was kidding, right?” Deacon said. “Tell me you’re not actually going to do that.”
“Of course not,” Levi said with a dismissive wave. “Jordy shouldn’t be dating anyone for another few months at least, if not a year.” He turned to me and grinned. “You, on the other hand…”
“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “No. I’m not even going to the dance. I’ve never gone to it. Not once in all my years on Summersea.
“That’s part of your problem. I know you like peace and quiet so you can do your research, but you can’t keep acting like a hermit.”
“I’m not a hermit. I see you guys.”
“Only because I invite myself over,” Levi said. “Only because I drag Deacon along with me. You picked the most remote spot on the island. It’s like you’re hoping people won’t notice you.”
My stomach was tight with nerves. That was way too close to the truth.
“I just don’t like being the center of attention,” I said faintly.
“You don’t have to be. But you do have to be willing to talk to people, to put yourself out there, if you’re ever going to meet a woman.”
“Maybe I don’t want to meet a woman!” I jumped out of my seat—and immediately smacked my head on the cabin ceiling.
You’d think I would remember the places where the roof beams hung low. I’d built the cabin myself, after all. But I’d spent long, long years trying to forget that my body existed, and I still wasn’t great at proprioception.
I couldn’t just sit there and listen to Levi talk, though. Every second we stayed on the subject, my stomach tied itself in more convoluted knots. I grabbed my beer, drained it in one gulp, and walked to the kitchen to get another one.
“Why not?” Levi pressed. He didn’t rise from his seat, but his voice carried through the cabin as I peered into the refrigerator, willing my breathing to slow.
“Because it’s not my thing,” I called back. “You know I hate crowds. And strangers. You were just saying I’d avoid a hospital if I were dying, and you’re probably right. What makes you think I’d want to go to a dance, a room full of strangers, when it’s not a life or death situation?”
“I’ll be there,” Levi said. “So will Deacon. We can be your wingmen.”
“Hey, don’t drag me into this,” Deacon objected. “I’m not pressuring anyone into anything.”
“I’m not pressuring,” Levi said. “I’m suggesting. Nudging. Cajoling, at most.”
“You can cajole all you want,” I called over my shoulder, “but it’s not going to help. I’d just get flustered and not be able to talk to anyone.”
“Fine then,” Levi shot back. “Don’t meet a girl at the dance. Bring a girl to the dance instead.”
I sighed. This conversation was getting nowhere.
“You think that’s less intimidating?” I said. “Asking someone to go with me to a dance that the whole island is going to be at?”
“It’s only intimidating because you’re out of practice. And it’s not the whole island. It’s like, half the island.”
“At least three-quarters of the island,” I countered. “And it’s only two days away. How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“Dating apps exist for a reason. We’ll just steer you clear of the hookup ones and find you a nice young lady who wants two-point-five kids and a dog.”
“I’m confused. Do you want me to get married, or do you want me to find someone to take to this dance?”
“At this point, I’d settle for you taking Friday Night Frieda, if it meant you’d actually come,” Levi retorted.
“Friday Night Frieda?” Deacon arched an eyebrow. “What the hell is that?”
“Friday Night Frieda is a who, not a what,” Levi said. When Deacon looked at him blankly, he sighed. “You know, the name for any of the girls who use the glory hole down at The Port Hole? Friday nights, after ten p.m.? I thought this was island-wide knowledge.”
“Pretty sure the island-wide knowledge is that The Port Hole is a not-so-secret gay hot spot,” Deacon said.
“What?” Levi shook his head. “Are we talking about the same Port Hole? Kitschy tourist trap at the Adair harbor, filled with drunk spring breakers and bachelor parties about to go terribly wrong?”
“Um, yeah. A tourist trap where locals can pick up closeted gay dads visiting the island with their families,” Deacon said. “I know it was rumored to have a glory hole in the men’s bathroom at one point, but that was years ago.”
“It’s not just rumored,” Levi said, “it’s factual.
The walls in between those stalls go all the way to the floor, and it’s common knowledge that on Friday nights, any ladies who are feeling…
lusty…can go in there and have some fun.
Last two stalls in the row. I’m pretty sure the bar turns a blind eye because it keeps the place nice and crowded. ”
“If the walls go all the way to the floor, how can you be so sure it’s women on the other side?” Deacon pointed out, but before Levi could respond, I broke in.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s women or men, because I’m not bringing someone I met at a glory hole to a dance that I’m not even going to.”
“You are going,” Levi said smoothly, “and that’s fine, you don’t have to meet someone at a glory hole or even on the internet—but that does mean that you’ll have to rely on me to introduce you to someone.
” He grinned. “Lucky for you, I know lots of single ladies who would love to be swept off their feet.”
“More like have their feet stepped on,” I grumbled. “I don’t even know how to dance, you know.”
“Details, details,” Levi said airily. “You’re taking someone to the Founders’ Festival dance, and that’s final.”
I stepped outside and stared at the ocean after Levi and Deacon left. The sun was sinking towards the horizon behind me, giving the rolling hills of Summersea a golden halo. In front of me, the Atlantic crashed onto the shore.
After my mom died, I’d begun slowly selling off all the property my parents had accumulated. I had no happy memories of my childhood home, nothing but pain and fear attached to any of the places we’d lived.
By the time I was done, this piece of land on the eastern edge of the island was all I had left.
Undeveloped and wild, it really was isolated, if not quite as remote as Levi made it sound.
I was a ten-minute walk from the tiny hamlet of Tolliver, and a thirty-minute bike ride to the slightly larger town of Adair.
I’d built my cabin by hand, piece by salvaged piece, trying to figure out who I was, out of the shadow of my parents. Being out here by myself, no eyes on me, no judgement—usually it calmed me. But tonight, my nerves were as ragged as the ocean below.
Levi knew me better than anyone else, but there were some things even he didn’t know. Some things no one knew. And those things—those things made my life complicated.
For starters, I wasn’t just out of practice at asking people out. I’d never practiced. I’d never actually done it. Never asked someone out, or done any of the things that came after that.
I was thirty-one years old, and I was a virgin.
Oh—and I was gay.
There was that little detail too.
I paced the bluff, trying to corral my thoughts into some semblance of order.
It wasn’t like I’d intended to make it to this age without having sex. It just kind of…happened. And with every year that passed, it felt like it was getting harder and harder for me to change that.
Even when I was young, I was bigger than all the kids in my class. Not just taller, but wider, and I’d barrelled through the world without any regard for where my body was in space, forever smacking into things.
My dad put me in peewee football when I was in second grade, in the hopes that it would teach me coordination, but I hated the aggression. My mom tried ballet the next year, to teach me poise and restraint, but I was just terrified I’d accidentally hurt someone.
I got bullied enough that I started to expect it.
I was so conscious of how much I stood out that I clammed up whenever someone so much as looked in my direction, bracing for the cruelty I was sure would come.
If not from other people, then from the little voice that lived in the back of my mind and reminded me that this was nothing more than I deserved.
I learned to disappear—mentally, at least. I still lived in my body, but I got good at ignoring it. Not connecting with it. Not feeling like it was mine.
Which was a critical skill, as I got older and learned yet another distressing thing about my body: that it was very interested in other guys’ bodies, and intent on expressing that interest in a rather obvious fashion.
I didn’t have a problem being gay. I had a problem being me.
A six-foot-seven-inch giant with tree trunks for calves and hands roughly the size of Miniature Schnauzers.
You’d think that having a dick that was more or less in proportion with the rest of my body would have made me feel better, but it just meant more to hide in uncomfortable situations.
No one was going to want me, not when I never knew what to do with my body even under regular circumstances, let alone sexual ones.