Liam #2
“No,” Ryker says. “He’s not, Liam. Fuck knows what you are, but it’s not healthy.”
I’m not healthy.
I bare my teeth at my brother as I grit out, “He’s staying.”
“Maybe we need to draw a chalk line down the middle of the house, your side and mine, and you can keep that on yours.”
I grab Ryker’s T-shirt in my fist and tug him towards me. I’m shirtless, so Ryker can’t grab me back, but he takes hold of my wrist in his right hand. I shove him, he shoves back. Keiron fans himself with his hand, watching us.
We both stop the shoving, but I don’t let go of Ryker’s T-shirt, and he doesn’t release my wrist.
Keiron pushes out his bottom lip. “Oh, don’t stop. I love you fighting over me.”
As a rule, Ryker and I don’t fight. We bicker, we argue, we get annoyed, but we’re not physical.
The last time we had been was over a boy—Freddie.
A thirteen-year-old Ryker admitted to me he liked Freddie as more than a friend and had done for a while.
My brother, who had a crowd of friends, both boys and girls, looking at him like he was God, liked the only person outside our family unit that I did.
My reaction had been feral. I’d leapt across the room to get to him.
Our parents had been forced to rush in and intervene, but right now our parents are in their villa in Spain and won’t be dragging us apart.
I back off from my brother, walk to the door, then slam it shut in Keiron’s face. He curses at me from the other side, but a minute later he stomps up the stairs, then the bathroom door bangs and the boiler in the kitchen kicks in as he starts the shower.
“I can’t do it,” I mumble at the door. “I can’t be his best man.”
“We said—”
“I know what we said, Ryker, but I can’t . . .”
Ryker sighs and drags a chair out from beneath the table.
I turn to him as he collapses down onto it, head in his hand.
“I don’t think I can either.” He scrubs his face.
“Even organising the stag party. It’s going be the last time he’s with us, you know, on holiday, in the sun, drinking, dancing, me trying my hardest not to touch him too much, and you staring at his arse in between glaring at any man or woman who comes just that little bit too close to him. ”
“Everyone comes too close to him,” I say.
Ryker laughs. “Territorial much?”
“Yes, with everyone except you.”
It took me weeks to tell Ryker why I’d launched at him that day when he confessed his feelings for Freddie.
He said he understood, and for years he didn’t mention him again in that way, but he overcompensated, mentioning every other guy, until at sixteen I asked him outright whether he still thought about Freddie.
Ryker had braced himself while admitting his feelings for Freddie hadn’t wavered.
I didn’t launch at him that time. He introduced me to porn, and I returned the favour by showing him a video I’d found, one of my go-to videos, of twins lavishing attention on the third man in their threesome.
It felt good watching two guys like us, identical twins, turn the man between them into a begging mess.
I don’t think Ryker had ever watched brothers with one other guy, let alone twins, but he couldn’t get enough of it afterwards.
That video became our favourite porno. And the brothers became our favourite porn stars.
We saw ourselves in them, and Freddie in every male performer who got paired with them.
“Maybe on the stag I can . . . tie him up somewhere, kidnap him.”
I twitch my fingers, wanting to touch the handcuffs secured to my belt, but its Sunday, and I’m off duty.
“I’m joking,” Ryker says wide-eyed. He’s read where my mind was going from my pensive expression. “Obviously I was joking.”
“It wasn’t funny, and it could work . . .”
“Jesus, Liam,” Ryker laughs. “Have you forgotten your vocation?”
“The opposite. I’ve got cuffs, and restraints, and the knowledge to get away with it.”
He stares at me, and says deadpan, “Right well, that’s okay, then . . .”
I nod.
“We’re not kidnapping him,” Ryker says slowly, deliberately, hoping it’ll sink in, but the thought of kidnapping Freddie is the first thing that’s lifted my brain fog in days.
“Then what are we going to do?” I ask.
“Tell him.”
I come closer and drag out the opposite chair. “We tell him we’ve been in love with him since we were kids, and he can’t marry Keegan, or anyone else for that matter.”
Ryker slumps. “We can’t stop him marrying her or anyone else. It’s what he wants. But we can decline being his best men, put a bit of distance between us in the hope I can stop finding loud men to fuck and you cure yourself of the poison upstairs in our bathroom.”
“Keiron isn’t poison.”
“Yes he is, you know he his. He’s poison you willingly take because you’re controlling the dose and the potency. You know you can cure it too by getting rid of it at any time, but you don’t. You like feeling shit.”
I don’t deny it. My relationship with Keiron is complicated, but the emotions aren’t.
We don’t like each other, but we still sleep together.
The sex is great for him, but disappointing for me, though it’s somewhat of a distraction.
I’m not Ryker, I can’t charm men into bed.
I’m a grumpy arsehole, and Keiron’s okay with that, and this .
. . situationship has been going on for years.
“Being in a relationship and feeling shit is better than being single and feeling the same. You fuck guys who scream your name because you know the one person you actually want to scream it in ecstasy, never will.”
Ryker shrugs. “That’s about right. We’re both fucked up thanks to Freddie Lester, so maybe it’s time we get un-fucked.”
“It’ll hurt him.”
“I know,” Ryker whispers. “But with some distance, time apart, it might do us good. We’ll still be his friends, we’ll just meet up less, ween ourselves off him. It’ll be okay.”
I don’t know if he’s trying to convince me or himself, but I’ve never been less convinced of anything in my life.
The thought of seeing Freddie less grows an ache beneath my ribs, and my internal voice shouts no, no, no.
It growls it like a beast. My heart rate spikes, and my thighs and calves throb with this irrational need to run.
I want to rush out of here and find Freddie.
I want to snatch him away. I don’t want less.
What I want is more, to wake up and have him in my bed, sandwiched between me and Ryker.
I want to know he’s here in this house when I’m on the way home from work.
I want his possessions—his clothes—everywhere in this place, mixed with mine and Ryker’s.
But there’s never been even a hint that Freddie’s interested.
All he needed was to show curiosity, and we would’ve blown his mind.
But no, he’s straight, and his two best friends are gay.
One loves carefree romps, and the other is in a relationship.
That’s how he sees us. That’s his comfortable place, his norm.
It’s security for him knowing he has us as friends, but for us it’s painful, its longing, and unrequited love.
It hurts to be his best friend, and I think it’ll hurt even more without him, but we can’t live like this forever. Maybe if I stop seeing Freddie, I’ll be able to give Keiron a proper chance.
That lie I tell myself is particularly sour, but I swallow it down anyway.