Chapter 9
Entry to Liberty Heights Biannual Puppy Day was five dollars.
Felix did not have five dollars left after his weekly chore lessons. Luckily, he did have a roommate who was much happier to lend him money after he started getting laid on the regular.
“So,” Shane said as they petted two adorable labrador puppies in the designated Patting Area, normally the yoga space in the campus gym. “How are things going with Jacob?”
Felix pretended not to hear him, bending over to nuzzle the labrador who had climbed into his lap. “Who’s a perfect little baby? You are, yes you are!”
Shane snorted. Felix hugged the puppy, hoping Shane would drop it. Liberty Heights Biannual Puppy Day was meant to de-stress the students, and talking about Jacob would not help with that.
“I think you should get a puppy when you move into your new place,” Felix said. “How much is pet rent?”
Shane shot him a wary look over the labrador puppy’s head. “Never say that to Nate. He wants a dog so bad. A big dog.”
“You don’t sound very enthused.”
“Big dogs are hard! They can drag you everywhere, and they have so much energy!”
“So does Nate! It’s a win-win!”
“We can’t afford it,” Shane said, scratching absentmindedly at the sleepy puppy in his lap. “Don’t say that shit to Nate.”
Felix pouted, holding his own puppy up to kiss his nose. “Hear that, puppy? Shane doesn’t want you.”
“Don’t tell him that,” Shane said. He sounded scowly, but he was smiling.
Felix sat the puppy back down in his lap, fighting back a tide of bitterness. It was good that Shane was smiling more than ever. It was good he was finding his own place with a boyfriend he was stupidly in love with. Felix just couldn’t help but be stupidly, uselessly jealous.
“So,” Shane said again. “Jacob.”
“Everything’s normal,” Felix insisted, playing with his puppy’s soft ears. “We hang out! We watch annoying foreign movies with subtitles that he wants to watch, then we watch fun movies that I want to watch. Also we have sex sometimes.”
He kissed his puppy’s head, trying to focus on the cuteness and not the memory of Jacob’s body against his.
He had been weirdly relieved that Jacob didn’t fuck him for real at that party.
Sure, he would have loved it. But it would have opened up something inside him that was better left closed.
It was dumb, but Felix always found anal weirdly intimate.
He wouldn’t have been able to hold in his emotions.
Even though he would have to do it sometime—it was on The List, after all.
He just needed to make sure he could hold back his feelings before then.
Good luck, he told himself morosely. He’d never been able to hold back on anything when it came to Jacob. The only reason he’d been able to hold back on asking for sex was because he knew what would happen if he did: he would fall apart, completely and utterly.
It was coming. Felix could feel it. He just hoped he could hide it when it finally happened.
Shane cleared his throat. He was serious about this, Felix realized with surprise. He was actually pursuing this difficult conversation. Since when did Shane willingly talk about uncomfortable shit?
“Just saying,” Shane began. “It might be good for you guys to, you know… talk about this shit. Before someone gets hurt.”
Felix laughed so loud his puppy startled.
Felix didn’t even pat him in apology, too caught up in the ridiculousness of it all.
“Doth my ears deceive me?” he demanded. “Shane fucking Turner, lecturing me on having a serious conversation? You fooled around with your boyfriend for months before finally nutting up and asking him out!”
“Yeah,” Shane said with a frown. “Which is why I’m saying you should do it. I’ve been where you are. I would’ve saved us a lot of time if I just had that conversation.”
Felix snorted, petting his puppy calm and accepting a lick on the chin.
He really thought nobody knew about his love for Jacob until Shane yelled at him about it.
Told him he was a pathetic coward and that he should get over it.
Or something. Felix didn’t remember the exact words, but he was pretty sure that was the gist of it.
“Your conversation and my conversation would go very differently,” Felix muttered.
Shane rolled his eyes. “You don’t know that. Maybe he feels the same way.”
“He doesn’t,” Felix snapped. “Just leave it, okay?”
Shane blinked. Felix didn’t blame him. Felix didn’t snap. He was breezy and fun and if he got annoyed, he was at least entertaining about it. You could get away with a lot if you made people laugh.
Felix looked around the room. Everybody was too busy talking themselves out of smuggling puppies back to their dorms to pay any attention to Felix getting vulnerable in a rare moment of honesty.
“My first time sucked,” Felix said with a grin he didn’t feel in the slightest. “I had never even kissed anybody before I got to college. Then I got here and there were so many gay people. And even better, none of them knew me when I was a kid. You get it.”
Shane nodded. He came from a small town, too.
“Anyway, I wanted to do everything,” Felix continued.
“And I wasn’t very picky about who I did it with.
So my first time was with this older guy who had graduated but still came to college parties.
He wasn’t very considerate, let’s say. And things got better after that, but that first time still sucked. I want Jacob to…”
He stopped, his voice catching in his throat.
The puppy in his lap whined, licking worriedly at his hand.
Felix petted him, grateful to have something to look at that wasn’t Shane.
“I want Jacob to have a nice first time. A bunch of nice firsts. You know? And I’m good at sex.
Fuck, I love sex. I know you think it’s a big deal, but it’s really not.
I’m just giving my best friend a good time. ”
“So you’re just gonna…” Shane paused, and Felix was reminded that Shane was still a prude, no matter how many times Felix had walked in on him having sex lately.
“Walk him through the ropes,” Shane continued, stroking his puppy absentmindedly as it dozed against his legs. “And then go back to normal?”
“Exactamundo,” Felix said. He looked around the room, desperately searching for another topic.
Then he felt a rush of warm wetness on his legs and couldn’t even be annoyed.
“WHOA,” he said loudly, and lifted his puppy off his lap just in time for the last squirts of pee to get on the gym floor rather than his pants.
He stood up, ignoring the puppy as it whined and pawed at his damp jeans.
“Okay,” Felix said, examining the wet patches on his jeans and twisting toward the volunteers at the front of the gym. “We need a cleanup over here!”
The volunteers looked up. One of them was on the phone, the other was mopping up another ‘accident,’ waving at him in a way that meant she’d get to him in a minute.
Felix plucked at his jeans and sighed. “Shit. I need to ask my cleaning guy how to get puppy piss out.”
Shane frowned. “Your what?”
“Never mind.” Felix got his phone out of his pocket and started googling. It couldn’t take much to get piss out of denim, right? Or was it another tomato juice situation where he had to learn the many uses of baking soda?
Shane eased his own puppy out of his lap and stood, avoiding the small puddle on the floor between them. “You know you can always move in with me and Nate, right? We need a roommate.”
“Nope,” Felix said, popping the ‘p’ and ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut. He only had until the end of the semester, he was running out of time. “I’ll talk Jacob into living with me. Just you wait.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shane muttered. “Just talk to your best friend, dickhead. Ask him—”
A familiar voice said, “Ask me what?”
Felix whirled. Jacob was walking toward them, wearing a hoodie so tight it could only be Felix’s.
One of the many, many reasons Felix enjoyed the rare occasions when Jacob stole his clothes: they were very form-fitting.
But for the first time, the sight of his own clothes straining over Jacob’s chest made Felix sad, not horny.
He could sleep with Jacob, he could watch Jacob wear his clothes, but it never meant what he wanted it to.
“Ask me what?” Jacob repeated as he joined their little group. He gave Felix an expectant look, only for his face to quickly morph into confusion. “Why are you wet?”
“Take a sniff and guess,” Felix said.
Jacob’s nose wrinkled. “Already? I told you to bring wet wipes. Here, I have some.”
He rummaged in his tight hoodie and brought out a pack of wet wipes. Felix took one, rubbed his hands clean, then paused when he noticed the logo. “You hate these ones,” he said. “You said they smell like feet.”
Jacob shrugged. “It’s the sensitive skin one.”
Despite what his parents said, Jacob didn’t have sensitive skin.
Felix did. And suddenly Felix was thinking about the air freshener in Jacob’s dorm, which Jacob switched from ‘Florals’ to ‘New Car’ after Felix complained the floral one gave him a headache.
And about how Jacob kept hand cream in his backpack all through winter because Felix’s hands got chapped from the cold.
He did love Felix. Just not in the way Felix wanted.
As Felix tried not to tear up at Liberty Heights Biannual Puppy Day, Shane cleared his throat. “Hey Jacob,” he said. “Would you ever date Felix?”
Jacob stared at him like he wasn’t entirely sure those words were English. “What? That’s not… what kind of question is that? Felix is my best friend.”
“It’s an inside joke,” Felix said, forcing a smile. “Ignore him. I do.”
Jacob gave Shane another look—confused, not disgusted, which was better than nothing. He handed Felix another wet wipe. “I’ll go get a mop,” he said, eyeing the puddle with distaste.
Felix shot him a thumbs-up. Then Jacob turned away and Felix turned to Shane, the smile dropping off his face.
“Thanks for that, asshole,” Felix said flatly.
Shane grimaced. “Mess—”
“Don’t Mess me, dickhead,” Felix hissed. He glanced over to Jacob, worried he’d overheard. But Jacob was over with the volunteer cleaner, hiding his impatience as she finished with the mop.
“I gotta go change,” Felix said.
Shane said his nickname again as Felix walked off. Felix ignored him, his head down as he waddled awkwardly toward the door.
“Hey,” Jacob called.
Felix thought about pretending not to hear him. Then he turned back.
Jacob was halfway across the gym with the mop, looking confused. “Are we still watching a movie later?” he asked, eyeing the puddle like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to clean it anymore if Felix was leaving.
Felix’s heart thudded. He clenched his teeth in another fake smile. “You know it,” he called. “Smell ya later, brochacho.”
With that lame goodbye, he left. Jacob called his name again, but Felix kept walking, puppy piss dripping into his socks, wondering if he should have just turned Jacob down when he came to him with the list.
Would this hurt any less if he’d said no? If he’d never kissed Jacob, never felt his bare body against his? He didn’t know. But one thing he did know: now that he’d had Jacob like that, he wasn’t giving it up until Jacob ended it.