Chapter 12
Jacob watched the door swing shut and wondered why his heart was pounding so hard.
He never liked watching Felix make out with guys. But that was because he was a prude. Or a little internally homophobic. So why did he suddenly feel like he was going to die?
“Dude,” said the guy next to him, whose name he didn’t remember despite repeating it in his head while the guy talked about his math degree. “Are you good?”
“What? I’m fine.” Jacob’s voice caught. He cleared his throat, confused. What was wrong with him? He should be annoyed that Felix was sleeping with somebody, while they were still going through his list, when Felix didn’t even know if the guy was clean.
But he wasn’t annoyed. He was…
Jacob blinked hard. He didn’t know what he was feeling.
He put a concentrated effort into not knowing, and it had worked fine so far.
But now he was cold and sweaty and his eyes were burning and he didn’t know why.
Whatever it was, it was a deeply stupid reaction to watching his best friend kiss a guy in front of him.
“Uhhh,” the guy next to him said. “You sure, man?”
“I’m fine,” Jacob repeated, still staring at the door Felix had dragged Hec out of.
This was when he noticed the whole group had gone silent. Jacob turned to them, alarmed. Things had been going great. He had only wanted to escape a little bit, and he’d even been making them laugh. These conversations were easier when he imagined what he would say to Felix, just a lot politer.
“What?” Jacob asked.
The guy from before coughed awkwardly. “You’re, like… crying.”
“I’m what?” Jacob raised a hand to his face, absolutely baffled to find it wet. He pulled his hand back, staring at the salty tears all over his palm.
Jacob never cried. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time it happened. A movie in middle school, maybe? He remembered desperately trying to hide his tears in the dark of a movie theater, even though Felix was crying right beside him.
“Shit,” Jacob said, wiping his cheeks. “Sorry. I’m… I’m gonna go.”
“Wait, it’s fine,” said the guy, who had the wide-eyed expression of somebody who did not think it was fine and would rather Jacob leave as fast as possible.
So Jacob turned and high-tailed it out of The Last Call, only remembering that he was holding his beer when he reached to wipe his face and banged the bottle right into his nose.
He threw the beer bottle away and rubbed his stinging nose, cursing.
He wanted to throw up. He’d had half a beer, why did he want to throw up all of a sudden?
Why was he crying? Was he coming down with something?
Some weird stress-induced sickness that caused crying and nausea and got set off by watching his best friend stick his tongue down some jackass’s throat?
He wiped furiously at his face, still muttering swear words. He was so busy trying to scrub the tears away he didn’t notice Shane Turner until he’d tripped over him.
Shane was sitting underneath a tree in the quad, bent over a notebook. Jacob only noticed this as he stumbled over Shane’s boots and toppled stupidly into the grass.
“Holy shit,” Shane yelled, dropping the phone he’d been using to light his notebook. Then he noticed Jacob’s face and paused. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Jacob croaked, pushing himself up on wobbly arms. He had grass in his mouth and he was still sobbing like a little bitch.
“Ooookay.” Shane shoved his phone and notebook away and approached Jacob cautiously. “Are you sure? You look… hurt.”
“I said I’m fine,” Jacob snapped. He climbed to his feet, brushing his jeans off angrily.
What the hell was wrong with him? He wanted to call his parents.
Wait, no, he wanted to never tell his parents about this, what the fuck was he thinking?
His parents could never know about any of this.
Even about the crying. They were always uncomfortable with it.
Once he’d walked in on his mom crying and she’d knocked over a lamp in her haste to hide it, then she berated him for making her break it.
He’d been left cleaning it up, all the while insisting that he hadn’t seen anything.
Shane crossed his arms tight over his threadbare shirt far too thin for the cool weather. It made Jacob wonder what the hell Nate was doing, not taking care of his boyfriend. Jacob sometimes left his own jackets at Felix’s place just so Felix would layer up.
“Sure,” Shane said slowly. He rocked awkwardly from foot to foot, staring around the empty quad like he was hoping someone else would take care of this situation for him. When no one appeared, he continued: “Look, I don’t know you that well. But is this because of Felix?”
“No!” Jacob wiped his face, groaning angrily when the tears didn’t stop. “This is… I don’t know what this is. Why would I cry over Felix?”
“So nothing happened with Felix?”
“No,” Jacob blurted. “I mean—no, nothing happened. He just went home with that asshole, Hec.”
“Right,” Shane said. But Jacob was already talking over him.
“But I’m not crying over that. Why would I?
Felix fucks everyone. Even me, apparently.
” Jacob sniffed, shocked at the bitterness in his tone.
He was fine with Felix having sex with people.
He was sex-positive, or whatever. He was just a prude.
And didn’t want to catch something because Felix went home with some guy who didn’t take sexual health seriously.
He turned away from Shane, who called after him: “Have you tried telling him not to do that?”
“Do what?” Jacob’s voice cracked again. “I don’t care.
I mean, I care about my health. Obviously I think it’s stupid to have sex with some fuckhead who doesn’t get tested!
Especially if we’re… if we…” Jacob’s throat closed up.
He thumped his chest in alarm. Was he having an allergic reaction?
This didn’t feel like he’d eaten pine nuts.
This felt like he wanted to scream and vomit and pass out.
“You could try it,” Shane said, still holding himself like he wanted to flee into the distance but was valiantly holding himself back. “Like, if you went to him right now and told him you wanted to watch a movie, he’d leave that guy so fast. He cares about you more than anyone.”
Jacob’s spine tingled. He felt strange, beyond all the nausea and inexplicable weeping.
Like he was on the verge of a realization.
He’d felt it a few times, especially since he left for college.
But it was never as powerful as this. This felt like the sort of thing he couldn’t ignore until he forgot about it.
“Sure,” Jacob said, barely aware what he was agreeing to. He ran his shaky hands down his face again, grimacing at the wetness. “Fuck. Sorry I snapped at you.”
“It’s fine,” Shane said dismissively. “Kinda expected it.”
Jacob stopped. He’d been about to walk off. But those words stopped him in his tracks.
“You what?” he asked, confused.
Shane blew out a long breath. He gave the dark quad another desperate look, like he was still hoping something would distract him from an acquaintance having emotions all over him.
“I don’t know,” Shane said stiffly. “Felix is always going on about how nice you are. You know? But you’re not, like, nice. You’re just polite. It’s not bad, it's just all surface level. You don’t really bother with anyone who isn’t Felix.”
Shane fell silent. Jacob stared at him, his ears ringing. He’d been told his whole life that he was nice—far too nice to be hanging out with someone like Felix. But Shane’s words fell into place deep inside him, making that icy realization creep up even further.
He didn’t bother with anyone. Didn’t really care about them, didn’t make any other friends.
Except Felix.
“Anyway,” Shane said uncomfortably. “Uh. You sure you’re good?”
Jacob nodded numbly. Then he turned and walked toward Felix’s dorm as fast as he could.
By the time he hit Felix’s hallway, he was jogging.
Also sweating like a pig, but thankfully not crying.
The realization from before was still trying to rise, but he was wrestling it back.
If he was lucky, he’d sleep it off and when he woke it would be safely back in the recesses of his mind where it belonged.
He arrived in front of Felix’s door, panting hard. The hallway was so quiet he could hear muffled groans drifting through the door. Every sound made him want to die, the truth rising dangerously close to the surface.
He knocked.
The moans stopped. Hec said something, his voice low and hissed.
The door opened. Felix was shirtless, squinting into the dark hallway with annoyance. Then he saw Jacob and his eyes widened.
“Uhhhh,” Felix said. “Hi?”
“Hi,” Jacob said, his eyes fixed determinedly on Felix’s face. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
Felix stared at him. He glanced down at himself, then back in the room where Hec had to be lying on his bed, half unclothed, maybe fully unclothed, waiting for Felix to come back.
Felix’s jaw worked. “I’m kind of busy here, man.”
“Right,” Jacob said, his stomach collapsing in on itself. “Sure. Tomorrow?”
Felix gave Jacob a strange look, and Jacob wanted to find Shane and shake him for putting this idea into his head. He’d leave that guy so fast. Obviously not, Shane fucking Turner. Thanks for the help.
“Sure,” Felix said after a moment. He started closing the door.
“Mess,” Jacob said.
Felix peeked out again.
Jacob wanted to say a million things. Unfortunately, he had no idea what most of them were.
“Be safe,” he croaked.
Felix rolled his eyes. Not dismissively, like Jacob expected. He looked… disappointed?
“Yeah, man,” Felix muttered. “Got it. Bye.”
His hands were chapped. Jacob’s hand snaked into his pocket to touch Felix’s hand cream just as the door slammed shut in his face.
He tried to be frustrated that Felix wasn’t using the hand cream on his nightstand. Anger was familiar. Comfortable. Especially when it came to Felix. But that realization was rising up again, and nothing could beat it back down this time.
Jacob walked back out to the dark quad and lay down. It was a very uncharacteristic move. Jacob was the sensible one. Uptight, some would say. Repressed, Felix would add. He was not one to walk into the night and lie down in the quad, trembling from head to toe.
Or maybe he was. Maybe Jacob didn’t know himself as well as he thought. Maybe there was a bunch of shit he’d been shoving down and refusing to acknowledge, and now it was all bursting out.
He was in love with Felix.
The truth washed over him like an ice bath, making him tremble against the grass.
Jacob had always worried about getting too close, and now he had, and these were the consequences: this horrible, gut-churning realization that he’d been in love with his childhood friend for a long time.
Possibly the whole time. That was why he hated seeing Felix kiss other men.
It wasn’t internalized homophobia, it was him being stupidly in love with his best friend.
His best friend Felix “Mess” Messer, who didn’t know how to boil an egg or clean a shower or date. Felix who didn’t fall in love.
Felix, who would never want him back.
Jacob let this wash over him for several long minutes, still shaking. Then he summed up his situation in the most eloquent way he could, shouting the word into the night in another uncharacteristic display that, for all he knew about himself, could have suited him all along.
“Shit!”