SULLIVAN #2
“Jesus,” I whisper, peeling them off in the shower and stepping out to get a towel. I’m shivering, the ice cold water doing exactly what I intended. It got the memory of Quinn’s hot breath off my fucking face.
“Can you get me some clothes?” I ask.
“Yeah. Requests?”
Fuck, how is he so nice?
“Something warm. I’m freezing. I don’t care.”
A minute later he’s knocking on the door. I unlock it and open it all the way. “That was weird. I’m sorry.”
Though I’m standing there naked in front of him for the first time in like a year, he keeps his eyes on my face while he hands over the clothes. “We’re talking about this, but I want to shower first.”
I nod. “Fair. Coffee?”
“Sure. Coffee sounds great.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re on opposite sides of my two person bistro table with coffee mugs in front of us and wet hair.
In all these twenty minutes, I’ve relived everything that just happened with Knight, trying and failing not to let it co-mingle with what was done to me that awful night on winter break. This shouldn’t be so fucking hard.
“I didn’t know it was gonna be like this,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Like so unpredictable.”
He stares down at his coffee mug, and I swear his cheeks are still flushed from the orgasm or the shower—probably the shower. Anyway, it’s cute, but I wish he’d look at me. I already feel like shit about what happened.
“Look, I think I understood it would be unpredictable,” he says.
“Okay…”
“Which is not a problem for me, to be clear, but when you get upset—it’s hard to know what to do.”
God, I fucking hate this. He’s so perfect. I’m the one who fucked up. “You’re doing everything right.”
“It doesn’t feel like that.”
I feel a wash of dread deep down, like there’s nothing I can say or do to fix this.
He’s so good, and I’m so rotten—rotting—there’s no reason for him to be with me other than we’ve never tried being with anyone else.
But maybe he should. Can I let him go, though?
Fuck, I don’t know. “I can’t think of a single thing I’d have you do differently,” I tell him.
“I mean I could have said no.”
“That would have hurt my feelings,” I state honestly. “I actually think if you’d said no, that would have been worse.”
“Okay,” he says carefully. Too carefully.
“It was you breathing for fuck’s sake,” I burst.
He looks at me now. “What?”
“Your breath. Feeling you breathe on me. That was the trigger, which is so fucked up. Like how could I have possibly known? Like I can’t tell you not to breathe.”
“Sullivan…”
I don’t mind the pity on his face or in his tone. I really don’t. I’ll take his pity, his sympathy, his “we need to talks” or whatever else he needs as long as he’ll try sticking this out with me a little longer because surely I can make this good again.
“I want to have sex with you,” I say bluntly.
He blinks, startled.
“Not right this second, but I’m saying I want to be able to have sex with you. I should be able to do that. Enough about this relationship isn’t normal or gonna work but that part should, right? I mean, don’t you think?”
He scowls, cocking his head to the side. “What about this isn’t gonna work? Forget sex for a second, we can come back to that if you want, but why say it’s not gonna work?”
“Because you always said it couldn’t.”
“And then I said I’d figure it out.”
I scoff. I don’t know why, but I do it anyway. “Figure out how to be in a relationship with me while you’re a star quarterback in the fucking NFL?”
“Or…” He doesn’t finish his thought, just bites his cheek and looks back down at his mug.
“Or what?” I ask softer. I hadn’t meant to snap at him. He’s not the one failing at our relationship.
“Or say fuck the NFL.”
What?
I’m stunned. It’s like someone just tased me. I have tingles all over, and I swear there’s a bell ringing somewhere, vibrating the insides of my brain. “What?” I ask out loud.
“What if…what if it’s not worth it?”
“Knight. Shut up. Stop.” Maybe what I’m feeling is more like whiplash. “You’re a quarterback. You’re literally the best quarterback.”
“But I don’t have to be. My dad’s always trying to tell me to do something else—and it’s not like I can’t. I come from a well-off family, I can go to law school, med school, whatever. I can flip houses if I want to, and I don’t think that would suck.”
“But—”
“If I come out, and the NFL doesn’t want anything to do with me, then fuck them. Like really. Fuck them.”
“It wasn’t ever really the league you were worried about though, right? It’s the fans?”
“Fuck them, too.”
“Knight.” I have to get up. I need to walk. “We’ve barely been together two months—”
“I fell for you two years ago.”
“And I’m not the same person, so take a breath.”
He raises his voice just enough to match my energy. “Whether you wanna be with me or not, it’s not gonna make me any less gay.”
“No, I know that, but I’m saying I’d personally be on board with the figuring it out plan. I don’t need to be out with you, and if being out is gonna fuck up the one dream you’ve ever had, then—”
“Dreams can change.” He’s looking directly at me when he says that, and yeah, gotta admit, it melts me a little, but also—no.
“The one thing we’re not doing this week is going cliff diving, okay?”
He sighs heavily. “I think what I’m trying to say here is that I love you, and we’re going to figure this out. Whether I have to make different plans or whatever, but forget what I said before about it not being able to work, okay? That’s not on the table anymore.”
I circle right back to myself on that one. “And if I can’t ever have sex with you again?”
He stands up, too, and makes a slow approach, stopping a few feet away from me. “You said you wanted to.”
“I do,” I reply softly.
“Well, if that changes, let me know, and I’ll reassess.”
That sounds…perfectly reasonable.
“All right.”
“Okay. Well. Good talk. Wanna spoon on the couch for a little while and let me breathe on you? I brushed my teeth.”
I nod and take the hand he offers, letting him lead me over to the couch where he puts on ESPN and assumes the big spoon position with his mouth right behind my ear.