I don’t need to be his best friend—or sober—to tell Pen’s pissed.
Hell, it was obvious the second he grabbed me at the party. Even more when we got to the Impala and he shoved his limbs through his clothes so violently, I thought he might rip them apart at the seams.
To most people, his emotions are hard to read. He’s good at keeping them hidden, always has been. But goddamn, when he’s pissed, the entire world is sure to know it. It’s written all over his face as the door to our dorm slams closed behind him.
I’m clumsily sliding out of my jacket, maybe not as sober as I thought I was twenty minutes ago, but still perfectly aware of Pen’s irritation when he kicks off his shoes by the door and tosses his keys on the TV stand. His fury is stifling, filling the air with a toxic fog that’s sure to kill us both if we don’t air out what’s going on.
I just…don’t know what that is.
Or maybe the problem is that I do, I’m just too much of a chicken shit to deal with the unresolved repercussions of kissing Aspen almost two fucking years ago.
Being that it woke something up inside me. Something unexpected and life-changing.
Something I’ve been keeping from him ever since.
I track his movements as he starts straightening up the dorm room. It’s one of his tells that he’s really pissed or stressed out—cleaning. He says it’s better to use his anger to be productive rather than destructive, and I have to admit, it makes sense.
But right now, I don’t want him to clean. I want…
Fuck. I don’t know what I want. To know what he’s thinking would be a good place to start. Or maybe I should start with an apo—
“What the hell was that?” he asks out of nowhere as he arranges a few pairs of our shoes in a neat row by the door.
I open my mouth to say it. To tell him everything.
That, even though he’s the only guy I’ve kissed, ever since that night, I can’t stop thinking about wanting to just grab him by the shirt and haul his mouth to mine again. That I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, either, besides being completely scared shitless that he can somehow read my mind and know what I’m thinking whenever he looks at me.
But what my brain decides to let my lips utter is, “What was what?”
“Don’t fucking play coy with me, Kee,” he snaps, rising back to full height. “What was that shit back at the party?”
Tell him. Tell him right fucking now. End the misery.
I clear my throat. Rub the back of my neck. And lie.
“It wasn’t anything.”
He shakes his head and steps closer, pointing an index finger at me. “I don’t believe that for a second, Keene. I know you too well. If it was nothing, then why wouldn’t you kiss me?”
This is about to be the most ridiculous argument ever between two guys who are supposedly straight.
My lips curl into something like a sneer. “Because I need a reason to not kiss someone? I should just walk around letting anyone do it?”
“I’m not anyone; I’m your best friend. Who does whatever you want, by the way. Whenever you pull me into your shit and ask me to do things with you that I hate, I still go. I try. Because that’s what we do for each other.”
“Aspen, the saint. Always putting everyone before himself, right?” I snap right back.
I know it’s the wrong thing to say almost immediately. In fact, I’m about ready to yeet myself out this fifth-floor window for being such a dick. But if I’m gonna dig a damn grave by continuing to lie to him, I might as well bury myself in it too.
“My point is that if I can do something like put myself in a situation where I’m stripped down to my underwear at a party with a bunch of people I don’t know and we’re about to win a fucking game, why would you bitch out on something as simple as a kiss?” His fingers snake through his hair in frustration, and I watch as he fingers the pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his black jeans. “Seriously, Keene. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”
“But like you said,” I grit through my teeth. “It was just a game.”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes at the same time my phone goes off in my pocket. I’d turned it off silent in the elevator so I wouldn’t oversleep and miss practice tomorrow afternoon, completely forgetting about the message notifications I was avoiding most of the night.
It pings two more times, and Aspen’s eyes fly to where it’s housed in my pocket.
“Are you seeing someone? Is that the issue?”
Aw, hell.
“No,” is all I say, checking the screen before I drop it on the coffee table. “I’m not seeing anyone. I’m too busy for that shit right now, and don’t you think if I was, you’d know because I’d be around even less than I already am?”
“Maybe, but you’ve been talking to someone a lot recently and—”
“Jesus Christ, Pen. Just drop it.”
His nostrils flare, and he steps closer. And I can tell. That this is just the beginning. He’s locked in on this now, like a hound on the scent, and there’s no way he’s giving up that easily. We’re not the type to keep shit from each other, after all. Not the small stupid shit, and definitely not something as life-altering as this, no matter the catalyst of it all.
“I don’t even know what it is, so how can I drop it? Would you just talk to me about it?”
“There’s nothing to talk about!”
“Bullshit, Kee. I call fucking bullshit,” he snarls, his arm cutting through the air. “You can’t lie to me, remember? I know when you do.”
Except I have been. For over a year, and you’re only just now catching on.
And hell if that doesn’t make me feel a stupid amount of guilt.
I might as well be going insane, the war battling inside me to either tell him or keep this to myself is literally tearing my insides apart. Nausea racks me, sweat starts gathering at my hairline, and I do my best not to lose the contents of my stomach as I sit down on the couch.
He clears his throat. Clasps his hands behind his head. Paces in front of the TV before stopping directly across from me, anguish etched in his eyes. “Do you…not trust me with it? Is that what’s going on?”
“No,” I say again, my head falling to my hands.
“To which one?”
Oh, my God.
“Jesus Christ, Pen!” I shout, the thin shred of sanity I had left snapping in an instant. I drop my hands and glare at him, the words tumbling from my mouth without my permission, “I didn’t want to kiss you because I didn’t want it to mess me up all over again, okay?”
His brows furrow and he blinks, taking a step away from me. Like my tone was enough to physically move him. Or maybe it was the words themselves to garner the reaction.
My stomach rolls again when he whispers, “What are you talking about?”
How the hell am I supposed to do this? Admit that, ever since that stupid dare…I’ve looked at him a little differently. In a way that’s more aching want than friendship, because the sound and taste and feel of him from the night we kissed have all been seared into my brain with a white-hot brand ever since. Swirling around there rent-free when I should’ve done the smart thing, locking them away in a safe at the back of my mind and losing the combination forever.
But instead, I kept thinking about it. Letting it fester in my mind like a disease, infecting every viable part of my brain until it’s become impossible to ignore. And only continues to confuse me.
“What are you talking about, Keene?” he asks again. Slowly, like he’s unsure if he wants to know the answer. But then he adds in, “Mess you up, how?”
Of course, my phone takes that opportunity to go off again, and his eyes move to it on the table between us.
I watch as the gears turn in his head. Thinking. Calculating. Debating.
Then he takes action.
There’s only a moment of hesitation on my part, but it’s enough. And even if I have a bit of extra muscle mass on him, the asshole is faster than me. He snags my phone from the coffee table and steps back out of my reach, making me barrel over the table to grab it from him and shove it back in my jeans.
But the damage is already done.
He saw the screen and the notifications waiting there for me. I’m sure there’s plenty of them.
Why did I leave it out for him to see, like a damn idiot?
His hand is still held out, though my phone’s safely in my pocket now. The expression on his face is blank, devoid of all emotion as he blinks. Then blinks again before he looks up at me.
I think I’m gonna be sick. Really, truly puke as he stares at me in wonder. Because I see the questions in his eyes. Can feel them filling the room in wave after suffocating wave, worse than his anger was earlier.
Still, it doesn’t prepare me for the first one that leaves his lips.
The same lips responsible for this whole fucking mess.
“What are you doing on Toppr?”
I remain silent, willing myself to keep from opening my big fat mouth about why I’m on the gay version of Tinder. Urging myself to do everything possible from screwing shit up. Because this is my mess, and I refuse to drag him into it more than he’s already been involved.
He’s always been my crutch, my helping hand or whatever, but this is something I need him to stay far away from. It’ll only make things more difficult in the end.
Pen steps closer to me, closing the few feet between us, and I take a step back on instinct. Hurt and anger flash in his eyes when I do, but he doesn’t make another move toward me.
“Keene. Why do you have that app?”
There’s a sharpness in his tone, and I can’t really blame him for it. If the situation were reversed, I’d be getting pretty irritated with my lack of answers too. But it’s enough to have me breaking my vow of silence, practically biting his head off with my response.
“Why do you think? Why does anyone have a hookup app?” I pause, then supply, “To hookup.”
“Yeah, but…” He trails off with another shake of his head. Like his mouth and brain can’t compute what he saw and put it into words. But the question continues in his eyes when he stares into mine.
Why that one?
And so, for the first time, I say the words I’ve been grappling with for over a year. The ones that have shaken me to my very core to even think.
“I think…I’m bi, Pen.”
His expression shifts, and though the proof was right in front of him, stunned doesn’t begin to cover it. “What?”
I let out a sharp laugh and step away from him, suddenly needing a lot more space. And maybe some air.
Maybe yeeting myself out the window isn’t such a bad idea after all.
“I might be into dudes,” I say, the words feeling strange on my tongue. But hey, they’re the truth, or at least as close to the truth as I have right now. “Figured that one out, thanks to kissing you last time, so I wasn’t about to go on another self-discovering mission without completely finishing the first.”
The silence between us stretches on for an eternity.
“You…” He sighs. “Kee.”
His tone, the softness in it…guts me. I can’t tell if it’s pity or something else, but right now, I don’t wanna know. I sure as fuck don’t wanna do this while I’m still half drunk. So like the coward I am, I avoid it. I run. I bolt. I flee the scene of the crime in favor of the safety of my room and lock the door behind me.
Good thing too, because he’s there moments later, rattling the handle a couple times.
“Keene,” he murmurs from the other side of the door. His forehead connects with the wood, a soft thud echoing through my room. “Please, let me in.”
The irony, the double meaning of his words, isn’t lost on me. And though I know I should listen, get up, and unlock the door…I don’t. I can’t.
Not now. Not tonight.
It might’ve been hurtful, shutting him out like this when he clearly doesn’t want that. Hell, what I said before probably was too. But at least it was honest, which is more than what I’ve been doing ever since the night at that damn party.
Kissing him, it flipped my life upside down. Opened up a whole new curiosity I never knew I had. One I still haven’t figured out, and I’ve been struggling on my own to understand what it means.
And it’s something I’m scared shitless to try and navigate, whether it be with or without his help.
