Wrangled

My eyes flick to his, snapping right out of it. Maybe it was his mention of the prom photo. “Why did you tell me this, anyway?”

Chad flinches, his stare on me hardening. “Tell you what? That I’m gay?”

“Yeah. Why is it so important for me to know?”

“Because I …” He shifts his footing, repositions his hand on the wall, then squints at me. “Well, why the heck do you think? Weren’t you wonderin’ why it was always you I kept targeting back in high school?”

Again, I feel like I might laugh. Or cry. I’m right on the verge of either reaction. “Because I had better hair than you?”

He steamrolls right over my comment. “Obviously it was some kind of sick self-hate thing, even if I didn’t know it about myself—that I was gay. I just had all this … somethin’ inside of me. Anger. Or loneliness. Or resentfulness. Maybe there ain’t a name for it. I just didn’t understand what I was feeling. And the more I pushed you around, the more my friends seemed to egg me on, and it became this disgusting cycle of boosting my own ego or something.”

“And … suppressing your super homo gayness?”

“Nah, that wasn’t it. Super homo gayness? The fuck, Lance?”

I look him down from head to toe, skeptical. “I just don’t see it. Are you dicking with me right now? Is this a prank?”

Chad lets out a huff so deep, it comes out in a growl. “Lance, I never bullied you ‘cause you were gay. I mean, not directly. It was more …” His lips curl inward in frustration, clearly finding it quite difficult to speak so bluntly. “I think … I think I hated how loud you were. How ‘you’ you were. How able-to-be-yourself you were.”

My gaze detaches from him.

My brain draws a direct parallel from what he just said to the way I ignored and cold-shouldered Billy so harshly way back then.

Are high school students just an incestuous ring of one person taking out their anger on another, round and round, until the day of graduation at last sets us free from each other?

“And yeah, alright, sure,” he adds in a lighter tone, “maybe I hated your hair, too, because it was better than mine.”

I smirk at Chad. His usual confidence is so strangely rocked right now. I’ve never seen this awkward, uncertain side of him, making dumb jokes. I can literally hear him choosing his words.

“My hair,” I start with a lift of my chin, “was fucking beautiful, and it landed me my first job in LA, I’ll have you know. They even commented on my hair. Like, specifically. I was called ‘Thor’s gay best friend’ by a …” I squirm until the celebrity’s name, which I likely shouldn’t mention, swallows back down my throat. “… a big and important person’s sister.”

“So why’d you cut it all off?”

His question causes my smile to tilt.

Flashback to one year ago when Salvador told me about this sweet new guy he was seeing.

Flashback to when I learned that the guy Salvador was seeing was my ex Richie, who was my very first boyfriend—and the most painful relationship I had ever endured.

Flashback to me reluctantly giving a teary-eyed, whiny-voiced Salvador permission to date him when all the truths were outed.

Flashback to an hour later when Salvador went to bed, and I locked myself in the bathroom and took shears to my hair.

“I … was going through a tough time,” I answer quietly.

Chad, not knowing how much lay between my words in that one unassuming sentence, simply lets out a sigh and steers the train back onto the track. “Look, I know this doesn’t make what I did excusable. But maybe it can at least give you a reason. Even if that reason is fucked up or dumb. I just needed you to know, and I needed you to hear it from me.”

I glance back at the opened doors again, listening to the noise of plates tinkling and tapping, the chatter and laughter, and the country music playing from the DJ. I think they’re clearing plates and preparing desserts, which is something I think my waistline won’t mind missing. “And none of your buddy-pals at that table in there know?” I ask, venturing a guess.

“No one in that whole room knows.”

I look up into his eyes, eyes that have haunted me in so many different ways and forms. They’ve been in several of my dreams, the kind that made me wrestle uncomfortably in bed, and the kind that made me thrust a hand down my pants. They’re eyes I have seen up-close in a few ways, too—ways that were good and bad.

My relationship with those eyes is complicated, like just about everything else I’ve ever had a relationship with.

Now, I get to look into them in a whole new way.