Bromosexual

And in the midst of all that mess of negative emotion, there’s also love. We both know it, too. He can be a real dick sometimes, but so can I.

Like father, like son.

“Ryan, you say,” grunts my dad, giving another shake of his head, like he’s still trying to believe it, or picture it, or something. “Little, good boy Ryan.” He huffs. “Okay … Alright.” Then my dad pops open his eyes and inclines his head toward me. “He’s a good young man, that Caulfield. I know that much. A really good young man.”

“And I think I’m in love with him.”

He makes a strange sort of cough and clutches his chest, as if I just slapped his back hard in the middle of him chugging a beer. “Son, you better slow down there unless you want two members of your family laid out in hospital beds today.”

At that, I let out a laugh, which then triggers the first genuine bout of laughter from my father that I’ve heard in years. I miss my old dad who’d laugh and crack jokes, even with his straight face and deadpan eyes. I thought he died the day I quit the minors. But no; he’s very much alive and full of the passion he used to be known for.

And so the fuck am I.

29

RYAN

I lean against the doorframe of Rudy’s room, watching as his mother sits in a chair by his bed holding his hand while he sleeps.

“Dad knows.”

I turn to find Stefan standing there. He’s wearing a distressed pair of jeans that hug his thighs and crotch in a distracting way, which I really shouldn’t be surprised by at this point. A plain white t-shirt pulls across his pecs, squeezes his muscular shoulders, and stretches itself mercilessly to accommodate his big arms.

The words register late. “Knows what?”

“About us.” Stefan comes up to my side, leaning against the wall next to me.

I glance back into the room where Stefan’s mom, completely consumed in looking over Rudy, doesn’t appear privy to our words out here in the hall. I come around Stefan to get farther out of his mother’s earshot, then bring my voice down. “You … You actually told him?”

“Yep.”

“What’d you tell him, exactly?”

“All he needed to know.” Stefan meets my eyes. “What? Are you surprised?”

Surprised doesn’t cover it. “Uh, yeah. Considering what the last words we exchanged to each other were … and how terrified you seem to be at the prospect of others finding out about you.”

“I guess you can say I felt dared to do it.” He shoots me one of his lopsided smirks. “And you know how I am about dares.”

“I never dared you.” I face him completely and cross my arms. “Why did you tell him? You didn’t have to do that. Stefan, I need to get everything off my chest.”

“I needed to.”

“Listen.” Everything is moving too fast. I grab both of his wrists without thinking of who else in the hallway might see us. “I was wrong in pushing you. You ought to tell people in your own time—if you even tell them at all. It’s your right. What you call yourself. What you don’t call yourself. Whether we’re a thing or just two buddies who … have sex. That’s your right. And it’s wrong as fuck of me to go back on all of the things I said at Terry Park and make you feel like you have to choose.”

“Well, I chose anyway,” he states simply. “And I chose not to let you go a second time.”

My eyes flash. Strange. I’d thought the same thing. “Stefan …”

“I would rather call myself gay, or a homo, or a clown, or ‘just another dumb jock’ as you put it that day so long ago … I’ll call myself whatever the fuck you want me to, as long as I’m yours, and you’re mine.”

His words steal all the breath out of me. “I was going to say the opposite,” I confess. “Well, almost the opposite. I don’t want you to compromise who you are for my sake. This thing between us doesn’t need a name, and it doesn’t need to be presented to the world. Let us just be. Let us exist as we are—sometimes sexy, or frustrated, or at a total loss for words altogether.”

Stefan reaches up and holds me by the shoulders, my hands letting go of his wrists. Then, unexpectedly, he pulls me against him for a hug, wrapping his big arms around me and clinging to me tightly. With the side of my face pressed against his chest, I’m reminded of that first night when we … first crossed a boundary, so to speak.

I’ve never felt safer than when I’m trapped in his embrace. Maybe that’s what inspires me to suddenly get another thing off of my chest. “I feel like I could have prevented this somehow.”