“You’ve been quiet today,” Decker observed while wrapping an arm around my waist as I washed dishes in the loft. I felt the scrubbing bubbles lathering over my skin as I tried to formulate my response. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t happy, I was just exhausted.
“Are you tired of hiding?” I asked.
“Yes.” His response was immediate and blunt. I loved his honesty and how we were always on the same page.
Decker grabbed my hips and forced me to look at him. I wondered if he could see the exhaustion in my expression. School was kicking my ass lately. I had straight A’s, but it was hard to keep up. He helped me study in the evenings, and even gave pointers on a presentation I was going to give. I appreciated him tremendously but felt like I couldn’t keep up.
He leaned down for a kiss, making a smile break out on my lips. But instead of kissing me, he whispered over my mouth. “Lance is supposed to be gone tomorrow. Why don’t I take you out of town? We can make this feel more public in a place where people won’t recognize us?” he offered. It wasn’t the first time he had, either. It just felt too risky. This loft had become our prison and our safe haven. I didn’t have it in me to risk losing that.
Decker’s lips found purchase on my forehead just as the front door swung open. “Hey! I got home early.” Lance’s voice died off as Decker pulled away from me. A cool sheen of nervous sweat coated my skin as I turned away to greet Lance, who was staring at us curiously, a hint of anger on his angelic face.
“Hey,” I said with a smile before walking around the kitchen island to greet him. “How was work?” Could he hear the tremor in my voice? Could he see the intimacy bouncing between Decker and me?
“It was fine. What are y’all up to?” Lance asked while keeping his eyes on Decker. The speculation and assumptions were twisting like a tornado behind his blue eyes.
“Just talking about school.”
“You were standing awfully close to be talking about school,” he accused. It was right there, right at the tip of his tongue. Relief like a cannon burst through me, but I kept my mouth shut, offering Decker a curious glance to see if this was it. Would we finally tell Lance? He said he wanted to trial and error this thing between us, but I was ready for the next phase in our experiment.
And the look that greeted me was full of terror and pain.
Decker was gripping the island so hard I was confident it would crack. His lips were slightly curled, and his muscles flexed. Now was not the time.
I intervened, trying to salvage this moment, but it felt so, so wrong. “I’ve just been worried about my project in Chemistry. It’s embarrassing. He walked in on a total meltdown. And this shit with my dad is really freaking me out.” All of these things were honest. I wasn’t really lying to Lance, just avoiding telling him the full truth. It was ironic that the half-truths our relationship were built on still held us back now. Dad hadn’t reached out since he left two months ago. I was really fucking worried those men had him. School and work were wearing me down.
But none of it had me as worked up as Decker’s and my secret affair. And I was starting to realize that all these secrets were acting like a wedge between my brother and me.
“Oh, Blakely,” Lance said before wrapping me up in a hug. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until my salty tears were saturating his shirt. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you need to call in to work tonight? Take a break?”
Lance was a chronic fixer, and it made me feel worse.
Pulling away as I wiped my face, I answered him. “No. I want to go tonight. It’s a welcome distraction. I just need some extra help lately, and Decker saw me crying. I’m sorry.”
“Of course,” Lance replied. “And I’ll be around to help out more, too. Sean and I broke up this past weekend. I wanted him to come meet you, but he said that was too close to labeling this relationship for him. I knew I shouldn’t have dated someone that hadn’t come to terms with his sexuality yet. I can go to his grandmother’s funeral, but meeting my family is too much, apparently.” Lance rolled his eyes in a painful, slow motion that was brimming with pain.
“What? You didn’t tell me,” Decker blurted out from his spot in the kitchen. The shock was evident on his face, as well as a hint of guilt.
Lance shrugged. “You’ve been extra busy lately.”
I took a good look at my brother and noticed the heartbreak in his eyes. “I’m sorry about Sean,” I croaked.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he replied.
The three of us stood standing there in silence for a long while, the things we weren’t willing to say making the air thick with tension. “Well, you better get ready for work. We can eat ice cream and watch movies on the couch tomorrow,” Lance finally offered.
Placing a hand on my brother’s shoulder, I nodded solemnly before disappearing.
Something told me this conversation was far from over.
“Why the long face, hot stuff?” Rose asked as I mopped the floor after closing. My feet were tired. There was beer on my shirt. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and cuddle Decker.
“I’m just tired.”
“What kind of tired?” Rose asked. “The emotional tired? The physically tired? The hopeless sort of tired? Are you the kind of tired that lamely uses a universal term for exhaustion but you’re really just falling apart?”
Rose was spit firing questions, one after the other, and I felt my body give in. My face contorted into pain, the kind that wasn’t exhaustion. “Oh, baby, come here. Is this about Decker?”
My mouth dropped open. “You know?”
“That boy tells me everything. Of course I know. I’m actually a little offended that it’s taken you so long to open up to me,” she tsked while grabbing the mop from my hand and wrapping me in a big hug. She smelled like vanilla and incense.
“Lance almost caught us tonight, and all I wanted to do was tell him,” I whimpered.
“So why didn’t you?” Rose guided me to a booth and sat me down, reaching across the table to hold my hand in solidarity.
“I was going to. But then I looked at Decker and saw his face. He looked terrified. It’s a lot of pressure, you know? Walking this tightrope between telling Lance and preserving their relationship while trying to build my own with Decker. Add the issue of school and living together, and it’s a clusterfuck of massive proportions.”
Rose nodded as I spoke, while pulling a joint out from her shirt pocket and lighting it up. She took a slow, deep inhale and held it in her chest for a long while before blowing out rings of smoke. “You love them, don’t you?” Rose finally asked with a smile. “I’m so proud of you. Look at that big ol’ heart opening up for the world to see.”
“That's your takeaway from all of this?” I asked incredulously.
“You’re focusing on all the wrong stuff. When you arrived in my office, you were closed off. Your aura was jaded and dark. Now you love two people so much that you’re crying in front of me. If that’s not progress, then I don’t know what is.”
I mulled over her words while tracing scratches in the wood on the table. “I do love them. It’s why I feel so selfish and guilty. My mama never cared who she bulldozed over to get what she wanted. I can’t help but feel like I’m doing that with Decker. I want—love—him so much that I’m willing to potentially destroy Lance in the process. It’s at the point where it’s not just our relationship that’ll hurt my brother, it’s the betrayal of keeping it secret that’ll ruin him.”