“What’s it like then, Oliver?” He no longer sounded combative, just tired. Resigned.
“I …” I started to say, my words failing me when I needed them the most. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. They’d been failing me for years where this topic was concerned.
After that weekend, I’d felt ruined. No matter how many women I’d slept with afterward, I couldn’t seem to recapture the euphoria of those moments with Rob and Calista. After a while, I’d started to wonder if the problem wasn’t with the women I slept with, but rather with me. That deep down inside, the reason it had been so good with them was because I’d always subconsciously wanted him. After some pretty intense moments of self-reflection, I’d been able to push that fear aside. I wasn’t in love with my best friend any more than he was in love with me.
After a string of dissatisfying one night stands that had left me feeling even more empty inside, I’d eventually gone to visit a therapist. Unfortunately, when push had come to shove, I’d been too worried our conversation wouldn’t stay private. I’d ended up shutting down when I should have been opening up. At one point, after I’d given a few monosyllabic answers to her questions, she’d shocked me by flat out asking if I might be gay. Deep in my gut, I didn’t feel gay. When I pictured my future, I always saw a wife and kids, but something was clearly keeping it from happening. In the years since, I’d sometimes wondered if Calista was the reason for my unresolved feelings, but after watching her and Rob build a life together, I knew in my heart that wasn’t it either.
The problem was, at thirty-two years old, I was no closer to figuring my shit out than I’d been at twenty-six.
“You know what?” he said, laying back down on the mattress, his eyes focused on the ceiling. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth in a quick, impassioned burst. In that moment, I understood that my inability to open up to Elijah might cost me his friendship. My gut heaved at the idea of not having him in my life. I’d known the guy for less than a month, but somehow his opinion mattered. He mattered.
He rolled his head on his pillow, and flat, blue eyes found mine. “It’s late. You should go to bed.”
I rubbed my hands roughly over my knees, weighing my words carefully. How to explain to him what I’d never been able to explain to myself?
When he continued to stare at me blankly, I panicked and blurted out the only true thing I knew. “It was the best fucking sex of my life, and I’ve spent the last six years trying to recapture the magic I felt with my best friend’s mouth on my cock.”
He inhaled a shocked breath and then swallowed deeply, his adam’s apple bobbing seductively in his throat.
Unbidden, I pictured licking it, and I groaned as I dropped my head down into my upturned palms.
“I thought you said …” When he trailed off, the unspoken rest of his sentence hanging between us, I spread my fingers to peek out at him.
“Technically, we didn’t.”
“Right,” he said slowly, moving into a sitting position, his back against the wall and his arm resting on a raised knee. “You just let him suck your dick.”
We both fell quiet after that, and eventually, I blew out a breath and leaned back in my chair.
“It was …” I said, breaking the silence. I shook my head. “I don’t know how to explain it. Everything started out as a tequila-fueled dare and kind of just grew from there. At first, it was your everyday, average threesome. He fucked her while she blew me.”
“Let me guess,” he said dryly, “before you knew what was happening, they’d switched places, and you were suddenly fucking his face instead?”
I shook my head slowly back and forth, the memory of that night settling over me. “When I was about to come, he reached out and grabbed the back of my neck. He smirked and then pulled me in for a kiss. I shot my load when he sucked my tongue into his mouth.” My dick twitched in my jeans as I recalled the moment I’d gone from shocked to more aroused than I’d ever been in my entire fucking life.
From atop his bed on the other side of the room, Elijah chuckled lightly.
“What?” I asked, curious at his reaction.
“When I was sixteen, my best friend kissed me, too. It rocked my fucking world.”
“You get it then,” I said, relief flooding my veins.
He speared me with an intense look I couldn’t read. “No,” he eventually said. “I don’t. The thing is, Oliver, the second Troy’s lips touched mine, everything clicked into place. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I liked men as much as I liked women.”
I dropped my gaze down to stare at my hands fisted tightly on my thighs. “The thing is, I don’t like men,” I said emphatically, ready to reveal another truth about myself that I’d never shared with another living soul. I raised weary eyes back to his. “At first, I was worried I might be in love with Rob without even knowing it, but that wasn’t it either. But I couldn’t explain my experience otherwise. In the end, I accepted that maybe I wasn’t as straight as I thought, so I went on that app. It was a disaster.”
He raised his right eyebrow in question, a silent gesture to continue.
Strangely, for the first time in my life, I felt like I could. Words that had eluded me for so long finally found their voice. “The guy was handsome enough. Successful. And very much in the closet, so I didn’t have to worry about him bragging to his friends afterward. We met up at a hotel two hours from where I live, and the second his lips touched mine, everything felt wrong. I apologized, and left as quickly as I could.” I laughed bitterly. “Ever since, I’m just kind of … dead inside. Nothing really does it for me anymore.”
“Nothing?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head again. “I want to have sex, I know I do, but I’m not attracted to any of the men I’ve met, and I can’t seem to bring myself to want to fuck the women I’m with, either. I’m going to develop carpal tunnel if I don’t figure something out soon.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I said, wondering what more there was left for me to say. I’d just laid my deepest, darkest secret at his feet.
“Is it possible you’re demisexual?”
7
Elijah
“Demisexual?” Oliver asked, his brows scrunched down in confusion. “I don’t …” He blew out a long breath and shook his head. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Keep in mine I’m no expert,” I began, “but I do know that sexuality is a spectrum in a lot of ways. There are a lot of definitions, but I’m not sure any of them are exact. In general, though, it sounds like you’re not asexual—you know you like sex, you’re just not sure who you like it with. Pansexual means that who you’re attracted to isn’t necessarily about the other person’s gender identity, or restricted by their gender presentation. But you’re not attracted to lots of people, right? For you,” I continued, trying to explain the sense I was getting from him, “it’s simply a matter of needing to actually care about the person you’re fucking. Rob is your best friend, right? Maybe you just need to feel close with the person to get off. That’s demisexuality, or at least somewhere on the demi spectrum.”