His laughter sounds uncomfortable. “All right. Dinner.”
Kieran
I make a plate of food for myself and then carry it into the living room. But I’ll be lucky if I can even taste it, because my mind is blown. I kissed him. And I liked it. A whole lot.
We sit on the new carpet, and eat at opposite ends of the coffee table that I brought home last night. It’s another relic from my mother’s attic. Absently, I pick up the giant sandwich and take a bite. And—Jesus. It’s so good. The meat is tender and the bread is yeasty and perfect. To my embarrassment, I let out a little moan of happiness.
Roderick grins at me from several feet away. “Honestly, I’d be more upset if you didn’t like this pulled pork than if you didn’t want to fuck me.”
I try not to choke on my next bite, because I don’t know how to respond to that. I’ve never met anyone like him. I don’t know any gay men at all. I mean—I’ve heard rumors. But I never met a guy like Roderick who calls himself “Gay AF” in a housing ad, or uses words like “cock” and “fuck me” in casual conversation. “You know, sometimes I can’t tell when you’re being serious and when you’re joking.”
He swallows a bite of our excellent dinner. “Here’s a tip—I’m almost never being serious. Life is easier that way.”
We chew in silence for a moment. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Roderick has things he could teach me. Besides cooking. And those are things that I desperately want to learn. I’d like to be more like him—willing to name my desires. Unafraid to know what anyone will think.
But I don’t have the first idea how you do that.
“Can I ask you a question?” Roderick says, breaking my reverie. “Have you ever dated men?”
I shake my head.
“So you date women?” he asks, looking perplexed.
“No, not really.”
“Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Do you have sex with men?”
Again I shake my head.
“Women?”
“Sometimes. Not for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
I think it over. “A couple of years. Well, four or five.”
His eyes bug out. “And you enjoyed it? Never mind. If you liked it you wouldn’t have stopped.”
“It was okay.”
He seems to think this over. “Not everyone likes sex. I can’t, uh, quite understand not liking it. But asexuality is a real thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” I say, and then take another achingly good bite of meat and fresh bread. It’s occurred to me before that I could be asexual. It’s true that I don’t spend much time thinking about sex. I don’t watch porn, and I don’t hook up.
On the other hand, I spend a fair amount of time avoiding thinking about it. My life is complicated enough as it is. I watch my brother flirting and chasing women and making a fool of himself on a regular basis. And for what? A hookup after a night drinking at the bar.
Sex with strangers doesn’t appeal to me. Women don’t appeal to me half as much as they did when I was a horny teenager. And experimenting with random men off an app? That’s just awkward.
I like the idea of sex. It’s just that I’ve never worked out the details.
“You’re thinking really hard over there,” Roderick observes.
“Yeah. One of the reasons I wanted to move off my parents’ farm is that…”
“Your dad is an asshole?” Roderick guesses.
“Sure, but that isn’t what I was going to say.” I have thought the word asshole many times while tangling with Dad. But my relationship with him is more complicated than that. I never asked to have a father who resents me, and he never asked to raise my mother’s biggest mistake.
“What, then?” Roderick asks.
“I wanted the distance so I could figure it all out.”
“Your sexuality,” he guesses.
“That,” I agree. “And my career, too. I need a better graphic-design job, and some more coursework. I don’t want to hear Dad’s opinions all the time. Not about that, and not about…”
“Steamy-hot man-loving?” Roderick offers, and I almost choke on my sandwich. “Sorry,” he says with a grin. “I was born with no filter.”
“It must be nice to say what you’re thinking all the time. I can’t really do that.”
“And I can’t stop,” he says with a sigh.
“You never told me why you left Nashville in a hurry.” One of the only tricks I know to get people to stop asking me questions is to ask one back. “Zara and Audrey are curious, too.”
“Ah,” he says, setting down the last bit of his sandwich. “It’s not a very interesting story. I was in a relationship for three years with a country music singer.”
“A famous one?” I ask, fascinated. I don’t know of any gay country music stars.
He shrugs. “I won’t tell you his name because I’d never out somebody. I owe this man nothing, but it’s the principle of the thing.”
“Okay.”
“We were a big fat secret, and I was okay with it for a long time.”
“And then you weren’t anymore?” I guess.
“Right.” He looks glum. “The weird thing is I totally understood why he had to stay in the closet. Country music is a weird scene. Lots of conservative fans. But whenever I got frustrated, he always made me feel bad about it. Everything was always my fault and never his. If he had just commiserated a little, I might never have left.”
“Oh,” I say, hoping to sound supportive. But I’ve never been in a relationship, and I have no idea what that’s like. “So you just had enough?”
Roderick laughs, but he’s bitter. “I stayed, even as he got meaner about everything. He said I was too clingy. That hurt because I had completely arranged my life around his. I wasn’t allowed to enter our house through the front door.” He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling. “I know it sounds ridiculous. But I didn’t give up until he cheated.”
“Ouch.”
“I know. Not only did he cheat, he set it up so that I’d catch him. It was the most cowardly thing in the world. I left Nashville right after I walked in on them. I got in my car and drove to this twenty-four-hour health clinic that performs STD tests. And then I drove home, walked through the backdoor like I always do, packed up my shit, and left.”
“Holy crap.” I cram the last bite of heaven into my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“Me too!” He smiles brightly. “I should have bailed a year ago. I knew he was kind of a head case.”
“He, uh…” I take a gulp of wine. “I guess you know a lot of those.”
Roderick gives me a soft look. He has the most expressive eyes that I’ve ever seen on a human. “You’re more honest about it, though. You said, ‘I don’t have my shit figured out,’ but my ex was always trying to be two different people at once—the queer guy who wanted me to fuck him and the straight guy everybody else thought he was. And I was just supposed to be waiting at home when he got around to seeing me.”