FROM: [email protected]
Date: Aug 23 1:06 PM
SUBJECT: Pushing my luck
Wild,
I’m leaving for Georgia on the 30th. I’ll only be there for a couple of months. Well, that’s if everything goes like it should. Which it won’t, so I’m betting I’ll be in Marietta longer. I shouldn’t be writing to you like this anymore, but I can’t stop thinking about you all the time. I wish I could go back and change everything. But no matter how hard I wish for what I want, there are some things in life that aren’t meant to be. You’ve already moved on, living your life. It’s going to be hard, knowing you’re only a thirty-minute drive away. Don’t worry, I won’t come to you, not until you ask me to. And I hope you will.
I know it’s been said, but I’ll say it one more time.
I’m sorry.
Jax~
I pressed send before I could talk myself out of it, and as I slipped my phone back into my pocket, Ethan showed up.
“Hey,” he said, smiling as I slid into the passenger seat.
Ethan had on board shorts and a tight gray tank top that stretched across his chest. His hair looked damp, and as I shut the door, the smell of chlorine stung my nose.
“Were you swimming?” I asked, a fresh wave of guilt pulling me under.
He bit his bottom lip and shrugged. “Not really. My apartment complex has a pool. But there’s always a million kids.” He gave me another one of his crooked smiles. “I’d rather have lunch with you.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to read too much into what he’d said. “Where do you want to go.” Ethan glanced at my dirty fingers, and my sweat-stained shirt. Insecurity rippled through me. “I’m not fit for more than a drive-thru.”
He laughed as he pulled onto the main road. “I’m kind of liking the whole sweaty-working-man thing.”
“I don’t think you’d like it if you got much closer. Nothing good about the stench I’ve got going on.”
He leaned over and wrinkled his nose with a laugh. “Maybe you’re right.”
My face heated, but I laughed too. “Sorry. I’ve been digging up Mrs. Hornsby’s yard all morning. August heat is no joke.”
“Don’t apologize for being a hard worker, Jax.” The car slowed, approaching a stop light. “I think it’s sexy… a man who can take care of things. Fix shit.”
I didn’t know how to respond. He was always casual about his sexuality, where I hadn’t even said the words, I’m gay, to anyone except Wild. But I guess sticking your tongue down a guy’s throat with a raging hard-on was enough of an admission.
“I’m really good at freaking you out,” he said, his lips pressed together suppressing a growing grin. “I should work on that.”
My hands fidgeted in my lap. “It’s just…” I turned and watched the buildings pass by, not truly focusing on anything. My mouth was dry, my stomach turning inside out as I said, “I’ve only been open with one other person about… this thing inside me. And he’s… it was a long time ago. I guess it’s weird to talk about it when I’ve been silent for as long as I have.”
Ethan turned into the parking lot of Billy’s, a burger place south of Bell River. Instead of pulling into the drive-thru, he parked the car.
He left the engine running as he stared at me. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Jaxon.” I studied his chest as it moved. I counted five breaths before he spoke again. “When I came out to my parents last year, I thought I was gonna die. I can’t even describe to you how hard it was for me to open my mouth and say the words. My dad threw me out, and I slept on a friend’s couch for two weeks. That’s when I got the job at Harley’s. But I didn’t die. And me and my folks, we’re working it out. I moved back in for a while, but it isn’t the same. I know they love me, but they don’t accept me as I am. Maybe one day I’ll go over there, and I won’t notice how my dad keeps a few feet between us, or how my momma always looks like she wants to cry. I can’t take it back… coming out, and I don’t want to. But I forget sometimes, what it was like to hide who you are all the time. All the little things we have to sacrifice. I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel like you owe me some sort of explanation.”
He didn’t have to tell me how hard it was to speak the truth. I could feel it in my chest. Like an anvil. I picked at a thread near the pocket of my shorts to keep my hands busy. “You didn’t make me feel that way.” I lifted my gaze and sucked down a ragged breath. “I’ve known I was... gay since I was a kid. Nothing you’ve said is wrong. If anything, I wish I could be as open as you.”
“I’m not as open as you think… I mean, I don’t deny that I like men, but I have to be careful.” Ethan hesitated. “I want to ask you something, but I’m afraid it’s too personal.”
“Ask me.”
“The guy you mentioned before… how long ago—”
“A little over nine years.”
His eyes widened. “Was he a boyfriend?”
He was more.
“Yeah. When I was at Eastchester. No one at school knew, though, and then everything happened here. The relationship ended.”
“Shit, Jax… all this time you’ve been dealing with this on your own?”
“It’s not as hard as it sounds. Jason became my world. And I’m grateful for every second I have with him and my mom.”
He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself. Shaking his head, he said, “Jason is a good kid.”
“What were you really going to say?”
His face flushed as he tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “What about…” He looked at me, waiting, and when I furrowed my brow, he blew out a breath. “Sex, Jax… haven’t you missed it?”
“I have sex,” I said, hating how defensive I sounded. I knew what he was getting at. The physical connection I’d had with Wild was something I’d never been able to recreate with any of the women I’d slept with.
Confused, he asked, “You have?”
“I was with Mary for a year and dated a few other women before her.”
Understanding dawned in his caramel eyes. “I dated women for a while, until I couldn’t. It wasn’t the same. And I hated feeling like I was using them.”
“I know what you mean.” I could feel him watching me as I stared through the windshield. “I don’t think I can do it anymore. But I have no idea how to move forward. I don’t want to lose my family.”
“I wish I could promise you everything will be good, and that your mom will be okay with having a gay son, but you know as well as I do, that’s a promise I can’t keep.”
“I’ll be in Marietta for a few months… Maybe while I’m there I can figure out a way to do this.”
“You decided to go, then?” I didn’t miss the disappointment in his voice.