Fifty First Times

  I fucking loved him. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  “So are you going to tell your dad you’re in town?” Malcolm asked, breaking me from my spiraling thoughts. “We could always invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner. He might be able to come over before work or something.”

  “He doesn’t want to see me. If he did, he wouldn’t have called to tell me he’d be working overnights all week.”

  Malcolm glanced at him, frowning. “Maybe he thought you didn’t want to see him. You don’t exactly talk to him much lately.”

  “Monitoring my calls now?” I unwrapped the breakfast sandwich and tore a bite from it, hoping he’d get the hint that I didn’t feel like discussing this crap.

  But Malcolm wasn’t deterred. “I’m just saying, maybe if you two talked and saw each other more, it wouldn’t be so damn awkward. Y’all used to be close . . .”

  “Is this the part where you give me the speech about how he’s the only family I have left and we should just hug and go fishing or do whatever father/son crap we’re supposed to do?”

  Malcolm’s jaw tensed and his grip on the steering wheel tightened as he turned onto the narrow highway that would lead us to the back roads. “He’s not the only family you’ve got. You’ve got me. And my family. You know my parents think of you like they’re own.”

  Ha. Right. He wondered how Malcolm’s very conservative parents would feel if they knew their “adopted” son spent most of his nights weaving erotic fantasies about his faux brother.

  “Look, I love your parents.” And you. “But my family is gone. When Mom and Samantha died, they took our family with them. That will never exist again. When I’m around my dad, all my presence does is bring up memories of what used to be for him. I can see it when he looks at me. He sees them instead. And I’m just done with it all. I’m twenty. I don’t need a place to run home to anymore. My dad is living his life and trying to move on, and I’m living mine.”

  “Alone,” Malcolm said, derision in his voice.

  I sniffed. “I’m not alone. I share a ten-by-ten cell with you every day, remember?”

  “Sure you do,” he said under his breath as he grabbed his soda from the cup holder and sipped.

  I turned in my seat. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  Malcolm shrugged but didn’t look at me, choosing to stare at the empty road ahead instead. “Just saying that over the last few months, we’ve barely hung out. You study more than I know you need to. You disappear on weekends instead of coming out with me and the rest of our friends. Half the time it feels like you’re pissed at me for something, but when I ask you what’s wrong, you brush me off. And when I asked you to come on this trip, you said you’d rather stay holed up in a dorm room alone instead. Did I miss the part where we stopped being friends?”

  Maybe. Probably. Because he’d become so much more to me than that. So much so that I could barely stand to be around him anymore. “It’s not that. I’ve just been dealing with a lot of shit. You know that. It’s been a bad year.”

  “Look, I get it,” Malcolm said, blowing out a breath. “No one should have to go through what you have. But I know it’s more than that.”

  Malcolm glanced over at me and I took another bite of my sandwich, pulling my expression into the placid, I-don’t-have-a-clue-what-you’re-taking-about face.

  That seemed to frustrate Malcolm more. “I need you to know that I. Don’t. Care.”

  I swallowed my food, the bite feeling like a ball of moss in my throat. “You don’t care about what?”

  He looked back to the road, his expression hard. “I was worried you were getting into stupid shit—drugs or something—and wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  I blinked, the words not lining up in my head. “What?”

  “I followed you to New Orleans a few months ago,” he said quietly.

  An explosion went off in my head—loud and blasting and ferocious. I grabbed the dashboard, my sandwich dropping onto the greasy paper in my lap.

  “Oh, shit,” Malcolm said, frantically trying to maintain his grip on the wheel.

  Only then did I realize that the explosion hadn’t been in my head but in the truck. Dirt and gravel flew past the windshield as Malcolm jerked the truck onto the side of the road. My shoulder hit the door, and a loud rumbling noise filled the truck as we bounced and ground to a stop.

  Malcolm cursed again.

  “Did we hit something?” I asked, still reeling.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, dragging a shaking hand through his hair. “I think it was a blowout. The wheel yanked left before I could stop it. You all right?”

  Physically, yes. Mentally, hell no. “Yeah, you?”

  He rolled his wrist and winced slightly. “I’m fine. Let’s get out just in case anything else is wrong.”

  We both climbed out of the truck, and as soon as my feet hit the gravel I could see the shredded state of the right front tire. I shut the door. “You got a spare?”

  Malcolm came around the front of the truck, scowling at the state of the tire and the bent rim. “Yeah, there’s one in the back. I’ll get it.”

  “No, you screwed up your wrist. I got it.” Plus, I needed something to do besides think about what Malcolm had said in the car. He’d followed me to New Orleans. New Orleans. How far had he followed? What had he seen? My stomach lurched.

  I got the tools I needed, hopped down from the tailgate, and went to work. While I set up the jack, Malcolm went to the back of the truck to watch for any cars coming. It was a narrow highway and anyone not paying attention could drift onto the shoulder easily. He leaned his forearms along the side of the truck bed, peering into the distance, looking as pensive as I’d ever seen him. “You’re not going to say anything about me following you?”

  “Didn’t realize you’d taken up stalking as a hobby?” I offered, pumping the jack with more force than necessary.

  He glanced over at me, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “Come on, Bates. Be straight with me.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Be straight with him. If it were only so easy.

  Malcolm cringed at the unintentional implication and I knew then that he knew. That he hadn’t just followed me to New Orleans, he’d followed me far enough to know what kind of club I’d gone into. I wanted to vomit right there on the side of the road. “Well, guess you know I’m not into drugs, then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, something akin to hurt in his voice.

  “Tell you what?” I said, trying to sound offhanded as I focused on pulling the old tire off. I needed him to say it. I needed to see how hard it was to even utter the words. Needed to see exactly what a lifelong friendship looked like when it disintegrated—probably not much different than the shredded rubber I was holding in my hands.

  “That you’re bi?” he said—a question not a statement.

  I smirked, bitterness welling in me, but didn’t look up. “Not bi.”

  I could hear the rush of air—his breath leaving him. “You’ve dated girls. You slept with Colette.”

  “And I kept my eyes closed the whole time,” I said, staring at the tools in my hands, forgetting what I was supposed to be doing with them. “It was the only way I could get into it.”

  “Imagining you were with a guy?” Malcolm asked, his tone unreadable.

  Imagining I was with you. “Something like that.”

  I went back to work, throwing all my focus into the task in front of me. I couldn’t look at him. I thought I’d want to know, but seeing the judgment in his eyes, the disgust, would rip me open. I couldn’t handle that right now. Right now all I could handle was getting this tire on this truck and getting the hell out of here. Maybe I’d be visiting home after all because I sure as hell wasn’t staying with Malcolm anymore.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Malcolm asked.

  I made a noise in the back of my throat. “Right. Because that’s what every guy wants to deal with. Sha
ring a room with a gay dude.”

  “What the hell, Bates? I’m not sharing my room with a gay dude. I’m sharing it with my best friend,” Malcolm said, his voice edged with anger. “How long have you known?”

  The wrench slipped out of my hand and landed in the gravel. I cursed at it, at the whole damn situation, and sat back on my heels, feeling defeated. “Maybe always, definitely since high school. Colette was my last-ditch attempt at making sure I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t.”

  “And still you didn’t say anything? You could’ve told me.”

  “No. I couldn’t have. I didn’t want this. This conversation. This awkwardness. In high school, I liked being one of the guys. You remember what happened when Ben Grady came out? All of a sudden, he had to take separate showers after soccer practice and none of the guys, including you, ever treated him the same. It was like y’all were afraid to pat him on the back or hang out with him for fear you’d catch the gayness. He even lost his babysitting job he had in the summers because the parents got all freaked out—like gay equaled pedophile. Screw that. It wasn’t worth it.”

  Malcolm’s frown deepened. “I didn’t treat him differently.”

  I looked up, squinting in the sunlight at him. “You did. Even if you didn’t realize it. And I didn’t want that from you. Now I guess I’ll see what it’s like.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Malcolm rolled the new tire toward me, his jaw set in that way that I knew meant he was getting past annoyed and moving into pissed. “I saw you kissing a guy in his car two months ago.”

  My ribs cinched.

  “I’ve known for a while. Have I acted weird around you?”

  I took the tire, the past weeks scrolling like a slideshow through my head. He’d seen me kissing that bartender. He’d known all this time. I couldn’t even wrap my brain around that. Malcolm hadn’t shown any signs. He’d treated me the same as always. He’d still gotten dressed in our room in full view of me, even though I usually looked away so I wouldn’t react. He’d still asked me to go out with our friends. He’d still grabbed me out of bed this morning and tossed me in the shower, insisting I come with him on this trip. A trip where I’d sleep in the same bed as him.

  He knew I was gay. But he didn’t suspect how I felt about him. Thank God.

  Part of me relaxed. “No, you haven’t.”

  “So you’re the one who wins the asshole award for not telling me, for not trusting me to not be a douche bag.” He squatted down next to me and helped me get the new tire on with his good hand. “And man, Colette is going to be bummed.”

  I snorted, happy to be in familiar territory of joking around. “Believe me, I was nothing to write home about. I’m only glad she was a virgin, too, so she didn’t know how bad I was that night.”

  Malcolm laughed. “Have you gotten better?”

  I gave him a droll look and put my hand out for the wrench. “You didn’t just ask me that.”

  He shrugged, a sly smile touching his lips as he passed the tool over. “Hey, gay, straight, or bi, I can’t have a wingman who doesn’t have game.”

  “Yeah, you just took the douche bag award back.” I turned the nuts on the tire, the conversation veering into the no-fly zone again.

  “Come on, things must’ve gotten better after you figured everything out.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said, securing the last nut and standing up. “Haven’t gone down that road yet.”

  Malcolm’s brows lifted and he stood. “Really?”

  I couldn’t pinpoint his odd tone—judgment, curiosity, disbelief, I couldn’t tell—but I was done having this conversation, so I turned it around on him. “No, unlike you, who has his dick on a two-girl-a-week regime of meaningless sex, I’m too busy with school right now to worry about all that.”

  Big. Fat. Lie. I hated those girls in his bed. Hated that they had what I wanted so damn much and could never have. Hated that they didn’t even realize what kind of person Malcolm was. Just like he saw hot girl, nice body, those girls saw hot guy, nice body. It was all so stupid and empty on both sides. And they got to touch him, to hear his whispered words against their ears, to feel him inside their bodies—all the while, never knowing or even caring that the guy they were kissing was the best guy I’d ever known. A guy who’d defended me from bullies in third grade when I’d gotten glasses. A guy who’d secretly had Star Wars sheets way longer than was socially acceptable. A guy who had refused to let his best friend sit alone in a dorm during the first Thanksgiving since half his family had died.

  I suddenly regretted the comment I’d made.

  Malcolm’s eyes met mine for long seconds. Then he turned on his heel, kicked a shredded piece of tire out of his way, and went back to the driver’s seat. The sound of the door slamming echoed through me.

  Leave it to me to thank my best friend for being so cool about my big revelation by calling him a man whore. Nicely played, Bates. Now I just needed to find a puppy to kick to finish my day.

  I tossed the tools in the back of the truck and climbed back in.

  It was a few long, silent hours to Alabama.

  Three

  I SAT IN the grass a few yards from the bonfire, sipping a cup of spiked hot chocolate and trying to warm up from the chill that had rolled in when the sun went down. The evening had gone all right. Malcolm had acted like nothing was wrong once we got to his parents’ farmhouse, putting on the everything-cool face for everyone. His mom had buzzed around us, feeding us the best food we’d had in months and asking us endless questions about school. When she’d asked me if I was taking time to have fun and date, not just study, Malcolm’s gaze had lifted and met mine, almost daring me to say something. But I’d just dodged the question.

  I’d been tempted to leave and suffer a stay at my dad’s, but when it’d come down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to go over there. So when Malcolm and I had gone upstairs to put our bags in his room, I’d cut things off at the pass. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  He’d smirked. “Afraid I’m going to try something with you since I won’t have my two girls this week? You know me, can’t live without all that mindless sex, doesn’t matter where I get it.”

  Despite the sarcasm, the comment had conjured images that had made my stomach dip. “I’m not that easy,” I’d retorted. Like an asshole. But that was my go-to safety zone right now when everything seemed to be falling down around our friendship. This would probably be the last time I’d spend nights at his family’s house. Things wouldn’t be the same after today.

  So now I was content to sit here in the cold and drink myself stupid while I watched the party go on around me. Malcolm was sitting on the other side of the bonfire on a fallen log, with his arm and a blanket wrapped around McKayla Ryan. He was murmuring something in her ear and giggling. A few other people were sitting around them, passing a flask around the group. And from what I could tell, they were playing some sort of game, daring each other to do stupid shit. One guy had already stripped down to his boxer shorts and run around the bonfire three times. Truth or dare without the truth part. Seemed appropriate. Dares were safer. Truth had only gotten me in trouble today.

  Someone’s shadow crossed over me, flickering in the firelight, and I looked over to my left and up. Colette smiled down at me as she lowered cross-legged onto the ground next to me. “Hey there, stranger.”

  “Hey,” I said, taking in her new look. Sophomore year really had been good to her. Her red hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was doing something different with her makeup. I could still see the freckled tomboy she used to be, but everything was more polished. “Long time no see. You look great.”

  She sipped her hot chocolate and smiled over the rim of her cup. “Thanks. You too. But that hasn’t changed. You always did.”

  Confident and forward Colette. That was new. I liked it. At least I hadn’t totally ruined her self-esteem when I’d fumbled around and had trouble staying excited during our one time together. “So how’s it going?”
>
  “Been better,” she said with a shrug. “Just broke up with a guy. He cheated.”

  “That sucks.”

  She took another long sip. “Yeah, way worse than finding out the guy you like doesn’t like girls. That I could deal with.”

  I nearly choked on my drink.

  She bumped her shoulder against mine. “Come on. I was a virgin but I wasn’t dumb. I’d fooled around with a few guys before that. I could breathe on them and everything would stand at attention. Your body had no interest in mine.”

  I shook my head. “Yet you still went through with it?”

  “I just thought we were doing it wrong. I didn’t figure it all out until a few days later. I was watching you watch him one day in gym.” She nodded in Malcolm’s direction. “I saw how you looked at him when he wasn’t paying attention. That’s when I figured it out.”

  My throat felt like a hand was squeezing it.

  “Are you and Malcolm . . .”

  “What?” I said, finding my voice. “No, he’s not . . . no.”

  She glanced over at the other group, and I followed her gaze. Malcolm still had his arm around McKayla, but he was looking straight at us. Colette gave him a little wave, and he unleashed that devastating smile on her. The one that always made my gut clench.

  Colette grabbed my hand and tugged. “Come on, let’s not be those people with broken hearts crying in their drinks.”

  “Wait, no,” I said, even as she was pulling me to my feet. “I’m fine over here.”