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"Why did you open it?" It's a stupid question.
"Might as well go for gold." He takes a deep breath, his head hanging low with the exhale. " I'd rather not be sober when they come to escort me off campus, anyway. Maybe they'll think I was drunk the whole time instead of…of…"
I bristle. "Instead of what?”
He shrugs and hands his head.
"Better to be a drunk loser than a gay one?” He winces at my harsh words, brushing his hand over his face and shaking his head. "What then?" My voice raises.
I feel bad for the state he's in, but I can't help but feel something about the way he's trying to use his drunkenness to explain away what’s happened between us this year. It makes my chest ache more than it already does. I don't want every sacrifice I'm about to make to be for nothing.
"Better to be a drunk loser than let everyone see how broken I am. I'm broken, Jack. So broken that I tried to break you." Once he starts talking, he doesn't stop. It's like he's picked a scab and now the wound won't stop bleeding. "That first night I saw you, I knew that something was off… with me. I looked at you like I’d never looked at a player before. Like I’d never looked at anyone before. I told myself it was just excitement over the team's prospects. But it was more. It was darker than that. Deeper. In the time between that night and you showing up here, I dove into everything I could find about you. Where you came from, what your hobbies were, your social interactions, your record, everything. I rationalized that I was helping you, making sure to keep Worth off your back and give you a fighting chance at a better future."
He stops and looks at me with pleading eyes. "If this goes public, he’ll realize that some of my threats were baseless. I want you to carry on like you have video proof of that twat spiking the girl's drink. It should keep him off your back, even if he comes after me for extortion."
"Extortion?"
He shrugs again. "I did everything I said I would do, and I did my best to give you everything you wanted. But I also took something from you. I used a part of you that I had no right?—"
"Bryant—"
"That's what my statement says. Officially. I wrote it up tonight when I got home. You might have to deal with the embarrassment of being violated, but if they know that I used my position of power to coerce you?—"
"No!" I'm standing now, raking my hands through my hair. "Bryant, no. What the actual fuck!? You didn't coerce me. For fuck's sake, if anyone coerced anyone, it was the other way around."
"I knew better. I knew it was wrong, what I was getting you to do. You were an obsession, Jack. You are my obsession. I can’t think of anything else, and the level of," he sighs heavily, "...the level of pleasure I get from hurting you, dominating you… It's not natural, Jack. I'm fucked up, and I fucked you up, and now I'm trying to do anything I can to prevent this from fucking up your future."
It’s then he finally breaks. In one fluid movement, he’s up, crossing over to where I sat the bottle, and grabs it. He turns the bottle up and chugs, and I watch him guzzle his poison with wide, terrified eyes, blurry with unshed tears. One swallow. Two. Three.
"Stop," I say, and pull the bottle down. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"
His eyes look away from me and another piece of my heart crumbles.
"You didn't force me to do anything I didn't want to do. After all of these months, I'm surprised you don't know better." He scoffs, because he knows I’m right. "Ain't nobody can make me do shit and you know it."
We both know that there's next to nothing and no one in the world that can get me to do anything I don't want to do. Almost. Truth is, he’s the only one that could be the exception to that rule.
I take the bottle from his trembling hands and put it down, placing my hands on his shoulders, his neck, and cupping his jaw. I run my hands across his stubble and steel myself to be more vulnerable than I’ve ever been.
"I wanted everything, Bryant. I wanted you. I wanted this. These past months I've felt more capable, stronger, freer, than I've ever been in my life. You give me something that takes away all the heaviness and lets me see the finish line. I've loved every minute of my time with you." I can only hope he's drunk enough to overlook or at least not remember the tears slipping out of my eyes. Tears slip out of his eyes, too, but at least he has the booze to blame for his outburst.
I lean forward and capture his lips, tasting the sweet whiskey on his tongue. I don't know how to say how I'm feeling, because I'm not really sure I know what it is. I only know that something is being taken away from me that I don't want to lose. I pull back and look at him again, wanting to try to tell him…
His knees buckle, and he wraps his arms around my waist. My arms hold his head against my stomach, and I comb my fingers through his hair while he sobs.
Bryant Nicks is larger than life, and not just in the physical sense. His personality, his presence. His strength.
The sobbing man on his knees before me seems so much more human than I've ever given him credit for. He’s always seemed so infallible to me, and the sight breaks me, wrenching hot tears from my own eyes. And while I know he probably thinks that breaking down and showing this part of him is a bad thing—I know I've always thought that about myself—it only endears me to him more.
When our tears are spent, and he's caught his breath, he tries to stand but stumbles. I help him up, but when he stands up straight, he looks pale, his eyes unfocused.
"I'm going to be sick," he says.
"It's okay, it's okay. Come on, I've got you."
I escort him to the bathroom and rub his back while he vomits, all bile and rancid amber liquid. After helping him out of his clothes, I turn on the shower for him and he sits on the edge of the tub with his head in the stream of cool water for a while. I hand him his toothbrush while he's in there and then lead him to bed, tucking him in with a glass of water and some painkillers for the headache I know he's going to have when he wakes up.
"Don't leave.” He says, his voice low like he didn't want to say it out loud, but couldn't help himself. It makes me grin.
