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“Always a good way to learn someone’s deepest, darkest secrets,” Braden said with a small smile. He didn’t ask anything else, and fell into a thoughtful silence as the train rumbled on.
Was he uncomfortable? I didn’t know him well enough to tell. Maybe it was all in my head. For that matter, was I uncomfortable? The four of them had made the proposition to me. They all knew their roles in the entire thing. If I slept with Ryan, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of them.
Then why do I feel weird about telling Braden?
Maybe it was because I still didn’t know where I stood with him. We had a great sorta-date before the other three showed up that night at the bar. He kissed me on the train after—and it was definitely a real kiss, not just acting. I could feel his desire. During the kiss he’d wanted me every bit as much as I’d wanted him.
And yet I was only going to be his fake-girlfriend for the purposes of getting his family off his back.
“So why does your family think you’re gay?” I asked to fill the silence.
He chuckled softly. “All the stereotypes. I have two older sisters, so when I was born my dad was ecstatic to have a boy in the family. He tried to get me to like sports, signing me up for baseball and taking me to Mets games. I didn’t like it. No, that’s an understatement—I hated it. It bored the hell out of me. So he tried Jets games, and the Knicks, but football and basketball weren’t much better. I didn’t have any desire to play sports.
“And I was effeminate growing up. I had two sisters! We played house and had tea parties, and instead of action figures for Christmas I asked for a kitchen playset and an Easy Bake Oven. Then I started getting into musicals. I sang along with all the Disney movies, and long after I should have grown out of it. We got kicked out of the theater when Aladdin first came out because I wouldn’t stop singing A Whole New World at the top of my lungs.” He chuckled and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Then theater. I rented every Broadway musical they had on DVD at Blockbuster. The selection wasn’t great, so mom ordered more online. The Will Rogers Follies, Sunset Boulevard, Beauty and the Beast. I loved Rent when it came out, which probably cemented my dad’s belief.”
“Wow, you really did sound gay,” I said.
He sighed. “Only thing missing was: I liked girls. Hell, joining the theater club in middle school helped me get closer to girls. Where else can you practice kissing half the girls in your class without it being weird?”
“And I’m guessing you tried telling your parents this?”
“Not when I was young,” he admitted. “Nobody likes talking to their parents about who they have a crush on, so I kept it to myself. I had school girlfriends—we held hands and ate lunch together and kissed under the bleachers, but never went on dates outside of school. In retrospect, I probably should have shared more with them. It would have made my life a lot easier down the road.”
I winced. “Were they hard on you?”
His eyes widened with frustration. “No! That’s the thing—they were as supportive as could be! To the point that whenever I told them I was straight, they would just smile condescendingly and tell me that I was their son, and that they accepted me no matter what. Thousands of gay kids get ostracized by their family and disowned, and me—a straight kid!—gets the parents that are loving and supportive of my gay lifestyle.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “That’s, like, the definition of ironic.”
“Somebody tell Alanis Morrissette.” He began to sing in a soft, melodic voice. “It’s like raaaaaaain, on your wedding day. It’s having supportive parents, when you’re not even gay.”
I cleared my throat and added another verse. “It’s a free parade, even though you’re straight.”
I fell apart into a fit of giggles, which made him laugh too and lean into me. He smelled like spice and lavender.
“So having me pretend to be your girlfriend will… what?” I asked. “If they’re supportive, what’s the problem?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just want them to know who I really am. Or at least get used to the idea. Because someday I’m going to bring home the love of my life, and they won’t believe it’s real because she’s a woman.”
I nodded along, but still felt a little pang of sadness at that thought. Someday he’s going to meet the love of his life, and it won’t be me.
It was a stupid, jealous thing to feel. We’d barely known each other a few days. And here I was thinking about the one.
Braden made me forget all about it with another line. “It’s like telling your parents, but the truth just won’t stick.”
I leaped at the opening. “It’s loving titties, but your parents think you like dick.”
We spent the rest of the ride laughing and thinking up more verses to our silly song.
*
We got off the train at my stop and began walking to my apartment. There weren’t as many shady characters around in the morning as there were late at night, but Braden still looked around with a worried expression on his face. But he didn’t say anything.
When we walked into my apartment, I swept my hand across the cluttered, filthy space. “Home, sweet home.”
Braden’s eyes were wide. “It’s, uh…”
“A shithole?”
