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Letting out a sigh as our food lands in front of us, I thank Jess and give her a smile. My eyes return to Devyn’s unrelenting stare.
“Fine,” I spit with a weak smile. “It is crap, but I have to find a way to make it true. For my sake, for Carter’s sake, for Brady’s sake.”
Her eyes soften again, but don’t leave my face.
“Hatred is not at all what I see in those eyes when you talk about him,” Devyn says.
“Who? Luke?”
She gives me a well-deserved eye roll. Sometimes I hate how well she knows me. I look around the nearly empty restaurant, sit back against the booth, and exhale. Fine. I think… time to unload it all.
“Fine, you win. I have feelings for Carter. Ridiculously complicated feelings we can never act on again.”
Her eyes grow wide. “Again?”
I scrub my hands across my face. Argh! “We’ve had sex.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She waits. I stare at her. She still waits.
I lean forward. “What do you want, Devyn?” I lower my voice to a whisper. “You want me to tell you it was the best fuck of my life and I’ve been thinking about it for years?”
“Years?”
I nod. “Casey’s funeral. That’s when it happened.” There is no need to mention the blow job after Luke’s funeral.
“Wow,” she mutters.
We get quiet, and she looks at me with sympathetic eyes. “So, was it? The best fuck of your life?”
She knows the answer. She grins at me, and another truth seems to settle into her eyes.
“I knew all these guys you pretended to date weren’t your type.”
When Devyn and Levi got together, I loosened the grip on the closet door I was hiding behind. I didn’t put my sexuality on full display, but everyone knew. They’d known for a while. As for my very close circle, I occasionally showed up with a dinner date when I felt the need to both shut them up and get laid. But these dates were nothing more than hookups. Young twinks who would do whatever I wanted. I purposely picked men who were not my type. I picked bottoms. I picked men I knew I had no chance of falling for or developing a relationship with. Hell, I could barely carry on a conversation with most of them. We had so little in common. But conversations weren’t necessary. It was just sex. An unfulfilling release.
I picked men who would never remind me of Luke… or Carter.
“And you think Carter is my type?” I ask.
She just raises her eyebrows and dives into her Greek salad.
“Fine,” I shake my head.
“So what? We can’t do anything about it.” My mind drifts back to our quiet ride home in the snowstorm the other day. We have to do this.
“Why not?” She asks as if Carter and I being together is so simple. I watch her fill her mouth with a bite of the gooey, cheesy bread she loves so much.
“Because,” I snap. The job, the history, Brady… all the reasons swirl around in my head so quickly I can’t figure out which one to spit out first. Hence, nothing comes out. I gawk at her. For the first time, for a fleeting second, I consider it. I consider that Carter and I can be together. My heart soars and an enormous wave of hope rips through me. Just as quickly, reality settles in again. “Carter doesn’t feel the same way.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Oh, I’m certain he has feelings for me. Very, very different ones.”
Devyn shoves the end piece of cheese bread into her mouth and then takes a swallow of her beer. She pins me with a look that tells me she is far from being done with this topic.
