Page 112 of These Secret Years

I agreed. I think I would have agreed to anything he asked after seeing that boy play cello in Adrian’s office.

I can’t stop him. I know this. But maybe I can buy that kid some time to find another way to have a future. Hopefully he’s smarter than I was and doesn’t fall for Adrian’s generous offers. Hopefully he was able to see him for who he is and smart enough to stay far, far away.

Adequately motivated and manipulated, I returned to school determined to make the best of the situation. If he can use me, I can use him, too. If I fail, well, it’s like Chelsea said. I have choices. She might not like all the choices I’ve decided I have, but either I figure my life out this year, or I throw it in the trash where I suspect it belongs.

The football team gets back to town about a week after I do in late July. If I didn’t know it from talking to Knight, I would have from the increased attendance at our sex soirees.

I have two returning customers from the football team. One is a senior this year, and I think he plays defense, but he’s not a starter. I don’t think he has any plans to go pro. Not that we talk much. The other one tore his rotator cuff last season, so he’s been on the disabled list for a while. I assume they’re both in the closet since Knight doesn’t know about them and because they show up here like clockwork—like they’re not getting any action anywhere else.

The defenseman has offered me extra money to fuck me, but I don’t do that, or I haven’t. Maybe I can’t afford to be so picky anymore.

I scrape by with Cs in both history and rhetoric, and the night before classes start in August, I ask Chelsea what she thinks about taking my business up a notch. We’re having drinks together after a quiet night in the house. Harrison is already asleep. She and I just finished a TV series we’ve binged over the last week. We’re on the couch, sharing a blanket in the dark with only the screensaver on the television lighting us up.

“What’s the hesitation?” she asks. “Specifically. I’m sure you have plenty of reasons not to cross that line, but what’s the main one?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s triggering?”

“What if you think about it like rewriting the narrative?”

I can’t tell her I’ve already tried rewriting the narrative with Knight. I ended my sexual relationship with Chelsea on the grounds of lack of interest in general and questions about my sexuality. She doesn’t know I was busy falling for the captain of the football team. I’ve had sex two ways—without my consent or participation, and with someone I care so deeply about, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him. Anything in the middle feels like a betrayal, not to Knight necessarily because we ended our sexual relationship, too, but to myself.

I’d be acting with consent, of course, but without feelings. I’d have a choice, but I’d be vulnerable, too. “The idea of mentally checking out during sex makes it feel too much like…”

She knows. I don’t have to say it.

“Then why mentally check out?”

“What other option is there?”

“Enjoying it?”

“Do you?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Sometimes. For me it’s all about being in the moment, but I also really like sex, so…”

“I wouldn’t be able to fake it, though. I’d need to use Viagra or cocaine or something.”

“Whoa…we don’t need to use cocaine, okay? We just need to figure out your mental block. The guy who offered. Do you trust him?”

“As well as I can trust anyone who pays for sex, I guess.”

“Is he gross?”

I shake my head. “No, he’s not gross.”

“But you don’t think you’d get turned on.”

“I don’t.”

She frowns.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s just—you’re a twenty-year old guy… I would assume it doesn’t take much.”

This is what it’s like for someone who’s been traumatized talking to someone who compartmentalizes everything. I love Chelsea, but there’s a level of empathy some people have that she just doesn’t. “I’m sure you would assume that.”

She makes a face. “Was that insensitive?”