Page 168 of These Secret Years

“Yeah?” he asks.

“You think he’d like me?”

“I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like you.”

Ironic, I think. I get this great personality, but I had to fuck it all up by being attracted to men, which therefore, apparently, makes me unlikeable to enough people that it actually matters. I fucking hate it here.

“You think he and his man friend can tell me what they think I should do with my life?”

“No, but I’d be happy to take a crack at it.”

I smile. My first actual smile in days. “You should stay all summer.”

“I can’t. I got into this workshop. It’s a four week intensive in July, and I really want to do it. It’s about scoring for film.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I found out on the day—On Monday.”

“Ah.”

We’re quiet another moment.

“You could probably teach the workshop,” I say.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m just hoping to get some inspiration and meet some people who aren’t assholes.”

“That’s really cool.”

“And you’ll be back in July, too, right? For training?”

I nod.

“Want me to stay until then? We can go back together.”

I look up at all the stars and the shimmery sliver of a moon. “That sounds good. It sounds really good. Thank you.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

SULLIVAN

It turns out, I suck at being a boyfriend. I’m legitimately useless at it, and I don’t know how Knight has managed to stay quiet about it. Maybe he doesn’t think I can hear him jerking off in the shower every day—sometimes twice a day, but I can, and if I were any less sexually frustrated myself, maybe I wouldn’t care so much, but I do, and it’s killing me.

I don’t know how much longer we can do this. I don’t know how much longer I can stand myself when I want so much more from him—when I want to give him so much more than he’s willing to take. I wanted so much to invite him to take a shower with me the day I got to his house after that long drive, but I couldn’t stand the thought of him saying no. Or yes.

I still stiffen up when it gets too heated between us. When our kisses morph from tender lip presses and quiet licks to the more all-consuming mouth connection implying a desperate need to be closer—to be inside each other in whichever way possible. I still flinch when he grips me too hard on the hip, and my hand always manages to snake it’s way between us to hold my palm against his chest—like a warning that I can push him away if I feel him go too far.

Of course he feels that. And how can I believe that my simple statements of “I want you” can in any way compete with the fact that I’m nearly always poised to physically push him off me.

I almost didn’t want him to move in with me when it came up just before we left Michigan for his training and my workshop because being around him is starting to feel like having every hair plucked off my body individually. Sharp, precise stings with every hesitation, every moan he can’t muffle well enough in the shower, every kiss that ends with us panting and him apologizing.

But he does move into the apartment with me rather than live with the guys. Rodrigo and Deandre are getting their own places now, too, while the twins stick together as they probably will until one or both of them is in a relationship. D dates all the time, but the twins don’t, which has me wonder about whether there’s something more to know about them. Knight says he’s heard Derek is often seen sneaking off with women at parties, but not Dillon, who seems content with beer pong or cards or a game of pool with the other guys.

I don’t know, and I won’t speculate, but if Dillon doesn’t raise any red flags by not having a girlfriend, then it might mean Knight won’t either, and so he moves in with me.

His football training takes place every weekday morning where he’s on the field with the team. In the afternoons, he’s working out with them in their training facility, rebuilding his mass of muscle, and he’s swimming now, too, coming home smelling of chlorine and sweat with marks from his goggles beneath his eyes. Apparently Rodrigo, who’s finally the starting tight end for the team, talked him into it.

Knight says it keeps his shoulders flexible, and, according to him, it’s making him faster.