Page 8 of Except You

I push myself up, and he wraps his arms around me, that floral scent infiltrating my nostrils. I inhale deeply as he squeezes me tight before letting go.

“It was real nice meeting you, Max.”

“Same,” I murmur and then he’s waving and walking out the door, a slight jog in his step. He seems eager to find someone to go home with.

I sink back onto the couch and scrub a hand over my face.

What the fuck do I do now?

I can’t get Beau Middlebrooks out of my head. It’s making my mind spin. How did a man like him burrow into my brain so quickly and make himself at home? He’d done nothing but be kind to me, only conversed with me superficially for a few hours, and yet, for some reason, my brain has latched on to him.

It’s a feeling I can’t shake.

I’m now at the gym with Matt and Mitch, the sound of the basketballs hitting the court and swooshing through the nets making my skin prickle. My brothers don’t know where I went two nights ago, that I spent time at a gay club across town and met a man who was kind and funny and real.

They have no fucking clue. And I won’t tell them.

No wonder Magnus kept himself a secret for so long, no fucking wonder.

I jog onto the court in my athletic shorts and tank top, and we pass the ball back and forth, making stupid, shitty small talk. I feel like a liar and a tool, and yet part of me is proud of what I’ve done, of who I met. I did it. I fucking did something I thought I’d never do.

And I’m doing this for someone who is important to me.

Someone who should have been able to depend on me growing up. Someone who should be able to turn to me now.

I didn’t even go to his wedding. Wasn’t invited. None of us were, but I’m the only one who seems bothered by it. I’m the only one who seems to have grown a fucking heart. It was those damn Christmas cards he sent us this year that set everything off. The picture of Magnus and his husband, smiling happily, with their two cute kids huddled around them. It was a fucking wakeup call.

I’ve missed out on years. Fucking years. All because of some notion that what he’s doing is wrong, that who he loves is unnatural. How can it be wrong if he seems so happy?

What the fuck have I been taught to believe my whole damn life?

“Where the hell is your mind, bro?” Mitch says as he slugs me in the arm. It twinges at the touch, and I scowl at him. He always was too rough, too mean. No wonder Magnus didn’t feel comfortable telling us who he was. He was probably scared of what would happen, how Mitch would rough him up, teach him to be a man.

In a way, I’m glad he found Sem, a man who can protect him from the likes of us.

I deserved to be punched in the face like I was. I deserved every bit of the blood I shed.

“I’m just a bit hungover.”

That’s a lie too. I’m a liar with his pants on fire. For some reason, I feel the incredible urge to tell Beau my revelations, to process it all with him, but neither of us has messaged the other since that night. And I don’t wanna be the one to make the first move. It’s already bad enough that he’s seen me at my weakest, a scared straight guy, in over his head at a gay bar. I don’t want to seem like I can’t keep my shit together.

For some reason, the idea that he might not like what he sees when he looks at me bothers me more than it should.

“Yeah, bro! You go out and party last night?”

I nod, even though I didn’t. I was bundled up at home with a cup of tea and a gay romance flick on the television. I was most assuredly not getting off with some woman I met at a bar.

Not at all. It was so far from it that I start to question my preference for women in general before shaking that thought away.

Beau’s face flickers through my mind, and I tamp it down. I don’t need him here right now, I really don’t. But he keeps appearing. So much so that I play like shit, and my brothers rib me endlessly, not getting the clue that something more is going on. But then again, none of us were ever good at reading a goddamn room.

If we had been, then maybe we wouldn’t have lost Magnus.

Maybe he’d still be in our lives.

By the time I make it home, I’m a sweaty mess. I stand in the shower for a long time, letting the warm water loosen my tense, sore muscles. When I finally step out, a towel wrapped around my waist, I grab my phone and begin to text Beau.

But then I decide that it would be a good idea to call him.

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