Page 15 of Second Chance

“Oh. Oh, I see. What changed?”

“I started being attracted to people even if I wasn’t too into the whole…dating thing.” He doesn’t quite mean attraction in the way he’s seen it in movies or read about it in books, but he can’t figure out how to make the words work to explain how he felt as a teenager. He was so confused all of the time. When he imagined the future, it was him in a nebulous marriage, modeled after what he knew from his parents. But when he tried to apply that to anyone his own age, he didn’t want it. Sex, sure, he was interested in sex on a conceptual level, but not with anyone in particular and definitely not with anyone he tried dating.

“You know,” Tony continues, “I dated Blake G for, like, two weeks in high school. Before he was Blake. We were friends and spent a bunch of time together, and I thought maybe that was what a crush was. But I didn’t want…anything. Kissing, or sex, or even holding hands.” The experience messed them both up more than Tony wants to let on right now. He spent the entire time feeling wrong for not wanting to kiss a pretty girl, and Blake G felt wrong for not being a girl. To this day, hanging out with Blake G alone is weird for Tony. Daniel doesn’t need to know all that, at least not now. “And then a while later, I could at least picture hooking up with Blake W, so I figured I wasn’t into girls.”

“Really? Blake? W, I mean?”

Tony grins over at Daniel. “Highly strung, overthinks everything, ringing any bells here?”

“Shut up. I am not like Blake W.”

“No.” Tony never once wanted to sleep cuddled up with Blake or spend time together on the couch, touching for the comfort of it, nothing else. He didn’t especially want to do anything sexual with Blake either. It was more that he wanted to have sex in general, and Blake was attractive. “No, you’re definitely not. Eventually, I figured out I was attracted to men in general, but I still couldn’t see myself dating anyone.”

“Makes sense,” Daniel says. “But you decided not to follow up on…the attraction and see if romantic feelings happened afterward?”

“It wasn’t an active decision. I…never developed those feelings for anyone.” Shifting in his seat as much as he can while driving, Tony adds, “I was a bit of a late bloomer in terms of…sex and all that.”

Twenty wasn’t necessarily late in the grand scheme of things, but at the time, it felt late to Tony. Only afterward, when he drove home after an unmemorable blowjob from a classmate in the classmate’s shitty apartment toward the end of community college, did he realize he hadn’t done it because he especially wanted to. It was something he thought he should want to do. It scratched a physical itch, but Tony didn’t feel any particular way about it.

“Sounds kinda lonely.”

Tony’s foot slips on the accelerator.

He gets the car under control again, the back of his neck burning. “Yeah. I didn’t…I didn’t know that until you came along though.”

It’s an understatement. The dormant part of his brain or his heart or his dick, or all of the above, came online when he met Daniel and couldn’t stop thinking about him. He wants to say asmuch. Before, he pursued some casual flings and had one-night stands now and again and never thought about it afterward, never needed more until Daniel walked into the shop, and Tony tripped over his tongue and his feet until Daniel kissed him. He doesn’t know how to find the words without it sounding like too much.

Tony thinks the conversation might be over as he follows the winding roads toward Rhinebeck, safe in the dark from having to be seen so thoroughly in all ways at once.

“You did know a little,” Daniel says just when Tony thinks he might let it go. “Or you wouldn’t have downloaded Grindr.”

“I guess. But I didn’t get it. You know, I love Gianna, but I didn’t understand then.”

“Understand?”

“Why she couldn’t leave well enough alone and not keep seeing Mario,” Tony explains. “It was so clear to me whatever she had with him wasn’t worth it. Every time she saw him, especially once she was pregnant, she was miserable, but she kept going back. I didn’t understand why she would until…”

“Until I fucked up and made you miserable. And you still came back.”

So, Daniel does know how special he is to Tony, even if neither of them can quite say it.

“Come on. It wasn’t that bad,” Tony says. It’s not true, strictly speaking, but Daniel feels guilty enough about Mario, and Tony forgave him for everything he did last fall the minute he asked.

“I thought you helped Gianna kill a man.”

“Okay, it was kind of bad,” Tony revises. “But you more than made up for it.”

“Or I’m lucky you’re a very forgiving person.”

Tony can hear Daniel’s smile in his voice.

“Thanks for telling me about this,” Daniel says.

“Yeah.” Entirely without him intending it to, Tony’s voice sounds like it was raked over hot coals. “I want you to know this stuff about me.”

“One more question. You and Blake W. Did that ever happen?”

Tony groans as he pulls the car into the lot by Daniel’s apartment building. “We kissed one time and then decided once was enough. You cannot ever tell anyone. We made a pact.”

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