Page 49 of Saving You

His girlfriend thought he was nuts and was not quiet about telling him so. He was weird about it in school the next day, and he kind of felt like that now.

He passed Myles in the hall, and shit, was his smile different? Could he tell?

Was there some kind of gay-sex-dar that they all had that he was still missing?

No, he was being absolutely fucking ridiculous. If anything, the face journey he couldn’t stop going on was telling everyone he was dealing with something, but they were all too caught up in their own busy schedules to ask.

It was his one relief. The Deaf community thrived off gossip, but if he could pull himself together before he set foot in the teacher’s lounge that afternoon, he could avoid anyone figuring him out. He wasn’t ashamed of what he’d done, or with whom, but he wasn’t ready to broadcast it.

Telling Myles had been a big enough step. He wasn’t sure he was ready for a flag pin or a pride parade. Someday, maybe, when he wasn’t such an internal mess and making up fake boyfriends to piss off his family.

When he was stable and ready to think like a goddamn grown-up.

Glancing at his phone, Oz realized he had fifteen minutes, so he swung by the lounge for coffee. The stuff in the pot was garbage, but two years back, the school had extra funds from a charity event, so the board sprang for one of those shitty latte machines they had in gas stations.

It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the burnt swill that came from the 1980s percolator that sat in the corner and sparked every time someone plugged it in.

Reaching into the cabinet for his cup, he jumped half a foot when someone smacked him on the arm, and he turned to see Anish smirking at him. He was wearing gym shorts and a polowith tall socks and his hair pushed back with shades, looking like every stereotypical gym teacher in movies and on TV.

Anish gave him a nod in greeting.

‘Hi,’ he signed with one hand as he walked to the machine. He knew what was coming. Myles wouldn’t tell anyone else, but he would definitely tell his husband.

Anish followed him and leaned against the counter, holding his water bottle between his thighs so he could have both hands to talk. ‘Myles told me.’

Oz rolled his eyes. ‘Not surprised.’

‘You’re okay with me knowing?’

He wasn’t actually sure about that. He knew Myles, but he hadn’t had more than a couple of conversations with Anish. ‘You won’t say anything, right?’

Anish quickly held up his hands in surrender, shaking his head. ‘Never. I know how it feels.’

‘Your parents?’

Anish grimaced in apology. ‘No, my parents were great, but some of my other family was not. I had to pretend a lot when I was in high school.’

‘Deaf family?’

Anish’s shoulders slumped. ‘Hearing. Oral,’ he added, and Oz knew exactly what he meant by that. ‘My parents couldn’t afford implant surgery, so they put me in speech therapy five days a week for ten years.’

Oz had been there, and his stomach twisted. Most of his speech therapists were kind, but one had been impatient and angry when no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake his accent. Her punishments were…creative, and there were mornings he woke up sweating after nightmares of her shouting into his processors, of her digging her thumbs into the underside of his jaw and forcing him to repeat a word over andover and over until he wanted to cut out his own tongue so she couldn’t make him do it anymore.

He hated thinking about that and quickly shoved it aside. There were many, many years between him and those memories, and they were not part of his life now.

‘My parents are religious,’ he told Anish. ‘Not a big fan of the Deaf thing or the bisexual thing.’

Anish nodded and tapped his Y hand twice:that-that.

Oz watched his cup fill, then grabbed it and took it over to the counter so he could free his hands. Maybe it was okay that Anish knew. Maybe it was okay that other people knew too. It was nice to be able to just…talk. To say what was on his mind. And, at least with Myles and Anish, know he was in safe company.

‘Do you know who I shouldn’t tell?’ he asked.

Anish’s brow furrowed. ‘Here?’

‘Yeah.’

He sat back, his chest heaving with his sigh. ‘Don,’ he spelled. Don was the algebra teacher. ‘And biology Jared,’ he added.

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