Page 59 of The Fireman and the Flirt

I heaved out a breath, a light breaking up the darkness lodged in my chest.

“The year after you graduated and absconded off to Alaska, I found another closeted athlete in our school. What are the odds? We were lab partners. We bonded over dissection.” It almost sounded sweet, like something I might’ve read in Maudrey’sSeventeenmagazine. “I also wrote him a letter. Not steamy like yours, but outing myself to him and wondering if he wanted to talk. And he did.”

“Who was he?”

“Let’s call him Gaston.”

“FromBeauty and the Beast?”

“I don’t like to use his real name.” Calling him his real name made him real. It was easier for me to picture him as a Disney villain. It minimized his power over me. Plus, I didn’t want Derek tracking him down. I hadn’t spoken to him since high school, and I preferred to keep it that way.

“For the record, my desire for him wasn't anywhere near what it was for you. But I’d shot my shot with you and missed, and he was here.” My hands got sweaty as layers of memories unpeeled themselves. “We started hooking up. A lot. He wasn’t interested in having a deep connection, just getting off. I did that stupid thing where I mistook hooking up for something more and imagined that we could be an actual couple one day.”

I glanced up at Derek, wondering if he was ready to bolt. His hot hookup was sounding more pathetic by the second. Yet his eyes remained kind and alert, and that gave me just enough confidence to keep going.

“We’d meet up. We’d hook up in his home while his parents were working. And it was exhilarating.One time, we drove out to a field a few towns over. And while we were fooling around, in the heat of things, I…stroked his gear shift. And I might’ve kissed it. Kinda like there was a third person there.He was into it. It really turned him on.”

I dipped my head into my hands.

“I get it,” Derek said. “People do lots of weird shit in bed.”

“Exactly! When you’re intimate with someone, you do and say weird shit because you trust them, and you know they won’t judge you. Think of all the wives whose husbands ask them to stick their finger in their asses during sex. They don’t want their golf buddies to know about that.”

I hated myself for trusting him. All these years later, that was the one thing I couldn’t get over. As a closeted gay kid, I thought I’d been good about keeping my guard up.

“I didn’t go down on a gear shift. I stroked it for less than thirty seconds, put my mouth on it for less than ten. Gaston had zero stamina so things rarely lasted that long.”

Derek threw his head back and let out a loud, hearty laugh, taking away a few bits of Gaston’s residual power. He quickly calmed down and got serious again.

“Why would he tell the whole school that? Did you dump him?”

“Not quite.” I steeled myself for part two. “One night over Christmas break, Gaston drove over to my house drunk after a party. He wanted to have sex. And I said no.”

I was still amazed at my response, all these years later. I was grateful that my teenage self had enough brains to listen to the tiny voice of reason inside him.

“I mean, yes I liked him, and I thought that this was all leading somewhere real. He’d tell me how cute I was, how funny I was, how nobody really got me like he did. But I don’t know…I didn’t want my first time to be some drunk, spontaneous thing. And I think on some level, I knew I didn’t want him to have all of my firsts.” I let out a sigh. “I watched him sour on me in real time. The intimate connection we’d been building over those months instantly vanished.”

I could see his face, clear as day, practically growling at me like an attack dog. The features that I loved most about him, like his thick eyebrows and pouty lips, turned against me.

“When I returned to school, I learned that he used the rest of his vacation to share the story of how I sucked off a gearshift to seduce him. And because I was uncool and powerless and closeted and my family wasn’t wealthy, I had to take it. I tried to tell people it wasn’t true, but nobody believed me. I didn’t want to out him because…honestly? I was scared of how he would retaliate if his secret got out.”

Deep down, every gay guy lived with a sense of danger, a tiny alarm blinking inside all of us that violence could be one misstep away. We were only a few years removed from Matthew Shepherd back then. It was still true today.

“I thought it would blow over, but gearhead really took hold. People who claimed to be my friends used the nickname behind my back.”

“Did Cal?”

“Never. He was one of the only people who stuck by my side.” But I would only let him get so close. I wondered if he and I could’ve been better friends, but a part of me always held back because what if something happened and he became an enemy? I watched how quickly Gaston turned on me. I knew what people were capable of. I never wanted to label myself a victim, but I couldn’t deny that the whole gearhead thing fucked me up.

“Cal must’ve believed you. He’s loud. He could spread the truth,” Derek said.

“I didn’t tell Cal the truth. He came up to my locker when everything broke and said he didn’t care what happened, he wouldn’t stop being my friend. He believed the story without hearing my side. If he believed it, then so did everyone else. There was no point trying to tell the truth. It was a salacious piece of gossip. The truth was boring. So I smiled and nodded and tried my very best to laugh with them. I wouldn’t let myself be the punchline. I’d be in on the joke. Bullying 101: bullies don’t find joy in bullying when their victims laugh along with them.”

Words I’d been wanting to say for decades poured out of me, and I had a hard time stopping.

“And you know what the worst part was?” My voice cracked with raw emotion struggling to get out. “My mom and dad drove Gaston home that night. I told them myfriendhad driven to our house drunk. They were in their pajamas and tired after a long day of work, but my dad drove him home in his car, and my mom followed behind them. I still feel immense guilt that they had to do that.” The image of them taking this creep home while wearing their pajamas made me ignite with anger. Anger at Gaston. Anger at them for doing the responsible thing. Anger at myself for being a bad son who put them in this position.

“Do they know about…”

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