Page 47 of Tobias

“No, I didn’t sleep well.”

The lie comes too easily. I’ve never lied to her before. At least, not about anything other than the dreams I have and the fact I might be gay, but none of that counts.

“Maybe you should take a nap.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” I grab a bottle of water from my fridge, downing half of it.

“Can I give you your surprise first?” She beams at me, and I nod, feeling awful that whatever she gives me probably won’t mean a damn thing. Of course I can’t say that. Maybe I should just tell her about the stuff going on with me. She’d understand. Marianne is a very understanding person, despite her family. But there’s always the chance that she freaks out…

She hurries over to her purse that’s on my couch, digs through it and pulls out an envelope that she hands me. I give her a curious look before flipping it open and pulling out some photos. My eyes widen when I see what they are.

“Wow…” I breathe out, going through them.

“You like them?” she asks, bouncing on her feet.

“These are beautiful.”

I flip through to the last photo of Marianne in a black one-piece lingerie. Her hair is curled and lips done in blood red. She looks hot as hell; there’s no denying that. If only my dick would respond…

How can my mind know she’s hot, but my dick not care? Does that even make sense?

“Beautiful? Really, that’s what you go with?” Her disappointment settles around me like a noxious fog. What’s wrong with being beautiful?

“You look hot, Marianne.” I lean in to kiss her because that’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s a habit at this point.

She smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. I hurt her feelings. I don’t know what she’s expecting of me. These photos are professionally done, and theyarebeautiful. Did she want me to drop my pants right here and jerk off over them?

“I was hoping we could get some done together,” she says carefully.

“Together? Why?”

She frowns and says, “Because it was fun, and I think it would be nice to have.”

“Have for what? It’s not like we can hang them around the house.”

Her hand goes to her hip, and she glares at me. “We could get some tasteful ones done that would look nice on the wall.”

“No way,” I say with a disbelieving laugh, but she’s completely serious. “My mother would have a heart attack if she walked into our house and saw this.”

“Well,mymother is on board with it.”

“Well, your mother isn’tmymother, Marianne,” I argue.

Her mother is more progressive than mine, and she knows this. I appreciate her being okay with having something like this in the house, but it won’t work. My mother would faint.

“Theo,” she whines. “I really want to get them done with you.”

I sigh, putting my arm around her shoulder and pulling her in for a hug. “Fine, but we can’t hang them on the wall. At least outside of our bedroom.”

She bounces up and down, kissing my cheek. “I’m so excited! I’m going to call the girl to book the appointment right now.”

Guess I’m not going to tell her my secrets today. Why the hell do I keep burying myself deeper?

I drop onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Marianne has been bugging me to stay at her house because I haven’t in afew weeks. I’m not sure how much longer I can pull this off before she starts getting mad. I used to spend a lot of time at her place because I needed to get used to life with her, needed to have sex with her so I could realize it isn’t all that bad. And though it wasn’t, it still wasn’t right.

After meeting Tobias, after he showed me that bar and introduced me to his friends, it’s harder to pretend. Look at all those people living a perfectly happy life out in the open with their sexuality.

Though, if that’s the kind of life I want to live, I should make peace with the fact I’m gay. Or at least bi. I guess bi would make more sense… This is just a hard thing to wrap my head around. I’m not sure how to begin processing something like this. Putting on this mask and pretending with Marianne is getting harder by the day, so I should figure it out.

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