Page 22 of Something Good
“I kind of figured.” My eyes snapped to his in surprise. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting—possibly disgust, possibly acceptance, but not this. Not him looking at me with a knowing smirk, like I was the last one in on the joke.
“How did you know?”
He chuckled. “Man, you never date. You never even look at other girls, even when they walk around in their tiny swimsuits at the pool, tossing their hair and making eyes at you.” He made a show of pretending to toss his hair over his shoulder as he dramatically batted his eyelashes at me. I laughed and shoved him playfully.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“From the moment Sammy arrived at the bonfire last night, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. If I hadn’t been sure before, I knew it the moment your eyes tracked him walking across the sand.”
“You don’t date either.” I ignored that last point in favor of defending the first.
“Yep,” he said, popping theP. He continued sipping his coffee, letting the weight of that single word stretch between us. Was he trying to tell me something?
“Wait. Are you…gay?”
He shrugged but continued staring straight ahead as if the answer to the question was somewhere off in the distance. “I don’t know what I am, honestly. I’ve never really been attracted to anyone.”
“Never?”
“Nope.”
I let that sink in. Though I hadn’t acted on it until very recently, I’d known I was gay for years, ever since I’d walked in on my mom watchingTop Gunwhen I was thirteen and poppedan incredibly unfortunate boner during the sand volleyball scene. I’d left the room as quickly as possible.
He looked at me once again, steering the topic back to me. “Listen, I don’t care that you’re gay. The other lifeguards don’t either. It’s not a big deal. Honestly, I’m mostly just pissed that you left me hanging last night.”
“Hold up. The guys at the pool know?” The weight that had started to ease at his acceptance sat heavily once again with the knowledge that Jason wasn’t the only one who’d figured out my secret.
“Of course. They figured it out the same way I did.”
“You guys were talking about me?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it came up once or twice when we were shooting the shit. They asked me, and I didn’t confirm because it’s not my place, but there was definite speculation. They were cool with it.”
I let that sink in, the weight in my chest easing some as my brain accepted what he was saying. I didn’t like it, but I supposed it was the way of things. Everyone knew everything about everyone in a small town like Astaire. And the gossip got especially bad in the summer when there wasn’t anything else to do. At least this way, it sounded like the others had already accepted it, so maybe I could avoid some sort of big coming-out proclamation. It was kind of a relief, honestly.
I let it drop, moving on to the next point. “I’m sorry I left you hanging. I barely even remember what happened last night.” A lot of it had come back to me, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable sharing all those details with him. At least, not yet.
His eyebrows rose in concern. “I was worried about you. I’m still kind of worried, if I’m being honest. Sammy’s… He’s rough.”
My hackles rose immediately, but my anger must have shown on my face because Jason held his hands up, gesturing for me to back down. “Look, I’m not saying Sammy hasn’t had a tough life.Everyone in Astaire knows what a piece of shit his mother is. But that doesn’t mean he’s good for you.”
“It’s complicated, alright?”
“Is it though? Most things aren’t nearly as complicated as we make them.”
“Wow. Thanks, Dad,” I said, my tone sarcastic.
“Quit calling me Dad.”
“Quit acting like one.” I smirked at him, and he shook his head.
I stared at the lid on my coffee, trying to decide how best to put my thoughts into words. I wasn’t sure I had figured it all out in my own head well enough to articulate it to someone else.
“Sammy’s always been prickly. He’s got a lot going on with his mom and brother. And I’m sure there’s a ton of shit I don’t even know about. But when we were kids, when it was just the two of us, he was…sweet. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me or me for him.”
Jason nodded, and I continued, “Things with us were different back then. But then I moved away, and we lost touch. I told him I’d write him, and we exchanged a couple of letters, but then I just…stopped writing.”
I sipped my now-tepid coffee. “I hurt him, Jason. It doesn’t matter that we were just kids. He was hurt…is still hurting. I don’t know how to make it right, and now he doesn’t want anything to do with me.” But that wasn’t true, was it? I’d seen the lust in his eyes more than once. I thought maybe he did want me. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
