Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Alex

STEPPING OUTSIDE IS like stepping out of a movie and back into the real world. The ordinariness of the trees and the sidewalks and the cars going past up on Main Street jars me from the haze of lust and satisfaction that engulfed me in Henry's house. Something came over me in there, something bigger than what I could control. Henry's mouth, his hands, his body under mine… Some need kicked in, and I didn't care if the person satisfying that need was a man or a woman.

This should feel weirder, right? This should feel weird as hell. But like with that kiss on Saturday, I'm almost distressingly normal as I follow the sidewalks back toward Main Street and then up the road the mile to my parents' place. I'm light. I'm easy. My body feels incredible after what Henry did to me … and what I did to him. Like I told him, it wasn't new, but even so… I've definitely never done that to a guy. I thought it would be more different, but it wasn't really. The whole thing was familiar as much as it was strange.

That's really messing with my head.

I barely notice Tripp Lake around me, this town I've hated so much for so long. I'm too busy wondering why hooking up with Henry didn't feel more strange. It's supposed to, isn't it? There should be more of a difference between him and my ex-girlfriends. It's not that Henry is feminine or something. He's not. He's definitely, definitely a man. This one is on me. I'm the one who's supposed to feel like there's more of a difference between touching him and touching a woman. But the moment of "oh shit this is new" sort of just … didn't happen.

How can that be?

Without even realizing it, I've harbored some idea in my head all these years that there was straight sex and gay sex, and a gulf existed between them, a chasm of difference. I'm certainly not an expert after one time, but that chasm is feeling a lot more like a crack in the sidewalk about now. I'm sure there are other things that are a lot more different, but I guess there's at least one thing that pretty much feels the same, at least for me. If anything, Henry was more enthusiastic and skillful with his mouth than some of my exes, and his ass was… Okay, fine. It was nice. More plump than I might have expected, firm and round and definitely … manicured. It has me wondering if his cock is as nice and whoa, hold on. Slow the hell down, Alex. We hooked up with one guy one time. We shouldn't be fantasizing about dick already. You want things to feel different? That'll definitely feel different.

I shake my head at myself as I walk. In truth, I don't know what I want. I don't know if I'm freaked out or relieved that having sex with Henry wasn't a huge shock or revelation. I don't think I'm gay, not if I'm thinking about this almost the same way I think about hooking up with women. Does that make me bi? Pan? Shit, I have no idea. I never thought about this stuff; I never believed I'd need to.

The lawyer part of my brain really, really wants to categorize this, wants to package it up under one neat, tidy definition that has parameters and rules. This simply isn't going to be that easy, though. No one unambiguous answer is going to present itself so that I can feel like I've got this tidied away in a precisely labeled file.

I churn it over and over in my head for the entire walk back to my parents' house. Only the sight of their home knocks me out of my own head. A car sits in the driveway, but it isn't their car. A knot twists in my stomach. What now? Did Dad get hurt again? That wouldn't explain this mysterious visitor, though.

I pause at the door, listening for sounds of an intruder. The television drones on the other side of the door, and I don't hear any other movement. I turn the handle gingerly, opening the door a crack.

The moment I peer inside, I toss the door open and almost run into the house.

"Carly?"

My sister bolts upright on the couch, eyes going wide before she recognizes me. She presses a hand to her chest.

"Jesus, Alex, you scared the shit out of me. You could knock."

"I didn't expect anyone to be here. Let alone you."

"No classes today," she says, and flops back on the couch.

I set my laptop bag on the ground and join her in the living room, choosing the easy chair instead of the couch. Carly is four years younger than me, and she's finishing up her degree at a college down the road in Everett. I knew she visited my parents sometimes on the weekend, but how could I have possibly known she wouldn't have classes on a Monday? Her dark hair sits in a neat ponytail. She regards me with eyes as dark as mine and glinting with mischief.

"And where have you been all day?" she says. "They were looking for you."

"Mom and Dad? Where are they?"

Carly waves a hand. "Grocery shopping or something."

"Should Dad be doing that?"

"I have no idea, but he wouldn't agree to stay home and sit around. You know how he is."

I do, and it's the reason I'm stuck here longer than I expected or wanted to be. Though, I guess if it weren't for my unexpected extension, I never would have hooked up with Henry. I would have left today, probably without ever speaking to him again. I would have mentally relegated that kiss to a weird one-off incident and tried to put it behind me. I wouldn't have all these questions about whether gay sex is different or not, whether I'm bi or pan or something else, what any of this means.

"You never answered my question," Carly says. "Where have you been all day?"

"You sound like Mom and Dad."

Carly shrugs but doesn't relent.

"I was working," I say with a huff. "A friend in town let me work at his place."

"I didn't think you had any friends in this town."

Yeah, well, I didn't think so either, but Henry has changed that pretty quickly. Is he even a friend? Is he something else? What do I call a guy who blows me on his couch out of nowhere?

I'm thinking so hard about all this that there must be smoke coming out of my ears. Carly has certainly noticed something. She narrows her eyes at me, appraising me the same way she did when we were kids and she knew I was lying about sneaking candy before dinner.

"Did you meet someone?" she says suspiciously. For a second, she reminds me of Mom prying into whether I have a girlfriend back in San Francisco.

I roll my eyes. "It's some guy I went to high school with. I ran into him my first day here. He works in town."

Carly puts up her hands. "Okay, okay, I was just asking."

"Yeah, well, Mom's been ‘just asking' since I got here, so excuse me if I'm a little tired of answering the same question over and over."

"Ugh, sorry," Carly says. "She's still on the warpath for grandkids, huh?"

"I guess," I say on a sigh. "I don't know what she wants. Something I'm not giving her, apparently."

Carly's suspicion evaporates, replaced with concern. "Hey, Alex, I'm sorry. I know how she is with that stuff. I didn't mean to bring up a sore subject."

I exhale and shake my head. "It's not your fault. I'm sure you get it just as bad living nearby."

"Sometimes, but I can play the ‘still in school' card. And she's met my boyfriend. I think she believes it's a matter of time. They were always harder on you, anyway. You're their baby boy, first born and all that."

Carly doesn't add that that means I'm supposed to get married first, have children first, fulfill all of our parents' expectations first, but she doesn't have to. She knows. She's the only person on the planet who understands what I'm up against here. Because our parents will heap the same exact pressure on her soon enough.

"It's fine," I say. "I'm only here to help out with Dad's stuff."

"You were supposed to have left already," Carly says. Then she adds, "I'm glad you have a friend in town, somewhere you can go when they're being … how they are."

"Yeah, I am too," I say quietly, holding back all the things about Henry that Carly doesn't know.

"Alex, you okay?" Carly says.

Her soft, serious tone snaps my attention back to her. My little sister is uncharacteristically serious, leveling a heavy look at me.

"I know how they can be, especially with you," Carly says. "They put too much pressure on you, Alex. If this friend of yours will let you go there to work or get some breathing room, you should do it. If he has space for you to crash, I don't think it's the worst idea. I'll back you up on it if I can."

I swallow. Carly can't know how complicated it recently became for me to go hang out with Henry again. Would he expect more? I don't yet know how I'd feel about that. If I asked to sleep on his couch one night, surely that would come laden with implications.

But Carly is also right. And somehow hearing it from her instead of inside my own head makes it more real. It's not me complaining silently to myself. Someone else sees and hears how my parents constantly pressure me, and she agrees that I need to get away from it, that I'm not running for no reason, that what I feel is valid.

"Thanks, Carly," I say. "I … I'll see. I don't want to impose on him too much. He works a lot. He probably doesn't want to take care of a guest too."

"If you're friends, it's not really ‘taking care of,' is it? Maybe he wants to help. It's okay to let someone be supportive, you know."

"You my therapist now?"

"No, but I am your sister, and I know what our parents are like. I don't want you to get sucked into their whole negative reinforcement thing." Carly waves vaguely. "Your friend sounds like a good person. Maybe he's what you need right now. That's all I'm saying."

Why does this sound like dating advice all of a sudden?

"I don't know him that well," I say, even though my tongue was inside him not an hour ago.

"You know him enough to call him a friend, right? So maybe he can help make this a little easier until you can escape Tripp Lake again."

Maybe he can, though perhaps not in the way that Carly is imagining. Not in the way I imagined, either. But whether I'm ready to think about it or not, something changed today, something I can't undo. The only way to figure out what this is is to see Henry again, as Carly is suggesting.

Conflicting emotions swirl in my gut like mismatched socks tumbling around a dryer. I excuse myself to retreat to my childhood bedroom. After all the time I've spent trying to escape this room, this house, this town, I never imagined someone like Henry would end up being my safe haven.