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.Even when I held him in my arms at night as we watched awful sci-fi movies, my fingers twirling through his black curls, I was always preparing myself for him to move on.I would have him for a day, a week, a month if I was lucky.Then he would be on to the next conquest.Bored with me until he wasn’t.I would say we were on again, off again, but we were never really on.He chose me then ignored me.He professed a soul-deep connection to me then brushed me off.He watched me with other boys—and girls when I gave them a try for a bit—but we never talked about what we were together.Four years we lived like this.At some point I fell in love with him.But I never told him.So when we went our separate ways after high school, it only made sense that Elia would be done with me.He went away to a private college; I stayed home and went to public university.I ached for him.I didn’t know how I was going to make it without him.But I didn’t call him.My freshman year went by in a flurry of house parties, the part-time job I needed to pay my bills, and trying not to fail out of school.I was bored and restless.Unsure if I’d made the right decision going to college at all.Certain that I would never meet anyone who could fill the void of Elia.That’s when I met Garrett.***EliaWhat was I supposed to tell Leo when we graduated? That I loved him? It didn’t matter if I did.I was eighteen years old, for fuck’s sake, about to live on my own for the first time.I wanted to taste other lips, to give other men head, to discover if any man could make my blood boil out of control the way Leo did.I know Leo thought he was just one of many.But that was never true.I can count how many other boys I kissed in those four years on one hand.I didn’t sleep with anyone else, actually sleeping in my bed or fucking and everything I ever learned about giving beejers came from Leo.I would let other guys blow me, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my lips around anybody else’s cock.There was no way in hell I was telling Leo that though.I thought what Leo and I had couldn’t be real.We were so young.It was high school.We were teenagers.I told myself it didn’t matter that I’d fallen in love with him.But I was wrong.I couldn’t get Leo out of my head.I missed the way he would swing his long legs over the side of a movie theater seat and lean his back against my shoulder, his warmth filling the darkened room.I missed the way he blushed when I teased him, the way he got more awkward around me.The way I couldn’t resist it when he smiled at me and would move in close as if he was telling me a secret only I could know.I still loved him, still wanted him.And I wanted him in different and more ways than we had ever dared to try in high school.Yet I didn’t call him.I was too scared, too proud.Before you start thinking that I’m an idiot and a dick—even though you would be spot on with both of those assumptions—there’s something you need to know.Leo was never meant to fit into my life.My parents were both doctors and I was supposed to follow in their steps.They were first-generation Americans.They had lifted themselves out of poverty, gone through an arranged marriage, supported each other through medical school, and only then started a family.They bought a house in an exclusive suburb.They sent my brother and I to private schools.We had every material thing we could have wanted.We weren’t keeping up with the Joneses; we were surpassing them.And it was expected I would do the same.Of course, me coming out threw a wrench in the works for them.But I was lucky.My uncle had already gone through the worst of it two years ago when he came out.I was a good student and I kept telling them I would join one of them in their private practice one day.It was all they needed to hear.Leo didn’t fit into that plan.But I never really tried to fit him in.Whatever.College was more work than fun.I wasn’t as smart as Leo and if I was going to make it into an Ivy League med school then I had to work my brain to mush.I also spent a good amount of time that first year solidifying a reputation that kept guys coming to my bed but never closer than arm’s length afterwards.You can call those years my “cocky asshole” phase.The title fits in more ways than one.Two years went by and I still didn’t call him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]