Page 71 of Best Served Cold

I snapped my gaze to River. “Sorry?”

“Your weekend. Was it good?”

“Not bad,” I lied. “How was yours?”

“Not terrible.” He swirled the pale liquid in his cup around. “Work was sooo slow last night.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, hoping to keep the conversation going so I wouldn’t have to look at Zane.

“Oh yeah.” He sighed dramatically. “The tips weren’t flowing either. At least we do privates now.”

“Privates?”

“Yeah. You know those booth things near the back wall? That’s where we do private lap dances. You can make bank doing those if people are feeling generous.”

A mental image of Zane grinding on some woman and dancing for her the way he had for me flickered in my mind’s eye. Jealousy and hurt tightened my chest.

The fuck?

Why was I getting jealous over Zane doing his damn job? He was a stripper, that’s what strippers did.

And it wasn’t like I had any reason to care about what he did, or who he did it with. I was no one to him. Just a guy he worked with who pissed him off and goaded him into fooling around because he couldn’t admit he was attracted to him.

Wait.

What?

I was attracted to Zane.

I was attracted to him, and I wanted him.

But he didn’t want me.

He only liked to fuck with me.

I’d tried to ferret out info about Zane’s dating history from the group, but everyone always said the same thing—that River dated a lot and Zane didn’t date at all.

Multiple people had told me that both twins were fuckboys, but that neither of them had slept with any of the girls in the group. Apparently they preferred to stick to randoms and kept their sexual explorations away from their friends.

Zane probably got lots of play at the club.

Had he hooked up with anyone this weekend?

A pit formed in my gut. He’d probably been hooking up with women this entire time.

More of the darkness settled over me, wrapping around my consciousness like a boa constrictor squeezing the life from its next meal.

I was attracted to Zane.

How could I have gone this long without realizing I was into guys?

But you did know, that fucking voice whispered insidiously. You knew you were unnatural. The voice now mimicked Pastor Dan, who’d caught me and another boy being “inappropriate” together at one of the church’s leadership camps.

The camps were nothing more than an excuse to beat gender stereotypes into us and brainwash us into believing that the only life worth living was the one the church and our parents chose for us. The only times the older boys were allowed to mix with the girls was at meals, and even then we had to stick to gendered tables. Looking after the little kids was the girls’ responsibility, and they spent their days as glorified babysitters who cooked and cleaned for the whole camp. The boys were taught archery and hunting and were allowed to go swimming and play in the woods between lectures about how men were created to rule over women and children.

The year I turned fourteen was the first time I’d actually enjoyed being at camp. At least until Pastor Dan had decided that my friendship with a new kid was worrisome and they separated us.

Pastor Dan had also taken it upon himself to do a little conversion therapy on me, and I spent hours listening to him proselytize about the sins of homosexuality and exactly what happened to men who liked men.

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