Page 26 of All Roads Lead to You

“Constant? We’ve barely said a damn word for hours. Whatever, Not Brother.”

There was that dig again, reminding me of the walls I’d built to protect myself from him.

This would be a long trip if we just bickered or never said anything, and I did promise Dad to try to get along with Nick, but it would be at the expense of my heart. Being this close to him already, I could just sense that I was going to fuck up somehow, and he’d learn that I was gay. Even worse, he’d find out how I felt about him.

Stay in the closet where it’s safe. Don’t come out until you reach Berkeley, where you can safely be out in the open at a gay bar among others like you.

I had to keep reminding myself of that because the loneliness was all-consuming, especially being forced to live with Nick.

“Fine. I want to go work for U.S. AID. They do beneficial work across the globe for countries in need, and I’d get to travel the world.”

“That’s… unexpected and totally cool. It proves how little I know about you, other than you play football and are kind of a loner, which is a really odd combo, man… no offense.”

That was a fair assessment. I wasn’t as introverted as he thought, though I wasn’t nearly as outgoing as he was. It was only another wall I built to protect myself. The fewer people who really knew me, the safer I was from bigotry and hatred. I’d overheard people talking at school, though it wasn’t a lot. But mostly, you heard about shit on the news.

I just had it in my head that if I came out, I’d be mocked, ridiculed, or worse, like losing my family.

“So, after you graduate, you’ll head back home and live in DC or something?”

I nodded as I read the sign to Kingsport, Tennessee, which told me we had one hundred and sixty miles to go. “That’s the plan. How about you?” I asked just to not be a dick.

“For now, I’m going to get a business degree, but who knows? Things change. It’s not exactly exciting, but it’s a safe major. Playing professional tennis would be pretty cool, too. While I’m good, I don’t think I’m that good, so that’s never really been in the plans for me. But tennis has been a springboard to get me into Stanford.”

In the five years we’d lived together, I’d never once seen him play, but since he got an athletic scholarship, I assumed he was decent.

Nick looked at me from behind sunglasses with a smirk on his face. “See how easy it is to talk?”

I rolled my eyes. “And you just had to fucking ruin it.”

“Whatever, man. You’re a major dweeb sometimes and can’t even tell what a joke is. Anyway, I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me when we get there, then I’ll take over driving after lunch.”

He slipped on his Walkman headphones, grabbed a pillow from the back, and rested his head on it.

I grabbed my smokes from the dashboard and pushed in the car lighter. As soon as it popped, I pulled it out and lit up my cigarette while rolling down the window further. The car didn’t have air conditioning, so it was gusty.

As Nick slept, my gaze kept drifting over to him. I generally tried not to look at him at all, afraid he’d see right through me, that my walls weren’t as thick as I’d made them to be. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself. But as he dozed, he wouldn’t notice me staring at him.

He had a nice jawline with just a shadow of hair since he hadn’t shaved this morning. I had more facial hair than he did. His nose was cute, too, and perfectly straight. As he slept with his lips parted, his bottom one was full and pouted.

He wore a white polo shirt, and my eyes wandered along his chest, traveling further down to his snug khaki shorts that hid nothing of his package, making my mouth literally water. I’d never dared to look at Nick between his legs before, imagining my mouth on him. Shit, that was a mistake. I yanked my eyes away, my growing boner making me shift in the seat, and focused on the road.

Playing football not only saved me from being outed as gay, but it had also been brutal, trying to keep my eyes away from the naked asses and dicks hanging out as we showered or changed in and out of our gear. But still, my eyes periodically strayed.

I looked over at Nick again. He’d been sleeping for nearly an hour. My hand had a mind of its own as I reached over and gently pressed the back of my hand across the warm skin of his bare arm before quickly removing it. It was the first time I’d willingly touched him without punching or shoving him.

Nick stirred, and I sat up straighter and took a drag off my cigarette, which was nearly burned down to the filter, before putting it out in the ashtray.

“Mmm, where are we?” he asked.

I coughed away my embarrassment. “About an hour away from Kingsport, Tennessee, and our next pit stop.”

He stretched his long arms and yawned. God, I couldn’t stop staring at him.

“Cool beans. I’m getting hungry.”

My eyes glanced over at him again with this unfamiliar and strong urge to just blurt out my feelings for him. To tell him why I’d fought so hard against him and to forgive me. Instead, I squashed the temptation down and reeled my anger back in. It wasn’t hard when I remembered what he’d done to Mom’s record.

As my anger festered, so did the depression, which always came with the fear that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. The loneliness was perpetually suffocating.

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