Page 33 of My Dear Mr. Corporate

CHAPTER 15

Tate

What a nightmare. I sat up in bed and breathing hard, I rubbed at my face. Why the hell was I dreaming about Gio? Damn him for putting foolish thoughts into my head. I didn’t even see him that way. He had always been like a brother to me, and that hadn’t changed because he had confessed to me last night that he was gay. I wouldn’t have been so shaken up if that was all he had said though. When he had taken it further and confessed to loving me all this time, my mind had been blown away. Years of friendship ruined by that confession. I wished he hadn’t said those words to me because now I was confused about what all this meant.

From the moonlight spilling into the bedroom, through the undrawn blinds, I stared at Bryan who was sleeping by my side. He was suspicious, but after I had ignored his initial questions about what Gio was doing at the party, he hadn’t followed up the conversation. The way he looked at me had changed, but how did I tell him my best friend was fucking in love with me? I was finding it hard to believe myself.

Bryan looked peaceful in sleep, curled up on his side. I loved him. I couldn’t love Gio, not in that way, but how could I hurt him? I had demanded that he not say a word of what he had said to me to Bryan. Maybe, somehow, we could deal with this mess and move on without Bryan being privy to our conversation. Maybe Gio would take back his statement and realize he was mixing up his brotherly affections for me.

Whatever it was, I just wanted it to go away. I didn’t want this confusion when I was so happy with Bryan. I already had my head buried in paperwork, trying to figure out what Uncle Simon had done wrong. All the evidence pointed to the charities and I needed them thoroughly checked out to find the full extent of the discrepancies.

I also had to visit Kathleen and Rachel. I had been avoiding it because I hadn’t been able to visit before. The pain that came every time I had attempted it had been too much. While not sure the pain would ever totally go away, I felt braver somehow to visit them, to ask their forgiveness one more time before I could fully move on with Bryan. If I hadn’t shared my truth with Rachel that I was bisexual, she wouldn’t have rushed off and met her untimely demise in that car crash.

Leaning over Bryan, I kissed his shoulder lightly, so it didn’t wake him. I just had to touch him, to reassure myself he was here, and he was mine. Fuck, I couldn’t have Gio come between this, but I wasn’t ready to let my friend go either. What a fucking mess!

I eased out of bed because I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep in the state I was in. I padded from the bedroom barefooted and descended the stairs. I slipped outside the house to the pool area, the serenity of the night a mockery of the turmoil I felt inside. The best means for me to lose the tension inside would have been to use the tennis court but I couldn’t play alone, and I couldn’t wake up Bryan to play with me. I decided to use the next best activity.

After I stripped completely, I plunged into the pool and tried to lose myself in the rhythm of the strenuous activity, but the memory of my earlier conversation with Gio would not leave me alone.

“Gio, what the hell are you doing here?”

He paled when he saw me, his eyes registering surprise. He clearly hadn’t been expecting me.

“Tate? What are you doing here?”

I was well aware that he avoided the question, but I answered anyway. “I came here with Bryan. He knows the owner and wanted us to stop by for a few. And you?”

“Um, I-I dropped off a friend,” he replied, but couldn’t meet my eyes. He was lying, and it felt strange to know he would lie to my face. I had known him too long for him to lie like this to me.

And then it hit me. My eyes widened a little. “Gio, are you gay?”

His lack of response at first was all the answer I needed. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked away. At least he wasn’t wearing a racy lingerie set because I wouldn’t have been able to reconcile seeing him like that with the man I had known for ten years. I racked my brain thinking of the girls he had dated back in college but he’d never really had a girlfriend. I had always thought he was just a playboy ready to screw ‘em and leave ‘em but what if he hadn’t been much different from me after all? Had he been covering up all this time? His parents were strict and religious. They wouldn’t have condoned his alternative lifestyle.

“Does it even matter?” he asked.

“What do you mean if it fucking matters?” I replied. “Of course, it does. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The same way you told me you were bi? I had to find out the same way everyone else did.”

“But shouldn’t that have made it easier for you to come out to me?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and snagged a glass of cocktail from the tray being maneuvered by one of those servers. “It wasn’t the right time.”

My frown deepened. “And how long did you know?”

He shrugged. “I confirmed it in college.”

“In college? Before we met?” I was trying to work out the time frame.

He hesitated a bit then drained the cocktail glass and looked me square in the eyes. “When we met.”

“When we met? You mean you…” I trailed off as his meaning became clear. The chattering around us and the soft sexy music playing in the background faded.

“That’s right, Tate,” he stated and reached for my hand, but I kept it out of his reach. “I always suspected in high school. You know the locker room situation and finding myself checking out other guy’s junk and other assets. But other than a few kisses and handjobs, I just chalked it down to experimenting. Then I met you in college and I loved you, man. I just didn’t know how to tell you and face your rejection.”

I tried to laugh it off as a joke because this couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible to have him in love with me for as long as he had said, and I didn’t know. I would have seen some signs. We lived like brothers, and there was nothing in what he had done for me that I would have misconstrued as anything else.

“You’re joking, right?” I said because even though I didn’t think he was, he could cop that excuse, and we wouldn’t have to talk about it again. We could pretend this conversation never happened. I was open to doing that if he was.

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