Page 36 of It's Complicated

“Where is this coming from?” I asked, hoping to break his spiral before it got too bad.

“I don’t know.” He huffed out a defeated sigh, his shoulders sagging. “I’m just so confused.”

“You said you think you might be bi,” I said carefully. Hopefully I wasn’t about to send him back into that spiral.

“I have no idea. I keep thinking about all these moments that are kinda murky. Like maybe I felt something for a guy, but I honestly don’t know.”

“Like what?” Letting go of his arms, I dropped my hands.

“Just some things that happened with Tim.”

“Your hockey buddy? The one you went to camp with every summer?” I asked, trying to place the name.

He nodded.

“You think you felt something for him?”

I didn’t particularly want to hear about Jamie’s maybe dude-crush, but my friendship brain was thankfully overriding my jealous asshole brain.

Jamie hadn’t seen Tim in almost ten years. It wasn’t like he was some existential threat to our friendship.

“I’m not sure. It’s not obvious or anything, but like, there was this time when we were hanging out in our room after morning skate and he was showing me some videos on his phone. We were just sitting next to each other, but I was really aware of him.”

“Aware?”

“Yeah. Like I noticed all these little things about him that I never did before. Like how big and solid he was, and how warm. And how his leg hair kind of tickled my skin. Stuff like that.” He shrugged. “But I was fifteen. A strong wind could get me hard, and I didn’t even get hard then. I just noticed stuff about him.”

“That is kind of ambiguous,” I said unhelpfully.

“And the last year we went to camp together, I was really excited to see him, likereallyexcited.” He dragged his teeth over his bottom lip hard enough that his skin went white from the pressure. “We’d always been tight, but that summer was different. We were inseparable. If Tim was doing something, I was right there with him. Kinda like…”

“Us?” I offered softly.

He nodded. “But some random awareness and being excited to see my friend isn’t the same as dry humping you on the couch.”

My cock pulsed at the mention of our couch time.

“And we never did anything, me and Tim. I don’t even know how I would have reacted if he had tried to start something.” He shot me a pleading look. “Please tell me I’m not the only one obsessing like this.”

“You’re not,” I assured him. “I’ve done the same thing. Gone over all sorts of scenarios, tried to figure out if maybe I missed something.”

“And?” he asked hopefully.

I shook my head.

“Awesome.” His shoulders fell again.

“There’s no one moment that stands out for me, not until that night with April.”

His cheeks went ruddy, but he didn’t look away.

“I think we can both stop pretending like we don’t remember it,” I said pointedly. “I was sober.”

“I was too,” he muttered.

“And I don’t think we’re going to figure out what we are just by talking about it or trying to figure out if we missed the signs all these years.”

“Probably not,” he conceded.

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