Page 70 of Finance Bros

Jesus Christ, the tangents. How am I supposed to keep up? “Are you on meds?” I ask.

“I’m not high, Ryan?—”

“No, I’m asking. Do you take anything for your brain?”

He scowls. “Yeah. Why?”

“And you’re not skipping days?”

“No,” he says. “This is me. You don’t have to like it, but I’m trying to be up front with you. It probably seems like I’ve been all over the place since the internship started, but there’s a through line here that I want to point out to you since you seem to be missing it.”

“Okay, fine.” I sigh, giving him my attention, eyes on his face, not his bare naked leg or chest or erect nipples. Mostly.

“I’m not straight,” he says.

I swallow again, fighting to keep looking him in the eyes and keep my expression blank. “Since when?”

“Like ever. Like from before we met. Like I was born this way.”

“And you realized this…”

“Realize is a complicated word,” he says. “If you’re asking when I was sure—it was last night. If you’re asking when I started having questions it was before we met.”

“What about high school?”

“You mean me and Kaylin? Or me and you?”

I shrug. Whichever. Any clarity is welcome.

He rubs his mouth and sighs. “Two things can be true at once, right?”

Okay, I’ll bite. “Sure.”

“So,” he says, “I can want to have a traditional life with a woman and kids and not have anyone looking at me funny,andI can want a man to fuck me into a mattress until I’m sobbing, too.”

That wakes my dick up. It was stirring with the sight of his bare leg and all, but the imagery he just put in my brain—I don’t bother to hide the fact that I need to adjust myself, and he doesn’t hide that he’s watching.

“Look,” he continues, “Do you think I would have done what I did last night if I wasn’t pretty sure I wanted it?”

I think about that for a minute. Because what other motive is there, really? To palm another man’s crotch and kiss his neck and hug him like you want to merge with him? “I guess not.”

“Admittedly,” he adds, “I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t freak out. Like all the wrong I tried to tell myself it was back then would come surging back, and I’d puke or something, but obviously I didn’t. I mean, I almost did when I got back here, but like I said—panic. Notgaypanic—brother panic.”

“You’re bisexual,” I say.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he responds vaguely.

“But you wanna marry Kaylin, put babies in herandfuck men.”

He laughs. “Is that what I said? I don’t think that’s what I said. It doesn’t sound like me.”

“Would you know what sounded like you if you heard it on a loudspeaker?” I ask.

He narrows his eyes. “I fucking hate you. Still. Sometimes.”

“Same,” I tell him.

“But also…” he leans in slightly and doesn’t finish the sentence.

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