Page 96 of Finance Bros

The real answer for that is what I don’t want to talk about because it nauseates me that it’s still something I think about. Itshouldn’t be. Ryan is separate of all that, but my question iscan he really be? If I’m still affected by it, can I really say it’s not spilling into my feelings toward Ryan, too?

Fuck, I want to talk to him so bad. There’s no one else I trust with this, but I don’t know if I can trust him anymore, either. I wish I’d told the Ryan who showed up at my apartment after work Friday night. Friday night Ryan was listening, and I hadn’t crossed any major lines with him.

Now I’ve had sex with him, and the need to have sex with him again is impossible to ignore—for me at least. Conversations like this one I should have with him feel secondary. I want to connect with him both ways, but my physical desire is out of control.

I need more time with him. Time without TikToks or Patreons orfucking Miguelcoming between us. Time to hold him and whisper all my secrets to him and let him tell me my past doesn’t make me fucked up beyond repair or wanting.

Goddamn, I’m needy. Selfish, too. Is that what’s pushing him away? I’m making it all about me?

“Because he’s not talking to me,” I say. More tears. Goddamnit. I grab two tissues and shove them both against my eyes while I lean over, elbows propped on my knees. I’m such a fucking mess. Christ. This obsession I have with him isn’t cute or endearing. It’s psycho, and I’m sure it shows. I’ve seen him look scared at least a few times already, but I took no for an answer…didn’t I?

Fuck.

“When we were fourteen, he told me he was in love with me. It wasn’t something I could hear at the time. The way people talked about LGBTQ kids at school—like they were freaks—and here I’ve got my fuckingstepbrothertelling me he’s one of them and maybe he thinks I am too—I just flipped out on him.”

“But you were close before that,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Best friends?”

The very best.“Yeah.”

“If he’d only told you he was gay would you have reacted the same way?” she asks. “Or was it more to do with the fact that his feelings were directed at you?”

“I don’t think heisgay,” I say, which just puts my thoughts into more of a snare.

“But back then.”

“Back then—if he told me he was gay—I mean…” I think about it. About the way we held each other. About the way we’d whisper talk about random things—TV shows, teachers, dinner, giving the most mundane conversations the veil of intimacy and importance. “I think…I think…” I take a deep breath. “I think I would have told him I was, too.”

“Oh.”

The room goes completely silent for a long moment.

“But that’s not how it happened,” I say in a rush.

Fuck, now I really wish that had been how it happened.

“What bothered you about knowing he loved you?”

“Not loved—in love. I don’t know. It was about twenty steps beyond where I was at? It was like having all this pressure on me all of a sudden, but it also changed the context of our whole past—or the previous year or two at a minimum. Like he’d been luring me or grooming me or something.”

“Grooming?” she asks, sounding even more surprised.

“I just mean I thought maybe he had ulterior motives.”

“Do you still think that?”

“Obviously not.”

“I don’t know why the hell you think that’s obvious,” she says.

“I felt the same way,” I tell her urgently, needing her to understand what I’m just now beginning to grasp. “I was justtoo stupid to realize it at the time. And I thought it was wrong.”

“Which was it?”

“Both,” I insist.

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