Page 19 of Meet You in the Waves
I knew there was meaning behind the words Nick had just spoken but my brain felt like a hand grenade had just been lobbed at it, waiting for the pin to drop before it exploded.
“Oh,” is what I managed to get out. “So you’re …”
“Gay?” Nick smirked. “You are allowed to say the word, you know.”
I felt like I was peddling on a bike with a loose chain, mind desperately trying to catch up with the conversation before I made a complete fool of myself.
“Oh, I know,” I stumbled out. “I’m not … I mean … I have, like,noissues with that or anything. I mean, I’m at the Con in Sydney. Pretty sure half the guys in my class are gay or bi or something rainbow coloured.”
And the points for eloquent speech of the night didnotgo to Ajay.
“I’m just playing with you, Ajay,” Nick returned, that real smile back on his face. He knocked his shoulder into mine and I took a breath of relief. “And I know you’re not a judgmental asshole by the way.”
“How?” I asked, confusion on my face. “How would you know I’m not judgmental?”
Nick shrugged casually. “Because I’m good at reading vibes on people and you, Ajay, are as sweet and openminded as they come. Kind of like a refreshing drink of water actually.”
“Oh.” Yep, still not back to anywhere near my required level of eloquence. But now my brain was slowly catching up and I found my eyes drawn back to Nick’s best friend, the guy who looked like a super model straight off the runways of Milan and I felt something twinge in my gut. “So, you … and him?”
“Yep,” Nick said quietly.
“Oh.” My eyes flicked between the two guys, brain still in explosion mode as all sorts of images decided to present themselves to my flailing mind, images of Nick with Mateo, all that golden skin and the abs and pecs and who knows what the hell else? And why did I find that image so incredibly hot whilst wanting to completely block it out of my head at the same time?
“But why is Mateo with a girl then? Is he bi?” I asked.
Nick just let out a small huff. “No. He’s not.”
“So …”
Nick sent me an ascertaining glance and I found myself leaning in to him again, wanting to know. “Mateo has a very complicated relationship with his sexuality,” he explained. “He comes from a very traditional Italian family who he’s convinced would go so far as disowning him if they knew the truth. I think he’s just trying to convince himself he can do a straight relationship.”
“That’s kind of sad,” I replied, flicking my eyes back to the beautiful boy who Nick used to date. Mateo’s eyes found mine, a slightly hostile if not dismissive cast to them before they landed on Nick beside me with a not-so-dismissive glance. “Is that why you broke up?”
“More or less. It’s not actually the easiest thing in the world coming out to your family and friends. I fully understand and appreciate that fact and I would never pressure anyone to do it before they were ready. At the same time, I’m perfectly happy with who I am and I wasn’t exactly all that excited about being shoved back into Mateo’s closet with him. Especially because he fought against it so hard, like he didn’t evenwantto be with a guy. I know he loved me in his own way but it was always there, that struggle. We had to be so careful whenever we were in public or at his parents’ house and of course, there were never any sleepovers there. Mum and Dad were much more accommodating, so we spent most of our time here. But the stress kind of just got to both of us in the end.”
I blinked away a sudden press of more images after Nick’s casual reference to hissleepoverswith Mateo. Images of two hot male bodies pressed up together. Where were these thoughts coming from and how did I stop them? I sucked in a breath.
“Do you think he could convince himself to be bi?” I asked instead.
Nick huffed out a small laugh. “Have you heard how sexuality is a scale? At one end you’ve got guys like Rob, straight as a beanpole even if he doesn’t want to be. Believe me, we checked.” Nick huffed out another little private laugh as his eyes flicked to his other best friend and part of me was intrigued. “At the other end of the scale are guys like me, exclusively about dick.”
My brows raised at Nick’s turn of phrase and he laughed and shoulder checked me again which I was coming to understand was his way of making sure we were cool.
“Most people sit somewhere in between or even move about the scale at different times,” he continued easily. “Unfortunately for Mateo, I’m pretty certain he is up at the far end of the scale with me. Even if he’s trying to convince himself otherwise.”
I nodded, trying to follow along. I had never heard of the sexuality scale before. I thought there was just gay, straight and bi. Which of course made me wonder whereIwould sit on this scale. I’d only ever really thought about girls in that way before but now I was curious.
“What do you mean about how you checked where Rob sat on the scale?” I asked before I forgot.
Nick smirked again. “He basically dared one of us to kiss him to see if we could spark any kind of response. I lost the dare, or won, depends how you look at it, so I kissed Rob while Mateo timed us for sixty seconds. I put everything into it too but not a whisper of response from Rob. He was as soft as a bag of feathers afterwards. And yes, we checked that too.”
Nick was smiling as he recited his story and I couldn’t help flick my gaze between him and his friends. There seemed to be so much history and familiarity and depth to their intertwined lives and I felt a little pang of jealousy. I loved Dane but we’d only really known each other for two years. I didn’t feel like we knew each other anywhere near at the level Nick knew his friends.
“So you just go around kissing your friends, huh?”
“I’m just that kind of guy, Ajay,” Nick returned affably. “Always willing to help out a friend.”
And there went my thoughts again, wondering if Nick would be the kind of friend willing to kiss me? Just so I could check if I had any response to him of course, maybe see where I sat on that sexuality scale. My stomach flashed at the thought so I tried to sweep it back out of my head before it took hold or got out of control. Something I seemed to severely lack whenever I was around Dane’s older brother.
