Page 35 of Cheater and the Saint
The next morning, I woke up in someone else’s bed. The bed was lumpier than mine, and the body wrapped around me was further proof that something had happened. Fog clouded my mind, and when I opened my eyes, I had to squint against the light coming through the window.
Hangovers sucked. Normally, I was lucky and didn’t get too bad of ones, but the memories from the night before reminded me that I drank way more than usual. What Icouldremember, anyway. I had only fragments.
Tayte and I had gone to a few bars before he got a call about a campus party. We went to said party, one of the dorms in our building, and all I remembered was downing shot after shot and chugging beer. There’d been a lot of laughing, dancing, and drinking games. Flirting with anyone who had given me the time of day.
The body wrapped around mine shifted, and a muscular arm squeezed me tighter. It was then I finally looked at them. The familiar mop of brown hair was a dead giveaway.
Tayte opened his eyes and gave a sleepy sigh. “Morning.”
Regret slammed into me. I didn’t remember going home with him. I didn’t remember sleeping with him. I respected our friendship too much to fuck it up, which was why I’d turned down his offers. The one time between us had been enough.
I yanked the blanket off me and got out of bed, groaning as the room spun. I fell back on the mattress and squeezed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.
“You okay, dude?”
“No.”
Nausea bubbled in my stomach, and before I blew chunks in his room, I took off toward the door and headed for the bathroom, making it just in time. Afterward, I rinsed out my mouth in the sink before squirting some of his toothpaste on my finger and trying my best to get the vomit taste off my tongue.
Once rinsing again with water, I looked at myself in the mirror.
I didn’t like the face looking back at me. Not physically. I was more than aware of my good looks. But the man on the inside, behind those chocolate brown eyes, was who pissed me off.
I wasnotashamed of who I was. Some people hated labels, but I loved having a name for me: bisexual. I even got the bisexual pride flag tattooed on the inside of my left bicep—which was the result of a drunken night, shortly after turning eighteen.
Yet, no matter how much pride I had in that, there were moments where my dad’s words came back to me, where I recalled the hatred in his eyes and remembered the disgust on my mom’s face as I packed my bag and left for good.
The inward self-loathing was what pissed me off. I hated that, even after all these years, my parents’ hatred still had a way of seeping into me, too. That there were moments where I wished I was the man they wanted me to be.
I doubted I’d ever fully get over it.
When I went back into Tayte’s room, he was sitting up in bed, and the blanket was covering his lap. His shirtless torso had those red marks from where he’d slept hard, and his disheveled hair stuck up on one side.
“Not surprised you puked,” he said in a sleep-heavy tone before yawning again. “You drank a shit-ton last night. I had to cut you off.”
“You did?” I had no recollection of it.
“Yeah.” Tayte chuckled and scrubbed a hand over his face. “You were fucking wasted, dude.”
Still standing by the bed, not wanting to crawl back in with him, I looked down at myself, seeing that I was wearing my boxers and nothing else. “Did we…?”
“No.” Tayte shook his head. “After I cut you off, you were moments from passing the fuck out. My dorm was closer than yours, so I brought you back to my room and put you to bed. We slept. That’s it.”
Relief made me sharply inhale and I nodded, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Sorry I got so drunk. Thanks for looking out for me.”
“That’s what bros are for.” He knuckle-bumped my arm before getting out of bed and stretching. After finding his jeans, he slipped them on and studied me. “Wanna tell me why you needed to get so wasted, though? I’ve seen you party before, Leo, but last night was different. It seemed less like a normal night out and more like a desperate attempt to escape whatever’s bothering you.”
“Saint and I got into it a little,” I answered, not having the strength to lie. “He asked a few personal questions that stirred up shit I’d rather not think about. I lashed out at him and left.”
“You talk about him a lot,” Tayte said.
“No, I don’t.”
“You must really not remember shit from last night,” he responded with a light laugh. “You bashed the fuck out of him, saying how nosy and weird he was. And then after a few more shots, you kept saying crap like, ‘Saint likes plain bagels with no cream cheese. He’s weird. But kind of sexy.’Then, you’d talk about how he doesn’t smile much, but how you like it when he does.”
My face heated. “You’re full of shit. I didn’t do that.”
Tayte put his hands up and grinned. “Whatever you wanna tell yourself, man. I’m just sayin’ that maybe you should go talk to the guy. I’ve known you for a while, and I’ve never seen you so interested in someone before.”
