Page 11 of Teach Me To Sin

“Hey!” He white-knuckles the wheel until we’re steady again. Seeing him scared is the best high I’ve felt in weeks, like for one second I’m in control of someone else’s fate instead of the other way around. Checking the mirror to make sure there aren’t any cars nearby, I jam my heel against his hand and he yelps as the car jerks toward the railing. “Do you have a fucking death wish?” he yells, trying to straighten us out.

“Yeah, but we’ll go over and I’ll swim to shore while you drown.” I hook my shoe around the wheel and, for half a second, I think I might be serious. My head snaps back when Gideon hits me. I curl up like a bug, my eyes watering with pain, and that glimpse of freedom to control anything that happens to me disappears.

“You entitled little piece of shit,” Gideon snarls, gripping the wheel in both hands. He’s done fucking with me, but I wipe my eyes and nose on my sleeve and unclip my belt so I can crawl between the front seats and over the middle seat to the very back row. No one ever sits here, so the upholstery still smells new and feels sticky against my cheek as I curl up on my side.

I pull my t-shirt up over my face and close my eyes. My body aches from training, and my ears are still ringing with the sound of Alek’s voice echoing off the surface of the water. He told me I was special. He told me I could be something great, and he meant it with all his heart.

When I was seven, my nanny taught me how to paddle around our unused pool. I loved the miraculous feeling of playing with one of the most powerful elements on earth, like I was some kind of god. Dad wouldn’t let me take lessons, so I used to sneak out to the local rec center and watch their classes. The teachers probably noticed the scrawny kid in the public section of the pool imitating everything they did, but none of them gave me a hard time. When I got the strokes down, I watched videos and tutorials on how to do them better. I’d struggle from one end to the other, then pump my arms and scream like a crowd of overjoyed fans, my voice echoing around the silent garden.

In the end it doesn’t matter how I ended up with this choice, or why, or what the consequences will be. I already know my answer. Someone wants me and believes in me for the first time, and I can’t go back to being invisible.

Alek

I apologizefor the other day. Can we meet this afternoon at the Dock Club restaurant on Madison?

Before I can change my mind, I fire off the text to the number Ethan gave me–the one that reaches a particularly obnoxious, patronizing lawyer I threw out of the swim center a few days ago. My hands are trembling as I set my phone face down on the dusty windowsill. Trying to breathe through the regret, I glance around my claustrophobic little office and resist the urge to text back,Never mind.

My whole life, my father twisted me into the shape of someone who couldn’t disobey him. When he did terrible things to the people I cared about, I just watched because if I didn’t have his swim team, I didn’t have anything. Safety, security, a reason to exist. Any kind of love.

Even though the media said I “broke free” when my testimony put him in prison, he’s only gotten more powerful in my head until his shadow covers everything I think and do. If I ask Colson to help me announce the coaching program, I can’t go back. I’ll be defying my demons for the sake of a strange, impulsive boy I know nothing about. He tried to play it cool the other night, but I saw the longing in his eyes when I talked about training together. My heart wants to make those words come true for him, whatever it takes.

“You look horrible.” Victor’s voice breaks the silence as he clomps up the last few stairs and bangs the office door shut. I jerk my stare away from the window when a hot cardboard cup bumps my neck, followed by the scent of a chai latte wafting up on curls of steam. My snarky blond business partner jumps from one open spot on the floor to another, dodging boxes and stacks of paper until he reaches the desk. It really is a disaster, but I know where every single document lives–more than I know where Maya keeps the mugs or can opener at home.

Shoving folders off the end of the desk, Victor sprawls across the scratched oak surface. I moved most of my stuff to a table against the wall, saving this one for him the same way you keep old furniture because the cat likes to sunbathe on it. Every morning, he chugs iced caramel coffee through a straw while he “stretches out his back” and watches me work. I think it’s his way of spending time with me now that we’re too busy to hang out.

I have fundraising calls to make and events to plan before my damn lunch meeting. But there’s something about him, and the silence, and the smell of coffee that slows my brain down enough for last three weeks to hit me all at once. Gripping my coffee in both hands like it’s a lifeline, I slide my back down the wall until my knees are folded to my chest. Victor angles his head to watch me, his eyebrows furrowing.

I have no idea what I’m going to say until it pours out of me in a breathless rush. “I think I need to break up with Maya.”

He blinks at me, then rolls over and props his chin on his hand. “Huh?”

I can’t find other words, so I try the same ones again more emphatically. “I think I need to break up with Maya.”

Pushing his curly hair out of his eyes, he opens his mouth, shuts it, looks around the room, then says, “No comment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stretch out my legs so I look less like a child in the fetal position, while he grimaces and slurps down the last of his drink.

“Ethan forced me to promise I would sayno commentif you asked me for advice about Maya.”

My eyebrow arches. “He forced you. Really.”

“The man knows how to buy my obedience,” he groans, rolling onto his back again and stretching all his limbs.

There’s no point playing around, so I go straight for the million-dollar question. “Why did he force you to do that?”

He hums thoughtfully. “Well, I told him I thought you should release the poor saint of a woman from her three-year dry spell and wean yourself off Viagra with some dick in your mouth. The transition should be instantaneous, no side effects. For some reason, he insisted I wasn’t allowed to say that.”

After a moment of dead silence, I crack up into a slightly hysterical laugh, dropping my forehead against my knees. I didn’t really sleep last night, or the night before, not since Benji came to the pool. I lay on my side and studied Maya’s outline in the dark, trying for the last time to make my heart or body respond, searching for any answer besides the obvious. When I speak, my voice wobbles and I swipe a hand roughly across my eyes. “Can you…turn it off? Be something else? Or do I not have a choice?”

My whole life, I’ve forced myself to look at other men’s bodies as abstract tools, built of thought instead of flesh and bone. Because if I’m not gay like my father, then maybe I’m immune to whatever sick genetic inevitability warps people into their parents. Maya was supposed to be my answer, the same way I’m her answer to a string of shitty exes. We’ve built a hopeful, tepid sort of love out of our own selfish needs, but it’s not strong enough to last.

“Oh boy.” Victor sits up with a sigh, swinging his long legs off the edge of the desk, and holds out his arms. “Come here, you little freak.”

“I’m bigger than you,” I mumble petulantly as I struggle to my feet and bury my face in his warm shoulder. My best friend always smells of chlorine and his partner’s eucalyptus body wash. We’ve known each other for seventeen years and gone through hell together–sometimes we were closer than brothers and sometimes we despised each other, but in the end, he’s my safest place.

His legs hook around mine, and his long fingers brush back my hair. “You’re the densest, most bull-headed person I’ve ever met,” he chuckles. “You never once in your life got it up properly for a woman, but you won’t stop trying. Doctors, drugs, porn, weird-ass sex toys–anything in the world besides, like, fucking someone you’re actually attracted to.”

“Maybe I’m not gay,” I protest pointlessly, pulling away. “Maybe it really is something else. How would I know?”

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