“You think I’d point and laugh at you?”
“Well, no, but anxiety isn’t exactly rational, you know? I think a part of it is, I think people like me how I am. And if I change, people might stop liking me.”
“Right.” He leans back. “Well, that’s never gonna happen with me.”
“That’s not true. It already did.”
Ruben pauses, and there’s something questioning in his eyes.
“Listen,” he says. “I might’ve had thoughts about the way things went down, but I never stopped liking you. I can’t promise I’ll still like you if you turn into a serial killer, or, like, a neo-Nazi or something, but otherwise you’re pretty much good.”
“Okay.” I stop myself, then push through. “There’s something I want to tell you, like, about me, but it’s really hard to say.”
“You know, I’ve spent a lot of time theorizing about what might have been going on in your head over the last week. I can run some theories by you, and if one of them sounds accurate, you can nod or something? Would that make it easier?”
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and nod.
“So,” he clears his throat. “You kissed me because you were drunk and you would’ve kissed anyone in the same room as you.”
I don’t move.
“You’ve had kissing a guy on your bucket list and you saw a chance to get it done but hated it and didn’t know how to tell me?”
I keep still again.
“You were so drunk you thought I was a girl and when you woke up in the morning you freaked out because you’d kissed a guy.”
“Keep trying,” I say. “This is helping.”
“Okay.” His eyebrows furrow. “You were feeling bad about not being on that stupid list, and I made you feel attractive, so in your drunken state you confused that feeling with actual attraction.”
“I mean, maybe that’s a little bit of it, but there’s more to it.”
There’s a long pause, and when he speaks, it’s basically a whisper. “What if you’ve figured out that you might like guys, but you’ve been scared to do anything about it, because then it would become real?”
I can’t lie.
Clearly, he gets it. I wonder if he went through a very similar thing, just when he was younger. I wonder if all queer people do.
So I nod.
“Okay, wow,” he says. “You think you might be queer?”
“Yeah.” I wince. “I think I might be bi.”
“Wow. Holy shit.”
“Are you surprised?”
“I guess I shouldn’t be, given last week,” he says with a wry smile. “But I am? I guess I thought I’d have heard about it by now if you were. Obviously I thought about it, but I kept deciding I just wan—I kept deciding you probably weren’t.”
“Right.”
But wait, he wanted what? For me to be bi? Why would he …
And then I see it. I kissed him and things got weird because I was cold and distant. Which would be crushing, if someone you liked acted like that after you kissed them. How he reacted makes a lot of sense if you factor in that he likes me. Or at least that he started to. God, I’m an idiot. Never in a million years did I think Ruben would care about me like that, but now … now it’s making sense.
He smiles. “But this isn’t about me. Shit, this is huge, Zach. How do you feel about it?”
I look into his eyes. The eye contact is steady, unflinching. It feels a little magical, actually. Having him know, and things not feeling that weird. It just feels right. And under it all is this thought that maybe he likes me.
“It’s like, terrifying, but in a good way. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does. But, um, are you referring to the fact that you like guys in general? Or…？”
He glances up, a clear signal.
And I really want to.
So I shuffle closer, he nods a little and smiles, so I bring my hands up until they’re on his face. Nerves slam into me, and what if this isn’t real, what if I kiss him and I don’t like it. I move my hand an inch away, and Ruben opens his eyes, and his eyebrows pull together, and I’m ruining the moment oh fuck I’m ruining this like I’ve been ruining everything lately and …
Oh fuck it.
I move across and kiss him, putting everything I have into it. I run my hand up through his hair, his gorgeous hair, and smell his cologne and taste the sugar on his lips.
It’s like fireworks in my chest. There’s no doubt that this is real.