HENDRIX AVERY
“Snap out of it, man!” Something smacks my cheek. Hard. “What is wrong with you?”
I blink once. Twice. Rub my face. “Did you just slap me?”
“He speaks!” Micah shouts victoriously. “I thought you had taken one too many hits to the helmet.”
“No, I . . .” I shake my head, trying to clear it, but just like the last few days, it doesn’t work. I’m back in that truck bed again, then by the pool, both encounters weighing so heavily on my mind that nothing else can get through. And yesterday’s football game had been the same way. I missed the ball more often than I caught it, and Coach pulled me after halftime. All the while, Tahegin watched me with those bright sapphire-blue eyes, biting his full bottom lip to keep himself from asking what was wrong. How would I have even answered? Probably with the same thought that has been echoing in my head since Halloween, then screaming since Thanksgiving. “I leaned in.”
Micah stares at me as if I have grown two heads and a pair of tits. “You . . . leaned in? To what?”
Burying my face in my hands, I let out a wail of despair. The sound is so unlike me that Micah stands, takes a step toward me, then fumbles. He stills, not sure how to help since he and I haven’t ever been the type to comfort each other. Hugs are few and far, far between and usually initiated by me when he gets super stressed. The last time we hugged was probably after his breakup over a year ago. “Not what,” I mumble into my hands. “Who.”
“You leaned into someone,” he repeats slowly, as if trying to verify what I am—poorly—telling him. “For . . .”
“Micah.” Standing, I cross his living room to grab his thin shoulders, even more dwarfed by my large hands. His caramel-brown eyes meet mine, as wide as they can go, probably because I am willingly touching him.
I came over tonight on a whim. He hadn’t even invited me. When I got here, he and Aleks had been . . . doing something that involved them being shirtless. Micah took one look at me, rain-soaked and depressed, and he kicked Aleks to the curb, throwing his shirt out after him as an afterthought. We had been sitting in silence for the last however-long until Micah slapped me partially out of my thoughts.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I blurt. “Especially Aleks.”
“And what, exactly, am I not telling him?”
“I leaned in,” I whisper, shaking him slightly.
His face drops into a sarcastic deadpan. Didn’t know that could even be a thing, but okay. “So I have gathered.”
Think, Rix. Think. You leaned in when Tahegin got close on Halloween, and it made your lips brush, but only a little bit. Hardly anything at all, really, but you couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, because your brain is totally fucked right now, you tried to do it again on Thanksgiving. Then, you wimped out and said some shit about his birth parents. And now, you’re regretting not going through with it.
Okay, but is it only a Tahegin thing, or was it simply because the opportunity presented itself?
My gaze flicks south of Micah’s eyes—to his lips. I have an opportunity here, don’t I? Maybe he can help me . . . “Can I kiss you?”
To his credit, he only looks curious as he shrugs. “Sure.”
I pause, stunned. “Why are you so okay with it?”
“It’s just a kiss. I’m more concerned about where you are going with this and why I can’t tell Zeke—oh. Oh! You almost kissed Tahegin, didn’t you? Oh my God, Rix. This is great! Are you queer now? I always thought there was a bit—”
Unable to cipher through all of that, I pull him in and lay my lips on his, fully devoting myself so as not to skew the results. I need to know if it is all men or just Tahegin. Fuck, I don’t even know if I want more than a kiss—I can’t think that far ahead yet. And honestly, I’m scared to think more about it.
Micah makes a noise and melts into me. He’s going all in, too, which I appreciate, and I can acknowledge the fact that he is a decent kisser. I’m the one to deepen it, sliding my tongue between his lips to caress his. Micah sighs and falls more into me, his hips pressing against mine with an unfamiliar—yet eerily familiar—hardness that . . .
I push him away, gasping for air. “Dude, are you—”
Pink blossoms across his pale cheeks, making his magenta hair seem even brighter. “You’re a good kisser, and you interrupted Aleks and me earlier! It’s not all from you, okay?”
“Hmph.”
“Don’t you— Oh, whatever. Did it work? Did that answer your question?” Micah slams his hands onto his hips, trying his best to appear less frazzled than he actually is.
Did it? I take a second to think it over and . . . “I still want to kiss him, I think.”
He studies me, head tilted to the side inquisitively, as if I am an unknown specimen. “Can I ask what happened to make you ‘lean in’?”
We both take a seat once more, and I sigh heavily because I have a pretty good idea of what his reaction will be when I say, “I told him about my birth parents.”
“You what?” And, yep. There he goes, climbing up the arm of the couch, then putting an arm and a leg on the back to get even higher. I gave him a look, and he relents, staying perched there, not going any further. “But you haven’t even told me about your birth parents.”
“I know,” I whisper, hanging my head. “I’m not sure why, but Tahegin is different. We’re friends, but the things I’ve told him . . . I haven’t told you a lot of that stuff. At least, not intentionally, and not so soon after we met. And the way we . . . But I should have realized before.”
“The way you what?”
I meet his inquiring eyes, refusing to be embarrassed or nervous. “Tahegin and I have been—well, we said it was teaching me to accept more contact from my teammates, like high fives and hugs and shit—but what we have been doing? I think it’s . . . cuddling.” The last word is nearly inaudible, but Micah can read lips just fine.
His jaw drops so low it’s uncomfortable to look at. “You have been cuddling Tahegin Ellingsworth—a man, your roommate at away games, your teammate, a famous football player, a man—”
I cut him off with a palm over his mouth. “Yes.”
He says something entirely unintelligible, so I remove my hand and gesture for him to repeat. “How did the cuddling and talking about your parents lead to this ‘leaning in’ moment?”
“The cuddling led to more contact between us, and the time we spent together naturally had us talking more, confessing things. The night of the Halloween party, after you and Aleks went to his room, Tahegin and I went and got veggie burgers. We ate them together in the back of his truck, one thing led to another, I told him about my birth parents, and he started to comfort me. He grabbed my head and pulled us close, telling me . . . things—nice things. We were nose to nose while he spoke, and I just . . .” I make a helpless motion with my hands, not meeting Micah’s eyes. “Leaned in. Our mouths touched.”
Micah teeters on the edge of the couch as he waits for more. “And then?” he demands when I don’t continue.
I shrug. “And then he pulled back without saying anything, and we kept talking as if it didn’t happen. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then, at Willow’s birthday party—”
“I knew something happened by the pool! You were acting weird . . . er than normal.”