By The Way, I Love You

by Seth King

  By The Way, I Love You

  A New Year’s Eve Story

  Seth King

  Copyright © 2018 by Seth King

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Evan Ruiz is a straight college student hiding a life-changing secret: against all odds, he has fallen desperately in love with his gay roommate and best friend, Tom.

  Evan has only ever dated women, but Tom stumbled into his life with everything he ever wanted in a partner: he is sweet, caring, and beautiful like an Old Master’s painting. After a period of denial and confusion, Evan finally accepts an unexpected reality: he is in love with his best friend, and cannot run anymore. But how can he tell Tom in a way that won’t complicate their friendship beyond repair?

  That’s when he hatches a plan that backfires spectacularly.

  Desperate for advice, Evan writes an anonymous love confession and plea for help on Reddit that starts getting shared – and then goes viral. Since the piece holds more than enough identifying characteristics to reveal the truth, Evan knows he must either confess his love to Tom or risk him finding out via social media, which could ruin everything.

  Backed against a wall, Evan decides that when Tom returns from his family’s annual holiday trip on New Year’s Eve, he will sit down and profess his love and tell his story, starting from the first day onward. And as the clock strikes closer to midnight, Evan learns Tom is hiding a secret of his own, too…

  But will their New Year’s Eve be remembered as a messy goodbye, or a sparkly new beginning?

  “I was born when I met you, now I’m dying to forget you.”

  -Brandi Carlile

  When I started writing out the concept of this book, I dedicated it to my boyfriend. But that’s all over now, so instead I dedicated it to the people who were there before him, and were there after him, too: my readers.

  Thanks for carrying me through.

  Reddit Posting

  From user: ConfusedInATL

  Title: I Accidentally Fell in Love With My Gay Best Friend. Now What?

  I come to you totally humbled, asking for any help you can give. I have nobody else to ask, so I’m about to confess something that is eating me up inside. I’ve always thought of myself as a straight guy. Football games, girlfriends, the whole nine yards. You know the whole thing. But earlier this year I met someone who is changing my life, and he doesn’t even know it. And he is a he. And if I tell him, I could totally destroy the closest friendship I’ve found in years.

  So I guess I should just come out with it: I’m a straight guy who fell in love with my gay roommate-turned-best friend. I know they say it’s good to be in love with your best friend, but sometime this year, I guess I started taking that phrase a bit too literally…

  I know it sounds dumb and makes no sense, but I guess love usually doesn’t make sense. I met him on a Saturday when he showed up as my randomly selected roommate, and I can still picture the way his hair looked. I can still smell the scent of his body wash. My heart stored away these memories forever, because now I know what my brain was too afraid to admit: I loved him from the first moment I met him. He was a guy, and I thought I was straight, but my heart didn’t mind. It made the decision for me. And now I realize there are some things you cannot deny.

  Before this, I’d never dated a guy. Never kissed one. Never even knew this side of me even existed. So I didn’t understand my behavior at first, why I’d get jealous and possessive over stupid little things, why I drove myself crazy trying to make him comfortable or find a specific brand of pickle he loves at Publix, why I’d feel my heart tremble every time he walked out the door for another Tinder date with some guy I really wished was me…

  It was hard not to bond with him, despite our differences. Easiest thing of my life, actually. We actually have so much in common: we’re both obsessed with our dogs, we both love a good slasher movie, we both put Tabasco on everything we eat. So gradually our friendship became closer and closer. He was unlike anyone I had ever met, and I became fascinated by everything he did. At first I was confused and in a bit of denial, but when he got in a car accident and I rushed to the scene like the world was ending, I realized the truth: I was in love, and I could no longer bargain with it.

  He has no idea my feelings have become romantic. Well, I’m sure he notices some weird things here or there, but he has no idea I fell for him like this. Now I fantasize about writing him love letters and taking him on dates and growing old with him, which are obviously things friends would never do together. There’s the other problem, though: he is still my best friend.

  Actually, he’s become even more than a friend or a roommate – he is a confidant, a platonic other half, my shoulder I cry on. And now that I know the truth about my feelings for him, I have no idea how to act around him anymore. Our relationship is starting to get weird, and it terrifies me. Every awkward silence buries me alive, and if this situation ruins our friendship, I will never get over it.

  I am not running from this anymore. I cannot. And I am not writing this post to ask you to convince me it’s puppy love, or that it’ll fade, or that I’m just confused. I am writing this because I am tired. I’m tired of crying myself to sleep every night over a guy who is sleeping fifteen feet away from me. I am tired of envisioning a future with someone who is across the living room, and who doesn’t even know my heart sings his name. But I’m afraid that if I come clean, I will make it weird and ruin our friendship – or even worse, that he won’t want to date a closet case like me, and he’ll reject me. I don’t know how to both confess my love, and keep him in my life at the same time. Is there any way I can salvage this thing, and see if he will be with me? What if I make the leap, and he doesn’t want me? What will I do?

  I’m not asking for anything other than help. Besides being the star of my dreams, he is also my best friend. If he freaks out and rejects me, if he doesn’t want me, two of the biggest figures in my life will disappear at once. I would not be able to withstand it. I love him so much, but this is ruining my life.

  As I write this, it’s Christmas break, and he just left for his family’s annual vacation. I’d like to come to some kind of decision by the time he gets back on New Year’s Eve. Please help me with this.

  So this is my ultimate confession: my best friend has my heart in his hands, and nobody in the world knows it but me. I found hell inside the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and every perfect memory of our friendship is eating me alive. But I’m terrified that if I tell him, I’ll ruin everything.

  What in the world do I do?

  Part I

  1

  Evan Ruiz

  On a windy night last week I took the deepest breath of my life and pressed publish on the single most personal thing I’d ever written. At the time, I didn’t know what else to do, and the letter was one final plea for advice before I officially just called it a day and checked myself into the looney bin. I sat down, poured my fucking soul into a Word doc, and hoped for the best.

  What I got was the biggest disaster of my life. And it is still unfolding.

  I expected a few responses, maybe ten or twelve. A few came in as I lay in bed, wracked with tension, but I was too nervous to read them. When I did glance at the page here or there, most people seemed supportive, with a few giving me tips on how I could come clean to Tom while still maintaining the friendship. I fell asleep sometime after twelve and then woke up un
usually late. And when I checked my phone, the battery had died overnight because of the amount of messages and notifications that were suddenly pouring in.

  I couldn’t believe it – my post exploded, literally overnight. When I woke up, forty-four people had shared it, and three hundred had commented. And then it grew from there. And when Buzzfeed linked to the post with a headline that said This Heartfelt Confession of Secret Gay Love Will Melt Your Heart, I knew things had jumped the shark and gotten out of control.

  My first instinct was to delete the post and pretend it had never happened. Tom had no idea about any of it, obviously, and if someone shared it across his feeds, he’d recognize our story in an instant. I never should’ve mentioned all those factoids about us. The hot sauce, the roommate timeline, the thing about pickles – he’d recognize us in the story instantly, and I’d look like a crazy person pulling a prank or something.

  But at the same time, it felt like a train that had already left the station. Commenters who had been touched by the story said they felt invested already, too, and yanking away the post without explanation would be weird and kind of rude.

  I never wanted any of this to happen. I mean, if anything, I wanted the opposite – I wanted to shrink away and hide until my love for Tom faded away. But it didn’t, so I had to go seek help somewhere, and I guess all my lovey-dovey gooiness just flowed out. It just resonated with people, I guess. But now, I am faced with the messiest truth of my life: my love for my roommate is now a national story, and he has no earthly idea that I even like him.

  The only good thing about all this is that when I wrote the post, Tom had just left for his family’s annual trip to the North Carolina mountains and probably isn’t too tuned into social media. But he will be back tonight, and I am horrified by the prospect of him finding the article before I see him. That would ruin everything.

  This is something I’m going to have to explain by myself, on my own terms. If he learns my secret in a public way, he might think it was a joke or a prank or something, and get mad. It would make no sense. Or he might just get mad that I told some random website instead of him. Or he might just reject me and move out. But as soon as I woke up that first day, I knew I’d plunged myself past a point of no return without even knowing it. And since then the story has only grown. I am out of time.

  Today is New Year’s Eve. Tom texted me this morning that he’ll be home later tonight, and asked about my party plans. A few hours ago I made the decision: I’m not making any party plans, because tonight I am going to sit Tom down and have the most difficult conversation of my life. If I wait another day, he could find the article, and that would complicate everything even further.

  I know this is a mess, but back up for a second. This is how I got here.

  When you get to know Tom Carlile, you won’t blame me for falling in love with him. After all, you would have, too.

  ~

  It actually started due to disaster – maybe that was an omen. Anyway, it was right at the beginning of the summer, and tons of people were moving in and out that day. I was just leaving my apartment at my off-campus student housing building when I heard a huge ruckus and then saw someone in a heap at the bottom of the stairs – that’s right, someone had fallen down the entire staircase.

  So I rushed down to help, and leaned down – and I remember jumping back a little when our eyes first met. He was beautiful, almost in the way women are beautiful. I’d never seen a man with such a symmetrical face, such delicate eyes, such full lips. And instantly, I was entranced.

  “Oh God,” he said in a voice I felt like I had known my whole life, even if we were just meeting for the first time. “How embarrassing, I’m sorry…”

  “Hey, you’re good, don’t be embarrassed,” I said as he started pushing himself out of the mess of books and trinkets from his box.

  “I was trying to carry too much, and I slipped on my shoes – ugh. Thanks.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked as he stood up.

  “Yeah, yeah, it was only a few steps, thankfully. I wasn’t even halfway up the stairs, but then again, I’ve never met something that didn’t make me trip. Anyway, I’m looking for unit 2401 – I’m moving in today.”

  I paused. “Wait, I’m 2401. I’m Evan. You’re Tom?”

  For some reason, he suddenly seemed horrified. He looked down and started patting his pockets for his phone. “You’re Evan? I knew it was random assignments, I just…my move was so sudden, I guess I forgot to check for a photo…and my childhood best friend was a girl named Evangeline, so for some reason I thought I’d been matched with a girl…”

  “Well…I’m him,” I said, aghast at his disappointment. “I’m your roommate. Let me help you get all this stuff...”

  I helped him collect his junk. I showed him around the small, two-bedroom apartment. And then my life changed.

  It really did start happening all at once. I’m usually distant with roommates, probably because of my mom’s horror stories from her college days when she’d befriend them, and then they’d turn out to be crazy drunks or emotional disasters and the whole thing would blow up and get awkward. I started chatting and offered him a beer, which he politely refused, saying he preferred “white lady wine,” whatever that meant. And then I did something that confused me even more: I canceled my plans and spent the entire day helping him move in.

  I’d never been that helpful to anyone before, but something about being around him just made me…well, kind of happy. As we chatted that first day, I got to know that he was funny and carefree in a casual way that I’d always envied in people. I’d always seen myself as being too serious, too dour, too boring. But instantly I saw that Tom was everything I’d always wanted to be. He was easy with his words, he was happy-go-lucky, he was full of stories and gossip and jokes.

  And that night, after he’d moved most of his things upstairs, we ordered Domino’s and ended up talking until midnight. I told him about my dad’s death, which shocked me, because I never talked about that with anyone – not even my mom. I told him about my past, hoping a tiny hope that he’d be a part of my future. And I loved his reaction: he didn’t make a big deal of it, and he talked to me about it like I was simply a normal person with a tragic incident in their past, and not some kind of victim.

  That night he fell asleep on the couch, and I slid a throw blanket over him without even thinking about it. As I stared down at him, watching him drooling onto the blanket, I got the first glimpse that I was in real trouble.

  Up until then, I’d always seen myself as being straight. Honestly, I was probably too straight – I dated too many women, and it wasn’t fair to them. But I never wanted relationships for some reason. Even though I loved a good hookup, I’d never been in love, or even said “I love you” to anyone, not even while drunk. I always felt like there was something missing in my life, but I never knew what it was. Sometimes I just figured it was the product of never having had a father. My mom said it was just some form of low-grade depression, and that I womanized to distract myself – but I’d always wondered if it was something more.

  I’d never been mystical or spiritual or anything, but one weekend I went with my friends to Boone, this hippie-dippie little mountain town, and as a joke we drunkenly wandered into a psychic’s office. I held back at the rear of the crowd, but my friends forced me to get a reading, and I never forgot when she looked me in the eye and said, “You’re hiding.”

  I felt her words so viscerally, it made me gasp – I had no idea what she was talking about, but at the same time, I knew exactly what she meant. I’d always known I was hiding, I just didn’t know what I was hiding from. Somehow I just felt like I was living as half of myself.

  And eventually, Tom Carlile started feeling like that other half, as crazy as that sounds.

  I found that I really, really liked my conversations with him. I’d never known anyone like him before. My social circle was all men, and all straight, so I’d never been exposed to all this before.
Tom fell out of the sky from a world I didn’t even know existed, a world full of sparkles and drag queens and Technicolor hues I’d never seen.

  I remember the third or fourth night, he was carrying in a framed poster of A Star is Born featuring Lady Gaga. I asked him about it, and he insisted that we watch it OnDemand – and I absolutely loved it. I never would’ve let myself be interested in something like that before. In my friend group, you would only ever see those movies on dates. Seeing them alone would be seen as suspect and “girly” and all that.

  But everything changed with Tom. As the days went on, everything he said started to seem fascinating – even banal talk about his classes or job started to rivet me. I started asking him more about his life, and he’d tell me about things like daddy tops and bears and poppers. I couldn’t get enough of those details. Gay culture was like an entire invisible world that had existed right under my nose all along. He seemed fascinated about my life, too – he always wanted to know what I’d do with my straight friends, for example.

  “You really mean you actually enjoy football games?” he’d ask, and I’d tell him about the plays and players and positions.

  “Great,” he’d say. “But what do you actually do while watching them? You just…sit there? Every single Sunday?”

  That was when I realized how boring my life had been before him. So I started to change it. Soon I realized I looked forward to seeing him, and whenever he’d go with his friends to the gay bars across town, I’d sometimes wait up until he got home. I didn’t understand why, and I just told myself that a curiously intense friendship was forming. My mom once explained that she would “sync up” with her female roommates, and I assumed it was something like that – it was just that weird juju that happens when two people live under the same roof.