Ideas that weren’t part of the bargain.
But then Carlos leaned against him conspiratorially when the same woman with the big Texas hair asked for yet another Willie Nelson song, and Deion leaned into him too, to catch every word of Carlos’s whispered snark. And when they were done being snarky, they just . . . stayed there. Leaning against each other, shoulder to shoulder, like touching was more important than sitting up straight.
Then when no one had paid them any attention or even blinked at how close they were sitting together—and the two women a couple blankets farther around the fire actually started making out for a little bit, which made it clear to him that he needed to stop assuming same sex twosomes were only friends and reminded him that other people might already be seeing them as a couple—getting even closer became too tempting to resist.
Carlos must have felt the same way, because after that brief moment of stiffness, he sank back and let his back press into Deion’s chest. He tapped the back of Deion’s hand, still wrapped around his waist, with gentle, callused fingertips. “I’m not used to being the little spoon.”
“We can take turns,” Deion said without thinking, because he’d never been the little spoon either and Carlos was big enough not to be dwarfed by his size.
The spine pressed against his chest stiffened.
Shit. Why did everything he said remind them of how temporary this arrangement was, and how little time he had left in Miami?
Because he didn’t have any good answers, for either of them, he gave Carlos a gentle squeeze and put his chin back on his shoulder. After a moment, the tension left Carlos’s body and he sank back again.
They stayed right there until the fire died down and everyone started packing up to go home.
When Carlos dropped him off that night, double-parking with his hazards on in front of Josh and Benji’s building, Deion’s don’t-give-a-fucks were still flying high enough to have him leaning over and kissing him right there in the open, where their friends could have seen if they’d walked outside.
“Thanks for tonight. That was . . .” Magic. Sweet. Special. He wasn’t ignorant. He knew his reluctance to say the words was tied up into a lot of bullshit ideas about masculinity, but that didn’t mean he could pitch over the cart his first go around. “That was really cool. Never done anything like that before.”
A sentence he could have said a hundred times in the past week. They both smiled, recognizing the words.
“Do you want to . . .” Carlos’s voice lifted slightly, and he tipped his head toward the traffic speeding past them in the direction of his apartment. Come home with me?
And he did, but he didn’t too. He always wanted to go home with Carlos. Wanting Carlos was pretty much his constant resting state at this point. It was more a question of how impossible to ignore the wanting was at any given moment. Plus, the pretending with Josh and Benji was getting a little out of hand. Spending the night with Carlos would either provoke some serious comments, or would make things so weird he’d have to deal with it.
So as much as all he wanted right now was to lie in a quiet, dark room with the man waiting patiently for his answer, Deion also knew he needed to take some time and figure out exactly what the fuck he was going to do next.
12
The next morning, he waited until Benji had left for the clinic for the opening shift before he found Josh in the living room, messing about online while Deion’s favorite cooking show played on the TV.
Deion slumped onto the couch too, with a nod that acknowledged Josh’s choice of channels. Neither of them said a word for a few minutes while Deion tried to figure out how to talk about this thing that was happening to him.
“You had girlfriends,” was the best opener he could come up with.
“Yeah.” Josh nodded, unflappable, as if he’d figured out sometime in the past two weeks that this conversation was coming and was ready for it.
That was a pretty comforting idea.
“But you call yourself gay. Not bi.” He wasn’t trying to offend, but Deion was genuinely curious about what made Josh’s feelings different from his own.
Josh paused, pursing his mouth as if trying to figure out what to say to that. Deion waited. He’d been curious about this ever since Josh had come out in the middle of a televised interview back in college, but had never felt like he had the right to ask.
“Listen. I slept with some girls. I can. But if Benji ever dumped me—God forbid—whenever I finally crawled out whatever bottle I moved into trying to get over him, I wouldn’t be looking for a cute girl the next time I went out the bars. I’d be looking for a man.”
Deion nodded. He got that. “Just because you can sleep with girls doesn’t mean you want to.”
“Yeah. Pretty much. So am I technically bi? I don’t know. Maybe according to some people? But they don’t get to define me. I do. And I don’t feel bi. I feel gay as hell, man.”
“I’m bi.” Air whuffed out of him like he’d been punched in the gut.
“Cool. Go get you some of . . .” Josh waved at the window, as if looping the whole world in as Deion’s future sexual oyster. “All that. Whatever works.”
“I don’t know if I want . . . all of that.” Deion imitated Josh’s wave. He wasn’t ready to mention anything about Carlos and everything that was already happening to him. The sea change that had already upended so much of his calm. “I’m just realizing some things that might change, depending on what happens before training camp.”
Even admitting that something, anything, might change in his life in the next few months felt like putting one foot in the air over a steep precipice and getting ready to jump.
“I hear you,” Josh said, nodding. He understood more than anyone Deion was spending time with on this vacation from rehab and reality exactly how off balance waiting to find out your fate, decided by men in suits in a far office franchise office, could leave you. “You’ve got a lot of options, man. And you know I’m making a big play for Miami being one of them.”
“I know.”
“That’s because you’re my friend and I like it when you’re around. And I’m hoping to pick your brains and your pocket and get you wrapped up in the clinic too.”
“It’s a good plan.” It really was. He’d made some tentative conversational forays about the clinic since his visit on Monday, letting Josh and Benji know they didn’t have to avoid the subject they were clearly most passionate about, if even he was extra sensitive about the idea that he might have to be making non-football decisions soon. Days of talking with them about their business plans had made him realize how detailed and well-researched those plans actually were.
He’d had some ideas of his own about details they could add to their plan—marketing strategies, some financial planning tweaks—but it felt like edging too close to that precipice again to talk about them. The cliff of admitting there was a chance—a tiny, infinitesimal chance he’d worked hard to squash into nothingness in his dedication to his rehab work—he might not get to play ever again. So he’d kept his ideas private, promising himself he’d email Josh a whole list of suggestions to consider once Deion was solidly lodged with his team again later this summer. He’d feel safe to let his brain play with all kinds of plans for Josh and Benji’s business then.
“And if you wanted to explore, you know, any of . . . that”—the hand gesture that had apparently become Josh’s code for Deion’s bisexuality/dude-banging prospects—“this would be a safe place. But I want to let you know that that particular possibility? Is not why I’m doing this. If you decide to move down here and none of . . . that . . . ever happens? No drama.”
Deion nodded, staring at the TV where a pink-faced, older white man was trying to right a leaning tower of something that looked like éclairs. Shoulda used stronger flour in the batter, my dude. Never gonna hold. But he was still listening.
“I’m not ever going to grill you about it or push you or even bring it up again unless you tell me you w
ant to talk. This is a judgment-free zone, dude.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Josh heaved a giant sigh and turned back to the TV. “You’re welcome. Now let’s watch them bake the shit outta these pastries.”
* * *
Deion ended the call he’d been on for the past half hour and looked over at where Carlos sat hunched over his laptop, researching something technical about constructing moving stage parts that Deion had only barely understood when he’d explained it the first time around. Apparently, Carlos had landed a new gig, with more responsibility than he’d had before, and while he swore he wanted to celebrate the promotion with some banging sex, he’d mostly been absorbed in work. Deion had come over after finishing breakfast with Josh, finding Carlos wrapped up in some serious brainstorming for his new theater production.
He cleared his throat and Carlos looked up at him. “Looks like I’m getting cut this week or next.”
Carlos winced, closing the laptop and turning to face him. “Ouch. I’m sorry, man. That sucks. I know how bad you wanted to play again.”
“Good news is, there’s a rumor the coach in Baltimore might be thinking of picking me up.”
“Whoa. Really? That’s . . . great.”
“Yeah, it is.” It was. His heart had leapt at the news. One more chance to play football before he had to give it all up. One more chance to do the thing he did better than anyone. To stay in the rarefied air of a world of elite athletes he’d worked his whole life to thrive in.
He’d kill for that chance.
So why did his hope feel stained with regret?
Carlos’s happiness seemed forced too. “Seriously, I’m happy for you.”
The entire afternoon, though, stretching into the evening hours, their every conversation or touch felt false. As if they were both faking their way through a day of visiting an open-air farmer’s market, cooking dinner together at Carlos’s apartment—which was supposed to be fun because neither of them knew what they were doing, but was tense and frustrating instead—and watching the first two episode of The Walking Dead, sitting less close to each other on Carlos’s couch than they usually did.
Josh and Benji were working evening hours at the clinic that night, plus attending a neighborhood business owner’s meeting after that, so when Carlos drove him home, Deion invited him up, honestly not sure if Carlos would say yes.
He did, following Deion silently up the stairs and in the door, pushing Deion against the wall as soon as they were inside and devouring his mouth with kisses that bruised. They stumbled to the guest bedroom, leaving a trail of shed clothes behind them and fell onto the bed, hands and mouths everywhere as they wrestled back and forth until they ended up on their sides. Facing each other. Legs entangled. Hands gripping necks as they locked gazes and rubbed their cocks against each other until their bellies were slippery and then sticky as they gasped and came, silent the entire time.
Afterward, Carlos wouldn’t look at him.
“What’s going on?” Deion finally asked, when the tension had gone from awkward to unbearable.
After another stretch of silence, Carlos finally rolled onto his back and answered. “It’s just hard, because I want to be happy for you. I want to mean it when I say I hope you get signed by that team. But it’s hard, because that means this”—Carlos circled his hand above their naked, sweaty bodies—“is ending.”
Deion ignored the pang in his chest at the idea. They’d always known there was a timer on their whole experiment. And besides, that was all it had ever really been.
Right?
“Yeah, but we said from the beginning this was just an experiment, right? This whole thing wasn’t really . . . real.” He waited for Carlos to say something. Silence stretched like a thread so taut it vibrated. “Was it?”
“Not real?” And yup, that was Carlos being officially super pissed off, narrowed eyes and bitter frown and all. “Do you think I’m lying here thinking about sleeping with someone else? With a woman?”
Deion reared back. “Fuck, no. I was operating under the assumption that while we were doing this, neither of us was thinking about hooking up with anyone else.”
That seemed to settle things down enough for Carlos to lose some of the angry gleam in his eyes. “You’re not wrong.”
He shrugged. “If you’re with me, you’re with me. I don’t worry about you wanting to be with someone else, of whatever gender.”
“But you’re going to date women when you go back home.” Carlos’s voice was hard, like a hit from a defensive lineman when he wasn’t braced for it.
“I don’t know,” he said, taken aback again and caught off guard enough to tell the truth. “I haven’t thought about anything except us.”
“Hey, you do what you want.”
“Are you thinking you’re going to date men too after this?” The idea of Carlos dating anyone was making him tense, the muscles in his neck tightening until his jaw locked.
“I don’t know. Probably not. You’re the one whose family isn’t going to freak out if you show up with a guy to family Christmas. My choices aren’t so simple.”
Wow. That was unfair. The accusation of having it easy if he decided to come out to everyone in his life as bi made Deion want to hit back. And Carlos had already given him the verbal bat that first night on the balcony. “You said you thought your family probably already assumed you were secretly gay.”
“Thinking they’ve guessed is one thing. Bringing home a boyfriend is another,” Carlos snapped, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve got no guarantee that wouldn’t be the last time I see half my family. I mean, not my parents. I’m not actually worried about them. But I got a lot of older relatives who are way more conservative, man, and they might cut me out entirely.”
“You really think that?”
Carlos rolled over, taking the sheet with him as he punched up a pillow and curled up facing away from Deion, clearly putting an end to the conversation. “Don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. Just saying, you can decide to do whatever. Your family’s cool. Worst you’ve got to handle is a lot of gossip and some awkward teasing. Some of us don’t have that kind of freedom.”
“You talk like family is all that matters. I play for the NFL,” Deion retorted, lips tight and teeth clenching. “Remind me how well dudes fucking other dudes have done in that scenario so far?”
He could see the tightness fusing Carlos’s spine to a steel rod and guessed they were about three seconds from Carlos saying something unforgivable about how Deion was deluding himself about his future and his sexuality.
Harsh words Deion wasn’t sure they could come back from.
“Please don’t say it.” Tiredness hung from his words. In another life, this might be an argument they picked at night after night, slowly working their way to some kind of understanding.
In this life, though, they didn’t have the luxury of time.
They fell asleep like that, angry, silent, and unused to dealing with this tangle of emotions that was snarling up their simple arrangement, making it messier than Deion had ever anticipated.
* * *
Carlos was gone when he woke up. Deion waited, but when he hadn’t heard anything from him by midafternoon, he shot Carlos a text.
Deion: How’s your day?
Hours passed. Hours during which he met Josh at the gym the clinic had an arrangement with and worked out at a low-key level, getting a tour afterward from Josh of the entire facility. Walking sales pitch, that dude was. Hours during which he ran out for takeout and brought it back to the clinic to share with the boys, because they’d gotten an unexpected rush of walk-in clients that day and couldn’t head out for dinner like they’d planned.
Which was fine. Deion managed to check another restaurant off his wish list and takeout from Casa Cuba was almost as amazing as dine-in. Plus, the whole point was to hang out with his friends, even if that meant hanging out in a vacant treatment room, eating tangy ropa vieja and yuca fries off an exam/massage tabl
e. Benji had muttered about lingering food smells, but Josh had pretended not to hear his complaints, the same way Deion was pretending not to obsess over the lack of text message notifications on his phone all evening.
Hours and hours and hours.
It was almost midnight when his phone finally beeped, and Deion was tempted to ignore it. Being ghosted after an argument didn’t sit right. Not that it should even be called ghosting when they had no commitment whatsoever to each other, damn it. It was simply . . . not calling. Or texting. Or whatever. And he was a fucking grown-up.
He scooped up his phone and checked his messages.
Carlos: Sorry. Just realized how fucking late it is. Got caught up at work. This is going to be a crunch time.
Which meant . . . ? Brusque, but not unlike their regular texts. Started with an apology, at least.
He decided to take Carlos’s text at face value, mostly because he was starting to feel like a middle schooler, analyzing the nuance behind every word in a message.
Enough of that.
Deion: No worries. We hadn’t made plans. Just wanted to see what you’re up to.
He waited what felt like a really, really long time for a response.
Carlos: I’ve got to put in long hours tomorrow. I don’t know if anyone mentioned my tendency to vanish during my busy times? I suck. I know.
Deion: It’s okay. Let me know when—he deleted the word, because clearly he couldn’t assume anything right now—if you’re free at some point. I’d like to spend some more time with you before I leave.
Instead of another text, his phone rang.
“Hey.”
“I’ve been avoiding you.”
HeartOn Page 13
