by Nix Knox
“Why?” Ronan poured the tomato sauce into a pan and started adding spices as it cooked. “Is he interested in you?”
“Hardly. He’s one of those superhetero guys whose always high-fiving everyone and thinks the only good fag is a dead fag.”
“Charming.” Ronan could also bet the guy was secretly into a little man-on-man action, which was why he was so vocally against homosexuality. It amazed him how many people who openly hated something were secretly fascinated by it.
“Indeed he is.” Noah shook his head. “He’s just a bully and a jerk.”
“So he’s been bothering you?”
“We have assigned parking spaces in front of the building. There’s a huge back part for visitors or if someone has an extra car. But it’s one assigned spot per apartment.”
Ronan nodded as he added sugar to the sauce.
“Anyway, Keith’s spot is over from mine by five spaces, but he insists on parking in mine.”
“Why?”
“Because he says it’s easier when he’s unloading his car. He says the sidewalk that leads up to the building is right by that spot, so it’s just easier.” Noah made a face. “I walked the distance from his spot. It’s thirteen steps. Thirteen freaking steps. And mind you, this is a guy who’s all about sports and staying in shape and runs around in the winter in shorts to show off his great body, but he won’t walk an extra thirteen steps!”
“Sounds like he’s just a bully.”
“Thank you! That’s what I think, too. There’s no reason for him to park in my spot other than to be a jerk and start trouble. I don’t want any trouble. I’ve asked him nicely not to park there or to move his car when he’s done.”
“Let me guess, he forgets?”
“Yes. He forgets. Or his buddy was going to do it. Or I just need to chill.” Noah sighed. “I honestly hate that expression since I’ve heard him direct it at me at least a hundred times.”
“Why don’t you just park in his spot?”
“Because he’ll have my car towed. I know he will. He’s that kind of a—a—a dick.” Noah lifted his head defiantly. “He’s a goddamn dick is what he is.”
Ronan got the district impression Noah didn’t swear. Ever. For him to call another person a dick was a struggle that he overcame only because Keith had pushed Noah beyond what he could endure.
“After being nice about the whole thing, I finally went to the apartment manager. He didn’t seem to care and didn’t offer to do anything. I said I was willing to switch spots with Keith, but we can’t do that, because the spots are assigned based on the apartment number. Seriously, the manager acted like there would be a disturbance in the time continuum if he switched them. I then asked the manager to tell all that to Keith.” Noah shook his head and rolled his eyes again. “I was woken up at two in the morning to eggs being thrown at my front door. Of course, I didn’t know they were eggs until I opened the door and got hit in the face.”
“How old is Keith?” From the way he was acting, Ronan was thinking he was twelve.
“He’s twenty-eight. I know because he had a huge, drunken party to celebrate.”
“That’s old enough to know better.”
“It is. It really is. When I sputtered out a question, he went into his apartment and slammed the door. I cleaned everything up—”
“From the carpet?”
“What? No. The hallway is outside. It’s like a split between the two halves of the building.”
“Oh.” That made it a little easier for Ronan to visualize. “You didn’t call the police?”
“For what? A prank?”
“It’s an assault, Noah. He hit you in the face with an egg.” Ronan went over and examined Noah’s face. There wasn’t a cut, but there was a slight bruise.
“The police have better things to do.” Noah looked away. “I was going to let it go, but then I went down to the parking lot to go to work this morning and found those marks on my car.” Noah pointed in the direction of the garage. “Not only had he scratched up the paint, but he’d let the air out of all the tires. They weren’t flat, which apparently saved the wheels—rims—whatever they are from being damaged, but I had to have a garage come out and pump them all back up. I was three hours late.”
“So you did call the police?”
“I did.” Noah again made that defiant head bob. “I tried everything I could to make the situation better, but nothing I did worked.”
“Because Keith didn’t want to work it out.” Ronan rolled the dough out into a circle and let it rise while he continued to tweak the sauce. “Guys like that like to fight.”
“Is that what it is?”
“If he’s anything like some of the dicks I went to college with, then, yeah. That’s probably what it is.”
“Why? I just don’t understand why anyone would want to have all that unnecessary stress in his life.”
“Because he has no life.” Ronan shrugged. “He’s probably just another drama junky who can’t stand not having something going on.”
“That is so sad.” Noah sighed. “But why me? Out of all the people living there, why did he pick me?”
“Because you’re nice.” Ronan turned the oven on to preheat. “You’re a nice guy, Noah. You’re quiet, clean, and you keep to yourself.”
“How do you know?” Noah asked archly. “Maybe I throw parties every weekend and get so drunk I pee off the balcony.”
“I have a feeling that would be Keith and not you.”
“You’d be right about that. I’ve never been drunk. Alcohol makes me feel sick almost as soon as I drink it.”
“But you’re okay with heroin?” Ronan popped the joke off to get Noah to relax a bit.
“Yeah.” Noah laughed. “I can take a shot of that but not a shot of whisky.”
“Me, too. Opioids are the thing this year.” After a short laugh, Noah’s scowl returned.
“I just—what does he get out of being such a jerk? What’s the benefit?”
“It gives him something to do.” Ronan shrugged. “The guy in my dorm would start out playing pranks on someone, usually the quietest guy on the floor. They were harmless—at first. But the more the nice guy let them go without reprisal, the more the dick would hassle him. The pranks would get meaner until the nice guy either moved or gave him back some of his own medicine.”
“Is that what you think I should do with Keith?” Noah seemed appalled at the very idea.
“God, no! Don’t retaliate. If you do, Keith’s reaction will be righteous fury. He’ll think you’re really asking for it and go after you with no holds barred.”
“That’s what the guy in your dorm did?”
“When one of the nice guys gave him back the exact same prank—you know the one where you put shaving cream in a sleeping guy’s hand, then tickle his nose?”
“What’s the point of that?”
“The sleeping guy scratches his nose and gets a face full of suds.”
“Oh. Childish.”
“Yeah. But it’s harmless and less messy than putting his hand in warm water while he’s sleeping.”
Noah’s raised his eyebrows rather than asking a question.
“It’s supposed to make you urinate, but I don’t know if it actually does. Anyway, one of the nice guys—sorry, I forget his name—did that back to the dick after the dick had done it to him. The dick didn’t think it was funny at all. In retaliation, the dick called up the nice guy’s parents and said the nice guy had died in an accident.”
“That’s horrible!”
“I know.” Even back then, when Ronan had been in that transition from teen years to adulthood, he’d recognized a huge difference in his maturity level compared to his contemporaries. “His folks were frantic to get information and—it was a mess.” Ronan had tried to put an end to the situation, but there wasn’t a lot he could do. “Even the resident advisor couldn’t get the dick to stop being a dick. Your apartment manager might have recognized that with Keith. Or n
ot. Some people just really don’t want to get involved.”
“Well, he’s going to have to now.”
“Why?”
“After the car thing, the police went and talked to Keith, who denied everything but when asked to produce his keys, they were covered in paint shavings that matched the color of my car.”
“Ooh, that must have been difficult to explain.”
“He said someone stole his keys, messed up my car, and then put his keys back in his pocket.”
“Please tell me the police didn’t fall for that.”
“They didn’t. They issued him a ticket or a citation for criminal vandalism. To make a bad situation worse, Keith then swore he was going to kill me.”
Everything inside Ronan turned to water and tried to run out through his toes. Crazy drama junkies were not to be taken lightly. The dick from Ronan’s dorm was eventually taken to jail when one of his pranks resulted in the victim breaking his arm and almost dying. As much as he didn’t want to alarm Noah, Ronan wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t say something.
Leaving the sauce for the moment, Ronan went over and crouched down in front of Noah. “I don’t want to be an overly protective boyfriend, but I would take his threat very seriously.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Ronan found it rather sweet that Noah got hung up on that particular word. “I’m your boyfriend. Moving on. This Keith guy isn’t someone you should dismiss. He sounds dangerous.”
“That’s why I had to get out of there.” Noah shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like I didn’t want to see you. I wanted to see you, too, but I also just couldn’t spend another night there wondering when he was going to get out of jail and what he would do when he did.”
“They took him to jail?”
“He was screaming about killing me, and then something happened—I think he shoved the officer—and they found marijuana in his apartment. Or in his pocket. Something. I don’t know. By that point, I was in my apartment with the door bolted.” Noah hung his head. “I just wanted him to stop stealing my parking spot. I should have just parked in the visitor lot.”
“He would have found another way to engage you. Guys like Keith are relentless once they find a target.”
“Is it because…”
“It’s not because you’re gay.” Noah seemed to really believe that people could look at him and know everything about him with one glance.
“How do you know?” Noah hit him with those incisive blue eyes of his.
“How would he know? What do you think? There’s like a gay essence or maybe Keith has gaydar?”
Noah didn’t even crack a smile. “You said that dick in your dorm picked nice guys.”
“So only nice guys are gay?” Ronan returned to the stove. He stirred the sauce so the water would evaporate, thickening it up. “I’ve got news for you. Dicks come in all shapes, sizes, races, and orientations.”
“I guess so.”
“Noah, he picked you because he picked you. He probably saw you and realized you don’t have a lot of people coming over and that way he could bully you without fear of reprisal.” From Ronan’s experience, dicks tended to target the quiet ones who didn’t have a lot of friends. Bullies had a core group of people who would back them up because they were generally bullies, too.
“I only have my family over, but even then not very often. I’ve done things with coworkers, but we always meet up somewhere. It’s not like I don’t have friends. I do.”
“But you don’t have them over a lot.”
“Right.”
“It’s not about how many friends you have. It’s about you being there at the apartment alone. If you had a roommate, chances are he would have left you alone.” Ronan deemed the sauce was ready, so he smeared it on the waiting crust. “It’s about picking a target that he knows he’s stronger than. He’s a dick and a bully. Bullies never pick on someone their own size. Have you noticed that? They always pick on someone smaller.”
“And weaker.” Noah lifted his arm and flexed his muscle. He was wearing a button-down shirt from work, but Ronan could still see his sleek muscle below the blue fabric. “I need to bulk up.”
“You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“But I want to bulk up.”
“Okay. I can help with that.”
“Would you?”
“Sure. I can even spend the night over at your place. That’ll make it clear to Keith to back the fuck off.”
Noah looked like his eyes were going to explode out of his face.
“Or not.”
“It’s not you. It’s just half the people who live in the building know my folks.”
“I understand.”
“But thank you for wanting to help. I appreciate that.”
“If there’s anything I could do, let me know.”
“I will.” Noah watched as Ronan put various veggies on the pizza. “Of course, that brings me back to my folks.”
“And the mission.”
“Yes.” Noah uttered another long sigh. Ronan knew how stressed he was, because he was sighing up a storm. “They want me to drop my entire life to go who knows where to spread the word of a religion that despises me for the way God made me.”
What Noah said actually surprised Ronan.
“What?” Noah asked, obviously picking up on Ronan’s reaction.
“Just—that you realize you came into the world this way.”
“I think I’ve always known, but it’s scary to accept that. It was easier to think something made me this way.”
“Something like what?”
“Maybe a relative put me in a dress as a joke. Or I played with a neighbor’s doll. You know, something totally innocent and happenstance just flipped the gay switch in my brain.” Noah laughed wryly. “If it were that simple, then I imagine there would be a lot more gay people in the world.”
“You know, you have some of the deepest insights of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.” Ronan really wasn’t. “You grasp that it wasn’t anything anyone else did or said. It wasn’t an event. Nothing turned you gay. You have always been the way you are.”
“After struggling with it for…well, all my life, I finally realized I am just the way I’m supposed to be.”
“Popeye.”
“What?” Noah asked with a laugh.
“‘I am what I am,’” Ronan said, trying to mimic the cartoon character’s voice. “That’s Popeye.”
“Ah.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“I didn’t think you were. But that’s it in a nutshell. I am what I am and who I am. I’m sick of feeling bad about myself when there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“There’s not.”
“I have a right to be who I am. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not going around trying to recruit men to join the gay army.”
“We have an army?”
“You know what I mean. There are people in my ward who really believe there’s some kind of gay agenda. I just want to live my life and not be bothered.”
“Here, here.” Ronan left off pointing out the hypocrisy of the church. They feared gays converting their members but didn’t see anything wrong with sending missionaries all over the world to convert people to Mormonism.
“I just wish it was as easy as making a declaration.”
“What stands in the way of that?”
“I couldn’t bear to lose my family and friends.” Noah shook his head. “Can we talk about something else? I’d like to get my mind off all my troubles for a while.”
“I can distract you with sex.”
“Perfect!”
But they didn’t talk about sex. They were quiet for a while. Noah sat at the table turned sideways in his chair while Ronan worked in the kitchen. Noah seemed spellbound by what Ronan was doing.
When he asked, Noah explained, “I
t’s your hands.”
“My hands?”
“You can do an amazing amount of things with your hands. Cooking, caring—”
“Spine melting orgasms,” Ronan interjected. “Oh, wait. That’s you.”
“You, too.” Noah rose. “Can I help?”
“Sure.” Ronan handed him the small plastic tub of cheese. “Slather that baby up.”
“I’ve never had pizza that wasn’t from a restaurant.”
“I think you’ll like this.”
“You made it,” Noah said, sprinkling cheese over the pie. “I’ll love it.”
For a split second, Ronan thought Noah had said he loved him. But he realized Noah was talking about the pizza. “So, what did you end up telling your folks?” Right after he asked, Ronan realized they were trying to talk about something else. “Sorry. I just—tell me about—” he was about to say work but that would lead back to the car. Unable to come up with anything, he stood there mute.
“It’s okay. Really. I guess I’m not talked out about it after all.” Noah shrugged. “I didn’t say much of anything. I didn’t know what to say.”
When he was finished covering the pie with a combination of mozzarella and cheddar cheese, Ronan popped it into the oven, then set the timer.
“I feel like I’m being backed into a corner. It’s slow, but it’s persistent. You know what I mean?” Noah laughed suddenly. “Of course you don’t. A guy like you doesn’t let anyone push him around.”
“Actually, I’ve been there. I think everyone has. Just because my family was unorthodox doesn’t mean they didn’t have expectations.”
“Like what?”
“My mother is a lawyer. One of my father’s is a dentist. They wanted me to become a white-collar professional. My other father was a stay-at-home father who wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Imagine their surprise when I wanted to be an artist who also practices BDSM?” Ronan remembered the uncomfortable shock when his parents found out about his predilection. “They were convinced they’d done something wrong because I was into leather and control.”
“I’m sorry. I guess that came off rather insensitive of me. Sometimes I think I’m the only one carrying around a burden.”
