False Start (Eastshore Tigers Book 2)

by Alison Hendricks

  Finally, I pose the thought I most dread.

  “I’m just as bad as Dad.”

  When it comes out of my mouth, it isn’t even a question. There’s no use denying it. Dad and I may have different intentions, but it turns out we’re way more alike than I want to admit.

  I always yearned for that growing up. To be more like my brothers. To have his respect.

  But not like this.

  “You’re not. You’re nothing like Dad, Mitch. Trust me.”

  “I did the exact same thing he would’ve done in this situation. You know it.”

  There’s a long stretch of silence before she answers. “Maybe. But here’s the thing: Actions don’t exist in a vacuum. You’re looking at the actions you took now and you’re realizing you were wrong. You want to make amends for it. That’s the difference between you and Dad, Mitch, and it’s a huge difference.”

  I press my lips together, reaching up to rub three fingers into my forehead. Maybe she’s right, but it’s hard to drag myself away from this feeling that I may have more of my father in me than I want.

  “Mitch,” she says, her tone urgent. “Quit thinking about this. You’re going to apologize to this guy, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, turning onto my side. I look at the open doorway as if Dante’s just going to suddenly walk through it to present me with the opportunity.

  “Do that, listen to what he says, and learn from it. You’re doing the right thing here.”

  After doing the wrong thing to get to this point. I sigh, then slowly nod. “Okay.”

  We don’t stay on the phone much longer. My mind wanders the whole time. She doesn’t give me shit about it—no more than I’m due, anyway. She just closes out the conversation and tells me to call or text her to let her know what happens after I talk to Dante.

  Lydia is the first to hang up. I leave the phone on the bed near me, and eventually its built-in sleep mode takes care of my lack of activity. I desperately wish I could join it, but instead I lie awake, wondering how I’m ever going to fix what’s broken between Dante and I.

  18

  Mitch

  It doesn’t take me long to work up the nerve.

  Mostly, it requires no effort on my part. It’s just a matter of showing up to practice and continuing to feel that clawing tension; the suffocating presence that exists between us. It eats away at me slowly, consuming bits and pieces over time until I start to worry there won’t be anything left but guilt.

  It’s a change from the resentment I felt yesterday, at least.

  When we’re done with our second practice of the day, I seek him out. Dante always stays in the locker room pretty late, but today he’s gone before I even realize it. He must have slipped out while I was on the shower. And as self-centered as it is to think that I’m the cause, it’s hard not to admit that’s a possibility.

  I have no idea where he’d go, except maybe the gym. I can’t ask one of our teammates where his dorm is—that’s just inviting extra trouble neither of us needs right now—so I hit the gym first, and when he’s not there, I just start wandering around campus.

  It takes me well into the evening before I find his dorm room. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. His roommates are probably here, and he probably doesn’t want to see me at all, let alone on his doorstep.

  Despite the fact that the front door leads to a common room—if the style of these dorms is consistent across the board—I knock and pray he’s home.

  It takes a few minutes for anything to happen. I hear footsteps, and a familiar voice muffled by the door that stands between us. The lock slides out of place and the door opens, revealing Dante on the other side. My breath catches in my throat, like I’m a teenager confronting my crush.

  Maybe I am.

  “What do you want?” It’s barely a question. His tone is gruff, raking over me.

  “I want to talk.”

  “Pretty sure we already did that,” he says, folding his arms over his chest.

  And God help me for feeling a shiver of arousal as I see his muscles flex, his sleeveless shirt revealing the entirety of his toned arms.

  “I mean…” Shit, I’m already getting it wrong. “I want to say one thing. And then I’m going to shut up.”

  He gives me a quizzical look, but doesn’t budge. Lydia didn’t give me advice on what to do if Dante didn’t even want to talk, but I’m fairly sure I deserve this.

  I scramble anyway, metaphorically throwing myself at his feet.

  I don’t know why this fucked-up dance exists between us. One of us doing something wrong, the other apologizing. But it’s my turn, and I fumble through the steps.

  “I’m sorry. For paying off that landlord without consulting you. For getting involved in something that was none of my business. And for… not listening to you. Not hearing you when you said it was a shitty thing to do.” I draw in a breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m most sorry for that last one.”

  Dante scrutinizes me, those dark eyes seeming to peer into my soul. It’s like he’s checking to make sure I’m earnest in my apology, and I don’t blame him.

  I try my best to stand straight and tall while he examines me. I shift my weight once, but keep my eyes on his the whole time. After a long moment he steps aside, jerking his head to invite me in.

  The common room Dante shares with what looks to be two other guys is well lived-in. The couch is old, with permanent impressions from those who’ve sat on it. There are beanbag chairs that seem to have lost some of their filling; I can see a hole in one of them from here.

  “Sit wherever you want. The other guys won’t be back for a couple hours.”

  I take a seat on the couch, knowing my legs are just going to make the deflated beanbag chair look like a massacre. My awareness of Dante increases tenfold as he sits on the couch with me, even if he’s on the other side.

  “I don’t wanna keep doing this,” he says after a few moments. “It feels like ever since I met you, it’s been either you or me apologizing all the time.”

  The corner of my mouth lifts. So he’s noticed it, too.

  “Yeah. I’m not exactly fond of it, myself.”

  But I don’t really know how to stop it. Maybe it’s like my sister said. Maybe we both need to talk less and just listen. When Dante starts to speak again, I try to do my part.

  “For the record, I know you didn’t mean to rub it in or anything like that. Just… I always have people saying the same shit to me and my mom, all the time. Telling me I’m not going to make it on my own, that I should just give up and accept that I’m always gonna be on this lower rung. Then I’ve got people telling me I need to work even harder, and anything less is me just being lazy, even though the deck’s stacked against me from the start.”

  He leans back on the couch, draping his arm over the back of it. From here, I can see him in profile. The harsh lights shouldn’t do anyone any favors, but they let me study every detail of his expression. The way his jaw is set. The way his lips are pressed together. The uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Most of them never come out and say it. It’s just the assholes who do, and I end up cutting them out of my life real quick,” he says with just the smallest quirk of his lips. “But they do shit that says it for them. And it’s not just people I know. It feels like every time I turn on the TV or play a game, it’s the same shit.”

  I can’t relate. Sure, I’ve had my own struggles. The world puts me into neat categories, too, as a gay man. As the son of an enterprising businessman. As an athlete. But I’ve never had to deal with the things Dante’s dealt with, and as I realize that, it becomes easier to just keep my mouth shut.

  It seems to make a difference. Dante was tense when I first entered, but gradually he relaxes.

  “I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I think this’ll give Mom a chance to get out from under that asshole. She was planning on downsizing anyway, now that I don’t live there full-time. Now she has a few months to breathe whil
e she and I figure it out. Fuck if I let him take her money later, though.”

  “Wait, he wants her to pay, too? He can’t do that shit. It’s already paid for.”

  “He let her think he was just going easy on her, and she insisted on paying him back.”

  “That’s bullshit. I…”

  His brow rises slowly, cautiously. Jesus, Mitch. Don’t fuck it up already.

  “…I will let you deal with it.”

  He nods, seeming satisfied. “And I’ll pay you back for those three months. I don’t exactly know how yet, but I’m going to.”

  I stop myself from telling him it isn’t necessary.

  “And I swear to God, Thor, if you ever pull that shit again…”

  There’s a threat and a plea in his voice, but I can’t help but smile. I’m not Erickson any longer.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  And I mean it. Not in the sense that I won’t intentionally do it again, but that I really think I’ve learned my fucking lesson finally. It feels like a weight being lifted from my chest, and I let out a breath of relief. With any luck, we can be friends instead of rivals. Friends who’ve had different experiences in life, sure. But friends just the same.

  But then Dante says something that makes my heart thunder in my chest.

  “I guess if we’re clearing the air, we should probably talk about what happened the other day.”

  He says it casually, though I can see from here he’s deliberately avoiding looking at me. There’s nothing casual about what happened between us, and all of the apprehensions I took into the locker room Monday morning come roaring back full-force.

  “It’s cool,” I say reflexively. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  I realize almost immediately that I’m talking instead of listening. I wince, but Dante thankfully overlooks my quick jump to the defensive.

  “I don’t know what it means, man.” He rubs his jaw, and I imagine the feeling of his beard under my fingers. “My best friend was straight when I met him. I mean, I guess he was always bi, but he just didn’t realize it.”

  It takes me a moment to think of who he’s talking about. Jason Hawkins. Star quarterback of the Tigers who graduated just last year. His powerful arm was a big part of the reason the Tigers made it as far as they did.

  “I think sexuality’s probably more complicated than most people think. And some people just don’t really figure it out until it hits them over the head.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he says nervously. He still won’t look at me. “I mean, I’m not sitting here having some sort of existential crisis about it. I just wish I knew for sure.”

  He finally looks at me, and his eyes pose a question that I desperately want to answer. Yes, what you felt was real. Yes, you’re attracted to men. Yes, you want me.

  But all of those answers come from a selfish and desperate place, and I can’t make that call for him. What I can do, though, is share my own experience.

  “The whole ‘epiphany’ thing never really happened to me. It took me a long time to feel certain.”

  He seems to relax a little at that, leaning more toward me. I tell myself it’s just so he can settle in for my story of teenage angst, but a part of me thrills at the idea of what could be.

  “So how’d you figure it out?”

  “It wasn’t until a few years ago that I even started thinking about it, really. My circle of friends… wasn’t all that large.” That’s an understatement. “I didn’t know anybody who was gay growing up.”

  Dante raises a brow at that. “There had to be somebody you suspected?”

  I smile politely. I don’t really feel like telling him just how lonely it was growing up in boarding school, surrounded by kids who already hated me because of my family name. It sounds like the biggest first world problem to ever exist, honestly.

  And even if it wasn’t, it’s a wound I don’t care to open.

  “Not really. The kids I went to school with were like a pack of wolves. They ganged up on anybody they perceived as weak, so everyone tried to act normal to avoid becoming a target.”

  “That I get,” Dante says.

  “It wasn’t until high school that I started to understand I wasn’t ever going to be part of that ‘norm.’ Actually, it wasn’t until a kid who was out transferred to our school. I ended up hanging out with him, and the more we talked, the more I started to realize there was a different path than what I’d been taught. I mean, I was raised to believe it was my duty to marry a girl from a good family and start making more Ericksons.”

  Then abandon them to ruthlessly pursue my career, I think bitterly.

  “I started dating in high school, and I didn’t hate it? But it just felt like going out with a friend. Whenever the guys would talk about… ah, well. The shit guys talk about. I was just never interested, beyond the fact that it would give us something in common, I guess.”

  And I would’ve done damn near anything for that, back then.

  “Did you ever try it? Hooking up with a woman?”

  “Twice. The first time I figured I was just bad at it. The second time I realized I was bad at it, but maybe not for the reasons I thought,” I say with a sheepish grin. “And then I started fooling around with this guy named Ian, and that felt more natural. Still wasn’t an instant click, though. It took me years before I realized I was miserable trying to fit the straight mold. And even when I started experimenting with being gay, I didn’t really feel like I fit into the community. There weren’t a lot of gay guys who looked like me.”

  “To be fair, there aren’t a lot of straight guys who look like you, either,” he says with a smirk.

  I smirk back, and some of my tension slides away.

  “I tried for a long time to be something I wasn’t, though. It’s pretty much the thing to do in my family,” I say, trying to shove that mix of bitterness and hopelessness aside. “But I finally told my sister I wasn’t happy, and that I thought I’d figured out why. She told me to stop lying to myself, so… I did.”

  “Sounds like good advice.”

  “Yeah, hers usually is,” I say, not willing to admit that her advice was the only thing that saved me from the complete blunder of fucking up my friendship with Dante.

  “What’d your dad think? Or does he know?”

  “Oh, he knows.” My smile feels tight and fake; it’s the same smile I wear at every public event. “He usually chooses not to acknowledge it, and my mom’s in complete denial. Every time I come home, she tries to fix me up with ‘a nice girl.’”

  Dante winces. “Like that’ll cure you, right?”

  “Definitely. A pretty wife, a few kids, and then I can just hide my shame the way every other gay man should.”

  Those words come from someplace deep inside of me; a place I didn’t even know existed. They’re tinged with bitterness.

  “Sorry, man. That sounds shitty.” He reaches out and claps my shoulder. It’s simple, platonic contact, but my heart speeds because of it. “My family would be behind me no matter what. My grandma started living with a woman once her husband died, and my mom never once pulled that whole ‘friend’ shit. She told me the truth, and it was never a big deal in our house.”

  I can’t help but smile. It’s hard to imagine growing up in a family where my sexuality would just be accepted, no questions asked. Not only that, but in a family where—maybe when my siblings start having kids—they’ll tell them that Uncle Mitch’s “special friend” is actually his husband.

  “It’s good that you’ll have support. If it turns out you aren’t straight, I mean.”

  He scrubs a hand over his short hair, then looks up at the ceiling. “Yeah.” He doesn’t say anything else for a while, and I indulge in watching him while he isn’t watching me. “I called Jason the other day. Asked him how he figured it out. He uh… he suggested I watched some porn.”

  My brows shoot up at that and I stare at him in disbelief, waiting for the punchline to what has to be a joke.
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  But he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me, squirms a little, then goes back to looking at the ceiling.

  “…Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wait again, the anticipation almost painful. Pulling teeth sounds like too simple an analogy to make.

  “And…?”

  His hand moves to the back of his neck. “It didn’t do anything for me at first.” My hopes fall back to earth in a devastating crash. “But…” I hold my breath. “One video did.”

  I forget how to breathe, until my lungs are screaming for me to remember. One video. One video doesn’t mean anything. But someone who’s completely straight wouldn’t get off on gay porn of any kind, right?

  “What did you like about it?”

  My tongue feels oppressively thick in my mouth as I force the words out.

  He shrugs a little. “I don’t know.” It looks like he’s… Jesus Christ. Embarrassed? Is he blushing? “It felt like the guys could be a little rougher with each other. Like they both wanted the same thing.” He finally looks at me, and I can see the blush clearly now. I’m sure my own cheeks mirror it. “I’m an LB. No secret I like getting a little rough.”

  And now my face feels like it’s on fire, and my cock has decided to weigh in on this conversation. I try to shift as casually as I can, but I’m becoming painfully erect at the thought of Dante pounding into me with that same passion I experienced when he kissed me.

  I swallow hard.

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. I don’t always want that, but it’s hot to watch. It… can be hot to experience with the right partner, too.”

  He catches my gaze, and I can feel the heat building between us. If this were like one of the videos he’s referencing, his hand would be on my dick now, and his tongue down my throat. I can’t hide the bulge in my pants anymore, and when I see his gaze flick down, I know I’m caught.

  And then he licks his lips, and I feel actual, physical pain. I have to bite back a groan.