Boyfriend Material

by Jerry Cole

  Elliot’s eyes widened. “You want to talk to me about your feelings?”

  Taylor laughed, rolling his eyes. “Not if you’re going to be like that.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” Elliot said. “I meant like, you rarely ever talk to me. You’re kind of a reserved person.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Taylor said. He suddenly felt bad for shutting Elliot out, when it was so clear that Elliot was just trying to be his friend. “It’s not that I’m trying to be. It’s just that, I don’t know, things are weird for me around here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like,” Taylor replied, trying to think of a way to phrase his thoughts that wouldn’t offend his roommate. “Okay, you’re a cool guy, you’re good-looking, you want to be a pro. You’re probably used to all these people’s adoration and respect, right? But I just want to put my head down and study. I know, I know, that’s really lame, but I’m secretly a nerd.”

  Elliot laughed, throwing his head back. “That’s not really a secret, dude.”

  “Fair enough,” Taylor replied, laughing with him. “The thing is — okay, like, right. Let me think about how to put this. Like you’re popular.”

  “So are you.”

  “Yes,” Taylor replied. “But unlike you, I haven’t always been popular. And it’s just a little hard for me, I guess, to remember that this is my life. And that people like you like me.”

  Elliot shook his head. Taylor noticed that he had stopped smiling, which struck him as strange. In fact, if Taylor didn’t know any better, he would have thought that Elliot looked upset. Which was impossible. There was no way that Elliot was upset just because Taylor didn’t feel like he fit into the team and he had definitely not seemed upset when Taylor had walked into the house.

  “We all love you,” Elliot said, after a little while. “I know there are other guys on the team who are more charismatic or whatever, but you always go out of your way to help everyone and everyone on the team appreciates it.”

  “Thank you, Elliot,” Taylor replied. “That’s really sweet. But that’s also not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  “Well, like, you’ve always been popular and I guess I’ve just had a really hard time believing that guys as popular as you think I’m cool.”

  “Because you were such a loser in school?” Elliot said, wrinkling his nose.

  Taylor laughed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, that, a little bit. I guess.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Elliot replied. “But I hope you’ve realized now we’re not all dicks.”

  “No,” Taylor replied, after he had swallowed the last of his pizza slice. “No, I don’t think any of you are dicks. I think this is like a personal thing. Which I think is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Yeah,” Elliot replied. “Of course. You can talk to me about anything.”

  “So what was weird wasn’t the class, the class was really cool. Salsex is fun,” Taylor said. “It was the instructor.”

  Elliot looked at him, cocking his head. “Were they not very good?”

  “No,” Taylor said. “It wasn’t that. It was me.”

  “It was you?” Elliot repeated, not asking him anything

  “Yeah, that’s what was weird about it,” Taylor said. “Like, I really wanted to talk to him afterward? He’s just so confident. And I think I ended up making a fool of myself.”

  “Wait, back up here for a second,” Elliot said. “You really wanted to talk to him? Why?”

  “Well, that’s what was weird,” Taylor replied. “I can’t really figure it out.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I asked him what he thought about doing Salsex with my arm which was so stupid. Like, how is he going to know? He’s not a physical therapist or anything of the sort. Like he said, he’s only certified to dance around a bit in front of people.”

  “Ouch,” Elliot said. “Is that what he told you?”

  “Not exactly, but yeah, pretty much,” Taylor replied.

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think,” Elliot said, quietly. “He probably gets way more stupid questions than you realize.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said, nodding. “And normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, right? Like — it just wouldn’t be. I don’t give a fuck if I look like an idiot in front of a random person or even an instructor. Hell, even Coach Moran. I don’t care about how I look in front of him. So why am I suddenly feeling so self-conscious in front of a Salsex instructor?”

  Elliot cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess that is a little weird.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “I know. That’s why I am like, trying to think about it, and I’m coming up short. I think it may be that I’m jealous.”

  “Jealous of what?”

  “Jealous of him, I guess,” Taylor said. “Jealous of how he could move and jealous of how much he was owning it, I suppose? I don’t know. It kind of makes sense, but then it doesn’t feel like it makes sense, either. As if that was part of it but it wasn’t fully it.”

  Elliot nodded, then looked at the TV. He didn’t look back at Taylor, which Taylor found a little strange, since Elliot usually had no problem making eye contact. “That sounds hard.”

  “It’s not hard,” Taylor said, shrugging. “It’s just weird. What do you think that was about?”

  Taylor noticed that Elliot almost turned to look at him for a second, but then seemed to change his mind and kept looking at the TV. “Maybe this is about all that mobility you lost. I mean, the best friends in the world can’t make up for not having enough independence to do everything you need to do, right?”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “That makes sense.”

  “And you said he felt really confident in his body and stuff,” Elliot said. “Maybe there was something about that. Like maybe you felt jealous of that because your relationship with your body has been particularly tricky lately, especially as you can’t do as many things as you used to do. And it just reminded you that you’re not there yet.”

  Taylor nodded, considering what Elliot was saying. It sounded almost right, but again, it sounded just short of the mark. He didn’t want to tell Elliot that, though, especially not after he had opened up to Elliot and he had been so reassuring that everyone liked him. He didn’t want Elliot to feel like he was leaning too much on him. He had done what he needed to do and he didn’t want to do more than that. Elliot had been less helpful than he had expected, but he wasn’t sure what he did expect.

  On the other hand, it was probably for the best. Elliot hadn’t been wrong. Taylor’s first instinct had been right, like it usually was, and he needed to stop over-analyzing something. If he thought it was nothing and Elliot thought it was nothing, then it was probably nothing. Taylor was almost certain of it.

  Chapter Five

  Jason was eating on the sofa and half-watching a TV show on Monday. It wasn’t late, but it was almost time to go to bed. He was checking his mounted wall clock when he heard someone knock at the door. It was late and his friends usually announced when they were coming over, so it was a surprise and one that was unlikely to be welcome. He really needed to move further from the university, but his rent hadn’t gone up in years and the occasional drunk student stumbling upon his home wasn’t really that bad, in terms of how cheap his rent was. He had thought about buying a house somewhere, but he wanted to wait until he had settled down more. With the way things were going, though, Jason was probably never going to make out of the city.

  Not that he wanted to. He had become quite comfortable, even though the city was a transitory place for almost everyone that lived there. But that couldn’t be helped. If he was going to live the rest of his life out in a student town, there was nothing that he could do about the fact that most of his friends would end up moving away.

  The knocking seemed to get more insistent. Jason stood up, noticing his sore his legs were and went to the door. He opened it to
see Blaine standing in front of him, looking absolutely terrible. His hair was matted, there were dark circles under his eyes and he had lost a lot of weight. But the weirdest part about it all was that he was there, in front of Jason, as if nothing had changed.

  “Sorry,” he said, when he saw Jason’s eyes. “I thought — I didn’t know where else to go.”

  Jason nodded, still not doing anything. Part of him wanted to move and let Blaine through, protect him from whatever was happening to him. But there was a big part of Jason that only remembered the hurt he had felt when he was in a relationship with Blaine and, more than he liked to admit, he felt like Blaine deserved whatever had happened to him.

  Jason and Blaine looked at each other for a while before Blaine looked down. When he spoke, it was in a small, barely audible voice. “Do you mind if I come in?”

  He did mind. He minded a lot, but it wasn’t as if he could say that, especially not with the state that Blaine was in. Jason shook his head and got out of the way to let him through. Blaine didn’t even look back at him once. He just walked in, went right to the sectional in Jason’s living room, where he had been eating, and plopped himself down.

  Jason watched him. It took him a long time to close the door behind him and to walk through the hallway and to his ex-boyfriend, who had randomly appeared during the night. He had been right; he hadn’t enjoyed that surprise at all.

  He was also worried. Whatever was going with Blaine had to be a huge deal. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even be there in the first place. Blaine was already there and Jason’s bitterness could only take him so far, so he sat down on the sofa too, but not quite next to him.

  In fact, pretty far away. As far away as possible all while trying to make it seem that being around Blaine didn’t freak him out.

  “Thank you,” Blaine said to Jason, as soon as he had sat down.

  Jason slowly nodded. “I was just eating. Do you need some food?”

  “I don’t need —”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Jason replied, though he had meant it like that. “I just wondered if you had eaten yet.”

  “I guess,” Blaine replied, shrugging. “I don’t want to impose, you know, any more than I already have.”

  “It’s okay,” Jason replied. “You’re already here and I made far too much for myself.”

  That was a technically a lie, since he had made just enough for dinner and lunch the next day, but Blaine didn’t need to know that. Jason could always make himself some different food, if he wanted it, or he could go out and get some when he was at work. And Blaine — well, he didn’t know anything about Blaine, but he could tell that he wasn’t doing well.

  Blaine smiled weakly. It made his eyes brighten and it made Jason want to throw up.

  He wished he had the strength to tell him that he needed to leave, that he couldn’t come back. That he couldn’t just randomly appear as if nothing had happened between them. But he couldn’t turn him away, either, especially not when he was doing so poorly.

  “Sure,” Blaine said. “If that’s okay, then. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not,” Jason replied. He walked to the kitchen and served Blaine the rest of the stir-fry he had made in one of the only bowls he had clean. He sighed when he was in the kitchen, reminding himself to take deep breaths. Whatever was going on, he still had a life left to lead, and he needed to be at work in the morning. And he had sacrificed plenty of his life to Blaine’s personal crises. He didn’t need to sacrifice any more. Or at least, he didn’t feel like he should.

  He was going to tell him that.

  That would have to be what he did. He would let him stay the night, crash on his couch, eat his food. Then he would have to be on his way, inflicting the pain he did to other people. But not to him. When Blaine had walked out, Jason had promised to himself that he would never let him back into his life. And until a few minutes ago, he had stayed true to that promise.

  But then, Blaine had looked pitiful.

  Blaine had never looked like that before. He didn’t just look unwell, he looked scared. Jason sighed again and took the bowl out to Blaine.

  “So,” he said, setting the food on the coffee table, in front of him. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Blaine looked at him, his eyes all huge and watery. “Not really.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. “Well, I don’t mind feeding you right now or whatever, but you can’t stay here.”

  Blaine nodded slowly. “I know. I didn’t expect to — I didn’t really expect to come here in the first place. Things are just really hard for me right now.”

  “Is it Gabriel?” Jason said, biting his tongue. He wasn’t really supposed to know the name of the guy that Blaine had started to go out with after they had broken up, but he couldn’t help himself. There was no way that he could have avoided knowing about Blaine on social media after the break-up.

  “Gabriel?” Blaine looked genuinely confused for a second, then shook his head, a weary smile on his face. “No. God, no. That happened years ago. No, it’s not about a guy. My life has just kind of taken a nose dive and I —”

  Jason knew that it was probably not a good thing that he felt slightly happy at the words coming out of Blaine’s mouth, but he couldn’t help but feel that Blaine kind of deserved it.

  “I know you think I deserve it,” Blaine said, as if he could read his mind. “And that’s okay. I was a total dick to you. I didn’t just come here to get you to feel sorry for me. I came here to make amends.”

  “You came here to make amends,” Jason repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Are you doing like a 12-step program or something?”

  Blaine looked up and nodded. “Or something. It’s kind of similar, except my issue isn’t alcohol, I guess.”

  “So what is —”

  “There’s a lot of them,” Blaine said. “I’ve been getting some intensive therapy after I had kind of a — a breakdown, I guess. And it made me look at the way I treated people and I felt so ashamed of myself.”

  Jason looked at him, cocking his head, saying nothing. He had stopped being able to get any satisfaction from Blaine’s confession, becoming increasingly worried instead. Mostly because he wasn’t sure what he was going to hear and he wasn’t sure if what he was going to hear was going to be enough to win him over. Not that he should assume that was what Blaine was trying to do, but it certainly felt that way. There was no way for Jason to say any of these things to Blaine, so he just kept cocking his head and saying nothing.

  Blaine swallowed, looking away from him. Jason didn’t know what he was expecting, but it was probably something that Jason wasn’t going to be able to give him. If Blaine was looking for absolution, Jason was definitely, one hundred percent, uninterested in providing him with that.

  “You’re looking good,” Blaine said.

  Jason wasn’t sure that he had heard him right, but when he didn’t say anything, he supposed that he had. “Thank you,” he said, after a while. He couldn’t return the compliment, so they just sat there in silence until Blaine decided to continue his story.

  “Anyway,” Blaine said, between bites. “I was living with this guy, Alan, and he was really nice or whatever. That was a few — he was my first serious relationship after Gabriel. Things were good, and then things were, I don’t know, really great. Like everything sparkled. Everything looked beautiful and amazing, even more than before. Everyone was beautiful.”

  “That… doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” Jason replied. “And it also sounds pretty in line with how you normally think.”

  Jason hadn’t meant to say that, just think it. He definitely didn’t want them to fight. He didn’t even want Blaine to be there in the first place. He was just waiting for the perfect time to kick him out and if he had to listen to him fill him in about the rest of his life, he guessed that was okay. Even if it wasn’t totally okay, at least it wasn’t intolerable. He couldn’t hold back what he thought, though, even though he had b
elieved that he could.

  Blaine exhaled heavily through his nose, not looking at him. “Yeah, I know. And that turned out to be a problem.”

  “Did it?”

  “You don’t have to say I told you so,” Blaine said. “Though you have every right to. I, um, started having delusions, I guess. And then one day Alan told me I had to seek help or he would move out.”

  “And that’s when you went on your quest to make amends?”

  “Not even close,” Blaine replied, laughing humorlessly. “That’s when I told Alan he was being crazy and he moved out. He took everything that was his, and I’ve —”

  “Never really owned anything,” Jason said. “I’m well aware.”

  “So, I was sleeping on the floor and trying to slowly gather belongings from secondhand stores and from men who felt sorry for me.”

  Jason raised his eyebrows. He still felt a little gleeful, because that was what Blaine had always deserved. But he also felt a little bad, because anyone, even someone like Blaine, wasn’t supposed to go through that kind of shit.

  “As you can probably guess, that didn’t go as well as you would have thought it could,” Blaine continued. “I don’t know what happened, but I was suddenly sure these men wanted something from me. Other than what you’re thinking about. And then, I like — there was this one night I went out for a walk and I can’t remember it. I can’t, no matter how much I try. I wasn’t on drugs, I wasn’t, like, doing anything particularly crazy that night. And then I got taken to the hospital, first for a seventy-two-hour hold, then I signed myself in. It was good. It was great, actually. It really helped and I got some real perspective.”

  “That’s good,” Jason said. He wasn’t sure what else he could say. He wasn’t even sure if he was expected to say anything else in the first place.

  “Well, yes,” Blaine replied. “Getting the treatment was good, but I was always a little clueless and didn’t realize that it would cost me my job when I got out. When I was in there, I wasn’t exercising as much. And part of it was my routine, for sure, but part of it was just that my motivation dropped considerably. But not just to exercise. To do anything. Like my sex drive —”