Boyfriend Material

by Jerry Cole

  “Okay, first of all, that’s adorable,” Jason replied. “It’s really sweet that you’re worried about those things. But you’re not the one who gets to decide how I feel about you. And those are all things you can learn. You know that no one is born with any skills.”

  “You think that’s adorable?”

  Jason nodded, laughing. “You want to know how to woo me?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said. “Like, what do I do? Do I send you flowers at work? Do I leave comments on your Instagram pictures about how hot you are?”

  “Yes!” Jason said, laughing again. “Definitely do those things. But not to woo me, do them because I want to make everyone I know jealous.”

  Taylor swallowed. He didn’t understand why Jason didn’t seem to be taking this seriously, though he guessed that it made sense that he wouldn’t spell out how Taylor was supposed to woo him. No women ever had.

  “You know,” Taylor said. “You think this is a joke, and I know this is easy for you. But this is hard for me, Jason. This is real. And I don’t know how to do it and that scares me.”

  “Hey,” Jason said, furrowing his brow and looking at Taylor. “No, I wasn’t trying to make fun of you.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “No, of course not,” Jason said.

  “Really?”

  “No! I would never do anything like that,” Jason said. “I just couldn’t help but think it was cute. And kind of silly.”

  “You thought it was silly,” Taylor replied, cocking his head. After he had tried not to make a fool of himself in front of Jason, of course that had been what he ended up doing. But they had kissed, and that was something. And Jason had felt it, too. He had to have felt it, too.

  “Yes,” Jason said. “But not because it was stupid. No, that wasn’t it at all. What happened was that I was so worried about whether you would like me or not, whether you were straight, how you would react to me asking you out, that I forgot you would also be afraid of things, too. And then you kind of just spelled them out for me. Because you are right, of course. I’m afraid, too. Not about the same things, and I’m not going to spell it out for you because this isn’t about me, it’s about you. But it just made me realize that you don’t have this nearly as figured out as I thought you did.”

  “You thought I had this figured out?”

  “I know,” Jason said, laughing and shaking his head. “I told you that I was an idiot.”

  “Yes,” Taylor said. “Obviously.”

  Jason stepped back and looked up at him. “So let’s do this right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Dating,” Jason said. “Properly dating. If that’s something you don’t want to do, you can just stop doing it at any time. We can spend time together. I’ll let things go at whatever pace you want them to go.”

  Taylor nodded, looking down. “I don’t know if I can do this right.”

  “What do you mean, right? I’ve never done a relationship right before. So hopefully I can learn how to do it right now.”

  Taylor looked at him, swallowing. His heart was beating so fast and hard in his chest that he thought he could hear it. “A relationship?”

  “If that’s what you want,” Jason said. “Like I said, there’s no pressure. I just want…”

  “What?”

  “You,” Jason said. “As much of you as you’re willing to give me, and if that’s only a little bit, that’s okay. I can live with that. That’s more than enough.”

  “I don’t understand,” Taylor said, shaking his head. “You barely know me. I barely know you, too.”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah, that may have been true. Before today. But after today, I feel like I know you better than some of the people I have known all my life. And to be totally honest with you, I want to know you more. That’s it. That’s all I want. I mean, it’s not all I want, but it’s all I want for now and it will be enough. I’m not going to pressure you into anything. Ever.”

  Taylor sighed. “I’m worried.”

  “About what?”

  “That I’m going to let you down,” Taylor said. “That I’m not going to be what you expect.”

  Jason cocked his head. “What if I’m not what you expect? What will happen then?”

  “Nothing,” Taylor said. “You’re still going to be wonderful. Even if —”

  “We’re not together?”

  Yeah,” Jason replied. “I know that. And you should know that about yourself, too. You’re overthinking this, though.”

  “I am, aren’t I?”

  “You are,” Jason said. “Do you always do this?”

  “No,” Taylor replied. “Only when I really like someone. And usually not in front of them, but in front of my friends, so that they don’t see me freaking out about them. You know, because I don’t want to freak anyone out.”

  Jason replied by smiling. “You’re not freaking me out. You’re freaking yourself out, though, and I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No,” Jason said. “Because all that you need to do is let me take you out on a date. Worry about what you’re going to wear and what we’re going to see. Nothing else.”

  “Nothing else,” Taylor repeated.

  “That’s right,” Jason replied. “Absolutely nothing else.”

  Taylor nodded, leaning down to kiss him again. Jason smiled at him, putting a finger over his lips. “Uh uh,” Jason said. “As much as I would like to do that, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop myself from dragging you to bed with me if you kiss me again.”

  “But that was amazing,” Taylor protested quietly.

  “I know,” Jason replied. “That’s another good reason for you to come out with me. Friday night?”

  “I can’t,” Taylor said, trying to remember his schedule. “Saturday?”

  “Okay, sounds good,” Jason replied. “Just promise you’ll show up.”

  Taylor nodded. “Of course, I’ll show up. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m just glad Elliot was wrong.”

  “Elliot?”

  “My roommate,” Taylor said. “He kept saying that I didn’t have a crush on you. That I just wanted to be you.”

  Jason laughed, throwing his head back. “Why would you want to be me? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Taylor replied. “I should go.”

  “Yeah, go,” Jason said. “Go before I change my mind about taking it slow.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re in a good mood,” Elliot said.

  Taylor wasn’t paying attention to him, but he had been talking for a while, though Taylor wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Taylor hadn’t really been able to pay attention to anything ever since he had gotten home the night before, he had barely been able to get a wink of sleep. It was hard when all his mind was filled with was anticipation. And a little bit of dread.

  “Yeah,” Taylor replied, when he saw that Elliot hadn’t moved his gaze off of him.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Kind of,” Taylor said, smiling at him. “I’m trying to settle into my new normal.”

  Elliot nodded, slowly. He was getting ready to go out, or so Taylor thought, but he had been standing by the door for a while and making no move to leave. He raised his eyebrows, then spoke. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s the problem,” Taylor replied. “I’m not entirely sure what it means. Like — okay, can I ask you something?”

  Elliot nodded again, pursing his lips and furrowing his brow.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Elliot said. “Just not looking forward to this class. Anyway, you wanted to ask me something?”

  Taylor sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Elliot looked upset, but it wasn’t as if he could just ask Jason these things. And Elliot had said he would be there for him, so Taylor didn’t see the harm in relying on him. Elliot was his friend.

  “Did you always know?”

  “Kno
w what?”

  “That you liked men,” Taylor said. “As well as women.”

  Elliot cocked his head and closed his eyes. It took him a long time to consider the question, and when he spoke, it was deliberate, quiet, monosyllabic. “No.”

  Taylor swallowed. “So how did you know?”

  “There was this guy,” Elliot said. “When I was in high school. My girlfriend had just broken up with me and I was really upset. I was sitting on the bleachers and trying to get drunk off of this diluted vodka I had in my water bottle, so overall I was doing pretty awesome. This guy, he sits down next to me and he just smiles, and asks me if I’m okay or whatever. It’s really dark at this point and I don’t want to go home. So we talk.”

  Taylor raised his eyebrows. “Did something happen?”

  “No,” Elliot said. “We just talked. He was nice and he was going out for a jog or something, and I guess he must have spotted me when he was doing laps. But I hadn’t seen him because I was upset and I was like, stuck in my own bubble and wasn’t really noticing anything. Or anyone. But he sat down next to me, asked me what was wrong, and I just told him. I hadn’t been able to tell any of my friends —”

  “But he knew who you were,” Taylor said.

  “Yeah, probably,” Elliot replied, shrugging. “I’d seen him before, at school. We had never like, talked or anything. But he saw me and he stopped even though I kind of wished he hadn’t at first.”

  “Is that when you knew?”

  “No,” Elliot said. “That’s when I tried to kiss him, though, and that was awkward. I thought he’d run away but he just laughed it off. He was really nice, like really, really nice, and I felt like an idiot for not noticing him before. So, then we became friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah, just friends,” Elliot replied. “There were rebounds, but they were all girls. I never struggled with female attention.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Taylor said, laughing.

  “No,” Elliot replied, flashing him a smile. “But my friend — he was always there. He never asked me for shit, he was just there. And then when I was moving away to college I kind of realized that I was in love with him.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah,” Elliot said. “I know. It was hard. I told him…”

  Taylor waited for Elliot to continue, though it seemed like it was taking him far too long to gather his thoughts. He didn’t want to ask him to continue when Elliot appeared to be getting quite emotional.

  Elliot swallowed, looking away from Taylor. Then he continued. “And you know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “He said ‘yeah, dude. I knew that’. See, for me, everything had changed. But for him, it was all the same.”

  “So what happened?” Taylor asked.

  “Well, I kind of spiraled a little bit. He wasn’t rejecting me, but it wasn’t like he was saying yes, either. I took it as a rejection and I started meeting guys up off of sites or whatever, you know, at bathhouses. Dingy stuff. I had no idea what I was getting into.”

  “But — but did you like it?”

  Elliot looked up, then slowly nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I really liked it. And I think that was part of the issue, that I liked it so much. But I was still into him, you know? Like I’ve always been a very monogamous person — don’t laugh — so it was kind of hard for me to do the whole casual sex thing.”

  “Right,” Taylor said, cocking his head. “But you still did it. Was it to like, find yourself or something?”

  “No,” Elliot said. “I mean, yes, I guess. Part of it was. But I would be lying if I said that was all of it, it was mostly just trying to forget Todd.”

  “His name was Todd?”

  “Yes, Taylor,” Elliot replied, smiling, and rolling his eyes. “His name was Todd.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Not much,” Elliot said, shrugging. “We’re still friends. I came to terms with the fact that I like men. He sends me postcards sometimes.”

  “Postcards?”

  “Yeah, he’s a wildlife camera operator now,” Elliot said. “He gets to go to cool places. We’re still friends.”

  “And you’re — like you’re okay with the way this turned out?”

  “I’m as okay as I can be, I guess,” Elliot replied, shrugging. “What am I going to do? Going to drag him into bed and ask him for an explanation or something? It is what it is.”

  Taylor sighed. “I’m sorry. That sounds hard.”

  “It’s okay,” Elliot said, smiling at him. “I wasn’t trying to make it so that you felt sorry for me. I’m not upset about it anymore. You asked, so I wanted you to now. It’s not something that everyone knows since they’re very young and it’s okay if you also didn’t know it until now.”

  Taylor nodded, looking away from Elliot. He bit his lip, then spoke. “He asked me out.”

  Elliot didn’t say anything for a few seconds too long. “The guy you’ve been obsessing about? Your Salsex instructor?”

  “Yeah,” Taylor replied.

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said, smiling to himself. “I said yes.”

  “Adorable,” Elliot said, chuckling. “I should really go, I’m already going to be late. Will you be home for dinner? I can pick something up on the way.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “After the gym.”

  “Alright, see you then,” Elliot said. Taylor watched him walk out the door and close it behind him, still smiling. Mentioning the gym reminded him that he would see Jason again tonight and he wouldn’t have to wait until their date.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jason looked at himself in the mirror. He had arrived early for class and the students had yet to show up. He hadn’t worked out the day before, which wasn’t a problem most of the time. He was okay with having breaks. He wasn’t nearly as obsessed as the rest of his co-workers. He would probably be especially tired during class tonight, but the students could reliably follow his cues without him having to do much. It wasn’t his body that he was worried about, it was his head. He needed to get his mind into the game because he couldn’t afford to be as distracted as he was for too much longer.

  He had almost cut a client’s ear when he was working earlier. Nothing had happened, the client hadn’t even noticed, but Jason knew that he had a lot of feelings to unpack, and he didn’t want people to be negatively affected by how idle he was being.

  He had tried to make an appointment with his therapist earlier that day, but he had been told that she only had slots available next week. The thing he needed to talk about the most — the one that he couldn’t stop thinking about — was the way that Taylor had kissed him before he left Jason’s home. Which, Jason thought, probably made him a horrible person. A few hours earlier, Blaine was on his floor, overdosed on prescription drugs and alcohol, almost dying. He should have been thinking about that and not about Taylor’s mouth, the smell of his aftershave, the way his tongue tasted. Jason sighed. Again, his thoughts had circled back to Taylor. He couldn’t believe that Taylor had actually accepted his invitation to go out. That was, until they had kissed. Until Taylor had kissed him.

  “Hey,” Tee said, startling him. She laughed. “Sorry, dude.”

  “Nah, it’s cool,” he replied. “Just came over here early to think.”

  “Oh,” Tee replied, raising her eyebrows. She was one of the only full-time trainers at the gym that also taught classes, which meant that she had become something of a mentor to Jason. Jason also considered her a friend. “That kind of day, huh?”

  Jason nodded, rolling his eyes. “I’ve had a hell of a time lately.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt it. Unless you know someone really good.”

  “I have Benzos in my car,” Tee said.

  Jason laughed. “That’s not what I meant. I meant therapists.”

  “Oh,” she said, laughing too. “No, sorry. But is there anything
I can help you with? I wouldn’t mind just listening.”

  Jason smiled. “It’s just — I’m worried you’re going to judge me.”

  “I’m already judging you,” Tee replied, brushing her brown hair over her shoulder. “My imagination is probably a lot worse than whatever you have going on.”

  Jason’s smile widened. “I seriously doubt that. But I’m a little bit worried about things.”

  “About things?”

  “About me,” Jason replied, quietly. “Like, about whether something is wrong with me.”

  Tee cocked her head, furrowing her brow. “What happened? Why do you think something is wrong with you?”

  “Because,” Jason said, exhaling heavily through his nose. “Something big happened, I can’t tell you what it was. But I think I reacted okay, at the time, and now it’s like — it’s like it doesn’t even matter, and that makes me feel like a selfish jerk. And it wasn’t just that, like something else happened after that, something good. But the bad thing was so much worse, shouldn’t I be thinking about that?”

  Tee closed her eyes. “This would be a lot easier if you weren’t making me guess. Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Mostly because I’m embarrassed,” Jason replied. “Embarrassed and worried.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should be,” Tee said. “Either of those things. But I think it’s human nature to hold on to good things especially after something bad happens. Especially something you think you’re supposed to feel bad about.”

  “But it is something I feel bad about,” Jason replied. “Well, something I’m supposed to feel bad about. But mostly, I just feel relief, and like, really happy at the way that things turned out. Because if the bad thing hadn’t happened, the good thing wouldn’t have happened either. And that — I mean, just thinking about that is awful.”

  “So you feel bad that you feel like you needed the bad thing to happen?” Tee said, frowning. “Also, I hate that you’re making me talk like I’m five years old. Will you at least tell me what one of the things was?”