Cut and Run 4 - Divide and Conquer

flush.
    “Wow,” Nick offered.
    “Couldn‟t help it.”
    “But?” Kelly repeated with a deeper frown.
    “When I told him, he didn‟t really say anything.”
    His three friends gave him a chorus of pained noises in response.
    “Shit, man,” Digger practically shouted. “Go pick that waitress up
    and make yourself feel better!”
    Ty laughed out loud and closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead
    with the heel of his hand.
    “Jackass,” Digger grumbled disconsolately.
    “At least he didn‟t say thank you,” Kelly pointed out wryly.
    Ty laughed before putting his bottle to his lips and taking a long,
    relieved gulp of his beer. This had gone better than he‟d ever imagined
    it would.
    “So, he doesn‟t feel the same?” Nick asked, confused.
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    “No,” Ty answered, shaking his head. “No, he does . I‟m just not
    sure he knows it yet.”
    “You can‟t do anything easy, can you?” Kelly asked, laughing.
    “Bet that waitress would be,” Digger grumbled.
    The others began laughing and talking once more, drowning the
    silence.
    But Nick watched him, still frowning in confusion. Ty waited for
    him to comment, unconsciously holding his breath. “You love him.
    You think he loves you, but he hasn‟t said it,” Nick finally laid out.
    Ty shrugged and nodded.
    “What if you‟re wrong?”
    “Then I‟ll get to throw his shit off my balcony. Should be fun.”
    Nick snorted, staring at him in wonder. “How do you live life
    without looking back or forward? God, I envy that.”
    Ty merely smiled enigmatically at him. It wasn‟t the first time
    he‟d heard that. Not many people—not even Nick, who‟d lived through
    his past with him, or Zane, who woke up to his nightmares—knew just
    how hard it was for Ty to shake off the past and the future and just live
    in the here and now.
    “So it‟s been like two months, and he still hasn‟t manned up and
    decided if he loves you, right? But you‟re still fucking.”
    Ty just stared at him, trying to decide if that was an accurate
    statement. They didn‟t know Zane like he did. Ty knew his partner had
    to take the issue from every angle, analyze it to death, resurrect it, and
    then study its dead, rotting body to see the results. Yeah, it might take
    Zane four months to decide if he loved someone, and then more to
    decide if that was a good idea .
    Ty didn‟t mind waiting.
    “What a prick,” Nick muttered as he put his bottle to his lips and
    looked out over the barroom with a disturbed frown.
    Ty didn‟t comment. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet
    up on the chair beside Nick‟s, crossing them at the ankles. One foot
    rocked slowly as they drank in silence.
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    “So are you the guy or the girl?” Digger asked abruptly.
    Ty barked another laugh, almost snorting beer up his nose. “It
    doesn‟t really work that way,” he managed to answer.
    “So how does it work?” Kelly asked in his typical soft, amused
    voice.
    Ty stared at them for a moment, surprised that not only had they
    accepted the news fairly easily but seemed to be showing genuine
    interest.
    He shrugged. “We‟re still dealing with the dynamics,” he said
    vaguely. He had never been a kiss-and-tell type of guy, regardless of
    who he‟d been with. They knew that. They weren‟t asking about sex.
    They were asking about the relationship itself in the only way they
    knew how, and Ty had no answers for them.
    “He seems like the „get on your knees, bitch‟ type of guy,”
    Digger grumbled under his breath.
    Ty nearly snorted beer up his nose again. He coughed and
    sputtered as Nick smacked his back repeatedly, laughing heartily. Ty
    closed his eyes and felt himself blushing as they continued on with the
    conversation. Did it bother him that they now knew he liked to get on
    his knees and be fucked until he screamed? A little. He had always
    been their go-to guy, the brawn on point, the guy they knew they could
    throw at anything and he‟d go in swinging. Why did his being gay have
    to mar that tough-guy personality?
    Ty didn‟t know. But in his mind, it did, to an extent. He supposed
    that was his own problem, though. Or society‟s problem. He shook his
    head, concentrating instead on the flood of relief. Not only was it a
    relief that his closest friends had, for the most part, accepted the news
    with grace and ease, it was also a relief simply to have told them. To
    this point, the only people who‟d