Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

figured out how to get all the Bug Boys but Brad to come to the bar with him. He could have worked up more courage so he wouldn’t be swimming in a sea of Xanax.
    He could have grown wings and flown.
    I can do this , he told himself, trying to stop the spiral of self-loathing before it got out of control. All I have to do is go into the bar. Walk through the door, say hi to Denver, and see what happens. It’s not hard. People do it all the time, and they’re just fine. I’ll be fine too.
    He’d be fine. Everything would be fine.
    So long as no one slipped anything into his drink.
    So long as he didn’t lose his cab money and have to walk home.
    So long as he didn’t get jumped by hooligans in the alley.
    In the mirror, Adam’s countenance went pale. He shut his eyes, drew a deep breath, and said again, this time in a whisper, “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”
    He had on his club shirt, which felt good, like armor. He’d been vain and wanted to go without glasses, but that meant he was obsessing about his contacts, whether or not he’d washed them enough, whether or not they had rolled back into his eyelids, whether or not they had defied factory tests and glued themselves permanently to his corneas.
    The contacts, he knew now, had been a horrible mistake. When he’d put them in, he hadn’t counted on being this nervous—or rather, he hadn’t considered he could turn his contacts into a point of worry. The fact that he’d done so made him concerned he’d do so all the time now, and he’d never be able to wear his contacts again, ever.
    Jesus, he had to get a grip.
    It was so hard to rein himself in, though, with no one else to tease him back into place. Usually he went out in a herd with the Bug Boys. Safety in the swarm was the joke, or it had been. Everything felt fractured now, since he and Brad had broken up and Adam had moved out. He felt disconnected from the lab, the group, everything. He wasn’t ever sure if it was real or his imagination, if the others truly didn’t talk to him as much now or if it just seemed that way. Maybe they’d all been part of his fantasy of inclusion. Or maybe he was making everything in his life a fucking melodrama for no reason.
    Feelings aren’t fact. He had this taped to the top of his bathroom mirror, over his kitchen sink, and a few other places now that he lived alone. It was true. Feelings weren’t facts.
    It was a fact, though, that he didn’t have anyone to go with him to Lights Out. The Bug Boys always went to bars closer to campus, and usually not gay ones. If Adam asked them to go to Lights Out, they’d ask why he wanted to go. Which theoretically shouldn’t be bad, because they didn’t care that he was gay. In reality it would be bad, though, because they wouldn’t understand about Denver. Brad especially wouldn’t understand when he heard what had gone down between him and Denver, and how much Adam had liked it.
    Adam wasn’t sure yet he understood that part.
    Taking a deep breath, he tugged at his shirt, blinked to ensure the proper placement and lubrication of his contacts, and left the bathroom, using a wet wipe to turn the doorknob. It was a little hardcore OCD even for him, but he was determined not to let his disorder get a single additional foothold tonight. No matter if Denver laughed him out of the bar, Adam was going to do this. Because while things had been lonely since he’d left Crispin House, they’d been downright miserable since his encounter with Cowboy. He hadn’t let himself think about Denver until the text, but now it was all he could do. How good it had felt. Not just the sex, but the way Denver seemed to be able to shut off his monkey mind like nothing else. He wanted that again. He wanted that so badly he ached.
    You’re using him , his conscience whispered, and not for the first time.
    Adam still wasn’t sure whether or not his conscience was right. Was that what he was doing, or trying to do? Did it matter if he was, if Denver consented? Really, it wasn’t like they had some kind of deep and abiding connection. They’d fucked in a goddamned laundromat. They hadn’t exchanged vows.
    He refused to feel guilty over the fact that what he seemed drawn to most about Denver was his sexuality. After the head-fuckery that had been Brad, he was more than ready for some fuck-and-go. Certainly Denver looked like the kind of guy who would be relieved to find out they weren’t doing the relationship