Talker

sex pretty steadily since his senior year in
    homeschooling. He was a pretty kid—he knew that in a detached
    way. Wheat-colored hair, blue eyes, all-American-boy freckles, and
    a wide, smiling mouth—between that and the body, which was
    honed because he liked the exercise and not because he liked the
    muscles—well, girls had been following him into bed with impunity,
    and he hadn’t minded. He liked girls, liked pleasing them, so he
    was pretty good in bed (when they could find one—often, he was
    pretty good in his car), but the whole affair seemed… curiously
    passionless to him. There had been no pounding or sweating or
    dedication to the act. The whole gimme gimme gimme gotta have it
    ba-bee thing seemed to be missing, and it hadn’t been until he’d
    lived with Tate that he’d begun to figure out why.
    Since moving in with Tate, he’d become obsessed with the
    crease of Tate’s thigh, the one leading from his hip to his groin.
    Maybe it was because Tate’s private parts were always casually
    hidden when he came out of the shower or was dressing, but that
    particular place just… captured Brian’s attention in the oddest way.
    Was Tate’s cock long? Thick? Did it hang heavy when he got
    out of the shower? Were there scars? (Poor baby, let there not be
    Talker | Amy Lane
    17
    scars!) Were there piercings? Was the hair the same dark, inky
    color as the hair on his head?
    And that wasn’t the only part of Tate’s body that seemed to
    have captured Brian’s attention, either. The slope of his back, the
    indentation of his waist, the subtle placement of smal , secret moles
    on his unscarred shoulder… suddenly, Brian was thinking of these
    things as he fell asleep at night. He was dreaming of them, and
    waking up with a hand on his hard cock and sweat-sticky skin,
    unable to tel the details of the dreams, just that they made his
    heart pound in his groin and his breath come in strangled pants
    from his chest.
    He began to have some suspicions that he wasn’t as straight
    as he’d thought he was, but it wasn’t until Tate came home that
    night, al excited about an upcoming late-night date with another
    bar-back, that Brian real y knew that his roommate meant more to
    him than his girlfriend.
    Tate hadn’t had sex yet. It had been a painful admission to
    Brian one night after Virginia had left. He’d “fooled around” a little;
    lots of kissing at parties, some groping or “frotting” as he cal ed it,
    but no… no skin on skin. No intimacy. No having his body
    enveloped by another’s and feeling cared for. Loved.
    O f course those hadn’t been his words, but he’d been so
    transparent—at least to Brian.
    Tate’s father had called once in the nine or so months since
    they’d been roommates. Tate was sparing with his family history,
    but apparently dear ol’ dad had been declared incompetent as a
    parent, and Tate had spent a lot of years in foster care. That was,
    he admitted candidly, how he got his scholarship—the big pity card,
    as he cal ed it. Apparently, that didn’t stop “Dad” from inflicting as much damage as he could, even long distance.
    Talker | Amy Lane
    18

    The cal had come on Tate’s birthday. Tate had picked up the
    phone, listened for a moment, and said, “Yes, Dad. Still gay.”
    Brian had heard the pejorative word on the other end of the
    phone even from across the room. It echoed from the walls as Tate
    put the receiver gently back into the charger.
    Brian had walked across the room, grabbed Tate’s hand, and
    said, “C ’mon.”
    “Where we going?”
    “Dinner. It’s your birthday.”
    “You don’t have any money!” Brian was perpetual y broke—no
    scholarship, no cash, just that simple.
    “Don’t care.” Brian had needed to hit his aunt up for Top
    Ramen money and potatoes from the garden that week, but he
    didn’t care. It was worth it to take Tate to Red Robin and treat him
    to a hamburger, talk about music that Brian had never heard of, get
    the waiters to sing to him over a melting bal of ice cream, and
    make the memory of that word fade forever by lingering for an hour
    over the bottomless pit of fries.
    So he’d thought his obsession might just be compassion,
    fascination for someone who was so damned tough and so damned
    hurt both at the same time, until Tate brought home Blaize with a Z,
    who had a shaved head and sparkly green eye shadow and gauges
    as big as a quarter in his earlobes.
    He also had a full, lush mouth, and