Talker

Tate
    for company, since he was no longer on the team. He liked running,
    though. He liked spending time with Tate when he was free from all
    the stuff that bound him to the earth in the painful way of iron
    manacles. Right now, though, he wasn’t sure he could make the
    trip down to the riverfront bike trail because he was too damned
    mad and in too much shock. His shoe dangled from his finger by
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    14
    the lace, and for a second he thought about using it to bludgeon his
    roommate until Tate came to his senses.
    “You’re going into the bathroom stal s after work and talking to
    guys until they come. You said that. A phone-sex operator, but in
    person. You said that too. What you didn’t say”—he had to pause
    because his voice made a sound like a gravel driveway underfoot—
    “was why in G od’s name you would put yourself in danger like that!”
    O h shit. There went his voice—but he couldn’t help it. He
    couldn’t. O h G od…. Tate was just so vulnerable.
    “It’s not that dangerous,” Tate maintained earnestly. “Honest,
    Brian. I don’t even have to see them. It’s like… I don’t know. It’s
    powerful!” He looked up then. He didn’t have on his eyeliner yet,
    and his hair wasn’t spiked, so it was just… his eyes. They were ink-
    dark, and hurt, and he had a clench to his chin, like he was going to
    power through the pain. That was how Tate met each day.
    “Powerful,” Brian echoed, his voice a hollow void.
    “Yeah, it’s like… you know. I can have the sex, but I don’t
    have to… to put anything on the line. People walk away happy, but
    they can’t hurt me. Don’t you see? It’s perfect.”
    Brian dropped his shoe there on the floor of their entryway,
    and sank down on the cracked tile after it, pulling his knees to his
    chest and pushing his longish, wheat-colored hair out of his eyes
    with a sweaty palm.
    “Yeah, it’s perfect,” he muttered. It made perfect sense. Tate
    had been so hurt, so many times. His body was literally twitching
    with the need to be loved, but his heart… his heart couldn’t take
    one more wormwood-flavored grind through the mood-processor.
    “C ome on, Brian,” Tate said, crouching down next to him. He
    put an easy hand on Brian’s shoulder because he thought Brian
    was straight, Brian was no threat to him, Brian couldn’t possibly
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    15
    hurt him that way, and Brian met that dark-eyed, clenched-jaw look
    of trust with a throat so tight he could hardly breathe.
    “I mean,” Tate said softly, “it’s not like you can do this for me,
    you know? You’re the best friend a guy could have, but… I… I
    real y want someone.” He stood up and danced away to the
    industrial-techno-popping rhythm of his heart. “I’m just so lonely,”
    he said nakedly, and Brian was final y able to get the words out.
    “But I love you,” he rasped, and Tate bent down and patted
    him on the head like a child or a cat or something.
    “Wel , yeah, but we both know it’s not the way I need.” His
    voice choked at that, and before Brian could contradict him, explain
    the trope that Tate had locked him into as surely as a girl in a
    manga book, he said, “Here. I’ve got to go… I’l just go alone…
    I’ll… I’ll shower at work… bye….”
    Brian tried hard to scramble after him, but he put al his weight
    on his bad shoulder and when his vision cleared from the mask of
    black spots in front of it, Tate was long gone. Brian had been a
    decathlete. Tate had been a distance sprinter, and they had more
    than half a dozen different trails to choose from between the city
    streets and the riverfront bike trail. The odds of actual y catching up
    to him when he was in this mood were as thin as the scar tissue on
    Tate’s healing heart.
    Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit….
    Brian found himself on his ass again as scalding tears slid in
    the salty dust coating his knees.
    “But it is the way you need,” he whispered. It is, Tate. It’s just
    exactly what you need. But Tate wouldn’t listen to him—not now.
    Not after all Brian had seen, or the way Tate had laid his heart bare
    because he thought Brian was “safe.” O h G od—now that Tate
    really needed Brian-the-lover, how could Brian get him to trust
    Brian-the-friend?

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    16

    P a rt III
    O ld Lovers

    BRIAN had a date with Virginia the first night Tate had tried to have
    sex. He remembered that—the date.
    He’d been having