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“You guys. Have you always been this way? Like supercompetitive?”
“Pretty much,” I admit. “I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I had an older brother, Kacey. He passed away when I was younger. He was very competitive, couldn’t really do anything without it becoming a competition.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Not the sort of thing you go around chatting about, youknow?”
“I hear that. My brother is competitive too, but that had the opposite effect on me. Made me pretty chill about stuff. I enjoy friendly competition, but I’m a good sport about losing.”
“I’m not like that. At all.” I laugh nervously, biting my lip.
“That’s sexy,” he says. “When you bite your lip.”
A part of me is waiting for Ty to appear out of nowhere and tackle Dax to the ground.
“That wasn’t me flirting with you, man,” Dax says. “Just giving you a compliment. Don’t worry. I can tell you have zero interest in me.”
“Huh?”
“I think you’re hot as fuck, but trust me, I know when guys are into me. And the way you’ve been acting tonight, it’s clear you just want to be friends, and I wanted to say I’m cool with that. So…who’s the lucky someone?”
I eye him. “What makes you think there’s a someone? You think that about everyone who’s not into you?”
“Naw, you’ve been spacing every five seconds.”
“I could be thinking about work or school. Maybe I’m working out my essay for my Tissue Mechanics class.”
“So this is how you look when you think about Tissue Mechanics…” He stares off, tilting his head, a dreamy look in his eyes, giving an overdramatic performance of what I was doing.
“Okay, okay.” I nudge him with my shoulder. “Enough of that. Maybe I’m caught, then. There is someone.”
It feels criminal to call Ty asomeonewhen he’s more than that—he’s Ty fucking Lancaster.
“They must be pretty special if they managed to catch your interest.”
I notice Dax isn’t assuming this someone is a girl, and Ihave a feeling he knows, but he’s sensitive enough not to press. Reminds me that he’s a good person to talk to, especially about some of these things running through my head, and while part of me fears he might connect that it’s Ty, the reality is, it could just as easily be some guy at Alpha Theta Mu, so it’s not like talking about my feelings will out his fratmate.
“Since you mentioned this person…” I say, “I have been struggling with some stuff recently. Well,strugglingmight not be the right word. I’ve had girlfriends, but those happened because they were usually someone I was friends with already and things developed slowly.”
“You’re demisexual?”
“Maybe. Seems to fit. I don’t really think about it that deeply, but one-night stands aren’t my thing. And I guess because my relationships always seemed to happen with girls, I assumed that meant I was straight.”
“But you have reasons to doubt that now?”
I recall that moment in the equipment room, Ty’s hot breath against my throat as he gripped my ass. The desire that pulsed through me. How desperately I wanted him.
“Yeah,” I confess. “What was it like for you?”
“Eh, I knew early on. I was a flirt, even in middle school. Had two boyfriends at the same time.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious?”
“Obviously, we like, held hands and had closed-mouth kisses, but I definitely worked out early on that I was attracted to dudes and they were attracted to me.”
“Sounds nice to have gotten your head around it that early.”
“We’re all different, and I’ve been with enough guys to know that it happens in whatever way it happens. There’s no right or wrong in any of it. Or really, I guess the only wrong isif you don’t trust yourself and that gut impulse when you realize that maybe you don’t fit into that neat little box everyone else has put you into.”