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Which explainedeverything.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

He toyed with his rice. “Long time ago.”

“Six years?”

His gaze shot to me. “Yeah. How did you know?”

“Just a hunch.”Please let him believe the bullshit I’m shoveling.

“Okay.” He said the word slowly. Then he shook his head. “I got through it. And came out on the other end.”

Without any family support and with few friends. As far as I could see.

Well, you’ve got me now, pup. I’m not letting you go.

Chapter Thirteen

Jai

Why did I dump all that shit on him? Why the fuck did I tell him about Gary?

Questions I had no answers for.

As we lingered over baklava, those questions receded into the background. He drew me out by getting me to recall funny anecdotes from when I’d been a kid. Wait, there had been some? Oh, usually having to do with something Arnav had gotten up to. With six older sisters, one could be forgiven for thinking that with so many prying eyes, he’d be well behaved.

Nope. He loved to give his sisters a hard time. Especially Rashmi. The sister who was thirteen years older had been the bane of his existence, and they still went after each other on a regular basis. Or so he said when we’d gathered at his house. Whether he was exaggerating or not was an entirely different story because my friend could do that well.

Friend.

Demetrius laughed at a story I told—about a particularly interesting visit to the library where Arnav had been on the hunt for a book about gay sex, and the librarian, Loriana, had caught us. She hadn’t been fazed, though. She’d found a book for my friend—which I might’ve also read later.

Timothea returned to remove our empty plates. “Coffee? Tea? Liqueur?”

We shook our heads.

“Just the bill.” Demetrius offered her a genuine smile. After she left, he grinned at me. “Big tip.”

“Well earned.” We hadn’t spoken about money. Pride Camp had a sliding scale so everyone who wanted to attend could—but he’d paid the full price for Keegan to come. That wasn’t, relatively, a ton of money. Neither was it chump change.

Timothea arrived with the machine, and Demetrius paid. She wished us a goodnight and headed off.

“I feel like I need to walk off all that amazing food.” Demetrius patted his flat stomach.

Does he have ripped abs under his shirt? Or does he have a little extra padding? Is his skin soft and smooth or rough? Chest hair or not?

As a teenager, I’d lamented at not having lots of body hair to make me manly. I’d wondered if that was part of the reason I was gay.

A couple of journal articles assured me I wasborn this way, and I moved on.

My chest hair did not, however, grow.

Gary used to say he liked the sparse look. Which, in the end, made me hate myself even more.

“Hey, are you okay?” Demetrius’s brow furrowed in evident worry.

“Yeah, fine.”