Page 21

Story: Tenderfoot

“You’re right. It’s tight. If you got a vagina.”
Ugh.
How had I never noticed he was kind of a jerk?
“I’ll have you know I have male friends who think this room is everything,” I declared snootily.
“They gay?” he asked.
They were.
“That’s beside the point,” I sniffed.
“Only because it makes mine.”
I was offended for the entirety of the LGBTQ+ community. “Not every gay guy is effeminate.”
“Yeah, but most of ’em got good taste, whereas I couldn’t give a shit if my lampshades match my comforter.”
Now I was intrigued. “How did you see that in the dark?”
“You learn to see in it when bein’ in the dark might get your ass nabbed and pushed back into the foster system or other even less fun shit.”
I couldn’t argue that.
Time to move on to something else.
“Can you get off me?” I requested.
“No,” he denied.
“I’m not real sure I can have this conversation with you lying on me,” I gave him my understatement.
“Too late for that. If you wanted to do it another way, you woulda responded to my fuckin’ texts last night. Now it’s gonna be this way.”
Okay.
Wait.
Last night, he laid it out there, his truth, about me.
It was brutal and it was ugly, but I could see, now, he felt bad.
However, it was his truth, brutal and ugly. He’d foisted it on me.
And now I had to make him feel better?
At five a.m.?
“Get off me,” I demanded.
“No,” he again denied.
I pushed at his broad shoulders and was pretty certain they didn’t budge an inch.
Bah!
“Javi—”

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