Page 115 of Catching Kyle

I can’t take the man I love up to my room after dinner and fuck my love into him. I can’t open my inbox to see Michael’s latest draft that he wants me to read and critique. Fuck, I can’t even talk to him.

My mom’s words echo throughout my mind. Is this really what it means to live with integrity? To live a shadow of the life I really want to live? I feel so small, like I’m trying to fit myself inside a box that wasn’t made for me. I feel achy and sad all the time, tired as hell, even though I sleep more than ten hours a night. And being around Jessica so much, the pressure to be intimate constant, the darkness never leaves my brain. Happiness feels like a distant memory. I know my dad didn’t like gay people, but would he really want me to stuff my true self down like this? Would he want me to be so sad?

The night wraps up, and all of us go to our separate rooms. And it feels like I’m walking to the gallows to be hanged.

Timmy said that the best way to secure my reputation as a straight man is to get Jessica pregnant. So, in the past week, I’ve coordinated this with her. She’s off birth control, and we’re finally going to have sex. Once she’s pregnant, we’ll announce our wedding date. Sooner rather than later. And when we’re finally married, we’ll reveal that a little Weaver baby is on the way. The Weaver legacy will finally live on. Just as my father wished.

“Gimme a sec,” I say to Jessica just outside the guest room door. “Need to use the bathroom.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she says flirtatiously, but my chest just squeezes hearing her.

I burst into the bathroom, feeling my chest squeeze even harder. The air gets thin around me, and I have trouble breathing.

Inhale for four, I think to myself.Hold. Exhale for four. Just like Neeti taught me when the anxiety gets bad. I do that for a while, and then my head feels slightly clearer.

I’m doing this for Dad. I’m carrying on his legacy. This is an honest life. I can do this.

Suddenly, my phone vibrates in a way that I immediately recognize. And my heart picks right back up again, the air thinner than before. I haven’t felt this in months, since before I started dating Michael. But I know exactly what it is.

My hands shaking, I reach inside my jean pocket and pull my phone out.

And there it is. The last thing I want to see.

Peter Cummins, aka Michael Cunningham, has posted a new video on OnlyFans.

My knees grow weak, and I lower myself to the tiled ground. My eyes blurry from tears, I open the video and watch. It’s some guy I’ve never seen before. But he’s hot. And he’s naked with my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend. It feels like someone is slowly stabbing me with a knife, over and over, as I watch this unknown man fuck the man I love more than anyone else. I want to say that Michael looks unhappy, incomplete without me there. But they’re get at it with enthusiasm and vigor. He’s moved on. Thriving. And here I am, procrastinating my duty to get my soon-to-be wife pregnant.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door, and I manage to turn off the video just before I freeze up, dark depression swarming my mind.

“Babe?” Jessica calls out. “Are you alright in there?”

I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I can’t say anything. I don’t have any more lies left in me.

“Kyle?” she asks.

I don’t respond. I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

She opens the bathroom door, and when sees me leaning against the bathtub, she rushes in. “Are you okay?” she asks, kneeling next to me. “Are you sick from dinner? What’s going on?”

My chest feels like it’s caving in on itself, and the air is so thin I feel like I’ll pass out.

I start to speak, then stop myself. This is it. I can manage to lie now and keep the future my dad wanted for it, or I can be honest about myself. I remember the question Robyn, the reporter, asked me at the end of our interview: am I playing for my daddy or myself? Up until now, it’s been all for him. But I think I’m finally going to do something for myself. I think that’s what I can call integrity.

“I…” I take a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m in love with someone else. A man.”

My words cause her to physically recoil.

I reach out and gently hold her hand. “Let me explain.”

She looks at me skeptically, and then she gives a small nod.

So I tell her the story: how in college, I slept with other football players. And then I tell her everything since. I don’t bother keeping any other details out. There’s no point in lying about it more. I gave up any future of an NFO career when I told her I loved a man.

“So, do what you will with what I told you,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t take the lies anymore.”

I expect her to get up and storm off. To cry and tell her family, to tell her little matchmaking agency that I forewent the deal, and to tell the world that the I’m the faggot they’ve all been making me out to be.

But she doesn’t. She just keeps holding my hand.