Love, Hypothetically[Theta Alpha Gamma 02 ] (4 page)

ell, that wasn’t at all what he’d meant to do. He’d meant to get off and get out, hopefully leaving Trevor with aching balls and maybe some heartache over what could have been.

He could probably still manage the second objective. Even if he didn’t really care about it anymore.
Paul extricated himself from Trevor’s shorts, then wiped his sticky hand on the leg of them. It wasn’t as if Trevor could wear them now anyway, not without washing them first.
When he looked up, Trevor was watching him, his breathing mostly under control.
“Was it as scary as you thought it would be?” Paul asked quickly, to keep Trevor from saying something he couldn’t handle hearing.
“Scarier,” Trevor rasped. Mmm, dick-throat. “You taste good.”
Hello? Did he need this? No. Paul shrugged and looked away. “That wasn’t exactly your first time.” Now why had he said that? Trevor would think he cared—which he patently did not. Trevor could have lined up before each baseball game and sucked off his whole team for all Paul cared.
Except maybe they should have used a condom.
Little late to think of that.
Trevor cleared his throat ineffectively. “I’d like to do that again.”
Paul shook his head. “No, thank you. We have way too much history between us for me to want to do that.”
“You just did. You enjoyed it too.” Trevor ran fingers down Paul’s arm, but dropped his hand when Paul didn’t respond. “I want to try again with you. I ended our relationship prematurely, and I know we had something real.”
“Ha!” Paul snorted for good measure. “Relationship? I don’t really think what we had counts, Trev.” He didn’t mention Trevor telling him he’d never really been his boyfriend. He didn’t even want to admit he remembered that.
“It counted for a lot with me.” Trevor tangled their fingers together.
Holding hands? They were holding hands, now? “You’re serious,” Paul said in surprise. “You saw me today for the first time in nine years, and suddenly you want some kind of relationship?” He stared at where Trevor hung on to him, not quite getting it, then narrowed his eyes at their fingers. “Is this some kind of desperate attempt to hold on to your youth now that you’ve lost your raison d’être? And your hair?”
Trevor sighed, but didn’t say anything right away. “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been trying to find a way to approach you for a while now?”
“No.”
“I have.”
Paul pointed a finger in Trevor’s face, nearly touching his nose. “If you tell me you left Major League Baseball to be with m—”
“I left because my career was going nowhere and I wanted to come out.”
Paul blinked, then got back on track. “And you couldn’t be out and play?”
“It didn’t seem worth it. Only the big stars would get any support from management.”
Paul untangled his hand from Trevor’s and took a step back, finally pulling up his shorts, paying careful attention to redoing his fly while he spoke. “So let me see if I have this right. You were unhappy playing Major League Baseball because you weren’t a star, and you felt like you were living a big fat straight lie. So you left a job that paid a couple hundred grand a year and went looking for your old high school boyfriend. When you found he was a graduate student at a small college in Oregon, you somehow arranged for the head coach of the girl’s softball team to fall in love with her star pitcher and for them to run off together at the end of the season to a lesbian love nest in Cabo. Then you stepped in and took the job.”
“I always knew where you were and what you were doing. I knew about the few years you took off school to work in that archaeological non-profit, and when you started at Calapooya. The Athletic Department here has had my resume since I left baseball.”
Paul groaned and fell back against the wall, sliding down to sit, resting his elbows on his knees. He felt rather than saw Trevor sit next to him.
“I’ve been with other guys—”
“As you ably demonstrated,” Paul snapped. Dammitall, there he went sounding like he cared again.
Trevor sighed. “I had a boyfriend for a year. We ended up living together—I don’t know how—and everyone with the team thought he was my roommate.”
“Do I need to know about your sordid past?” Paul moaned, bringing his clasped hands up to bury his forehead in them.
“Shhh,” Trevor said. “I’m telling you something.”
Paul rolled his eyes at the floor but shut up. It was the fastest way to get through this.
“About two years ago, I was on a road trip for a while, and when I came home, half the stuff in my place was gone and so was Xavier.”
“Xavier was the boyfriend?” Paul asked, then wondered why he bothered.
“Xavier was the boyfriend,” Trevor agreed. “Most of the stuff he took was mine, but he was nice enough to leave a note. It said a bunch of shit, but at the end he wrote that he was leaving because he could never compete with a memory.”
“How dramatic,” Paul sniped.
“Xavier had a flair for it.”
Paul bit his tongue to keep from asking what the hell Trevor was doing with a guy like that.
“I missed the stuff he took, but it wasn’t worth chasing after him to get it back.”
Paul snorted. “Sounds like he couldn’t compete with much of anything when it came to your opinion.”
“Yeah, I guess I wasn’t that into him.”
“I need to know this why?”
“He was talking about you. You’re the memory.”
Paul laughed shortly, unamused. “How do you know he meant me?”
“He mentioned you by name. He said I talked about you and was always comparing him to you. I thought he was nuts, but after that, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” Trevor shifted, turning toward him. “It was like, I don’t know, Paul. I kept thinking about what happened between us, and it just made me sick.”
“That makes two of us,” Paul muttered.
Trevor ignored him. “I saw it clearly then, I guess. After Xavier left, I’d wake up dreaming about that night in the locker room, and what happened, and I’d lie there at night hating myself. I wanted to come out—it was as if I’d never like myself again unless I did. When my contract was up, I resigned and came out at the same time. They weren’t exactly begging me to stay.”
Paul couldn’t help but ask, “Do you like yourself, now?” He did have some humanity, after all.
Trevor nodded. “I do, yeah.”
“This is misplaced guilt, Trevor,” Paul said softly, standing up and looking down at him. “You feel bad for what happened, that’s all this is.”
Trevor stood up also. “No, it’s not. I thought it was too, and that when I left baseball and came out, it would fade, but it didn’t.” When Paul started to turn away, Trevor grabbed his arm and held him there. “I didn’t stop thinking about you, and I started wondering what would happen if we could see what we’d have now. When this job came open, I applied for it right away.”
This was bullshit. Paul shook off Trevor’s hand and stepped back. “And you thought what? That you’d come here and your long-lost boyfriend would’ve been pining away for you for nine years? That he’d fall into your arms, forgive you for betraying him, and agree to run off to New York and marry you? That I’d trust you?” Paul pointed at him. “I’ve got news for you, Trevor: no one marries their first love. It’s a fairytale.”
Trevor stepped close and asked quietly, “Was I your first love?”
Paul tried to meet Trevor’s eyes, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “Your dick certainly was.” Weak.
“You were my first love.” Trevor’s voice pulsed in Paul’s chest.
His lungs hitched. “You never told me that, or showed me.” He’d probably revealed too much by even responding.
“I should have. I was horrible to you. I don’t deserve another chance, but I’d like one.”
His words throbbed in Paul’s fingertips and chest and nuts. Paul swallowed, staring at the floor. “I can’t give you one.”
Trevor grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly and pulling it toward his chest. “I swear to God, Paul, I will never treat you like that again. I won’t. I’ll make it—”
“It’s too late,” he whispered. He met Trevor’s eyes, knowing all the pain he carried was spilling out, but he couldn’t stop it. All his normal protective mechanisms were malfunctioning.
Trevor grabbed him, one arm wrapping around his waist and the other smashing his head into Trevor’s shoulder. Paul let him. He couldn’t take whatever else Trevor was trying to offer him, but he’d take this. Trevor rocked him like a child, swaying back and forth, occasionally kissing Paul’s temple like he was trying to take the pain of some boo-boo away. Paul relaxed into it, letting Trevor do this for him.
But it still wasn’t enough. When Paul tried to pull away, Trevor gripped him tighter. “Please.”
“I understood why you did it, even then, but I . . .” Paul swallowed. “I can’t forgive you,” he said against Trevor’s shoulder. “‘Sorry’ isn’t enough.”
Trevor’s throat worked next to his face. “It could be enough if you’d let it.”
Paul shoved back far enough to look at Trevor. Wouldn’t it be great if the pain in his expression was enough to make Paul forget what had happened?
But it wasn’t, so he left.

aul stomped his way across campus to the dorm he’d been forced to live in for the summer, and called Josie without really thinking it through. She was the one friend from his hometown he kept in touch with, and when it came down to it, she was his confidante. He tended not to admit that, though.

“It’s about time,” she whispered furiously when she answered. “Do you ever answer your phone? Or listen to messages?”

“No,” Paul whispered back. “Have you been trying to call me?”
“Why don’t you answer when you know it’s me? My name comes up on your screen, I know it does.”
“I keep it on mute. I prefer not to speak to people. And why are we whispering?”
“You don’t have to whisper; I’m whispering because Callie’s taking a nap.”
The way Paul’s heart softened every time he thought about Josie’s daughter was another thing he tended not to admit. “That parasite runs your life, you know.”
“Oh, shut up. You love her.”
Unfortunately, he found himself incapable of refuting that, so he changed the subject. “Guess who I saw today?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Trevor Gardiner.”
“Oh my God!” Josie whisper-shouted. “I forgot, I have gossip about him.”
He held the phone away from his ear for second, glaring at it. “How long have you had gossip about him?” “Possibly as much as a month—”
“I just spoke with you last week!”
“Don’t you even begin to bitch. Maybe if you answered the fucking phone when I called, I would’ve told you earlier.”
“Do you kiss your parasite with that mouth?”
“Motherhood induces cursing, it turns out. Incurable condition. Now just shut up and listen to me already.”
Paul held his hand in the air in defense. “Okay!”
“Trevor gives talks to high school students about being gay and bullying.”
For a split-second, Paul’s heart lifted, but he beat it back down to reality and narrowed his eyes. “How did this come to your attention?”
“He spoke at the school Alan teaches at.”
“How would your husband know who Trevor Gardiner is and why it’s significant that he speaks about these issues?”
“Ha!” Josie whispered. “So you admit it’s significant.”
“Just answer the question,” Paul snapped.
“Hon, he’s my husband. I tell him lots and lots of stuff you’d probably rather he didn’t know.”
Paul grumbled wordlessly. Josie snickered very quietly.
“All right, it’s very commendable, but I care why, exactly?”
“Alan said Trevor spoke about his high school boyfriend, and how he ruined their relationship because he stupidly thought other things were more important.”
Paul’s head reeled. He sat on his bed. “He did? What if . . . you don’t know that he was talking about me.”
“Have a little faith,” Josie snapped.
“In the guy who sold me out for the sake of his baseball career? No, thank you.”
Josie sighed. “It would just make such a good love story if he came a-groveling and you two got back together.”
Paul swallowed air.
“What?” Josie asked. “I couldn’t hear you.” Fortunately, the parasite chose that precise moment to begin squalling. “I guess you’ll want to get off the phone now? After all, I know how much you hate to talk to me when the parasite suckles.” As she spoke, Callie’s screams got steadily louder, until Paul thought they might just be inside his head.
“I’ve asked you not to use that word,” he said, but he doubted she could hear him. Babies were appallingly loud at times, and frequently smelled horribly. He still couldn’t understand why he found this particular one so appealing. Suddenly, the cacophony stopped, and all he heard was the occasional greedy pig noise. “It’s nice to know breasts have a useful purpose in life.”
“Strangely, most men see feeding babies as a secondary purpose,” Josie murmured. Her voice changed when she was feeding Callie. Sometimes Paul thought she’d lull him right to sleep if he wasn’t careful.
“Yet if they all disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t notice,” he mused, matching Josie’s tone automatically. “Though I might wonder about all the men wailing and gnashing their teeth in the streets.”
Josie’s explosive laughter caused a sudden squawk, quickly cut off with a snuffling noise and possibly gulping.
Paul chose not to think about that. “I can’t believe you had a baby so young. It’s far more common for educated women to wait until well into their thirties to have children.” It was an old argument, and he brought it up almost reflexively.
“Well, some of us fall in love at unfashionable moments in our personal histories.”
“At least you didn’t fall in love with an unsuitable man.”
Josie’s voice sharpened. “What’s that about?”
“Nothing,” Paul said quickly, certain she knew he’d lied. “I should go. Give the parasite a kiss from Uncle Paul.”
“I will.” Her voice contained a smile.

After he hung up with Josie, Paul called Toby, his other former roommate. The one who didn’t hate his guts. Toby had decided to stay in town for the summer instead of returning to his hometown, but unlike Paul, he’d voluntarily vacated their former apartment when Brad and Sebastian had decided they must cohabitate.

“I’m sure I have something I’d rather be doing,” Toby said.
“Please,” Paul grumbled. “I need a distraction, and you’ll do.”
“Well, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?”
It wasn’t that Paul didn’t hear the sarcasm in Toby’s voice, it was that he didn’t care. He needed to get out of his tiny undergraduate hell-cubicle.
He tried to make up for his behavior by ordering and paying for Toby’s beer, but it was lukewarm by the time Toby got there to accept the peace offering. Toby hung his leather jacket on the back of his chair and raised his eyebrows at the beer, then at Paul.
“It’s for you,” Paul snapped.
Toby froze in the act of sitting down, eyebrows nearly in his hairline. “Well,” he said once he’d recovered from his surprise and planted his buttocks on the seat. “Someone’s feeling guilty, I guess.”
“I don’t do guilt. I prefer morosity.”
“I prefer moronity,” Toby said, sipping his beer and grimacing—probably at the temperature. Served him right for being late.
Paul glowered.
Toby smiled and drank some more beer. “So, you’re drinking too?” He nodded at Paul’s glass. “I thought you didn’t like beer.”
“I don’t. I needed a drink.”
Toby grinned, balancing his chair on its back legs. “Why Paul, I get the feeling something’s bothering you. Are you going to share this time, or will you be bottling it up like usual?”
Dammitall, Toby always knew how to ruin his sullen mood. He swallowed his smile. “I’ll be stuffing it down like normal, thank you.”
“Is it a guy?”
Paul started, then froze, trying not to react. About as clear a “yes” as actually just saying the word.
The front legs of Toby’s chair thunked on the floor. “You’re in love with a guy?”
“No! A guy sort of . . . got under my skin.” My foreskin.
“First Sebastian, now you. Do you think it’s catching?”
“It’s not like that. This is a guy from my past who suddenly resurfaced. We have . . . unresolved issues.”
“Ah, ‘issues.’ The death knell of contented singledom.”
“My singledom has never been particularly content,” Paul pointed out philosophically, then took a gulp from his beer and tried not to shudder from the taste. “Besides, I’m not talking about it.”
“Okely-dokely,” Toby said. They drank silently, or at least Toby did. Paul had given up (again) on ever liking beer. Its faint charms were lost on him.
“So, are we here to look at guys?” Toby asked when the dearth of conversation seemed to be too much for him.
“Do you really only think about that one thing?” Paul snapped, planting his chin on his fist.
“No,” Toby said slowly, drawing it out. “But we are at a gay bar, and we do happen to be gay men who have frequently gone out cruising tasty young lads together.”
Dammitall. “I’m a prick, aren’t I? You know a lot about pricks, I believe.”
He probably shouldn’t have tacked that last bit on there.
Toby reached over and gave him a friendly shoulder slap that almost knocked Paul off his chair. “Definitely.”
Paul opened his mouth again, then hesitated. He didn’t want to expose dirty secrets about his sex life to Toby, did he? Certainly not.
“Really,” Toby continued in a more serious voice, “your behavior isn’t that bad once you’re used to it. Most of it’s stuff we all do. You just do it with more, um, shall we call it personality?”
“Let’s,” Paul muttered.
Toby scratched his chin, tilting back in his chair again. “Take Brad, for instance. I wasn’t totally down with Sebastian getting serious with him at first either. I just, you know, wasn’t quite so hostile and I was more willing to change my viewpoint. I imagine most of the stuff you do is understandable—something most people would do under the right circumstances.”
“Is that so? Have you ever had revenge sex?” Fuck. It appeared he was going to expose his smarmier side for scrutiny after all.
Thunk. Toby’s chair legs hit the ground again. “Nooo. Was it with a jock? You’re especially a prick to jocks.”
Paul lifted his chin. “I’m speaking hypothetically,” he informed Toby.
“Ah. So I can assume you had revenge sex with a hypothetical jock. Was this a visible or invisible hypothetical jock?”
A topic change was in order. A covert one. “I realize I can be somewhat . . .” Hysterical couldn’t possibly be the right word, could it? “Unreasonable when it comes to jocks. I was way out of line with Sebastian and that frat boy, wasn’t I?”
“His name’s Brad.”
“I’m warming up to addressing him properly.”
“I recommend you call him Mr. Feller.”
Paul shook his head, staring morosely at his beer. “I may have to just die a prick.”
Toby shrugged. “Calling him ‘Brad’ is probably fine. He’s a pretty laid-back guy.”
Paul shivered, remembering the look on that frat boy’s face when he’d insulted his cooking. “Laid back” didn’t seem possible, not for Paul. “I intentionally provoked him. I told him those pancakes were awful when they obviously weren’t, and he seems a bit touchy about his cooking.”
“That you did,” Toby said agreeably. “But you had cause, I assume?”
Paul looked at him askance. “No,” he snorted. “I just hated—hate the athletic elite. I was feeling . . . reactionary that morning.”
“Yes, but it’s a pure and unreasoning hate, which I’ve always assumed was caused by some sort of trauma in your past involving jocks, and possibly a locker room incident in high school.”
Paul gaped at him. “That is absolutely not what happened!”
“Of course not.” Toby leaned back again. “Say it were to happen to you—hypothetically, of course—I wonder how it would go down?”
Paul tilted his chin again. He would not be drawn into this line of conversation under any circumstances.
“How about I get you another drink?” Toby asked after a few moments of silence. “I’m getting myself a beer.”
Paul shrugged, but Toby had already stood up and walked over to the bar. He came back with two glasses a minute later, one holding beer, and the other with something clear and fizzy with a lime perched on the rim. “What’s that?”
“It’s tonic water. You think I don’t know you normally drink this when we go out? You don’t like alcohol.”
Paul accepted the glass as Toby sat down. “No, I really don’t. Thank you.”
Toby sprawled out in his chair, stretching his arms and then stacking them behind his head. “I dated a guy on the football team in high school. Well, more like we hooked up when we could do it without anyone thinking it weird we were together. He was an actual jock, not a hypothetical one.” Toby shook his head knowingly. “But man, those hypothetical jocks, they can be a real bitch, can’t they? I’ve heard some scary things about them. Threatening rape—”
“What? You know someone who was threatened with rape?”
“No, it appears I don’t,” Toby said. “But maybe I know someone who was jumped by the whole, um, basketball team?”
Paul snorted. “Not that I would be very surprised, but that level of brutality is extreme. I hope they were all prosecuted as adults. It’s shocking what the herd mentality will do to young minds, isn’t it?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I don’t actually know anyone that happened to. This is all hypothetical. Now, hypothetically, if someone had a relationship with an athlete and was exposed by him, that would be devastating.”
Paul gulped some tonic water.
“Especially if he really cared about this hypothetical athlete,” Toby added quietly.
Paul slumped over his tonic water and poked at an ice cube with his straw. “You know someone that happened to?”
“Well, hypothetically, yes.”
“That sucks,” Paul muttered. “It really, really . . . would hurt.” He poked viciously at the ice cube, watching it bob and weave, trying to escape.
“I’m sure it would. Especially since the athlete did it because he was scared of what his teammates would say. Or maybe his girlfriend?”
Paul snorted and stabbed the ice through the heart. “That bitch. Not that it was really her fault; she didn’t know. Hypothetically.”
“Or otherwise,” Toby murmured. He leaned closer to Paul. “Everyone’s scared that first time they come out, especially when it’s unexpected. Say someone surprises you.”
Paul stirred his drink, watching the ice cubes swim frantically at his urging. “Because you—the hypothetical you—thought it was impossible for anyone to get in the building.”
“Exactly. They surprise the hypothetical you and you’re caught there with your pants down—”
“Or completely naked,” Paul interjected.
“Or naked, yes. You’re standing there, completely naked, and the other guy is fully dressed—”
“Or naked, too.”
“The other guy is naked too, yet somehow whoever surprises you assumes it was all on you? Wait, I don’t get that. My hypothesis is falling apart, help me out.”
Paul straightened up and put down his straw, clasping his hands on the table. “My belief is that the athlete is considered the gold-standard heterosexual male, trumped only by the warrior, possibly, and if you combine the warrior and athlete—well, we still talk about the ancient Olympians and the gladiators. At any rate, the athlete. Let me illustrate a theoretical model for you. If a teammate of, say, the star shortstop on the baseball team walked in on said shortstop and his boyfriend in the locker room, he’s going to assume that the non-athlete boyfriend somehow inveigled the jock into this compromising sexual situation. The non-jock is the foul tempter in this scenario, and the jock is the fair and naive hetero boy led down the path of homo sin to have his virtue smashed on the rocks of the only decent blowjob he might ev—”
“This hypothesis is really coming together,” Toby mused, interrupting. “So, this hypothetical jock just sells the hypothetical you up the river, given this assumption that the jock can’t be a willing and eager participant in guy-on-guy sex.” He leaned farther toward Paul, chin resting in his hand and brow furrowed slightly.
Paul opened his mouth to agree, but then shut it. He stabbed at some ice cubes with his straw some more, chasing them around in the glass. They had melted some and become small and wily. “It’s possible,” he began slowly. “It’s possible the jock had some understandable reasons for what he did. I mean, it’s hypothetically possible, don’t you think?”
Toby looked at him steadily, wheels clearly turning. “Such as a father who would beat him or kick him out—or both—if he learned his son was a fag?”
“That would be a good reason,” Paul agreed. “But say it was a more nebulous reason. More of a value judgment, and the jock and his boyfriend didn’t necessarily agree on that value, but the boyfriend could understand why the jock did what he did. Not approve or forgive, mind you, just understand.”
“Huh. I might need a more detailed theoretical model to determine that.”
“Well, say the jock was a very good player, to the point that he had a shot at the major leagues, but he believed he’d never make it to the major leagues if he was an out gay man.”
Toby scrunched his eyebrows together, tilting his head to one side, then the other, as if it might help him think. “I guess,” he said doubtfully. “If the boyfriend supported him in his goal . . .”
“Oh, he did. In this model, the boyfriend knew the jock was happy playing baseball, and he liked him happy. But the boyfriend thought that the jock could play Major League Baseball as an out gay man. It’s possible, in a situation such as this, that there was a misunderstanding of how much support the boyfriend was willing to give.”
“So the jock could conceivably believe that the boyfriend would willingly take the ‘fag’ bullet for him?”
Paul nodded. “Exactly! He thought of it more as the boyfriend taking one for the team, and didn’t realize until too late that the boyfriend saw it as the jock throwing him under the bus.”
Toby sat back in his seat, looking flummoxed, then leaned forward again. “Did the boyfriend ever give the jock any indication that he would make this kind of sacrifice for him?”
“No, I don’t think so. The boyfriend wasn’t known for his giving, altruistic nature. The jock was in a tight spot and not thinking clearly. I think he thought the boyfriend cared about him that much.”
“Did he?”
“Not that much, but he did . . .” Paul shook his head.
“Love him?” Toby asked, leaning so far forward he was nearly out of his seat, his eyebrows somehow forming question marks.
Paul swallowed and nodded. He grabbed his tonic and chugged a third of it, for strength. “It was a hypothetical kind of love.”
Toby suddenly relaxed, leaning back in his seat. “Thought so.”
Paul nodded, putting as much morosity into the gesture as possible.
“Did the jock apologize? Or try to explain?” Toby asked.
“He apologized repeatedly, but while they were still in high school, he was never willing to come out. Or after, actually.” Not until recently.
Toby nodded, sipping his beer. “Did the boyfriend forgive him?”
Paul poked at his nearly non-existent ice cubes with his straw. “He couldn’t. Would you have done?”
“I wouldn’t then, but later I might, if he meant a lot to me and I believed he regretted it. And he begged forgiveness enough. But then, of course, there’s the trust issue.”
Paul shrugged, attending assiduously to his few remaining slivers of ice. “Doesn’t matter. It’s all hypothetical anyway.”
Toby planted his elbows on the table suddenly enough that Paul started. “People do awful things to each other, and sometimes it’s mean-spirited and uncaring, but sometimes they have valid reasons. You were pretty cruel to Brad, but you had your reasons. You were trying to protect Sebastian.”
Paul’s dying ice flotilla needed more attention from his straw. “I was just trying to help him get a clue,” he grumbled.
“Just like this theoretical jock did this awful thing to his boyfriend for a justifiable reason. Not a good reason, obviously, but you can tell me why he did it.” Toby hesitated. “I’m not sure the boyfriend is over the jock. Hypothetically.”
“He is too!” Paul sat up straight, straw dripping on the table.
Toby raised his infernal eyebrows. “I think you protest too much. I also think it’s not like you at all to understand this kind of betrayal, hypothetical or real. There are clearly strong emotions involved.”
Paul slumped, putting his straw back in his drink. “Shut up,” he grumbled.
Toby leaned back, stacking his hands behind his head again. “Sorry,” he said complacently. “If this were my theoretical model, I’d try to contact the jock. See what’s happened over the years.”
Dammitall, his ice cubes had melted away to nothing. Paul poked desultorily at his remaining tonic. “In my theoretical model, the boyfriend has already been in contact with him.”
Toby dropped his arms and sat up. “He has? Wait, Paul, didn’t you say a guy from your past just resurfaced, bringing along unresolved issues as carry-on luggage?”