Page 257 of Silver Sweet
“That’s not the reason.” His gaze is pained again. “It’s not because I thought you’d react poorly. I’ve wanted to tell you…there’ve been so many times I almost did.” His normally composed voice carries a tremor.
It’s hard to breathe. “You were scared I’d tell Eliot?” I ask. “Because I can keep a secret from him. You know, we aren’t the same person. We don’t share a brain?—”
“Tom.” My words hurt him even more. “I know what it feels like to be lumped in with someone. I’m a twin. I’ve never, not for a single fucking minute, seen you and Eliot as one person. Ineverwill. It’s not why. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.”
I try to relax.
“It’s felt like…” Beckett wants to touch his hair, but he notices his black leather gloves. Ones he must’ve put on to shake hands with strangers tonight. He tugs them off, finger by finger. “It’s felt like an unraveling, and I just couldn’t get it out. And it’s made me…” He stares at the floor, sliding the gloves into his back pocket.
“Made you what?”
“Feel like a horrible brother to you.” His bloodshot eyes tunnel through mine. “You’ve sought advice that I could’ve given—that Iwantedto give.”
My jaw unhinges. “I might need that chair,” I say as realizations rock me. “Holy shit…” I thread my hands on my head. “You’re way more experienced than I am…this whole time? How long?”
“I’ve had casual sex with men for a while.”
I blink hard.What the fuck?“Leo isn’t the only one?”
“No, he’s not.” Beckett slips his bare hand through his dark, wavy hair. “But he is the first guy I ever slept with.”
I’m pummeled with the truth. My brain cycles through so many questions, but I land on this one, “When?”
“I was nineteen. So was he,” he says. “I was his first experience with a guy too.”
“Five years ago?”
“Almost six.”
Right. I drag my hands down my face, hoping this all sinks in soon. “You’ve had anal sex? Like received? Given?”
“Both,” he nods.
I think out loud, “You’re not straight.”
“I’ve never really thought of myself as anything. I just fuck who I fuck. That’s it really. It’s simple to me.”
Our dad is very similar, so I ask, “Does Dad know?”
Beckett shakes his head slowly, but then says, “I suspect he does know.”
I nod. “Because he knows everything.”
“Because he sensed something between me and Leo. The same way I think Phoenix must have too. Honestly, I’ve really only ever told Charlie everything.”
I push my hair back a few times, trying to process. My gaze rises back to Beckett’s with a much deeper question. “Do you love him?”
His brows spring off his face. “Leo?”
“He was your first, Beckett.”
“It’s not romantic. It’ssex, Tom.”
I think about me and Phoenix, and sleeping with him has never been unemotional or purely physical. I can’t imagine having sex with him like that.
But I know Beckett has been into casual sex with zero commitments since forever. “Okay, yeah.” I worry, “Is this triggering your OCD telling me everything?”
“Not yet.”
