Page 9 of Jealous Guy

This time, he attacks from the side and lifts me off my feet as soon as he gets his arms around me. I kick my legs out helplessly, unable to find something for them to connect with, and despite myself, I start laughing.

“Stop!” I yell, struggling in vain.

Jordan laughs too. A low rumble that flows from his core and bumps over each bone in my spine.

“Come here, goddamnit,” he grinds through his teeth as he tries to pin my arms to my sides. “I mean it, Orion. Get over here…I need this.”

He doesn’t.

He isn’t the one who needs it. I am, and he knows that about me.

He took one look at me this morning and knew I wasn’t feeling great. He took one look at me and knew that the darkness that often tries to pull me under was close. He knew without me saying a word that I needed something from him.

He doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong with me or what I need. How could he? I’ve never told him, and I spend an inordinate amount of my time trying to make sure he doesn’t find out. In his world, the solution is simple. In his world, the cure-all for feeling less than perfectly happy is a hug.

A massive bear hug.

A hug that doesn’t need to be a hundred percent consensual to be effective.

He winds his arms tightly around me. So tightly that he squeezes a full breath out of me, and a lot of my common sense too. At first, he holds me like that, with my arms pinned to my sides, as the last of my halfhearted resistance works its way out of my body. Then, when I go still, he relaxes his grip and lets my arms escape. He keeps his where they are, around my waist, fingers locked loosely at my lower back.

A cage with the door open.

A cage I could get out of if I was strong or brave.

I’m not.

I wish I could escape him, but I can’t. Not when he’s Jordan and he means things to me that I can’t put into words. Not when he’s my oldest friend, who gets me better than anyone else does. Not when I know things about him no one else understands. Not when his body is so close to mine. So hot. So male. So goddamn enticing that I physically can’t make myself push him away no matter how much I tell myself I should.

Defeated, I drop my head, resting my chin on the shelf of his shoulder as I breathe him in as quietly as possible. He smells like sleep and sex dreams. True, deep friendship and fantasies I’ll never act on.

My arms float up of their own accord, circling his neck as he squeezes me harder. I stay like that for as long as I dare. My chest pressed against his. The hinge of my jawbone touching his. His stubble grating against mine as he speaks. The entire time he hugs me, he whispers things he thinks I need to hear in my ear.

Things like, “I’ve got you, Orion,” and “You’re not alone,” and “Nothing bad is going to happen to you today.”

He says it over and over until my fool heart not only believes him, but it can no longer recall why he’s only a sex dream and a fantasy I’ll never act on. The second that happens, I come to my senses and pull away.

“I’m fine,” I say again. This time it’s a little closer to the truth, but also a lot further from it.

Jordan cups the back of my head and touches his forehead to mine. “You have class this morning, and you’re going to grab a bite at Crema for lunch. We’re going to meet at the gym at three. It’s leg day.” He waits for me to grumble or make my displeasure known. When I don’t, he continues, “But if you’re not feeling it, we can do back and biceps instead.” Because he knows almost everything about me, he knows that I hate leg day, and that having a clear plan for my day settles my anxiety. He releases me and looks up. “Class, lunch, gym. Okay, bud? That’s it. One thing at a time.”

I nod and try to claw back a little dignity. “You’re the worst, d’you know that? Like seriously, how am I supposed to sink into a respectable depression when I have you dragging me out of it all the time?”

“You’re not, Orion.” My attempt at humor doesn’t land. Jordan’s expression is serious, bordering on severe. “Nothing’s ever gonna pull you down while I’m around, d’you hear me? I won’t let that happen to you.”

I nod again because I know that failure to do so will result in an immediate, even more exuberant hug.

He releases me at last, flicking a watchful gaze from my right eye to my left and back to my right again.

His eyes are blue. Bluer than blue. Clear sky-blue fills his irises like watercolor paint on paper, except for a tiny ring near his pupils. For some reason, God—or whatever deity has a truly evil sense of humor—decided Jordan Slater wasn’t attractive enough with that face and that body. No. Looking like a sexual awakening happening in real time wasn’t enough for him, so it deigned to give him bright-yellow rings around his pupils. Flaming golden spheres that light up ocean eyes and make it so that no matter how many years pass, no matter how much I mature and change, one thing remains the same: when I look into Jordan’s eyes, I’m the same dumb kid I was when I was half a head shorter than him and had to look up to make eye contact.

5

Orion

My first year in Cape Elizabeth passed in a blur. In some ways, time flew. In others, it dragged so slowly that I still have near-perfect recall of entire conversations and events from that time. Some of my memories are significant, others less so. Some seemed insignificant at the time, but in retrospect, shaped who I am today.

It was one of those arcane times in life, where normal existed somewhere on a spectrum bound by two extremes: a terrifying desire to be seen and a desperate quest to ensure no one noticed I was alive.