Page 45 of Sizzle

“Not so new for me.”

He looks up at me, clearly startled. I nod, letting him work it out on his own.

“You’re bisexual,” he says a long minute later. I nod again. Another beat passes. “Is that why Diana—?”

“I never cheated on her,” I tell him. “I wasn’t even tempted. We were pretty happy, or so I thought. But I didn’t want to marry her without telling her the truth.”

“The truth,” he echoes. “Meaning that you’ve…”

“Been with men before. Yes.”

He goes quiet again. My stomach is wound so tightly I’m afraid to move for fear of rupturing something.

“Wait, you said you didn’t cheat. You mean she left you because you told her… because you—”

“Because I came out to her, yes,” I say. The sheer outrage on his face makes me want to kiss him. A tiny spark of hope flickers in the back of my mind.

Maybe I won’t lose my friend after all.

“That’s some serious sack of bullshit,” he says.

I laugh, glad to let go some of the tension in my gut.

“I agree.”

Quiet descends again. I can feel him sneaking glances at me but I wait for him to ask. I know he needs to work this out for himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I sigh.

“We were eighteen years old,” I say. “Everything at school was so new, you know? And I’d only just told my parents that summer.” They’d been amazing about it, too. Mom had yelled at me for thinking they’d be anything other than supportive.

“Back then I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience, either with girls or guys. So it didn’t seem like a real thing, like it was something I needed to tell people about.”

“Even me,” he says flatly.

“Not back then,” I say, finally meeting his gaze. “By the time I’d dated enough to know things weren’t going to change, I told myself it didn’t matter if you knew. Or didn’t know.”

“What if you’d fallen for some guy and decided to get married? You don’t think I would have noticed then?” He grabs his soiled shirt off the floor and stands, so I follow suit.

“I’m sorry.” Elliot spins around and pushes me.

“Fuck you, Alex. You throw this at me after that—after I—and you’re fucking sorry?” He shoves at my shoulders again.

A muscle in my cheek tics as I grind my teeth together, but before I can form a reply, I see it—that sheen of moisture in his eyes.

“Elliot.” He moves to shove me out of the way again. I circle his wrists, bringing his arms down and around, holding them tight behind his back, our bodies close but not quite touching.

“Elliot, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you.”

He’s pulling air in through his nose hard, head bowed so I can’t see his face, his forehead on my shoulder.

It occurs to me that his response isn’t just that of an old friend who thinks he’s been betrayed.

No, he’s acting like a jealous lover.

That spark of hope explodes in my chest, so intense that I might burst.