Page 49 of Their Wicked Ways
“How long have you guys been doing this? I know that wasn’t the first time. You were way too practiced.”
“A few years.” I tapped a pattern out on my knee distractedly.
“That long? I get not telling everyone, but why did you hide it from me?” The pain in his voice broke my heart, especially since he was still wearing his neutral mask. “Did you think I’d care? Do you think I’m that much of an asshole that I’d judge my best friends for what they like to do in bed?”
“No. We just…didn’t know how.”
“All those times I talked to you about my other job. All the times I came to you for advice, and you never thought that could be a good segue? That it didn’t have to be a huge deal because I wouldn’t care.” He widened his eyes, shock replacing his neutrality. “Did you think I’d be weird and want to join in?”
“No!” I yelped. “No,” I repeated in a normal tone. “That was never even a thought.”
Jesse might be gay like Wes and me, but there’d never been any sort of sexual tension between him and either of us. We’d only ever be friends.
“Then why? I know I should just let it go because you’re allowed to have secrets, but it kills me that my best friends kept this huge thing from me for years when I’ve been nothing but honest. The stuff you know about my other job could put me in jail. I know you’d never tell anyone, but I trusted you with something that could ruin my life. That could destroy everything I’ve worked for. I took that chance because I trust you. I thought you were my family.”
“We are. You’re our family. Full stop.”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Jess…”
“Whatever.” He waved his hand dismissively, his blank mask back. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not fine. We should have told you. It’s not that we don’t trust you or thought you’d be a dick about things. We were trying to protect ourselves.”
He kept quiet, giving me the chance to keep talking or shut down.
I kept talking.
“You know I don’t give a shit what people think of me. And I’m the first to tell someone where to shove it if they have issues with what I do. But Wes isn’t like me.”
Understanding dawned on his face.
“It’s not easy working in the same industry as your partner. Until we got on with your dad’s crew, we had to hide the fact that we weren’t just roommates every time we started a new job or met new people. We couldn’t even have people over because they’d realize we share a bedroom. It’s isolating, and it took its toll on us.
“Things got way better when we signed on with your Pops and we could be open, but his crews aren’t like Quinn’s. They accepted us as a couple as long as we didn’t act like one. They weren’t dicks about it or anything, and no one was outwardly hateful, but the tension and awkwardness was there any time we looked at each other too long or made the mistake of touching in a way that went outside what ‘bros’ do. It’s exhausting having to pretend that the man you love more than anything is just your friend. It sucks having to put other people’s comfort above your relationship when your colleagues are free to talk about their partners or people they’re interested in. When they can bring someone they met a week ago to the company party, but you have to make sure you don’t stand too close to your boyfriend of seven years at said party because it would make those same people uncomfortable.”
“Why didn’t you tell Pops? You know he would have shut that shit down instantly.”
“I know, but it was easier not to. We had to work with those guys every day. The last thing we wanted was to rock the boat and piss anyone off by putting them on the boss’s radar. And the fact that we’ve known your Pops since we were kids didn’t help us either. They already assumed we got special treatment; tattling would have put a giant target on our backs and made things even harder.”
His features relaxed. “Yeah, I get it. Things at my last shop were like that. The guys were cool with me being out as long as Ikept my personal life away from them and pretended like I was sexless. They could say or do whatever they wanted, but I had to make sure I didn’t act, look, or come across as queer at all.”
As a mechanic, Jesse understood better than most, and he’d dealt with a ton of homophobic bullshit before he’d been hired at his current job.
Not all shops or crews were like that, but enough were that our experiences weren’t uncommon in our community.
“We got so used to hiding everything that it just became second nature,” I continued. “We didn’t leave you out because of anything to do with you. We were scared of what would happen ifanyoneknew.”
Jesse finally relaxed. “And it didn’t help that you worked for my stepdad, and now you work for my stepbrother. It put you in a weird place because I was in a weird place. Not part of things, but not an outsider.”
I picked up my beer and took a sip. “Yeah. And we’re not planning on doing this forever. It works for us now, but who knows how we’ll feel in a month or a year or five years? We figured it was easier just to keep everything on the DL. You remember what happened in high school when we were outed. How everyone talked about our relationship and sex life like it was celebrity gossip. You remember how hard that was on Wes.”
Jesse nodded, his expression grim. “I remember.”
“We should have told you.” Picking up my beer, I took a sip. “I’m sorry we didn’t. I promise it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with trying to protect ourselves.”
“I get it, and I’m not asking how or why you guys started.” Jesse picked up his drink as well. “That’s your business, and you can tell me if you want. But this thing with Jett is obviously a big deal, and I know you. You need to talk to someone about it.”