Status Update (#gaymers) (7 page)

“Being a perfectionist isn’t so terrible, right, boy?” he said to the sleeping Ulysses on the couch.

“Nope,” said Adrian from the doorway to the bedroom.

Noah whirled around, face flaming.

“But, Professor Perfectionist, it’s late. And if you’re taking work advice from a dog, you probably need a break.”

“Maybe,” Noah conceded.

“I just discovered that you own one of my favorite cult classic movies of all time.”

“Yeah? Which one?” Noah hit save on his work and closed the laptop.

“
Last Starfighter.
I thought I was the only one to own that DVD.”

“Really?” Noah followed him back to the bedroom. “I figured you’d hate all the crappy eighties graphics.”

“Oh no. The shitty graphics are all part of the charm. See, modern stuff I want to dissect the special effects to see what they’re doing and why.
Last Starfighter
is pure so-bad-it’s-good fun.” He sprawled on Noah’s bed, then patted the space next to him.

Oh dear.
Noah had not thought this through. Adrian had been in his bed for hours
.
Would his sheets smell different? Would his covers still be warm when he left for his own bed? No way was Noah going to be able to sleep tonight.

“You can’t exactly watch from over there.” Adrian fluffed Noah’s pillows.

Why hadn’t he suggested they watch the movie in the living area? Suggesting it now would sound paranoid, right? He gingerly sat on the corner of the bed. Pixel and Ulysses bounded past him, jockeying for position in the middle of the bed.

“Better drop the virginal pretty princess routine or you’ll end up on the floor.”

Noah made great gasping sounds that he hoped passed as laughter, albeit of the frantic variety.

Somehow Adrian took this as an invitation to drag him forcibly back on the bed. They ended up in a heap of men and dogs, Pixel dancing on his chest and Ulysses licking his ear. Noah’s laughs switched to the genuine variety.

“Hey, Noah?”

“Yeah?” He tried to talk around the various tails wagging in his face.

“You’re not really a virgin, are you?”

“How is that relevant?” He sat up, gently pushing the dogs off him.

“Oh. My. God.” Adrian stared at him like he’d sprouted a second head. “You are
.
”

“Can we watch the movie? I don’t feel the need to assuage your curiosity at the moment—”

“What would it take?” Adrian leaned forward, face right up in Noah’s. God, he was more relentless than Ulysses when he got a hold of an idea.

“Clarify,” Noah said carefully.

“For you to talk about this. What would it take? Or—wait. Did you think I meant what would it take for you to lose it?”

Yes.
No.
Noah’s blood ran colder than the blizzard outside at the same time his face flushed lava-stream hot. He was a mess.

Adrian slowly raised a hand. “I volunteer as tribute.”

Chapter Seven

Noah balked. Complete tongue-flapping-out, eyebrows-waggling, hands-shaking, near-panic-attack recoil. And he knew panic attacks.

“My...experience is not a joke.” He managed to get the words out, managed to sound affronted instead of freaked out. Or tempted. And that would be the worst—if Adrian knew how very, very tempted he was, when it was obvious Adrian’s enthusiasm was nothing more than a ploy to get him to talk.

“Sorry.” Adrian looked suitably contrite. “I shouldn’t tease you. Not that I wasn’t a little bit serious. I mean, I was expecting to get massively laid this trip, and that so didn’t happen. So if I can help you out...”

“You and Trent didn’t...have relations?”

“Man. We have got to work on your sex vocabulary. No. As it turns out, arguing is not an aphrodisiac for me.”

“I can imagine.”

“Can you? Because that’s the ten-million-
Villager
-credit question here.” Adrian’s voice was light, but it wasn’t unkind.

“Why is this so fascinating to you?”

“Hot guy, of
literary inclinations
, who may or may not have
experience
in
relations
.” Adrian made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Heck yes, I’m fascinated. You, my friend, are one intriguing puzzle.”

“You really think I’m hot?” Oh curse his stupid tongue.

“You own a mirror, right?” Adrian smiled slowly. “Or do you need me to catalog your smoky eyes and your hot beard and your tasty—”

“Never mind.” His skin felt dry and flaky, as if he’d stayed out for hours in Grand Wash Canyon in the middle of July, as though he might be headed for a perma-red face. The few times Noah really considered his appearance all he saw was too much hair everywhere but on his head, where a receding hairline had shown up in the last year or so. He kept his hair long and fluffy enough to disguise it. He had too-wide lips and a too-narrow face and eyes that never seemed quite awake or happy enough. He had no idea what part of his appearance constituted hot.

He traced the jacquard pattern of his comforter with a finger, avoiding Adrian’s eyes.

“I guess I don’t see how a guy as attractive as you could possibly remain a virgin so long. I mean I get that your ex-fiancée was super religious and wanted to wait—”

“I. I was the one who wanted to wait.” It was a silly thing, but even after all these years, he felt he owed Sarah some modicum of truth—the truth he’d never been able to articulate back then. “She thought I was sweet and old-fashioned, but it wouldn’t have taken a lot to convince her to spoil the honeymoon.”

He could still remember her kisses, her roving hands on him, the questions in her eyes whenever he stopped her attentions. And the guilt. Oh lord, the guilt over the fact that her touch and her lips did nothing for him. The feeling washed over him again, the sick dread of not getting aroused over stuff his friends talked about in hushed whispers.

“Why? I’m not trying to be judgmental here—just curious. Why not take her up on it?”

A rage swept through him, a swift current through the skinny little slot canyon of his self-control. Adrian’s “just curious” made his hands grab fistfuls of the comforter.

“Why do you think, Adrian?” Noah’s voice was louder than he’d ever heard himself and both dogs fled the bed. “Because maybe I was gay and had no real interest in sex with her?”

“Oh.” Adrian’s voice was all soft and surprised. “I didn’t know if you could actually say the words.”

“What? That I’m gay? Has that been the point of all your probing questions? Some sort of exercise to get me to confirm I’m gay? I was pretty sure the books would have clinched it for you, but I’m happy to have provided hours of amusement.”

“Easy.” Adrian patted his arm, stroking like Noah was an angry pony.

Noah felt like one too. He
never
argued like this. He’d promised himself long ago that he would never turn into a loud, ugly man like his father. Instead, Noah made a point of leaving conflicts before they got heated. He fled uncomfortable emotions. For Pete’s sake, he’d broken up with his fiancée in a delicately worded letter.

But something about Adrian blew past his every defense, made him want to engage. In fact, he wanted Adrian riled up too. None of this “calm down” nonsense.

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? The pathetic thirty-five-year-old closeted virgin and his sad little life. Something you can laugh about later when you tell your friends about getting stranded.”

Adrian laughed at that, a harsh, bitter sound that echoed the slashing winds outside. “I am so not telling my friends about getting stranded. You’re not the pathetic one. You’ve taken some sort of noble vow of chastity or whatever. Me? I can’t seem to get a boyfriend who wants to be in the same state as me. And trust me, I’m not telling my coworkers that the guy I met in our forums abandoned me.”

“You met Trent in the
Space Villager
forums?”

“Yeah. He was a big fan of our videos. He’s a programmer too, and he was always leaving compliments on my
Code Review
videos. You know, the things we toss up on Twitch or YouTube talking about problems with game development. And he was one of the people who sent us gifts—”

“One of? Multiple people send the programmers gifts?” Noah couldn’t keep the skepticism from his voice.

“Not just the programmers. The customer support people. Robert, our founder. The guys in marketing and promotion. The whole team gets an endless stream of free food and little toys. You have no idea how rabid the
Space Villager
fans are.” Adrian sounded more than a little proud of that. “We’re already the most popular space MMORPG game with the biggest fan base and we don’t go live for another year.”

“And Trent was one of these rabid fans? I mean, I gave money to the crowd funding drive and I’ve visited the site a couple of times, but I’ve never been tempted to send a bagel or a bobble head.”

“Trent sent me a Nerf gun to torment my team with. I thought it was cute. Anyways, we always thank our backers and supporters on air in the videos, but I mangled his name. He messaged me, and one thing led to another...”

“And next thing you were driving across country together?” Noah wasn’t a total idiot. He could fill in the “another thing” blank with plenty of hot chat sex, and his starving imagination didn’t need the specifics.

“Next thing I’m stranded with only the clothes on my back with this hot professor guy...” Adrian smiled slyly at him. “But anyway, the whole virgin thing? Not nearly as humiliating as my week, let me tell you. You want to be the one who’s going to have to request a new company laptop?”

“Point taken. And it’s not some noble oath.” Noah settled back against the pillows, fighting urge gone and in its place a strange calm—a sense that it was time to finally say certain truths aloud.

“It’s not?” Adrian took his cue and leaned back on the pillows, rolling on his side so he could see Noah’s face. And no, that wasn’t disconcerting in the slightest, being put under observation like an interesting snail.

“Well, maybe it started out that way. I knew I was gay in high school, but my faith told me it was a sin. I went to a conservative college, in part because I didn’t trust myself at a more liberal school. I thought maybe I could ignore that part of me. Then my friendship with Sarah seemed like fate—like I could marry her and everything would be okay.”

“But it wasn’t,” Adrian guessed, blue eyes sympathetic. In the window behind him, snow continued to drift down in lazy sheets, creating the sense of the two of them alone on a snowbound planet, one where Noah could share things he ordinarily locked away.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t love her.” Noah tried to find words to describe the mess his emotions had been back then. “I did.”

“You loved her too much to hurt her.” Adrian was too darn perceptive.

“Exactly.” Noah sighed. “I broke her heart, and I went off to graduate school convinced that as long as I never acted on the gayness I was doing the world a favor—”

“That’s so sad,” Adrian said. “To cut yourself off like that.”

“Well, I thought it was what I deserved after treating Sarah so badly. But gradually...” He trailed off, not sure he could say this next part.

“Something changed?” Adrian leaned forward, and it wasn’t his eagerness that made Noah want to continue as much as the promise in his eyes that he wasn’t judging him.

“I got Ulysses and he was kind of...therapeutic for me. I started hating myself a little less.”

“Oh man. I get that. A few months of taking care of Pixel and I didn’t feel so much like the perpetual screwup my family thought I was. Unconditional love will do that for you.”

Noah’s chest did a weird fluttery thing, and he had to wave his hand to lessen the sensation. “Yeah, well other things weren’t going so well. I was in my final year of the doctoral program and I had all these official functions to go to, and every place I interviewed with did group interviews and formal receptions and...I don’t do well with crowds.”

“I think I got that you’re not exactly a people person from the first,” Adrian teased. He rubbed Noah’s thigh again. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“There is when you want a tenure-track job. It got so bad that I was having panic attacks before flying out to interviews,” he admitted.

“Hey, don’t feel bad. I have panic attacks over flying even when it’s a vacation. I have to either drink or pinch some of my mom’s Xanax to make it through.”

An invisible knot released in Noah’s back. Adrian would get this. “I didn’t have a mom with a pharmacy in her purse. But I went to student health to see if I could get something, and they made me see a psychologist first.”

“That’s smart.” Adrian patted Noah’s leg. “Nothing wrong with getting some help. Unless, of course, the doctor made you feel worse?”

“No, nothing like that. But the doctor said she could tell that I was burdened by something. And of course, I wouldn’t tell her what—”

“It might have helped,” Adrian said gently.

“It might have. But I couldn’t say the words aloud. But I think she might have guessed.” Oh the shame he’d felt back then, feeling like he might be on the verge of being found out. “She gave me this book to read. All about self-love. And it was full of new-age stuff—”

“Hey, I was raised on all that new-age psycho-babble.” Adrian’s tone was all defensive. “My mom reads self-help books for relaxation.”

“Well, she would probably love this title. But it made me realize that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life loathing myself—”

“Damn right.” The purple lock of Adrian’s hair jumped with the force of his words.

“And I started trying to...accept my gayness. I still wasn’t anywhere close to coming out. But I discovered gay novels around that time, and I worked on trying to reconcile my sexuality with my faith.”

“And you weren’t tempted to...experiment?” Adrian asked.

“I had panic attacks at going to sedate academic receptions. No way was I going to a crowded gay bar. And casual sex isn’t attractive to me.”

“But relationship sex is? Or are you not into sex at all? Because that’s cool too. I’ve got two asexual friends—”

“Not
everything
needs a label,” Noah said. “I find the idea of a relationship attractive, yes. And I’m not opposed to sex or immune to desire, but to me, it’s something sacred, reserved for a union of meaning, not some urge to be worked out on a Friday night—”

“Good to know.” Adrian smiled encouragingly at him, and Noah’s stomach flip-flopped. This conversation was happening on so many levels, Noah simply couldn’t keep up.

“But I’ve always been able to compartmentalize that part of my life.” He knew he was turning red again. “Anyway, I was slowly getting more okay with who and what I was and then...” He drifted and had to look away from Adrian’s questioning gaze.

“And then?” Adrian’s hand was gentle on Noah’s chin, turning his face back toward him.

“And then I got the job at Landview. And I had to sign a morality clause in the contract. They kicked two students off the basketball team the year prior for having premarital sex. Coming out was completely and totally off the table and I was...”

“Relieved?”

“Yes.” Noah felt the word all the way to his feet, every muscle releasing with the realization Adrian got Noah on a plane that no one else had ever. “Yes. I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to deal with the...messy reality of how coming out would destroy my family. I wouldn’t have to figure how precisely to navigate gay culture when I was opposed to casual sex. I figured it was a sign from God that this is how I’m supposed to live my life. Aware of and accepting who I am, but not...seeking more.”

“That’s quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Adrian’s voice had a quiver in that went straight to all the raw parts of Noah’s soul. “So you just resigned yourself to a life alone? You didn’t think about job hunting elsewhere?”

“Do you know how few tenure-track archaeology positions there are each year? No. This is just my life now. And I’m okay with that.” Maybe if he said it enough times, he’d believe it too.

“No, you’re not.” Adrian shook his head. “People aren’t meant to be alone, Noah. It hurts my heart to think of you choosing to be celibate simply to keep a job. And because you’re afraid. And I know coming out’s scary, but trust me—”

“It’s not an option for me.” Noah cut short Adrian’s pep talk. “It doesn’t really matter if I would have eventually gotten up the courage to do it. Last year, two tenure-track jobs opened. In the whole country. I’m here working on my book because this is my sabbatical semester. Assuming I make my book deadline, I’ll have the final tenure review in the spring and then I’ll be tenured. That’s enough for me. The ability to work on my research is huge.”

“But research won’t keep you warm at night. And I know that because I’m working eighty-hour weeks on this game. I take Pixel with me to the office because otherwise I’d never see him. But I’m honest enough to admit I’m lonely as heck.”

“Look where that got you,” Noah said, and Adrian’s face crumpled, all that earnest light fading from his eyes. Adrian looked away, studying the print of the Utah desert on the wall. Even his hands had gone slack from their usual perpetual motion. “Wait. I didn’t mean—”