was clear that John didn't understand. “Baby, so am I.”
“You're gay?” John looked appalled and Lionel started laughing again. “You are? But I never thought …” And yet that wasn't true, there had been a faint, hesitant current between them for the last year and yet neither could accept the possibility that the other understood. They talked about it for the next two hours, lying on Lionel's bed, friends at last. Lionel told him about Paul. And John confessed to two brief, terrible affairs. There had been no love in either of them for him, just terrible, anguished, tortured, guilt-ridden sexual release, one with a teacher from his school, who had threatened to kill him if he talked, the other with a stranger, an older man, who had picked him up on the street. And the only purpose the two affairs had served was to show him what he was. He had suspected it for a long time, but he had always thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. People like Greg Thayer would never have talked to him again. But Lionel was so different, he understood it all, and he looked at the younger man sympathetically now, from his vantage point of nineteen. And John was curious about one thing.
“Does Greg know?”
Lionel was quick to shake his head. “Only my Mom. She found out last year.” He told John how, and it still hurt thinking of how shocked she had been, but she had been wonderful to him since then, understanding, compassionate, she accepted him as he was. “Everyone should be lucky enough to have a mother like her.” She had far exceeded his hopes and dreams.
“I don't think my Mom could accept it … and my Dad …” He almost cringed at the thought. “He always wanted me to be such a jock. I played football for him, and I kept thinking, I'm going to get my teeth kicked out doing this, and I hate it, I hate it.” His eyes filled with tears as he looked at Li. “I did it for him.”
“I wasn't as good as you were. But my Dad had Greg to pin his hopes on. I always let him carry the ball, so to speak.” He smiled gently at the new friend that he had known for years. “It took the heat off me in some ways, but I paid a price I guess. My father has never approved of me. And if he knew … he'd die.” They had so much guilt for so many years, for what they were not, for what they could never be, and in the past year, for what they had done. It was almost too much to bear at times. And Lionel thought of it now as he looked into John's eyes. “Did you know about me?”
John shook his head. “I don't think I did. I wished a lot though sometimes.” He smiled honestly up at Li and they both grinned, as Lionel tousled the damp black hair that framed his face.
“You little shit. Why didn't you say something?”
“And have you knock my teeth down my throat, or call the cops, or worse yet … tell Greg?” He shuddered at the thought, and then thought of something else. “Are all the guys in this house gay?”
Lionel was quick to shake his head. “None of them, and I'm pretty sure of that. You get a feel for that when you live with people. And they all have girls stay here pretty regularly,”
“Do they know about you?”
Lionel looked at him pointedly. “I'm careful that they don't suspect, and you'd better do the same, or they'll throw us both out.”
“I'll be careful. I swear.”
Lionel found himself thinking again of changing rooms to the one that shared the bathroom with John, but he forgot the room and looked up at John instead, lying across his bed, and suddenly he felt relief and desire wash over him, and he remembered his dreams of the night before. He reached out to touch John, as he lay back on the bed, waiting for Li's lips and his hands and his touch, his youthful flesh rippling with excitement and begging for him, and Lionel found him with his mouth, and his tongue danced hot fire up John's thighs, as he groaned, and discovered something at Lionel's hands that he had never had before. This time there was nothing clandestine, nothing frightening, nothing embarrassing about the love that Lionel lavished