| |
Robbie’s POV
For a few minutes that night, I was in a state of shock and couldn’t get my body to listen to my order to get the hell up.
“Hi, you must be Sam,” James greeted, and he sounded genuinely afraid.
“Yes, I am Sam, and you must be the football player Robbie has been tutoring,” my very scary friend responded. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for a tutoring session?”
It was this that spurred me to jump to my feet and rush over towards the door.
“Sam, you can never have enough tutoring so you should get going so I can teach James some new material before it gets too late.”
When Sam turned to look at me, I knew that she knew I was full of shit.
“Really? Is that what you two are doing?”
I looked her straight in the eyes, despite the fear running through my body. “Sam we’ll talk later, okay?”
“Oh, you better believe we are going to talk later,” Sam said, before turning towards James.
When she shook his hand, James’s eyes widened almost comically. “Yeah, nice to meet you, Sam.”
“So very nice to meet... James, that’s it right?”
“Yeah... that’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” he joked weakly.
She giggled. “Just maybe I will.”
After she left, I tried to do damage control. James didn’t appear to be shaken up and we were quickly able to move on to more fun and pleasurable activities.
Every moment we spent together, I fell deeper and deeper for this guy. It was starting to get out of hand, but I couldn’t help myself. One day, probably soon, this was going to end because James was going to wake up and realize he wasn’t into guys. This was just some fun phase to get out of his system before returning to dating and hooking up with girls.
Until that moment, I was just going to keep going and enjoy whatever the hell was happening between us. When he did ‘break up’ with me, I’d try to handle it as best I could. I mean, I’d handle it better than a normal person would because I knew it was coming.
When I got up in the morning, James wasn’t up but I expected this. If James came over the same night as a game, he was going to sleep later than me. I was even able to get dressed, leave, go down to the cafeteria to get some snacks, and then return.
I came back to James awake and sitting up in bed.
“I got snacks,” I told him, laughing when his eyes lit up.
“Dude, thanks. I appreciate you getting me something to eat. I’m starving.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course, you are. I mean, you’re an athlete. You guys eat as much as a fully grown horse.”
“An almost grown horse,” James argued back playfully.
While James was hanging out there, I was able to forget about the fact that Sam was going to want to talk to me. However, once he left, I knew it was only a matter of time before she called. Part of me wondered if she had seen him leave my dorm room in the morning, but this would require Sam to get up early and stake out my building.
The only reason I knew she wouldn’t do something like this is because Sam was not a morning person. Most, if not all of her classes, were in the afternoon or later. She had purposely chosen these times because morning was just not a time of day Sam was able to function properly.
I went about the rest of my day, went to class, studied, and did everything I had to do. When I hadn’t heard from Sam, I started to grow concerned. The silence couldn’t be good. It either meant she was seething or she was planning something. Neither of these options exactly appealed to me.
The club meeting was that night, so I went. To my horror, Sam was waiting right in the doorway. Our eyes locked and I felt the urge to run... though I didn’t act on that urge.
“Hello, Robbie.”
I swallowed. “I texted you, but you didn’t respond. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I just wanted to make you sweat a little,” she informed me with a giggle. “Did it work?”
“What do you think?” I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose in annoyance. “So, are we going to the meeting, or did you wait here so you can kidnap me?”
She sighed. “I wasn’t sure. While I want to go to the meeting, I also want to shake you down and figure out what the hell is going on with you. I know it’s something.”
Before Sam could say anything, I rushed past her and into the room where we usually held the weekly LGBTQ meeting. I sat down and kept my gaze focused on the wall in front of me.
Someone sat down next to me, and I didn’t even need to look to see that it was Sam who had taken a seat in the open seat beside me.
“Robbie, you do realize that you have to talk to me eventually, right?” Sam whispered to me.
I nodded. “Yes, but I’m trying to prolong it.”
“... you know, I only care about you, right? Something is going on and you’re hiding it from me. That isn’t like you.”
“Coffee after the meeting at the usual spot, okay?”
Sam nodded. “Okay, but I’m holding you to that, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She blinked. “I like the sound of that, just not from you. Why couldn’t some hot girl tell me that rather than my best twink friend?”
I gave her a look before laughing.
At the end of the club, we headed to the coffee shop. The two of us got our coffee, sat down, and then I found myself on the receiving end of a glare.
“Spill everything.”
And spill everything I did. I explained the entire situation to Sam and felt like a total idiot as I did. While I explained everything, I looked down and couldn’t bring myself to even look in Sam’s direction. This was how ashamed I felt about the situation.
“Jesus, Robbie, I wish you had talked to me.”
I glanced up at her and winced. “Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you talk to me about this?”
“Why do you think, Sam?” I muttered. “I knew you wouldn’t approve of such a relationship and were going to tell me I need to break it off.”
Once again, she groaned. “You know what I’m going to say, right?”
“Yeah, I have an idea.”
“Well, good. I’m going to say it anyway though,” she warned.
I sighed. “Go ahead.”
“Why do you do this to yourself, Robbie? You know it’s just going to end in heartbreak. Getting with someone straight never works out well... especially someone who is still trying to figure themselves out.”
“I like him, Sam,” I told her weakly. “Look, I know it’s going to end in disaster, but I want to ride this wave until the end. Can you respect that?”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t, Robbie because I can’t stand to see someone who has become my best friend hurt themselves like this.”
“Look, I understand you want the best for me, but you need to realize I can make my own mistakes. I need to be able to make them. Why don’t you get that?”
Sam leaned back in the chair, and I could tell she was judging me hard. A part of me felt like she might jump up and just storm off. I didn’t want to lose a good friend because of my decision.
“I do get that, but I worry for you,” Sam said, sounding exasperated with the situation. “Look, I’ll drop it as long as you promise that you will at least consider ending things with him. Can you do that for me?”
I bit down on my bottom lip. “I’ll try. That’s the best I can do.”
It wasn’t like I was lying. I did intend to think about it and then make an actual decision. The problem was, I just felt like my decision was going to be one that caused me a lot of heartaches because it seemed like the only one, I was capable of making at this point.
When we were done, she walked me back to my dorm and hugged me.
“Text me when you want to talk, okay?”
“I will,” I assured her.
Once I was back in my room, I realized I had a lot to think about. My relationship with James wasn’t healthy, but I cared for him. We had this connection that I never imagined would happen.
It was crazy to think that a few weeks ago I had been dreading tutoring him because I was convinced that it wasn’t going to go well. I thought he’d be bullying me and just be generally unpleasant, but what happened was anything but the sort. He was nice, charming, funny, and just great.
God, Sam was right. I had gotten in too deep and did need to get out, but I knew that was not a step I could take. When we got closer to the end of the semester and had to return to our homes, that would be a good time to end this arrangement. No point in continuing this when we would end up being hundreds of miles apart.
I sent James a text, telling him that we could get together tomorrow so the two of us could get some studying done. It was difficult to balance our studying and physical relationship at times, but somehow, I had managed to do it until this point. Could I continue to do it? I didn’t know.
He responded by telling me that sounded like a good idea. I couldn’t help the small smile that spread across my face.
His sending me such a simple text message was enough to make me feel butterflies in the pit of my stomach.
Everything seemed so good right now that I couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to come crashing down suddenly. I mean, all good things came to an end so it made sense why I might think something like that.
Sam kept checking in with me after that at least once a day to ask how things were going. I’d tell her that everything was the same because that’s really how it was. I hadn’t made any final decisions yet and didn’t think I was going to anytime soon.
Why had I fallen for a straight guy out of all guys? It wasn’t like there weren’t gay guys who were on the campus. This was a huge campus, and I was in a literal LGBTQ club, yet I ended up falling in love with the jock I was tutoring. The straight jock.
Yes, love. I knew it was love at this point. While I was young, there was no other way to describe what I was feeling other than love. I told this to Sam, and she just sent me a bunch of angry emojis and then curses.
I just smiled at her response, unsure of what else to say when she was raging like that. Thankfully, she didn’t call me. That would have made matters way worse.
So, despite my realization, I said nothing. It was difficult but I knew I couldn’t tell him. Better yet, I wouldn’t tell him. Not even when one night after we slept together, he turned to me as we were laying there in the afterglow before telling me he had something important to tell me.
