And he was right. The idea of having a husband and family to take care of was appealing to me. It was one of the reasons I didn’t feel completely comfortable when Jay and our other gay and bi friends started raging against heteronormativity. I felt like maybe I wasn’t the “right” kind of gay man if what I wanted was the same life my parents had.
The server’s hand landed on my shoulder after he finished setting down more platters of appetizers someone must have ordered. “Need something else, cutie?” he asked, meeting my eyes with a crooked smile.
I looked around the table at my friends. “Anyone need anything?”
Everyone seemed happy enough, so I turned back to him. “We’re good. Thanks.”
He pursed his lips and walked away. When I turned back to Chris, he was laughing.
“What?” I asked.
“Dude, he was flirting with you. The man’s had his hands on you all night.”
I glanced back in the direction of the server, but his back was to us as he waited at the bar for more drinks.
“I don’t think so.”
Jay snorted. “Oblivious.”
“Right?” Chris asked with a laugh. “He never notices when men are trying to pick him up. If it weren’t for Grindr, he’d probably never get any action.” He winked at me.
“I don’t use Grindr,” I said. Since when did he think I hooked up with a bunch of random men? “Are you kidding?”
“Yes.” He met my eyes and held them. “But maybe you should.”
The words hit me square in the chest like well-aimed darts. My throat felt thick, and my fingers tingled. I glanced around at our group of friends, but no one seemed to notice the heated moment that had just happened between us.
“I think I will,” I said through my teeth as I met his eyes again. “Good night.”
I stood up and reached for my jacket, ignoring his sudden protests that he was “just kidding” and I should “stop being so sensitive.”
Just when I thought he might actually come after me, someone at the table said something funny that caught his attention and he was back to laughing with our table of friends.
As I walked out into the frigid Chicago night, I reminded myself that they were actually his friends. I’d stayed home in Carpentersville and gone to community college first before being able to afford my bachelor’s degree in nursing. During those years, I’d come to the city many times to visit Chris in college and meet his friends. So when I’d finally gotten a good placement at a nursing home in the city a few years ago, I’d felt like I already had a good group of friends here. They’d always welcomed me and made me feel included, even though they had fancy degrees from expensive universities and came from the kind of wealth I’d only ever seen in Chris’s family.
As I made my way down the stairs to the train station, people jostled me from all sides. All I wanted was my bed and the companionship of my cat. Well, my two cats. Only, one of them wasn’t really mine. My next-door neighbor had gotten her for her daughter before discovering the daughter was allergic. So she’d asked me to keep Waffles at my place so her daughter could visit it whenever she wanted.
It was fine. Waffles and Socrates gave each other as much healthy respect as could be expected in a 540-square-foot studio apartment. But at least it was all ours. No sharing. That had been my one requirement when I’d moved to the city, even if it meant a couple of additional stops on the train at the end of the day.
When I finally settled into a seat on the train and felt the familiar jostling as it pulled away from the platform, I let out a breath.
It wasn’t like I’d intentionally set out to still be a virgin in my late twenties. There’d been… oh, about a hundred and fifty thousand instances in which I would have liked to have had sex in the past ten or twelve years, but the person I’d wanted to do it with hadn’t been willing. And for some stupid-ass reason, doing it with anyone else felt like cheating.
I knew it was ridiculous. Pathetic, even. But I hadn’t wanted to fuck some random stranger. I’d wanted to have sex with Chris. And I’d wanted it to be special. It was the reason I’d refused to sleep with him until he was ready to come out to his family and commit to a real relationship.
I rubbed my hands over my face. Fuck special. At this rate, I was going to die a virgin. Even when Chris finally came to his senses, if he found out I was still a virgin, he’d surely lose respect for me or think I was weird. At the very least, he’d be annoyed by my inability to give him the experience he deserved.