Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Oh, son,” he’d said. “You love so big and so true. It’s beautiful but it’ll break your heart.”
And it had.
Bram knew he fell hard for people...but what other way was there to fall?
He slid his hand under Zachary’s sweater and stroked the warm skin of his back, tracing the landscape of his spine.
“Do you, um, do this often?” Zachary asked, pushing up on one elbow to look into Bram’s face.
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I broke up with someone a few months before I moved here. We were together for a long time. Haven’t been with anyone since.”
Zachary sat up and raised his eyebrows in question.
“I wondered how you ended up here,” he said.
Bram nodded.
“My family used to come to Wyoming to camp when I was a kid. Near Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest. I always loved it. It was so peaceful here, so beautiful. It was the place I had the fondest memories of—besides home, and I couldn’t be at home.”
“Bad breakup?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Bram liked how Zachary just asked when he wanted to know things.
“I was with Drake for two years. Naveen was my best friend. He was like another brother. My whole family knows him.”
Zachary’s face was set in an I-think-I-know-where-this-is-going-and-I-hate-it expression.
“Yeah. They cheated on me. Were cheating on me for months, it turned out.”
He’d walked in on them when he dropped by Naveen’s house to borrow a tool. He had been utterly stunned.
Drake, Naveen, and Bram spent a lot of time together and Bram had never noticed anything between them. He’d felt like the luckiest guy alive, that they got along so well, because it meant he got to hang out with his best friend and his boyfriend at the same time.
The truth was that if Drake had told him he had feelings for Naveen, Bram probably would have given his blessing. They had agreed to monogamy, but there was always room for renegotiation. Flexibility was what let people grow and thrive.
But Naveen and Drake had snuck around behind his back instead. When he opened the door, they’d stopped in what would have been a comical frieze, if that frieze hadn’t broken Bram’s heart.
“To be honest, losing Naveen was worse. We’d been friends since we were ten. I’d told him how much I loved Drake. He knew how much it would hurt me and did it anyway.”
“Damn,” Zachary said. “That’s so heartless.”
“I think... I think maybe they fell in love.”
This was a new thought that had crept slowly into Bram’s mind over the last few weeks. His shock and hurt were so huge and so sharp that for a while they were all he could see. Betrayal, cruelty. He didn’t look for explanations because none of them would matter. But now... Naveen wasn’t cruel, and he didn’t hurt people if he could help it. It was possible he simply...felt things.
“Does that make it better?” Zachary asked doubtfully.
“Yeah.” Bram traced the lines of Zachary’s face. “It does.”
Zachary shrugged like he didn’t agree but his eyes fell shut at Bram’s touch.
“You left your family and came to a place where you don’t know anyone. It must have been bad.”
It really was.
“I got all messed up. I was devastated about Naveen and Drake, but... I couldn’t see past the realization that maybe trust is never possible. I guess maybe it sounds naive, but I trusted people. I believed them when they said things. Of course I knew people lied, but a lie or two doesn’t mean you can’t trust someone when it counts.
“But in the months after, I lost it. That feeling that people—that the world—can be counted on for anything. I started thinking how fragile it all was. That everything we think and believe is based on assuming you can trust people to do what they say or remain consistent in their feelings. And if we can’t, then...there’s nothing certain. Nothing you can believe in. It messed me up.”
Zachary hmmed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever trusted anyone the way you’re describing. It’s always seemed to me like people are going to do whatever serves their interest and I usually won’t know why they’re doing it. But that means I have to take care of myself because no one else is going to do it.”
Bram ached at the idea.
“My sister Moon says the way I used to think was just privilege plus stupidity, so maybe you’re right.”
Zachary snorted. “I don’t like lies,” he said. “If you can’t even trust people to do what they say, I want them to at least not make it more complicated.”
They lay in silence for a while and Bram stroked Zachary’s curls. But just as he was starting to drift off, Zachary said, “You wouldn’t know.”
“Hmm?”
“Your boyfriend and your friend. Even if there were signs.” Bram tensed but Zachary went on. “Knowing would’ve meant being suspicious. Assuming the worst of them. And you’re too generous for that.”