So Skyler talked. He didn’t know for how long, but he laid out the whole situation. How his mother was holding this over his head, how she wouldn’t let Skyler interact with his sister unless Skyler did as he was told. By the end of it, his body was chilled right through, so it must have been awhile.
“Okay, so why does your mom want to keep you from your sister? Seems like a pretty shitty thing to do to both of you,” Craig asked. He had this way of getting right to the heart of the matter, one which Skyler wasn’t nearly as good at.
But this was his chance. He didn’t think he was taking too much of a risk, but considering that he hadn’t even explicitly said these words to Kyle, the best friend that he had ever had, it was definitely a bit scary for him to say it now, to someone he barely knew.
“I’m gay.”
Craig looked at Skyler, and his expression didn’t change. It had been intent, focused, the entire time that they’d been speaking, and it stayed that way, but Skyler didn’t know what to make of that.
“Your lips are turning blue,” Craig finally said. “Let’s go in and dry off. I have some food if you’re hungry.”
That was it? That was the big reaction to his confession, the one that he had made only once before and had been so sure that he never would again? Skyler made his way out of the creek with legs that felt like they had been mostly numbed, and when Craig spread a blanket out, he collapsed down onto it gratefully.
“Does that change your opinion of me?” Skyler demanded when the silence had stretched on so long between them that even he felt like he needed to say something, anything, to break it.
“That you’re gay?” Craig asked and then shook his head. “No. I was just thinking about the thing with your mom and your sister.” When he saw the expression on Skyler’s face, Craig actually laughed. “Dude, come on. My brother just married your best friend yesterday. Did you see me having any problem dancing at their wedding?”
Skyler let out a soft exhalation, a huff of air passing his lips, and when he was handed a sandwich, he accepted it and ate with more enthusiasm than he would have thought possible only a few moments ago.
“I was just thinking,” Craig said, as he plopped himself down onto the blanket beside Skyler, a sandwich in his own hands. “Why don’t you just look her up on Facebook or Instagram or whatever?”
Skyler forgot to eat for a second and then had to remind himself to chew and swallow the bite of food that was in his mouth. That was it. That was the thing that he had been forgetting this whole time. Something had been nagging at him from the moment that his mother had tried to pull her power trip on him, and right there, Craig had put his finger on what it was.
This wasn’t the same world anymore. Some options hadn’t even been around when his mother was growing up.
“I don’t have a Facebook account,” Skyler whispered, and it was a huge relief to him when Craig smiled at him and patted him gently on the shoulder.
“I’ll help you set one up. It’s easy.”
And just like that, with a few words, Craig gave Skyler hope. Practical, common-sense hope. Skyler had been given two choices, both of them terrible, but now he had a third. And it was all thanks to Craig.
Six
Craig
Right then and there, on Skyler’s cell phone, they set up his Facebook account. The phone even had an app for it built right in, and yet Skyler had never activated it. When Craig had asked him why he had shrugged and said that he had never had a reason to.
For most people, just the fact that everyone else was doing it would be enough of a reason. But not Skyler. He did things on his own schedule when it was the right thing to do for him, when he had a reason to do it. And that was something that Craig couldn’t help but admire about him.
As they set up the account, Skyler started to shiver, and Craig acted on nothing short of pure impulse. He wrapped his own shirt around Skyler’s shoulders, a little smile on his face. It was obvious to him that Skyler had grown up much more sheltered, physically speaking, than he had, and that touched something deeply protective in him.
When Skyler didn’t object, Craig kept his arm wrapped around his slender shoulders. Just the slightest bit, just enough to be sure of, Skyler leaned toward Craig. It might have been an instinctive thing, just a reaction to Craig’s warmth, but Craig would take it.
He and Skyler would never work out. Even in the creek, when Craig had been almost sure that Skyler was going to kiss him, it hadn’t happened. Craig might have gone for it himself, except that he couldn’t read Skyler, and Skyler had shown no sign of interest before.
Kissing another man was something that Craig was very, very careful about, and because of that, he had never been caught. He wasn’t about to try it on Skyler, who might be gay, who had outright admitted that he was, but who messed all of Craig’s signal-reading right up. He had shown signs of interest, and Skyler hadn’t responded, so that was his answer right there.
Oh well. They could be friends. Skyler didn’t have any objection to that, as far as Craig could tell, and if they could be friends who touched, who cuddled, and that was a good thing, too. As long as he could keep himself from wanting Skyler, or, if that weren’t possible, from acting on that desire, they would be fine.
That seemed like a big if, though, when he had that slender, chilly body pressed close against him, when they were close enough that Craig could feel Skyler breathing, in and out, against him. It was so easy to let himself drift off into a fantasy. What if he turned his head, let his lips graze, as if by accident, against the side of Skyler’s face? What if he let his lips slip down, over the shell of Skyler’s ear, down to his neck? What if he just let himself taste?
Would Skyler get turned on? Or was Skyler even capable of getting turned on by Craig? Without more signs from Skyler, who seemed to give off nothing, Craig couldn’t be sure, and he honestly felt like enough of a creep already just for enjoying this contact as much as he was and not breaking it.
“I found her.”
Craig forced his gaze guiltily back to the screen. For just a moment, he had let himself forget what this was. That he was a friend, helping out his friend. And that if he wanted to keep Skyler around at all, he needed to remember that.
“Your sister?” Craig remembered and felt Skyler nod. The smaller man still hadn’t pulled away from him, and Craig, for just a second, closed his eyes and tried to memorize the feeling of being this close. Warm and safe, that was how it felt, and deeply protective towards Skyler.
