The Increasingly Misnamed Short Story (AKA, This is A Not-So-Short Story, pt. 25), It Might Be Appropriate to Rename it the Energizer Bunny

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And a reminder, this is copyrighted to Emily Rush on February 25, 2014. All rights reserved… yadayadayada
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“I-I’m s-sorry…”, the boyfriend starts sounding more timid than usual, “I-I kn-know that y-you both c-care about m-me. I g-guess I-I’m s-still a l-little hurt.”

The boyfriend looks at him and places a reassuring hand on his leg.

“B-but… I w-want u-us a-all to b-be h-happy. S-so…”, the boyfriend continues.

He stops him by gently placing a finger over his lips.

“We can talk about this later.”, he says.

He replaces his finger with his lips.

“I want to make sure that we’re all ready for this.”, says the boy, “There’s no pressure to make any decision now. Come to it in your own time.”

He nods. His head a bit heavy from everything that’s happened today. The day has been quite eventful. It’s almost more than his brain can understand. He had outed himself to his fiancé and now his boyfriend’s boyfriend is asking about going out on a date. It’s certainly more than he expected out of the day. It almost comes across as too much. While he wants to hide from the fact that he may no longer have a family, he also appreciates that his boyfriend has toiled without one since he was in high school. He was disowned and thrown out, forced to fend for himself. If anything, he thinks that it’s given his boyfriend a certain kind of strength. The ability to stand on his own. While he likes how successful his family is, he also wonders what his boyfriend has gone through.

Granted, he also knew that it wouldn’t be the same as he would be disowned later and more capable of being on his own than his boyfriend was at the time.

All that matters now is that he’s where he feels like he belongs. At least, that’s what he thinks his boyfriend needs. After all of all the crap that happened in high school, he needs to make sure that his boyfriend feels loved.

The boy continues to scan back and forth between the two of them. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to discern what would be an appropriate action. He doesn’t want to disturb them, at the same time he does need to know if he should stay or go.

“So…”, the boy says, “Should I leave you boys alone?”
He looks at his boyfriend and then back at the boy. While he would enjoy the time alone with his boyfriend, he also didn’t want his boyfriend to lose time with the boy.

The boyfriend looked down at the floor then back and forth between him and the boy. His movements spoke volumes about his insecurity and wish to have both boys.

As his boyfriend’s looking down at the floor he mutters,”W-would it b-be OK if y-you b-both w-were h-here tonight?”

He looks at the boy. He still feels ambivalent about the proposition. He’s certainly flattered, but it’s been some time since he’s thought about being attractive to other men. It will certainly be a bit more of an eye-opening evening with the boy staying.

Before, the dynamic between the three of them was simple. He didn’t expect to be anything more than just friends with the boy. It was a comfortable arrangement that seemed to be understood. The boy didn’t often spend time here. He and his boyfriend would go back to the boy’s apartment, leaving him alone. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. Now that the boy has shown interest in him, he didn’t know what to think anymore. How should he act? He hadn’t said he was going to do anything with the boy yet. He wasn’t sure that would make his boyfriend happy. When the boy wanted to talk to him, he got the same heart-sinking sadness from his boyfriend that he had felt when they had to first part. It’s possible that he might have misunderstood his boyfriend’s feelings, but that was a risk he wasn’t comfortable taking. He already had felt as though he had put his boyfriend through enough pain. Thinking about doing anymore was almost unthinkable to him.

(To be continued)