The group chat has a name, and the name is the problem.
It’s called The Soft Launch. Six people, four years, and I’m the only one in it who was soft before the launch. The femboy of the chat. The one everyone tags when somebody needs an outfit opinion or a witness. Theo named it. Theo thinks it’s hilarious. Theo is, according to Theo, straight.
Tonight is Dana’s birthday at Theo’s place, which means the good couch. The one he bought with his first real bonus and has defended in every argument since. Gray, deep, stupid expensive. It seats three and holds four, and every time I’ve sat on it he’s made exactly enough room for me without looking up from whatever he was saying.
I’m wearing the blue dress. Not the pink one. Blue, because blue is the color of not trying, and tonight I am doing a lot of not trying.
Here’s the thing I notice at ten: Theo puts his wine down and switches to seltzer.
He never does that at his own parties. He buys the cheap red by the case and drinks it alone for a month after. But at ten he pours the rest of his glass into Dana’s and cracks a lime seltzer and holds onto it like a prop, and he looks over at me while he does it, just for a second.
I put my glass down too. I’d had one.
By midnight the six are four. By one it’s three. At 1:20 Dana’s girlfriend drives her home with the leftover cake in her lap, and then it’s Theo and me on the good couch, and the city’s doing its gold thing through the big window, and he is turning a seltzer can around and around in his hands.
“You switched,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you switch?”
He looks at the can. “Because I’ve been planning to say something tonight, and I didn’t want there to be any version of tomorrow where either of us could go well, he was drunk.”
My stomach drops through the couch.
“Okay,” I say. “Say it.”
He sets the can on the floor.
“I think about you,” he says. “Not the friend way. I’ve been telling everyone I’m straight for my whole life, and it wasn’t a lie, exactly, it’s just—I can say it to my mom and mean it. I can say it to the chat. I can’t say it to you. I’ve tried. In my head. It doesn’t come out true.” He rubs his face. “That’s the whole speech. I had a longer one. It was worse.”
I look at him. Broad, a little gray already at the temples, wearing the dumb flannel he wears to every party, and his ears are bright red.
“Theo.”
“You can tell me to fuck off. We stay friends. The chat keeps its name. I swear I’ll never make it weird.”
“I’m not going to tell you to fuck off.”
He finally looks at me.
“I’m going to ask you what you want,” I say. “Out loud. Because I’ve been the secret before. I’ve been the thing a guy figured out at 2 a.m. and pretended didn’t happen at brunch. I’m not doing that with you. So if you want something, you say it, and you say it sober, which you are, which—” I laugh, a little shaky. “Which is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me, by the way. The seltzer.”
He laughs too. Then he stops.
“I want to kiss you,” he says. “I’ve wanted to since the first weekend, when you came over in that plaid skirt and fell asleep on my old couch.”
“Then kiss me.”
He kisses like a guy who’s never kissed a guy and has thought about it every day for four years. Too careful for a second, his hand hovering at my jaw like I might break. Then I grab his flannel and pull, and he makes a sound into my mouth, and the careful goes away.
He gets a hand on my thigh under the dress. Stops.
“Keep going,” I say. “I’ll tell you if I want you to stop. You tell me the same.”
“Deal.”
His palm slides up. He finds the lace I put on under the dress because I’m a liar about not trying, and then he finds what’s under the lace, hard and straining against it, and he goes completely still.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Yeah.” His voice is wrecked. “Yeah. I just—I’ve thought about this so many times and I thought I’d freak out, and I’m not freaking out. I want to touch you.”
“So touch me.”
He does. He pulls the lace down and wraps his hand around my cock like he’s not sure he’s allowed, and strokes me once, slow, watching my face. I put my head back on the good couch and make a noise I’ve been holding in for four years.
“Oh,” Theo says. “Oh, okay. That.”
He does it again. He’s bad at the angle and I don’t care at all.
I push him back into the cushions and get off the couch and onto my knees on the rug in front of him. It’s cold. I don’t care about that either.
“Can I?” I ask, my hands on his belt.
He nods. Then he remembers and says it. “Yes. God. Yes.”
I get his jeans open. He’s hard, thick, already wet at the tip, and when I wrap my hand around him he grabs the arm of the couch. I look up at him. A lifetime of straight, a wedding-guest flannel, and the most desperate face I’ve ever seen.
I take him in my mouth.
“Cass.” His hand goes to my hair and freezes there. “Cass, oh my god.”
I go slow. I want him to feel every inch, because he waited, because I waited. I take him deeper each time until my eyes water and he’s saying my name over and over, the way you’d say it if you were trying to remember it. His hips push up once and he says sorry and I hum no around him and he does it again.
I pull off before he can come. He actually whines.
“I want to ride you,” I say. “Is that—”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even know what I—”
“I know what riding is, Cass, I’m straight, not Amish.”
I’m laughing so hard I have to put my forehead on his knee.
There’s lube in my purse. Of course there is. He watches me get it out with his mouth open, and I say, “Not trying,” and he says, “You’re the biggest liar I’ve ever met.”
I climb onto his lap with the dress rucked up around my waist, my knees sunk into the good couch on either side of his hips. I slick him up, slick myself, reach back. His hands are on my waist, big and warm and shaking a little.
“Tell me when,” he says.
“Now.”
I sink down on him. Slow. The stretch of it takes my breath and I stop halfway, and he holds completely still, his thumbs moving on my hip bones, saying okay, okay, take your time, like I’m the one who’s new. Then I let my weight go and take him all the way and we both make the same noise at the same time.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You feel—Cass, you feel—”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Hold on.”
I ride him. Slow at first, rolling my hips, learning him. Then not slow. The good couch creaks under us. His hands go from holding my waist to gripping it, pulling me down to meet him, and when he finds the angle that makes me cry out he does it again on purpose, and again, watching my face like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“There,” I tell him. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
He wraps his hand around my cock between us and strokes me in time, clumsy and perfect, and I come first, hard, all over his stupid flannel with my forehead against his. He groans and grabs my hips and fucks up into me through it, three, four, five strokes, and comes inside me saying my name like it’s the only word he has left.
We stay like that a long time. His arms around my back. My dress ruined. The city gold outside.
“So,” he says eventually, into my shoulder. “That’s not straight.”
“No, babe. That’s not straight.”
The morning comes slow and gray. He’s sitting on the floor by the window in just his boxers, and I’m wearing his shirt, and my phone is going off on the couch.
theo?? where r u did u get home also the good couch has a stain and i need to know if it’s wine
I look at the stain. I look at Theo.
“It’s not wine,” he says.
“It is not wine.”
I type: it’s wine. i’ll buy you a new couch.
Dana, immediately: you hate wine
Then nothing. Three dots. Three dots. Then, from Theo’s phone, on the floor beside him, a message to the chat:
renaming the chat
He changes it. The Soft Launch becomes The Hard Launch. He puts the phone face down and looks at me.
“Too much?” he says.
The chat explodes.
“No,” I say. “That’s exactly enough.”
