I'm Your Wreck

39- The End

Banks's Point of View

On the day that I met Liam, I spent most of the day avoiding it. He was my cousin's best friend, one of my roommates for the next nine months, so it was inevitable that I meet the guy. I forget why I was so afraid of meeting him for the first time.

Well... okay. That's not true.

I didn't know a lot about Liam before meeting him, except that he was a jock.

Jocks were the guys that beat the shit out of me in high school, threw me against lockers, ripped up my homework, stole my wallet, called me every colorful and homophobic slur they could think up.

Jocks were the guys that pulled me into an alley and cracked my ribs open like a raw egg three months earlier.

I'd been embarrassingly skittish since then.

Of course, Ollie wouldn't knowingly be friends with somebody who was homophobic. Sometimes, you don't know that somebody is homophobic until it's put to the test.

I didn't think any of my guy friends were homophobic either, until they learned that I was gay and suddenly stopped texting me back. Or other times, they'd say that it didn't bother them, but then later on I'd get accused of checking them out or sitting too close or flirting when I wasn't doing any of that. I was just existing.

Sometimes, you didn't know somebody was homophobic until after you've had their dick in your mouth. It's only disgusting after they've had their orgasm, but they still take it out on you.

As if it was my fault that they had these "awful" urges.

So yeah. I trusted that Ollie thought Liam was a good guy. I wasn't gullible enough to take that at face value. Not anymore.

I took a long time picking out beer for the party. Not only because my ribs still hurt from the attack, that constant, throbbing reminder that trusting the wrong person could have serious consequences. It was painful to lift two heavy twenty-four packs of awful and cheap beer, like somebody was stabbing me in the lung.

But I needed to stall my introduction to Liam, and I was the only one old enough to legally buy the beer. Ollie had a fake, but it was terrible.

In my truck, parked in the driveway of the house, I took some deep breaths. The kind of breathing exercises my therapist recommended when I felt too much all at once.

The anxiety was temporary, something that needed time to heal like the crack in my ribs.

I set my face into a calm happy expression, making sure I hid away any of the physical pain from carrying the heavy beer, or any of the anxiety that boiled right below the surface. Ollie was already so worried about me. I wanted him to enjoy the party without thinking he needed to be my caretaker all night.

"Party's here!" I announced as I stepped through the back door. The guys were all standing around the kitchen shotgunning beers, almost all of them familiar faces by then.

I'd already met Kenji and Walker, who were both cool guys. Ollie was there, already tossing his empty beer can toward the trash.

And then there he was.

And fuck.

Fuck he was beautiful.

Tall, strong jaw, sharp eyes, and that body. Lean, but tight with muscle and veins in his forearms that I wanted to spend all night studying until I could plot them on a map. His shirt was now soaked through from a failed shotgun attempt, white fabric now see-through and clinging to his hard pecs, down to a subtle pack of abs.