Talker Read Free

with a lump in
    his throat that, for this moment at least, he was needed. Tate
    Walker needed him as a friend as no one else had perhaps needed
    Brian in his life.
    It was so easy after that.
    Brian’s shoulder had final y blown while practicing the shot put.
    He’d lost his scholarship and had to take a job to get through
    school, and they’d moved in together shortly after that.
    Hey, Brian—where you living if you can’t live in the dorms?
    Don’t know—gotta find an apartment.
    Here—my friend on X Street just gave up a second-floor
    dump. It’s a shitty neighborhood, but it’s got two bedrooms, and it’s
    right behind a Starbucks, so we can pirate their Wi-F i.
    We?
    Wel … if you don’t mind a roommate who likes guys.
    No—not at all.
    Although Tate never said so, he gave up his dorm because
    Brian was his best friend, and he didn’t want to lose the ability to
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    just wander down the hal and throw a movie in the laptop while
    Brian was trying to pound out a paper.
    Both of them got restaurant jobs: Tate as a bar-back at
    G atsby’s Nick, a flamboyant gay bar, and Brian waiting tables at
    O live G arden. Tate stil had his scholarship, but neither of them had
    much money. Their apartment was crappy, their furniture was
    second hand, and when they weren’t filching restaurant food, they
    lived on Top Ramen and fried potatoes.
    Brian couldn’t remember being happier.

    AND now, after two and a half years of friendship, Brian couldn’t
    believe he’d heard right.
    This was Tate’s new hobby?
    “You’re doing what?” he asked quietly, when the echo of his
    unexpected outburst had died down.
    Tate shook himself out and danced on his toes. The tile under
    his feet crackled and broke down into even smal er fragments
    before he answered.
    “It’s no big deal.”
    “It’s not stamp collecting! What is it you’re doing again?”
    “You know, I’m… I’m talking.”
    “Yeah, I heard that,” Brian growled. He was running with Tate
    for company, since he was no longer on the team. He liked running,
    though. He liked spending time with Tate when he was free from all
    the stuff that bound him to the earth in the painful way of iron
    manacles. Right now, though, he wasn’t sure he could make the
    trip down to the riverfront bike trail because he was too damned
    mad and in too much shock. His shoe dangled from his finger by
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    the lace, and for a second he thought about using it to bludgeon his
    roommate until Tate came to his senses.
    “You’re going into the bathroom stal s after work and talking to
    guys until they come. You said that. A phone-sex operator, but in
    person. You said that too. What you didn’t say”—he had to pause
    because his voice made a sound like a gravel driveway underfoot—
    “was why in G od’s name you would put yourself in danger like that!”
    O h shit. There went his voice—but he couldn’t help it. He
    couldn’t. O h G od…. Tate was just so vulnerable.
    “It’s not that dangerous,” Tate maintained earnestly. “Honest,
    Brian. I don’t even have to see them. It’s like… I don’t know. It’s
    powerful!” He looked up then. He didn’t have on his eyeliner yet,
    and his hair wasn’t spiked, so it was just… his eyes. They were ink-
    dark, and hurt, and he had a clench to his chin, like he was going to
    power through the pain. That was how Tate met each day.
    “Powerful,” Brian echoed, his voice a hollow void.
    “Yeah, it’s like… you know. I can have the sex, but I don’t
    have to… to put anything on the line. People walk away happy, but
    they can’t hurt me. Don’t you see? It’s perfect.”
    Brian dropped his shoe there on the floor of their entryway,
    and sank down on the cracked tile after it, pulling his knees to his
    chest and pushing his longish, wheat-colored hair out of his eyes
    with a sweaty palm.
    “Yeah, it’s perfect,” he muttered. It made perfect sense. Tate
    had been so