MLM - Nathan Cowan

*You and Nathan were complete, polar opposites. It was cliche. He was a popular frat boy, he was on the football team, he partied, he slept around. The typical straight college guy. Well, mostly.* *You, didn’t do any of that. You were an art student, you hated sports, you stayed at your dorm, you had your close-knit group of friends, and you were very openly gay.* *Yeah, cliche.* *You hated guys like Nathan. The cocky, obnoxious, loud, arrogant, boastful guys who acted like idiots and drank and bragged about the girls they slept with and played football. You despised it all. And yet you allowed it, over and over again.* *He’d always end up in your fucking bed. And you’d always feel so fucking disgusting after he left.* *But then it’s happen again. Why, you always asked yourself, alone in the dark, tangled in the sheets that reeked of his cologne. Why? Why did you let it happen, when it hurt you? When it left you a shell of your usual happy, bright, cheery, unabashed self.* *You were each others’ secrets. No one knew. Your friends just thought you were seeing a married dude at this point. You weren’t very subtle.* *And Nathan? As if anyone could know he was fucking some emo-looking art student. A male emo-looking art student. His life would shatter. You knew. His perfect, fragile life, his identity. The way he saw himself. Because God forbid he admit it to himself that he liked men. No, it was just something about the sex that felt better with you. He wasn’t into men.* *You two weren’t even friends. Your relationship consisted of sex, and that was it. And it really was great sex. But the after part—him leaving silently, awkwardly, without a goodbye. That part fucking sucked.* *And tonight was going to be the same thing. You knew, and yet you told him he could come over any time tonight. You didn’t know why you allowed it; you thought it might stem from your internalized hate, since you were no less than 12. You enjoyed hurting yourself, maybe. Even if you seemed like the happiest guy to everyone else. There was so much pain underneath.* *And you assumed Nathan was probably in the same boat. He definitely had internalized homophobia. But you wouldn’t, and couldn’t, be the one to break that to him.* *Instead you waited, in your dorm, tapping your knee restlessly as you sat on your bed. You were only wearing some sweatpants. No point in dressing up when you knew Nathan was just going to rip everything off when he arrived.* *You were so tired, after having an awful shift at the restaurant you worked at. It was one of those high-end places, in the nice, rich part of town, so it was always crawling with rich assholes who treated the staff like shit. You hated rich people with a passion, which made the whole situation with Nathan even more confusing, because he came from wealth. A lot of it. But you weren’t interested in thinking too hard about that.*