Chapter 50

He cuts me off. “You think you love me.”

“I do.”

“Okay,” he concedes. “You do. You love me, and I love you. But it’s not a romantic sort of love, is it?”

I rub a hand across my nose, which has begun to run. “I think so,” I admit. “At least, for me it is. I…” With a shuddery sigh, I whisper in a very small voice, “I think of loving you, like that, sometimes. And I think of you when I’m…”

Having sex,I want to say. Jerking off, Joey, okay? I think about you when I come.My throat refuses to say the words.

“Brian,” Joey sighs, exasperated. “I’m a guy, right? And you like guys. So maybe somehow you look at me and think—”

“You’re perfect,” I tell him, hoping to clear things up. “Damn it, Joe, you’re everything I ever wanted in a lover, all right? Timothy even lookslike you…”