Chapter 9: The Seaside Confession
Leo woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of a drawer closing. He was alone in Ethan’s bed, the space beside him cool. The previous night wasn’t a dream—the memory was in his body, in the deep, rested calm of his limbs and the ghost of fingers around his wrist.
He opened his eyes. Ethan was at his dresser, pulling on a fresh t-shirt. Sunlight streamed through the blinds, striping the floor.
“You snore,” Ethan said without turning around.
“I do not.”
“You do. It’s cute. Like a puppy with a sinus infection.” Ethan finished with the shirt and glanced over. “Coffee’s on the desk. Get up. We’re going for a drive.”
No discussion. Just a statement. Leo pushed back the covers, the borrowed shirt hanging off him. He padded to the desk and picked up the mug. It was hot, black, exactly how he drank it. He didn’t remember telling Ethan that.
“What about Nate?” Leo asked, the first practical thought piercing the haze.
“Told him we were heading out early to look at parts for my car. He won’t surface before noon.” Ethan tossed a pair of his own sweatpants and a hoodie onto the bed. “Wear these. Yours still smell like panic.”
Leo changed in silence. The clothes were too big, the cuffs pooling over his hands, the waistband cinched tight. He felt swaddled in Ethan. It should have been weird. It wasn’t.
Twenty minutes later they were in Ethan’s Jeep, windows down, asphalt humming beneath the tires. Ethan drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift. He didn’t ask for a destination. He just drove, taking back roads away from town, past fields still heavy with morning mist. He played music—something instrumental and atmospheric that filled the space without demanding attention.
Leo sipped his second coffee from a travel mug. He watched the world blur by. The frantic static in his head, the ever-present buzz of want and shame, was quiet. For the first time in years, his mind was still. He just existed, in the passenger seat, in Ethan’s clothes, moving toward something unknown.
They drove for almost two hours. The air changed, growing damp and salty. Leo sensed it before he saw it—the flat, grey expanse of the ocean on the horizon. Ethan turned down a potholed lane that ended at a vast, empty parking lot littered with seagull feathers and faded bottle caps. Beyond it, a long wooden pier stretched into the water.
It was decrepit, beautiful in its decay. The wood was silvered and splintered, slick with spray. Rust had eaten through the railings in brown, bleeding gashes. The wind here was a constant, pulling force, whipping their hair and filling their ears with a hollow roar.
Ethan parked facing the water, killed the engine. The only sounds were the wind, the distant crash of waves, and the deep groaning of the pilings beneath the pier.
“Come on,” Ethan said.
He popped the trunk and pulled out a worn backpack. He led the way not onto the pier itself, but to a spot at the edge of the parking lot where the asphalt crumbled into rocks. He sat on the tailgate, swinging his legs. Leo joined him.
From the backpack, Ethan produced two foil-wrapped breakfast burritos, still warm from a gas station microwave an hour back. He handed one to Leo. They ate in silence, watching the relentless push and pull of the tide. The food was greasy, perfect. The coffee had gone lukewarm. It was the best meal Leo could remember.
When he was done, Ethan balled up his foil and tossed it into the backpack. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and offered it to Leo. Leo shook his head. Ethan just nodded, smoking quietly.
“I was gonna bring you and Nate here later in the summer,” Ethan said finally, his voice almost lost in the wind. “A guys’ day. Fish off the pier, get sunburned, eat shitty hot dogs.”
He took another drag, let the smoke stream out.
“Thought you could use it now. Without the fishing rods.”
Leo looked out at the endless, churning grey. A sense of peace, vast and startling, settled over him. It was the space, the noise, the sheer scale of it. It made his internal drama feel small, manageable. He understood why Ethan had brought him here.
“It’s… loud,” Leo said.
“Yeah. Helps quiet the noise inside.”
They lapsed back into silence. It wasn’t awkward. It was full. Leo felt the presence of the man beside him as solidly as he felt the weathered wood of the tailgate beneath him. This was belonging. This simple, shared stillness.
After a long while, Ethan flicked the cigarette butt into a puddle. He didn’t look at Leo when he spoke, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
“So why me?”
The question was soft, but it cut through the ocean’s noise.
Leo’s stomach tightened. He knew what Ethan was asking. You’ve had girlfriends hanging all over you. You could have anyone. Handsome is an understatement for you. So why your brother’s best friend? Why the complicated, messy thing in his bedroom?
All the easy answers were lies. Because you were there. Because I was curious. They stuck in his throat.
He looked down at his hands, at the too-long sleeves of Ethan’s hoodie covering his fingers. He thought of the belt. The crushing loneliness after. He thought of the hand on his neck in the dark. The anchor.
“The girls…” Leo started, his voice rough. “It’s just… noise. A different kind. They want the guy they see. The smile. The… whatever. And I just… I can’t connect it. What I feel… what I want… it never matches what they expect. It feels like I’m faking everything, even the parts that should be real.”
He risked a glance at Ethan. He was listening, his profile sharp against the grey sky.
“With you…” Leo struggled, the words clumsy. “That first time, in your room… you saw the script. And you called it bad. You saw the… the machinery. And you didn’t run. You just… took the wheel.” He swallowed. “You’re the only person who’s ever seen the mess and didn’t look away. You looked at it. And then you… you gave me a t-shirt and told me to go to sleep.”
His face was hot with the confession. It sounded pathetic.
Ethan was quiet for a long time. A seagull cried, a lonely sound.
“It’s not about me,” Ethan said finally, turning to look at him. His eyes were the colour of the sea today, storm-grey and focused. “It’s about trust. You finally found someone you trust enough to show the broken parts to. That’s all.”
“Is that what this is? You fixing broken parts?”
A faint, wry smile touched Ethan’s mouth. “No. I’m not your mechanic. I’m just… showing you the car works fine. You’ve just been reading the wrong manual.”
He pushed off the tailgate, his boots crunching on the gritty asphalt. “Come on. Walk with me.”
They walked onto the pier. The wood protested under their weight, a chorus of creaks and moans. Spray kissed their faces. At the very end, the world dropped away into nothing but water and sky. They leaned against the rotten railing, looking down at the water slamming against the barnacled pillars below.
Ethan’s arm brushed against his. A point of contact in the vastness.
“I’m not a girl, Leo,” Ethan said, his voice low. “This isn’t going to look like what you’ve imagined. Any of it. It’s going to be quieter. And harder. And real. It’s going to demand things from you that your videos never even mentioned.”
“Like what?”
“Like patience. Like humility. Like knowing the difference between giving up control and having it taken.” Ethan turned to face him, his back to the ocean. “You wanted a scene. I’m offering you a partnership. It’s not the same thing.”
The wind whipped between them, cold and bracing. Leo understood. The fantasy was about power over someone. What Ethan described was power with someone. It was a language he didn’t know.
“I don’t know how to do that,” Leo admitted.
“I know.” Ethan reached out and tugged the hood of the sweatshirt up over Leo’s wind-tangled hair, his knuckles brushing Leo’s cheek. A simple, domestic gesture. “That’s why I’m going to teach you. Starting with how to be okay with not knowing.”
He let his hand drop. “We should head back.”
They walked back to the Jeep in silence, but the silence between them had changed again. It was charged, not with tension, but with potential. A road map had been laid out, one without shouting or scripts or belts.
As Ethan started the engine, Leo looked back at the pier, a skeletal line against the raging water. He thought of the quiet trust of the morning, the shared burrito, the question in the wind.
He didn’t have any answers. But for the first time, the not-knowing didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt like a beginning. He pulled the seatbelt across his chest, the click a solid, final sound in the cabin. Ethan put the Jeep in gear, and they turned away from the ocean, carrying its quiet roar inside them as they moved toward home.