XOXO, Santa - Spencer Spears Page 0,3

one thing I’d learned from my earlier encounters with the scientific method, it was that you needed to test your hypotheses to have any faith in them.

Which meant I was going to have to test this.

But how the hell was I supposed to find a guy who was willing to hook up with me? A guy who wouldn’t mind that it was my first time, and who wouldn’t laugh at me if I was terrible at it, and who wouldn’t be offended if I realized, three seconds into sucking him off, that I really, really didn’t want to continue?

And more importantly, how was I supposed to make sure that guy had no connection to anyone in my apartment complex, on my team, in my classes, or anyone who was in any way, shape, or form related to me and my friends?

Because if there was one other thing I knew for sure, it was that I would die if any of my friends found out about this.

I was still mulling it over as winter break approached. Then I got a text from my mom.

MOM: Sweetie, you’re coming home on the 11th, right?

I closed my computer—and the felching porn that I was watching—from a purely anthropological perspective—I was the Margaret Mead of gay porn at this point—and responded.

BLAKE: Yeah what’s up?

MOM: Your father and I aren’t getting in until late on the 12th, but Cindy needs a sheep costume I borrowed from her back before that. Can you arrange with Henry to drop it off when you get home?

And just like that, a lightbulb went off.

Cindy was Cindy Waterstone, a family friend. Henry was her son. And Henry Waterstone was gay.

And sure, maybe we weren’t as close as we’d once been. In truth, there was no ‘maybe’ about that. We’d been best friends in elementary school, but we’d kind of drifted in middle school when he realized he was way smarter than I was. By high school, we were nothing more than passing acquaintances, as far as the rest of the school knew.

But outside of school—well, outside of school, our families were friends. Our older sisters, Claire and Fliss, were besties. And since our parents loved having dinners and barbecues and beach weekends together, Henry and I still saw each other a lot. Hell, ever since my parents bought a cabin up in Mammoth a few years ago, we’d spent a week there with the Waterstones every Christmas.

And Henry—out and proud Henry—had been a one-man pride parade for as long as I could remember. He kinda had to be, since there weren’t a lot of other out gay kids at our school. But he’d started a mentoring program for LGBT upperclassmen to provide support to younger students at schools across the city. There was probably no coming-out crisis, no crazy question, that he hadn’t faced.

Which brings us back to the issue of awkward phone calls.

Because how, exactly, do you casually mention to your ex-best friend that you think you might be gay, but in order to be sure, you’re wondering if maybe he’d like to have sex, but also you need to warn him that you might be terrible at it, and might run screaming the second he asks you to touch his dick?

It definitely wasn’t something you could do over text.

Hell, it probably wasn’t something you should do at all. Not in person, not in a box or with a fox, not on a train or in the rain, not anywhere or anyhow.

But it seemed like such a perfect idea, otherwise. Henry wasn’t hideous looking. I mean, he was even kind of handsome, in a waifish, Victorian orphan kind of way. I was sure that if I were into guys, I’d be into him.

And if it turned out I wasn’t? If the whole experiment backfired and I freaked out when he tried to suck me off or something? Well, it was just Henry. He already thought I was an idiot. It wasn’t like I could sink any lower in his eyes.

The trick would be selling him on the idea, because I could say with complete confidence that Henry Waterstone was not into me.

If he were, it would have come up by now. He would have made a move, or I would have picked up on the attraction, at least. But all I’d ever gotten from Henry since middle school was polite disinterest.

Which, in a way, was perfect. Because if I ended up not being into guys, then no harm, no foul.