Footy, chapter 10

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 “Are you happy, Adam?” 

The question came out of the blue, and Adam was so surprised he answered truthfully. “Yes. Well, mostly.” 

“Me too.” 

Nothing else needed to be said. The thought struck Tom that if Adam had been a woman, he would be in love with him by now. They would probably have been lovers for a while. This wayward reflection didn’t bother him. He was happy, after months of misery, and years of an unacknowledged emptiness. 

While Tom was contemplating the nature of love and happiness, Adam was thinking how, if Tom had been gay, they would be in the middle of an affair. And then he recalled that if Tom had been gay, he would not have been interested in Adam, because this was the iron rule. Tom was buff, beautiful, manly. Why would he have ever been interested in a thirty-something guy with couple of inches too much flobbing on top of his belly? That they were together at all was due to Adam’s own willingness to overlook a lot in a bloke he was attracted to, and Tom’s straight sensibility, which made how Adam looked irrelevant. Tom liked Adam for what Adam was, not the size of his pectorals or the shape of his butt.