I fucking hate being in business. It teaches you to read people too well. From the way Si is looking, speaking, and acting towards me, I realize he obviously wants to try this. Whatever this is. But if Si couldn't change for Joel, and they were married, then he can never change for me. I am not ready to be his, or anyone's for that matter, experiment. I already did it once and that was enough. From what he told me about his marriage, it is so clear to me that he has barely changed since high school. It is still too soon to make a judgment about this whole thing though. I want to see this through and learn more about who Si is now before I make a decision.

"I don't want to pry, and you absolutely don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but what happened between you and Joel?" I ask.

"I put my company above our marriage. I needed it to succeed; I needed to succeed. With you, it was schoolwork. With Joel, it was my work. I got my first big client and immediately started to change. It began with small things at first like being late to a date night, taking a while to respond to messages, canceling plans last minute etcetera. Then it became a lot worse. We had conversations about it, and I would try to change for a week and then I would stop. I just didn't have the time for him or the desire to change because I didn't realize how much it was bothering him. Joel would fight with me for me, but I just saw it as fighting and couldn't take it. After a while he couldn't take it either," Si tells me, looking relieved.

"You know you would never open up this much to me in high school about anything, especially if it was about another person," I tell Si remembering a conversation we had one night before anything happened between us. I asked him what his biggest regret was, and he told me that there was someone he still wished he could talk to, but couldn't because of circumstances outside of his control. Eventually, I connected the dots and realized it was Cleo, the girl he led on in high school so that people would believe he was straight. One time when I was going on a date, I asked Si for advice on what he did on his dates. He answered that he acted straight. It made me laugh at the moment, but afterward, I realized how sad it was.

Si did a lot of things in high school that stunted his self-growth. Leading Cleo on and sacrificing his relationships for work was just the beginning. He was also borderline secretive about everything he did and hid his ego with kindness. However, even with all those flaws, I couldn't go a day without talking to him.

Eventually, Si and I reach the hotel, but I tell him that I don't want to sit inside, because of how gorgeous the late afternoon weather is. I can see a little park a few blocks down and we decide to go there.

"You also weren't exactly the best at keeping things confidential back then," Si reminds me while we continue our walk, "That's part of the reason why I wouldn't tell you things."

"I really am sorry for telling people you were gay," I apologize genuinely. It was actually such a shitty thing to do. I just knew it would never catch up to me. Si knew that I had been outed to my parents and hated it. Hence, he would never believe that I could do the same thing to him.

"It doesn't matter anymore. I wasn't subtle about it either," Si accepts my apology, "I'm just shocked that you telling the entire school never got back to me."

"It's because I wasn't telling them something they couldn't see with their own eyes dumbass," I gibe, and we both laugh.

Si had done quite a terrible job of hiding his sexuality from the start. Before our freshman year ended, most of our grade already suspected he was gay. By the time I outed him our junior year, I was more so confirming a well-known fact than starting a rumor.