He's Got a Fiancé, I've got an empty bottle of champagne, and we're both about to be miserable forever. (True Story, Part 2)

So, I'm continuing....Here's Part 1: The Alignmenthttps://www.reddit.com/r/gay/comments/5lktbk/hes_got_a_fiancé_ive_got_an_empty_bottle_of/Part 2: The Be-WildernessIt was Friday morning, and I had to get up for work. The sun light split in between the blinds, gently warming my face. I smiled; I could still smell Anthony on me, but the smile quickly dissipated as I began to wake up and remember the look on his face after he dropped me off. At work, I felt a little giddy. Something cool had happened last night between us for the first time, and my boss was there, giving me a cheeky smile and a look from the corner of his eyes, like "finally, told you so", and I chuckled to myself. Maybe things were finally happening for me... but this dude had a girlfriend... for half of his adult life.... I began to put my guard up, but I was sure I was not the crazy gay dude who falls for the straight guy. That's not who I am, and I never felt comfortable with putting pressure on a guy whose sexuality I was unsure of. I just did not want to come off as a straight-dude hungry homo like a lot of us are stereotyped as.Students were filing in and out of the tutoring center as I stood by the door, admiring the fresh Autumn breeze. Anthony was sitting with a group of his friends; they always sat on the couches by the door chattering away in Spanish. Of course, I would secretly be listening to their shenanigans. Anytime something racy came up, Anthony would look at me and give a devious smile, knowing I knew exactly what they were saying, even though my Spanish is a little rough. The giddiness began to well up in my stomach, like a child being seated on a roller coaster before it takes off. I looked down at my phone and sent a simple smiley face to him... because he made me smile... gross.... He looked up and gave me a puzzled look and brushed it off. This puzzled me. Anthony's shift ended, and he took his posse of chattering Mexican girls and waved goodbye as he disappeared behind the sliding glass doors. I pursed my lips and gave a slanted smile. I could feel the confusion brewing, and I decided that this is something I should let go. I was obviously tripping out, and this straight 21 year old man, who was been with the same girl since the age of 15, is not gay and made no advances... but isn't that the typical closeted gay dude's story? I didn't know what to think. I just sipped on my coffee and continued to stand by the door, waiting for my students to show up. The glass counter top beneath my fingers vibrated, and Anthony's name popped up on my phone, but the name was changed to "Tony <3" with a blue heart next to it. My eyebrows furrowed and I tilted my head. "He changed his own name in my phone? Weird." I thought to myself. My finger met the place where his name was strewn, and I swiped to the right. It was a picture of a mousepad next to a desktop. The mouse pad, though, had tiny pictures of Anthony and his beloved collaged together."Haha, my mom is too much! Look what she had made." The text read. I was right; this was all in my head, and I was the crazy gay dude after all. I felt nauseous after looking at the photo for much longer than I should have. I walked over to my boss, who sat engrossed in his weird game on the computer. Did he ever even work? I showed him the screen, and he inhaled deeply as he saw the "I'm a fool" look on my face."Dude. This kid is obviously gay. Do you know what you two look like together? You two start to talk and then that's it. There's only you two, and it's weird. He's been with this girl for 6 years... this is bound to get messy." He gave me a hardy pat on my shoulder. "Oh, Anthony", he chortled. My eyes darted to the couch where Anthony was seated just an hour before. A sideways smile creeped up on my face, "Wipe that Obama smile off of your face. Put yourself in his shoes. It's hard, dude!" I felt my pupils dilate at the idea of Anthony having to come out to his family. I nodded, slouched down over the glass counter top of the front desk's side and rested my head on my hand. I sighed out of the side of my mouth and stuffed the thought of anything "Anthony" into the back spaces of my mind as I completed my shift.I began to minimize contact with Anthony. Whatever was happening between us began to remind me of how I felt when my heart got broken for the first time. No one breaks your heart like a best friend does, and this was beginning to feel similar. I was investing into Anthony, and I learned never to do that after I learned my lesson, but he knew exactly what to say and how to say it.... The funny thing is, when I first saw the kid, I found him to be a repulsive nerd: gawky, long limbed, awkward and he sported glasses, but something changed. I don't know how attraction works, but over the timeframe of observing and becoming Tony's best friend, I realized I had found the other side to my coin. I was the extroverted version, and he was the introverted version. Our friendship grew into something that needed no words. When anything was said that caught our attention, we would glance over at each other, and a nonverbal conversation would ensue. I had never connected with another human being on this level, which is something he admit as well; I began to bear the weight of beginning to fall for someone who would act on his feelings but never admit them. I mean, I still was not sure if this was all in my head or not.During the Fall semester, we shared a physics class, and we formed a large group of friends. We called ourselves "The Delicious Deltas", as each lab group had to come up with a name. Slowly, I befriended each of these people on a personal level. There was Ariel and Xavier, a fresh couple who had sexual tension flying all over the room. Both of them were beyond attractive, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who needed a cold shower after seeing them make out in-between lecture and lab. Olivia, a woman of amazon stature but a heart of gold, and obvious latin decent, claimed her space as my "closest friend" because of the classes we previously shared, and we were fairly close. Lastly, besides Anthony and myself, there was Aurora. Fair skinned, pleasantly curvaceous, and a glance that would pierce fear into anyone's heart; she quickly laid down her barbed wired wall and allowed me to court her in friendship; at least thats how it felt, Haha. Either way, it paid off. Our tight knit group was cohesive, strong, smart, and most importantly, hilarious. We all quickly became close friends that would pull each other through hardships and be there for each other whether we failed or succeeded. This also meant that my relationship with Anthony was hard to ignore, hard to dismiss, and even harder to legitimize.One night, Anthony and I held a physics study session at the center; all of the Deltas showed up, and we all aided each other in the complexities of the angles of a plane's wing in relation to the wind and such. It was a successful session with laughter, jokes, and an obvious increase in the level of camaraderie between us all. Aurora also took the time to fill everyone in on the existence of a micro penis, which we all found fascinating. The lot of us were all some sort of pre-health major: medicine, veterinary science, and dentistry, and I felt like I had finally found my crew. Over the hours, we mastered everything we needed to know and were prepared for the test. The deltas all filed out, one by one, but Olivia, being the extremely considerate person that she was, stayed behind with Anthony and I in efforts to help us clean up. Anthony was standing by the white board and I began to talk about some random science experiment someone was conducting. Our conversation topic enveloped us until we were interrupted by Olivia attempting to bid us farewell. We too grabbed our things, turned off the lights, and we began to walk out of the center. Olivia and I bid Anthony farewell, and Olivia followed me to my car, so I could take her to her's.There wasn't even a moment of silence in the car before Olivia blurted, "Is Anthony gay?." I, taken aback, looked at her very bewilderedly. "Yeah, what the fuck was that between you two back there? It felt like you wanted me to leave so you guys could be alone. You were in your own world, and I wasn't there with you." I just sat, staring at the H on my steering wheel."Olivia, he has a girlfriend. Of course he's not gay. They're like talking about getting married and shit. Chill," I defended. I dug my nails into the steering wheel's fake leather that would crumble onto my palms as I drove. I gave another "Obama smile" and exhaled deeply through my nose. "I don't know, but you're not the only one who sees this shit, and I don't know what to do." I quickly filled Olivia in on the whole deal."DUDE. He loves you, are you joking? Look at those texts", she yipped. I turned red, but not because I was blushing, but because I began to feel nauseous, and I closed my eyes. I knew that this would be a sticky mess, and that I would more than likely be hurt by giving it a chance, but I couldn't forget how complete I felt when he was around, and I know I wanted more.A few weeks passed, and we found ourselves sitting at the tutor's bench. Anthony and I watched the clock's long arm move by until we could get up and go to our physics class. The movie nights with our devious co-workers would continue, our texts didn't cease to be flirty and overly caring, we both would just bring food and coffee for each other at work, and the fellow tutors at work began to title me as "his husband" whenever referring to me. It was obviously a funny joke, but anytime I heard it, I would look at him, and he would smile at me and look away, biting his cheek in efforts to hide his smile. I stood up from the bench and signaled for Anthony to follow me. We walked over to the computers and began looking up animals. I explained to him that when I graduate from medical school, the first thing I will do is but myself a pet fox, and I showed him pictures. He scooted me over and began to type onto the black keyboard. He pushed his chair away from the desk, turned the monitor towards me and showed me a miniature marmoset. "I'm gunna get one of these." We both chuckled, grabbed our bags, said our goodbyes to the other staff members and darted out of the sliding glass doors of the center. I was frustrated while walking with Anthony. I felt good, but frustrated anytime I was with Anthony. I had all these feelings I was putting out that were being reciprocated, but where was the line in the sand? Where was too far? I decided to try and stir the water a little bit to assess reactions.We took our seats next to the fellow Deltas in the left corner of the classroom. I pulled out my phone, found "Tony <3" and texted "Our love is invalid", closed my eyes, and sent it. It was stupid, I know... even weird. But I got the response I was looking for. I peeked at him from the corner of my peripheral vision. I could see him typing, and the "..." symbol appeared, notifying me he was typing. He then stopped, looked up at me as I turned to him. His eyebrows were furrowed, his head was tilted, and he looked utterly offended. I stuck my tongue out at him, made a funny face, and turned around and pretended to be really into the lecture and my notes, even though I had no idea what was going on. My phone vibrated repeatedly and messages flashed on the screen of my phone one after another. "???", "What do you mean???", "Don't say shit like that." The satisfaction I felt was unreal, but I couldn't show that, so I didn't respond. Class was over, and the sigmas proceeded to walk to our cars, chatting along the way. Anthony walked particularly close, almost nudging me to answer his texts, but he had a habit of never being able to speak things out loud. Text messages were always easier. I continued to pay him no attention. I could tell he was really annoyed that I called our love in valid, but I tried my best to pay it no attention, and I drove home.The next time that Anthony and I were at work together wasn't a day followed by class. The air was still dry between us, as I had continued to down play our relationship because it was "invalid" for some reason I could not explain, but we both knew. This set him off in some weird way where he began to constantly check on me and my well being. He would offer random things in efforts to get me to come back to the way I was, but I was irritated with the whole thing, and I began to feel some disrespect. We again sat behind the front desk gawking at the possibilities our futures hold, and of course, all of the animals that we would have. Again, I pull up various images of domestic foxes. Anthony points to the screen, looks at me diligently and says "We'll get this one." I looked at him without turning my head."I'll get this one," I firmly said. He showed me pictures of marmosets once more, and again, hinted at the two of us owning pets together. He would play out scenarios in which we'd be "at home" and his marmoset would be terrorized by my fox and things would be crazy. I stopped to ask him where his wife would be in all of this, and he would just laugh it off. I defended the fact that I would not share a pet with him and his wife... or a living space, as his fantasy was eluding to. I was confused and I knew I needed some form of proof for the way he was feeling since he would never say anything that convinced me.A friend's advice rang in my ears, "Play on his jealousy." I knew what to do from that point on. Anthony knew how much I liked the way he smelled, and he was very proud of the effect it had on me, joking that was the only reason he puts on "extra" cologne. I cringed at the thought of his tiny, silent girlfriend being mixed into all of this. I mean, nothing super serious happened yet, but her boyfriend was totally courting a dude. I had to do something to make sure that I wasn't crazy, I didn't make this all up in my head, and that I'm not the crazy gay dude who tries to turn straight men. Like Madonna answering a prayer, my next, and last, appointment arrived, and he happened to be a beefy studly Mexican dude, exactly my type, and I saw Anthony's body contort like a dog in a defensive pose. I felt the adrenaline pulse through my body, and I almost yelped with excitement. This was going to work, I thought to myself.I greeted the student in a very welcoming fashion, like I did all of my students. I filled out his paper work and asked him to take a seat in the back of the center. I turned to Anthony and exclaimed, with an elaborate smile on my face, "OMG. He smells so freakin' good!" I could see Anthony's jaw muscle clench; he opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but I grabbed my legal pad and walked to the student, whom in-fact, did not smell very good.As the center prepared for closing, I finished up my appointment with the student and walked up to the front. The sliding glass doors had just closed, and I could see Anthony's long, Jack Skellington-like figure walking away. He always had stylish choice of backpacks.... I thought it was very odd of him not to wait for me, as we always wait ridiculous amounts of time for each other to finish just to simply walk to our cars together. I collected my things, fastened my backpack, and looked at my phone."1 Message From Tony <3"I opened the text, and the most confusing emotions flooded me as my eyes moved across the screen."No one will ever love you like I can love you."I looked out into the distance behind the glass door. I could no longer see him slinking away into the darkness.