Thanks for your helpful feedback good, I hope you like chapter two.
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It was a few days before I saw the bear again, he looked very nervous when he came into the gym and I intentionally kept out of sight, I didn't want James to give up or stop coming out of embarrassment that I had caused.
'The Poor bear', I thought as my eyes went to the floor and I felt on the edge of tears. I took a deep breath and was thankful that no complaints had come from it all. 'Time to move on' I reminded myself and I headed to the gym floor.
About an hour later, just like clockwork, I caught the bear's eye as he came down the stairs to leave the gym, his face was slightly flushed from his swim and there again was that spark. 'Oh that man is hot' I thought to myself and smiled at him.
To my surprise the bear smiled back, he didn't seem angry or anything, maybe a little shy, but I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I realised it seemed he was at least not angry with me.
From that day on things seems to return to normal, the bear's friendly banter with Estelle resumed, and more often than not we would shyly catch each other's eye. I was finally coming to grips with my attraction and starting to get back to just being a good trainer... it was simply not meant to be.
Almost a month after that my brother came to town, a big burly guy, Pablo is one of my best friends in the world and I was so excited to show him around my new home. Pablo didn't have great English so he had come from Argentina on this visit in order to try and improve it but we often ended up speaking in Spanish and talking about home anyway.
When we were kids Pablo and I had been almost identical, I should have known he would grow into a hulk, given that he was 2 years younger than me and he had caught up with my 10 year old frame by the time he was 8. He was always the sportsman and never really went without a girlfriend, I knew he had more sexual experience than me because he always boasted about his conquests. I could understand why the liked him, I was proud of my brothers looks too, but he wasn't my type... not enough fur and he didn't speak English.
At home it was just Mom, Dad had died when I was 5 and the three of us had been very close, my family were very modern and had easily coped when I told them I was gay. I expected Pablo to have issues being all about the machismo in his normal daily life. But he just laughed at me and said he already knew it. Mom took it in a similar way, saying that I was no longer allowed boys in my room with the door shut and smiling. I was so embarrassed but relieved, many of my friends had had such a hard time, one even ended up on the street.
But I never really knew just how cool Pablo was until one day at school in my senior year I had been cornered by a couple of bullies, they were pulling at my clothes and calling me names, one was trying to get my back pack and a few other kids were just laughing, "look at the senior fag, can't even defend himself".
Very suddenly I saw one guy's head violently jerk, clearly someone had hit him but it wasn't until he began to fall that Pablo was revealed standing behind him. He was so pissed and just kicked their asses, seconds later they were running down the hall crying and the kids were now laughing at them. Pablo picked me up and checked that I was ok. I hugged him and thanked him. He pushed me off him and said "I'm not gay you know!" smiled at me and whispered, "love you bro".
Never again did I worry about bullies and forever I would love my little-big brother, which is why I would do most anything to help him out.
So Pablo had just finished telling me about his new girlfriend and how much sex they were having when his attention turned to me... "So ya got a white boy yet" he asked half smiling half sneering. My face instantly turned red and I clammed up.
"Oh you do!" he said with a huge grin, showing his pearly white but slightly jagged teeth. "Tell me! Tell me!" he pushed. It only served to make me even more embarrassed and in the end it took quite a while to finally admit that there was no one.
He was not satisfied with the answer though and kept pushing, he saw the reaction on my face and wasn't going to let it go, so finally I told him the story about the bear.
By the end his face had dropped and he said he was really sorry, but he knew there must be someone out there. After a few moments of silence his face lit up again and he said "Let's go to the movies? I want to see how much I can understand without subtitles". I was completely up for it, it had been ages since I had someone to go to the movies with and we both rushed to go out.
I lived not that far from the gym in a nicely sized apartment and it was very central, so it was only a 10 minute walk to the movie theatre. As we walked Pablo and I joked and laughed, he put his arm around me and bumped me back and forth, I had missed how much more physical friends were in Argentina, there was no sex to it, but men could touch, no problem, white guys were so reserved in comparison.
