by V. L. Locey
I toppled back to the bed, mortified and beyond disgusted with myself.
“As you can see it’s not always cut and dry on the flip side of that journalistic coin,” Layne tossed out, rising from his seat. He walked over, removed the tray from my lap, and then sat down beside me. “Sometimes telling the truth injures innocent people.”
“Ugh. My morals are quivering. Katherine Graham was right. News is what someone wants suppressed.”
He ran his hand over my hair, pulling it back from my brow, his gaze finding mine and holding it.
“So what do we do?” he asked. “Be honest and add more fuel to the fire about to erupt? Or do we hide in the shadows until the blaze is extinguished? Tell me how you want to handle this, and I’ll go along with your wishes. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
I had no easy answer for him. Hell, I had no answer for myself, and that shook me as badly as Dillon’s announcement had. If there had been one thing that I had always been able to rely on it had been my resolve to always live my truths. Being gay. Check. Lived that. Being Jewish. Check. Lived that. Being a dorky geek who worshipped Gene Roddenberry, Stan Lee, and Hideo Kojima as much as he did Ida B. Wells. Check. Lived that. Being an investigative reporter who shined the bright light of honesty on the darkest of lies. Check. Oops no, uncheck that box. Rewind that whole living it boast.
“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed then shimmied up until I could rest my cheek on his thigh. Life had been so much easier when it had been black and white.
Chapter Six
Flying first class was an experience. In luxury.
At first, I wondered why Layne had coughed up the cash for such swanky seats. The flight wasn’t a long one, a few minutes over two hours. It seemed like we could have sat in the cheaper seats, but as soon as the other passengers boarded I saw why we’d flown first class. The looks and whispers that broke out as soon as people saw Layne made me feel terrible for him. Seated by the window, I cocked my hat down to hide as much of my face as I could then stared out at the tarmac. No one came right out and said anything, but it was obvious the scandal had broken.
I hid behind my hair and hat until we were in the air. Then I chanced a peek at Layne sitting across the aisle. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, another obvious advantage to our posh seats. He’d let his head fall back to the well-padded seat. His eyes were closed, and he had earbuds in. A tumbler of something amber sat beside him, with little of the cocktail missing. I let him rest although I had a thousand questions and worries. Instead of pestering him, I settled back with my cola and began scribbling down an idea for an op-ed I’d had while we’d lingered at the gate waiting to board. Something about the fine line that the press needed to walk when it came to a person’s rights to privacy. It was a topic that was foreign to me because I’d always felt that the truth should always be revealed, no matter the cost to the people involved. Now, seeing this kind of situation from the flip side I’d begun to realize that perhaps I might need to adjust my aggressive behavior when it came to non-political stories.
The flight was quiet and uneventful. I’d gotten a nice bit of writing done before the call to turn off laptops and phones. I shut my tiny notebook down, looked to the right, and found beautiful blue eyes resting on me. My cheeks grew hot instantly.
“Hey,” he said, his voice lazy as a Kentucky summer morn.
“Did you enjoy your nap?” I asked as we began to slowly circle Trenton-Mercer Airport.
“I did. It just wasn’t long enough. I didn’t sleep well at all last night.”
He looked as if sleep had been elusive. “I can see why you’d not.”
“Roman, when we disembark, I want you to go ahead of me. Don’t walk with me or even look back at me until you’re away from the media glut.”
“Glut? There’s a glut?” A surge of anxiety washed over me. “How do you know there’s a glut?”
“My agent is waiting for me at the gate. He warned me that there is a glut, a rather big one.”
“Crap.” I glanced down at the ground as we made another pass. Stupid holding patterns. Or maybe being stacked up above Trenton was a hidden blessing. It gave us more time to talk before we waded into the lion’s den.
He leaned over to touch my thigh. My gaze moved from the window to him.
“Roman, please do this for me. I do not want you pulled into this mess. My agent agrees that any dating I do has to be discreet until the worst of this blows over. I’m sorry.”
I placed my hand on top of his. “Don’t be sorry. It’s just how things have to be for now. This too shall pass as soon as the schmendricks find something new to talk about.”
An amused smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. I really wanted to kiss him but that just wasn’t in the cards. Good thing we’d shared a few tender moments at The Windward Way before we’d checked out. The memory of his arms around me and his lips claiming mine might have to hold me for a while.
“I do love how you turn a phrase,” he replied then the announcement that we’d been cleared to land came. He gave my knee a squeeze, sat back in his seat, and we slipped into our own places mentally. Since we were first class, we got to leave the plane first, and as soon as we were cleared of the jet bridge, Layne veered away from me without so much as a glance. Feeling like a dog dumped alongside the road, I, nevertheless, knew he’d done the right thing by me.
Always the journalist, aka nosy son-of-a-gun, I wiggled into a corner of a pretzel shop and watched the chaos as it unfolded. A tall, thin black man pulled Layne aside. I assumed he was the aforementioned agent. Nattily dressed he was and sharp-eyed. The press moved on Layne and his agent en masse, and I cringed at the onslaught. People pushing and shoving phones and cameras in Layne’s face, questions being shouted out, rude and impersonal questions, tabloid fodder the whole lot of it. It sickened me. I hugged myself tightly, wishing I could shove my way through the crowd to tell them the truth. They needed facts. Cold hard facts, not the wild innuendo-laden queries or comments being lobbed at Layne.
Security arrived, escorted the press outside, and there they swam, like a school of piranha watching a sickly monkey dangling over the Amazon river as he struggles to hold onto a rotted vine.
Fine way to talk about your tribe.
I blinked at my inner voice. Ugh, I was right. One of those eager-eyed reporters could be me in a few months. When I got a job at a paper, not if but when because as Andre Gide once said, “Be faithful to that which exists within yourself,” I’d probably start out with a menial job such as celebrity news or trending topics. God save us all from trenders and influencers. So, yeah, that could be me shouting lewd questions at some poor guy who’d just been ambushed. No. I would sooner flip burgers than be part of something this debasing.
Layne and his agent sped off in the other direction, heading out a different exit I hoped.
I watched them until the crowd swallowed them then I looked skyward.
“I vow now that I will never lower my standards when it comes to journalistic integrity. Also, I promise to get to the bottom of this.” I nodded at God, my hand on my hat, and then had an afterthought. “Oh, and if it’s possible, watch over Layne and knock some sense into Dillon.” Another bob of my head to the big guy in the sky and I slipped out the door, bumped off a reporter, got a sour look and then was summarily dismissed.
Which was fine, I needed more time to get the facts assembled before I could present them to Layne and the rest of the world. I might just be a cub reporter, but I had morals dammit. And this story was far from over. I walked proudly to the nearest bus stop, my nose and toes frozen until I was safely on a warm, crowded NJ Transit bus.
Seeing the familiar high rises and sprawling William B. Ogden campus usually filled me with joy. I truly loved my college and would sorely miss it when I graduate in May. This return trip though was filled with angst and worry, and yes, a good bit of anger. Trudging to my dorm, the shortest and oldest of the brick buildings that m
ade up resident living quarters, my emotions were all over the place. Padding into the lobby of Campus View, so named because it had the best view of the campus, or so the alumni way back in the sixties when it had been erected felt, I was silent and sullen. I grunted at people I knew when I passed them on the way to the elevators. Once in the lift, I worked hard to try to arrange my feelings and get them locked down. A good journalist does not let his personal baggage affect his story. Just the facts. Right.
So when I exited the elevator I was in control. Had my feelings locked down. Then I opened the door to our room, number 6 F, and stepped inside. Dillon glanced up from the suitcase he was packing. I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t, not really. He’d been livid with me about Layne and had spewed some nasty things at me during that showdown in Chicago.
“You’re never going to find an empty room on campus,” I opened with, tossing my bag to my bed. “Oh and thank you for leaving me in a strange city without a way home.”
He sneered at me. Actually sneered. It hurt way more than it should have given my rising anger. “Please, as if your ass wasn’t payment enough for a fucking plane ride home.”
Ouch. That was mean. “I can’t believe that you’re blaming me for this situation.”
“You’re the one who fucked him the first day you met him. I mean, hello? Maybe get to know the man you’re bending over for before you fuck him?” He flung a handful of socks into a severely aged suitcase.
“Oh please, as if you have room to talk. You’ve hauled at least fifty girls in here and fucked them without even knowing their names. At least I knew his name, and I’m not lugging around his dirty BVDs in the back of my car!”
“It’s not the same. You’re queer. You should have better standards but then again you’ve always been kind of a slutty fag.”
I tried to speak, truly I did, but there were no words. Who was this man?! Where did my best friend go? I’d never seen such hatred in Dillon before. Not knowing what to do, I punched him as hard as I could right in the face. It hurt like a bitch and staggered him. Shaking my hand to bring back some feeling, I stood stock still, eyes wide, heart leaping around in terror, and witnessed the sight of a man coming totally undone. Dillon charged me like a fullback, arms going around my waist. We crashed into the door then out into the corridor. People in the hall shouted in surprise.
My back hit the wall. Hard. A big corkboard bulletin board fell to the floor about the same time that we did. I slapped at Dillon, getting another sharp shot in before he manhandled me to my back. He was bigger and heavier and way more muscled. Soon he had my hands pinned over my head with one hand.
Blood from his busted lip dripped on my chin. I stared into irate blue eyes. I jerked one hand free and in the tussle that followed, he accidentally slapped me across the face. Not incredibly hard but hard enough to make my eyes water. Then he leaped up, stumbling around obviously shocked, his face smeared with crimson as I cupped my scarlet cheek, eyes watering.
“Fucker,” Dillon spat, spinning away. Two girls came to help, hoisting me up, asking if they needed to call the cops or Josh, the dorm supervisor. I shook my head, picked up my hat, and schlepped back into my room. Dillon sat on the edge of his bed, a washcloth pressed to his face. I kicked the door closed right in the face of several of our neighbors.
“You suck,” I snarled, cradling my poor stinging face. “You’re the worst person ever, did you know that? The way you’ve handled this whole thing has shown me what a jerk you are!”
“Oh right, like this whole mess is my fault? He’s the one who knocked up my mother and left us to fucking starve!” Dillon shouted, his lip oozing still. He spat into the washcloth and glowered up at me.
“You don’t know that. You have no facts of any kind aside from what your mother said, and she might not be telling the truth,” I pointed out. Dillon took great umbrage to me saying that. He flew to his feet, his hands curling into fists. I felt a fleeting moment of fear. If he punched me, he’d probably knock me through a wall.
“Do not say anything bad about my mother,” he growled low and deep. I danced around that highly sensitive issue, easing out of fist reach just in case. “This all falls on that miserable shit that you fucked.”
“No, this whole mess is on you. You brought this nightmare to life. You could have acted like an adult and not a mad little brat. What on earth made you feel the need to confront him in public?” I threw Grandpa Frank’s hat to my desk.
“He left us to starve. That kind of bastard deserves to be called out in front of his precious friends and fans.”
“But you don’t know for sure that he’s your father! Your mother could have slept with—”
He had me by the collar and into the door before I could squeak out a distress yelp.
“You’re this close,” he snarled, his breath hot on my face. I could see the violence just under the surface. He was walking a fine line.
“Sorry, I’m not trying to make you madder I’m just saying that until there is legal proof of his paternity you have no reason to be so vindictive to him. He’s a good man…”
“You just like his dick. You gays are all alike.”
“Fucking seriously?! That’s the second gay slam you’ve thrown at me in ten fucking minutes!” I shoved at him with all I had. His expression shifted a bit, from dangerous to distraught. He released me, stepped back, and ran his bloody fingers through his dark hair. “Is there some deeply seated homophobic shit bubbling away inside you or something?”
“No!I never meant…. I just…I knew it would hurt you the most.” He turned from me and went back to packing. My hands were quaking with outrage. “Just let me get my shit and we can get some space. I can’t do you right now, Roman. Every time I look at you, I think of him getting all over you, and it just makes me mental.”
“So you’re just going to drop these bombs on me and Layne and then what? Run away? That’s bullshit, Dillon! Stand your ground. If you’re going to inflict this kind of collateral damage on another human being at least have the balls to stay and face the blowback.”
He slammed shut the suitcase that was on his bed. “I can’t. I can’t stay here. The press is already on campus, Roman. Yeah, please, don’t look so surprised. They were waiting for me when I got back. They’ve cornered my mother in the fucking grocery store, so I’m going home and taking care of her until this blows over.”
My mouth did drop open a bit. “Christ above,” I said then sighed. “Why did you handle this in such a frenzied way? If you had only reached out to Layne, privately, he would have been more than willing to talk this over and work things out. I just don’t get why you ran into this so blindly and with so much disregard for everyone involved. Can you at least explain that to me before you go?”
He grabbed his suitcase and his varsity jacket from the back of his old office chair before he lifted his face to me. His lip was swollen, his chin coated with drying blood, and his eyes so incredibly sorrowful.
“Because he didn’t care about us, about me. That’s why. He hurt me. He hurt my mom, and now he’s hurting. Seems fair to me.”
He pushed past me. The sound of the door slamming rattled around my head for ten minutes after his departure. I flopped onto my bed, kicked off my shoes, and laid down, my hot cheek resting on my cool pillow. Curled in on myself like a fetus, I stared at the walls above his bed. Posters of sexy women and buff athletes, a whiteboard with his class schedules and papers due, an old sketch of a yellow cat on ice skates that he’d done back in elementary school. His mom had framed it, and he’d brought it to college with him. He’d once told me that he had this childish notion that if he ever found his dad—who would be rich and famous of course—he was going to ask for a yellow kitten and season tickets to the Jackals games. Irony. Ain’t she a bitch?
Chapter Seven
Four days passed. Four terribly rotten sucky days.
My concentration on schoolwork was slacking as I poured everything I had into the Layne/Dil
lon/Roman triangle of pain and confusion. The only communication with Layne had been a few texts, most of them on the fly as he dodged paparazzi outside his home then went on a road trip with the team to Canada for a week. Probably for the best to get out of the country. In a week, the press would have some new celebrity scandal to salivate over. I hoped. I rather missed the man, on more than just a physical level.
Professor Willis, the faculty advisor for The Snapper, and I had had a long sit down about the Layne/Dillon situation the day after things broke nationwide. Since I was right in the middle of things being Dillon’s roommate and friend—he had no clue that I’d slept with and was infatuated by the man Dillon claimed was his father—he’d assumed that I’d be handing that story off to someone else. His concern being that my close proximity to those involved might taint my journalistic impartiality. A justified concern. I assured him that I was not going to be swayed by Dillon or the fact that we were friends. I got a look from the man who was an assistant professor of investigative journalism here. Daniel Willis was a young man, late thirties, who had a mop of brown curls and a nose for news. He was that “hip” professor we all love and remember long after we leave college.
“And you see no conflict of interest here?” Professor Willis asked, leaning back in his creaky wheelchair. I shook my head. He tapped his lower lip with a pencil, his dark brown eyes resting on me. “What’s the angle you’re hoping to bring to the paper with this story? I hope it’s not a raging defense of either of the litigants. If so, I’m going to assign Nina Cabot to cover it, and I’ll find you something less…personal.”