by RJ Scott
“Listen up, freak, this shit of that hockey player living here and not coughing up cash for the rent is at an end.”
“He’s looking… ouch, would you let go?” He squeezed harder. I hated Craig with a burning passion. The feeling was mutual, obviously. “He’s looking for a job. As soon as he gets one…”
“He either coughs up a hundred bucks for rent, or he gets the fuck out. And don’t think that because he’s a jock, I’m not going to kick his ass out the door. I play baseball, Dexter plays football, we both have issues with him living here rent free, and we both have the muscle to haul him out of your bed, you freakish little queer.”
“Hey, you know the lease is in my name, right?” I snapped.
He showed me a fist. “You know this is in my name, right?”
With that, he flung me to the side. I fell over the first step leading to the attic, my hair obscuring my sight. I sped up the stairs and exploded through the door, my heart pounding and my legs quaking. Scott was spread out on the air mattress, using the old tongue-and-groove wall as a backrest. He glanced up from his textbook, smiled just for a moment, and then let the smile slip.
“You okay?”
I slammed the door shut. “Yes, fine. Good. I… ran all the way from campus,” I panted, then bent over to take off my socks, whipping them into the hamper by the small fridge.
“Why?” He closed his book, and all his attention rested on me. I felt funny inside, fidgety and fluffy, airy, hot, needy, confused and—“Why did you run?”
“Oh, I have news. Good news.” I threw the door a look, then hurried over to sit on the air mattress with Scott. He had super long legs, thick and hard from skating, but I made sure I curled into myself on the corner of his bed so not to touch or crowd him. “Professor Poole really likes the Winter Knight and is going to call the director of the Minnesota Museum of American Art to see if she’d like to add it to an exhibition they’re running now. Or was it a new exhibition? Shit, I can’t remember, but if she likes it, one of my paintings might be in a museum. And people will walk by and see it! Some will pause and study it and make soft thoughtful sounds as they enjoy the color scheme and brush strokes!”
Scott laughed softly. “Man, you are super stoked. I’m really happy for you.” He grabbed my toes and squeezed them. I giggled, then hid my face in the floppy neck of my turtleneck sweater.
“You were the knight,” I whispered into the soft wool.
“So you keep telling me.” He patted the top of my foot, and then his sight flickered from mine to my feet. “Dude, really. You have paint between your toes. When did you paint last? Like, four days ago?”
My ears and face turned scarlet. “Stop, I do not.” I slapped at his hand, but he pulled my leg out and up to show me my toes. Shit, there was paint between my toes. Sunshine yellow, to be exact. From the new oil on the easel that I’d started one morning when we’d woken and seen that the snow had melted off the skylights. The sun had fallen on Scott, and well… I had had to paint.
“You so do.” He chuckled. I tugged on my foot. He playfully held on to it. “I’ve never seen such tiny toes. They’re like little macaroni.”
“Don’t make fun of me!” I snapped, the giggling and roughhousing coming to a quick stop.
“Hayne, hey, I’m not.” I tried to kick him in the face for saying I had macaroni toes. “I’m not making fun. I think they’re… beautiful.”
Face hot with shame, I stopped trying to drive my heel into his handsome face. Bracing myself on arms locked behind me, I sat there, stunned, as he lifted my foot to his mouth and pressed a tender kiss to my little toe.
“Your feet are small and delicate, the arch high, the skin soft and pale and dotted with paint.” He spoke and kissed each toe, and then came a light touch of his lips to the sole of my foot. My cock was hard as a post. I had never experienced anything so erotic. Scott caressed my arch, his gaze roaming over me, touching on the erection tenting my leggings, and then slowly coming up over my heaving chest to my face. “Would you be… can I… is it okay if I kiss you?”
“Yes, please, if you would,” I squeaked as he placed my heel on his lap and leaned up, his hand cupping my chin. I closed my eyes and puckered. He blew several wild curls out of the way, then put his lips on mine. The kiss lasted for a second or two, the pressure so light I barely felt it, yet I felt it all over. He pulled back and let his fingers slide along my jaw.
“That was nice.” I opened my eyes. His were fiery. “Your lips are as soft as the skin on the sole of your foot, which you did not wash in the shower.”
“I did wash my foot. I just missed that spot,” I replied in a weak, raspy voice. “I’m happy to have you here to talk art with.”
“You happy about my kisses too?”
“Yes, very much.”
His smile lit up my attic in ways the sun wished it could. He pulled me into his arms, wrapping me tightly in his embrace, and fell back to his air mattress, wiggling us around until he was the big spoon and I was the little spoon. I’d never been happier to be flatware in my life.
“Tell me more about your amazing painting,” he whispered beside my ear.
We talked for hours, lying like two tablespoons in a warm, soft drawer. I fell asleep in his arms and didn’t stir until my phone alarm went off.
“Pretzel knots,” Scott grumbled. I snorted softly, slipped out of his strong arms, and crawled across the floor to find my phone. “What is that?”
“Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E minor, opus 64,” I prattled off as I silenced the cell phone and sat down in the middle of the floor, hair covering my face, a yawn cracking my jaw. “I need to call Mimi and Mom about the picture.”
Scott mumbled something, then left his air mattress. I slid around on my ass to watch him walk to the small corner bathroom. He’d started getting lax on the whole privacy thing over the past couple of days. I sat there, arms around my legs, fixated on him taking a leak. His upper half was bare, his bottom half in worn flannel sleep pants.
“Should I not call them or call them? If I call and Winter Knight isn’t chosen, then they’ll be upset.”
“Then don’t call them,” he called over his shoulder.
I wrinkled my nose in thought. “What if they find out I knew and didn’t call them? What if they found out you know but not them?”
Scott flushed and turned to look at me. “Then call them.”
I nodded. “No, I don’t think I should.”
His eye roll was epic. “Flip a coin,” he said, spinning from me and dropping his sleep pants to the floor. My eyes flared at the display of tight ass. Then he was gone, behind the white curtain. I pushed at the morning wood in my dusky blue leggings. The water came on, the pipes rattling and moaning in the wall. I turned on some music to drown out the groaning pipes, then snuck around the room, taking off my clothes from yesterday and gathering up clean clothes to wear to class.
“What’s this?” Scott shouted from the shower stall.
“Still Mendelssohn, just a different opus,” I yelled back just as the water was shut off. I did my best to tidy up as he dried, to give him some privacy. I was pulling some milk and day-old Danish from the fridge when he threw the curtain aside, the rattle of the rings pulling my attention from breakfast.
He’d pulled on jeans and an OU sweatshirt in the Eagles colors of gold and brown. His hair was finger-combed, his cheeks thick with dark scruff. He looked me up and down. I blushed as his sight lingered on my skinny chest.
“What the hell happened to your arm?”
He stalked over to me standing there with a half-gallon of milk and a cold, dry, raspberry Danish, and I instinctively skittered into reverse, my ass bouncing off the fridge. I held the milk in front of me like a shield.
Brilliant, Hayne. Plastic will protect you. Try lobbing a stale Danish at the next slob who shoves you around.
“Hayne, it’s cool.” He lifted a hand and tugged gently on a kinky strand of hair fluttering back and forth in front of my mouth. �
�I will never hurt you, right? You know that?”
“Yes, I know. I’m just…”
“What is this?” He released the curl and poked at my biceps. I hissed in pain, then glanced down at the purple ring around my upper arm.
“Ugh, stupid Craig.”
“Craig? Like that douchebag roommate of yours? That Craig? Did he do this to you?”
I shrugged, trying to play it off because I could sense the anger starting to bubble inside Scott.
“He was just horsing around, you know, grabbed me too hard. I’m delicate as you said,” I lied, hoping to avoid any kind of confrontation. “Hey, I forgot!” I slid my elbow from his hand and jogged over to my backpack. “I ran into your friend Ryker on the way out of Willows Hall.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep, he was nice.” I grabbed the pink flyer from amid the books and papers crammed into my bag. “He was hanging these up. Some sort of Valentine’s Day booster event for the hockey team. Local band, food, dancing. No booze, since this is a dry campus.”
I handed him the flyer. He read it over quickly. “Did you want to go or something?”
“I thought… well, if you were feeling up to it, then maybe we could check it out.” I peeked through my hair. He seemed really tense. Perhaps it was the bruising, or maybe it was the thought of going out and being seen with me. “Unless you don’t want to go with me, which I totally get. You could go by yourself and be with your friends. Isolating ourselves isn’t good for our recovery. We need to be with other people and… what?”
He shook his head and murmured about not fitting in anymore.
“That’s not true. They’re all your friends,” I told him as his sight locked onto the flyer, which I was beginning to wish I’d never brought home.
“That party’s for the team. I’m not on the team anymore,” he stated, lifting pained eyes to me. “I don’t deserve to be there.”
My mind raced to find something to say that wouldn’t sound trite or patronizing. I opted to go with the truth. He’d be able to see the sincerity in my eyes.
“You’ll always be a member of the team.” He frowned and muttered. I could hear the paper in his hand crinkling. “It’s true. Are you saying that injured members of the team are no longer considered Eagles hockey players?”
“That’s different. That’s a physical injury.”
“And you’re fighting back from an emotional injury. Hey, no, I’m serious here. When I lost Jay-Jay, one of the first things my counseling taught me was that a person must heal physically and mentally from any trauma. We all try to push past the mental health aspect of things, but you can’t, you know?” He stared right at me, right into my soul, his gaze seeking something that I hoped he would find. “Addictive and destructive behavior is a symptom, just like pain in your leg when you tear something. So you’re recovering from a deeply bruised psyche, and that will take time, just like a bad knee. Real friends all know this and will never turn from you.”
A long moment ticked past. I worried I had pushed him too hard, had been too greedy and pushy, too whiny and clingy. Too desperate…
“You’re an incredibly giving person.”
My cheeks grew warm under the praise. “Do you want to try it, then? The party? You can go by yourself, if you’d rather.”
“Why would you think I’d go to this stupid thing without you?” he asked, folding his arms over his chest.
I blew hair out of my face. “Because most people don’t want to do things out in public with me.”
“Fuck that. Okay, here’s the deal. From now on you do not put yourself down in front of me, okay?” I nodded. He cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously, I mean it. Hayne, you are beautiful and magical and so full of kindness and love. You make me feel… I don’t know how I feel, but I like it. Please, don’t repeat what losers like Craig and Dexter have pounded into your head. You’re special, and I would be proud to go to this Valentine’s Day thing with you.”
“Really? Like, touching and stuff in public?”
“Exactly like touching and stuff in public.”
There were no words, so I whispered a weak thanks and scurried to the bathroom and yanked the curtain around me. Then I hugged myself tightly and did a small, silent happy dance.
Seven
Scott
The group was quiet tonight. We’d all arrived, helped ourselves to coffee and the donuts that Monica had brought with her. I sat in what I thought of as my usual chair if I had one of those having only attended two sessions so far. Hayne sat opposite me now I didn’t know if that was because he felt comfortable there or that he wanted space or because he didn’t want the rest of the group to know we were…
What? What were we to each other? Hell, if I knew. Apart from friends, of course. He hadn’t asked me to leave his place, and I’d stayed fourteen nights now, and we talked as if we were friends. But there was more; a spark that I couldn’t ignore, a gentleness Hayne had in him that I was drawn to, and of course that had ended up with the one kiss we’d shared.
We hadn’t done anything else since, apart from cuddling. Maybe that was what I needed, just to be able to be close to someone who knew some of the grief and pain that consumed me at times. I didn’t question what we were doing because it felt right. Anyway, whatever the reason, I could’ve sat and watched him paint for ages and just as easily hugged him for longer.
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I sent him a wry smile as I realized I was staring. He’d changed before we’d come out tonight, today’s jeans covered in splashes of orange and red, or copper as he pointed out. I saw the individual colors; he just saw the beauty of them together.
I’d already proved I wasn’t an artist when he’d offered me a brush and I’d made a halfhearted attempt at painting a square. That had been this morning, and he’d carefully taken the brush from me, explaining that not everyone had the ability to paint.
He’d only taken the words back when I’d pinned him and tickled him. Which had turned into cuddles and talking softly about the color red and squares and all kinds of artistic things that meant so much to him.
I wanted to kiss him again. I could weigh all the pros and cons, come up with conclusions to support a kiss, and equally enough issues that meant I should really leave him to get on with his life.
I was a selfish bastard. I felt safe in Hayne’s place, and I wanted to stay.
“Has anyone seen Alice?” Monica asked, then checked her watch again. This was only the third session I’d attended, but Alice had been there each time, picking at the fabric of her cardigan and saying things when prompted. Last session, she’d gotten into an argument with Oscar over the use of the word guilt. Monica had wanted to know if any of us felt guilt that we’d lived when our loved ones had died, and that was like a red rag to a bull, apparently.
The things I could have said at that point about how if it hadn’t been for me, Luke wouldn’t even have gone on spring break. What would anyone say to me if I explained that guilt consumed me, and it wasn’t because I’d lived; it was because Luke dying was all on me. So I’d stayed quiet, but Alice had snapped something I didn’t really hear, and for some reason, she and Oscar ended up in a heated debate. They’d hugged it out, and everything had settled, but her absence tonight was clearly worrying Monica.
“She told me she was coming,” Oscar said from his position by the window. He was staring down at the entrance and probably willing Alice to appear, pulling out his phone and texting. To her, I assume. I caught Hayne’s gaze, and he looked worried. Should I be worried as well? What weren’t people telling me here? Were they thinking something had happened to her?
“Should we call 911?” I blurted.
“What for?” Alice said from the door when she breezed in as if we hadn’t all been just sitting for five minutes wondering where she was. She was bright-eyed, smiling. There was a spring in her step, but no one could miss the stumble as she walked, and I could smell alcohol as she sat. Seemed to me as though she was self-medicati
ng, which is what I’d been doing for a long time. Like knew like.
She patted my knee, then blew a kiss at Oscar, and Monica closed the door to the room to begin the session.
“Alice, there’s coffee,” she prompted, but Alice shook her head.
“Don’t want to ruin my beer buzz.” She laughed and slumped in her chair, leaning into me. “Alcohol is good.” She breathed up at me, and the fumes hit me square on.
There was a silence for a moment. Then Monica cleared her throat. I knew she wasn’t there to judge, but she certainly appeared concerned. “Welcome everyone, tonight I thought we would talk about…”
The rest of her words were blurred. All I could focus on was the scent of beer and how liquor could blot out everything. What would everyone here think of me if they knew just how much shit I’d done when I’d been drunk? I doubted anyone here was the type who to attend frat parties, but the shame that washed over me had to be making me scarlet.
You think alcohol is going to help? You think it will bring back Luke? Dad’s words snapped at me, dredged up from yet another nasty scene when I’d done nothing to defend myself.
What if Hayne found out some of the things I’d done? There was a connection between us, a nebulous but shiny thing that made me feel warm. If I told him what I’d done under the influence of drink, he’d turn and run. I remembered throwing my weight around, I recalled the shit I’d said to people. Then there was a lot of stuff I didn’t remember at all. People expected me to be a jock, the kind that messed up people and thought they owned the world, and I’d played that part really well. As each memory piled on top of each other, I’d worked myself up into such a state of shame that when it came to my turn to talk, I didn’t even know where in the process we were and what I was supposed to be saying. Alice snored softly and drooled on my shoulder, and I didn’t dare move in case she fell, but all I really wanted to do was go and find a beer. I couldn’t play hockey, I didn’t need to gain muscle, I didn’t need to care about myself, and alcohol sounded good right about now.