Finally Us

by Quinn Ward

  If I was honest, so far, I felt like a fraud down here. I’d sailed through high school with decent enough grades to get into college, but I’d never been near the top of my class. Even taking a lighter course load to acclimate myself to how things were done here, I was struggling. But I wouldn’t admit that to anyone, not even to Trevor. Hell, especially not to Trevor, because I knew damn well he’d try to help me the way he had the past seven years, through both middle and high school. He had enough on his plate without worrying about me too.

  Although I felt more at peace after talking to Trevor, now I was thinking about his suggestion that I needed to get out and meet people. I used to be a friend magnet, so other than my feelings of inadequacy, it made no sense that I wasn’t out there doing something when he was busy. He’d made it clear he was living his own life right now, so why shouldn’t I?

  In a totally uncharacteristic move, I walked over to Seth’s room. What made tonight different than the other nights we’d hung out was that I wasn’t in the midst of a pity party. Tonight was about nothing more than seeing if he wanted to hang out, maybe walk down to Port Java with me. He might’ve been the only person on campus with less of a social life than I had.

  His door opened before I could even get to it from the communal area. “Oh, hey Seth. I was coming to see if you wanted to hang out for a bit. I’m thinking about heading over to Port Java.”

  “Oh, I would, but I’m actually on my way out.” His gaze flitted everywhere but in my direction. “I thought you were spending some time with Trevor tonight?

  “Yeah, but apparently everyone but me has plans.” I shrugged as though I didn’t feel like a complete loser. I had less of a social life than sheltered Seth. I turned to mope back to my room, but Seth’s offer stopped me in my tracks.

  “Maybe it’s not your scene, but the LGBTQ Alliance is having a get-together tonight.” Had not seen that coming. Perhaps it was unfair of me to make assumptions about someone’s sexuality when I was pretty sure no one pegged me as gay, but I hadn’t considered that might be yet another issue he was facing in his life. Then again, it wasn’t like I made a habit of thinking about anyone’s sex life, especially someone I was still struggling to think of as anything other than “the kid.”

  “No pressure at all, but I thought you might want to get out of here for a bit.” He stood taller and squared his shoulders. “And honestly, it’d be nice to know someone there. It probably sounds stupid to someone like you, but until I got here, I’d pretty much convinced myself I was a freak of nature because I didn’t think about getting married and having kids like the rest of my Sunday school class.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably not a hotbed for gay activity,” I joked, trying to keep him from crumbling under the weight of what he’d admitted to me.

  He laughed, but the sound was thready and hollow. “Yeah, so anyway, when I got accepted to UNCW, I started looking at the different clubs to figure out what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to sit in my dorm room all the time, studying.”

  He gave me a pointed look, as if to silently add “the way you do” to the end of his statement.

  “That’s awesome,” I responded enthusiastically. “Maybe I should’ve done something proactive like that, but I had… other things on my mind.”

  “Like being eager to move in with your boyfriend without anyone knowing what’s going on?” How in the hell did he know that? He must’ve read the confusion on my face because he quickly clarified. “Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but when we’re all hanging out in the commons, everyone sees the way the two of you look at one another. Ayden and Gibson were the first ones to figure it out. I wasn’t so sure at first, but I’m pretty sure our beds are on the shared wall and you two aren’t exactly quiet.”

  Seth blushed adorably. If we were better friends, I might’ve teased him about whether or not that was a complaint or compliment. Then again, if Trevor knew anyone had heard me⁠—and it had to be me, because Trevor was even timid in orgasm⁠—he’d be mortified. Which meant I needed to do some damage control.

  “Yeah, exactly like that,” I confirmed. “But don’t tell him everyone knows. Things with us are complicated, and he doesn’t want to go public yet.”

  “So you’re saying he has no clue how he looks at you?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Like he’s a sugar addict and you’re a cupcake with a mountain of frosting on top.” Huh, hadn’t really noticed that. We were so used to not making eye contact that lasted longer than a socially acceptable amount of time that those looks must’ve been when I wasn’t looking in his direction.

  “I have to get going or I’m going to be late,” he told me as he checked his watch. Yes, his watch, because he was likely the only student on campus who didn’t have a smartphone, so he kept it shoved in his pocket at all times. “No pressure, but if you were looking for something to do tonight, it’s supposed to be a pretty nice group of people.”

  I hedged for a minute. Going to an LGBTQ Alliance meeting was getting awfully close to stepping out of the closet. If I went, people would know for sure I was gay. If they knew I was gay, and if Trevor looked at me the way Seth said he did, they’d assume he was gay, too, if they saw us together.

  Screw it. He’s off with his study group friends and suggested I get out of the dorm room occasionally. This was the perfect solution.

  “Yeah, let me get my hoodie and I’ll meet you back here in a few.” I quickly scribbled a note for Trevor that I was out with Seth and I’d try to be back by nine, but not to worry. I could’ve texted, but I wasn’t prepared to have to answer questions about where we were going in case he thought it was a bad idea.

  9

  Trevor

  It was eerily quiet when I got home from my study group. The lights in the commons area were out, which usually meant no one was there. But Gabe hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving tonight. I’d been ready to come home and grovel for leaving right after his big meltdown about feeling like we were drifting apart now that I was busy with stupid little things like keeping my grades up.

  I flipped on the light in our room, possibly for the first time since we’d moved in since Gabe was almost always there when I got back to the room, and I saw the note he’d left for me.

  Heading to a meeting with Seth. He needed a bit of moral support. Be home by nine if I can.

  It annoyed me more than it should that he was out with Seth. I hadn’t realized they were close enough that Gabe would be the one Seth turned to if he needed support. Gabe wasn’t the person most people would go to if they were having a rough time. He didn’t deal with tense situations well at all.

  I took advantage of the peace and quiet to get a bit more research done for my psych paper. It was the easiest class I had this semester, so it’d be a breeze to blow through this assignment before Thanksgiving break even though it wasn’t due until the first week of December.

  Gabe and Seth practically fell through the door to the commons area a while later. Something was obviously funny, but I was the outsider without a clue. I hated that feeling, because I was supposed to be the person Gabe laughed with.

  “Oh, hey, Trev. You been home long?” I closed my laptop and joined them in the commons.

  “Nope.” Rather than sit next to Gabe on the couch, I took one of the club chairs to subtly let him know I was irrationally annoyed with him right now. It wasn’t the fact that he’d been out, but the fact that he and Seth seemed much closer than I’d realized. If I made a new friend, I let him know because I wanted him to know about my life. Obviously, that wasn’t a two-way street.

  Seth seemed to pick up on the tension between us first. “Thanks for coming with me to the meeting, Gabe. I’m going to head back to my room and try to read my assignment for tomorrow.”

  “Cool. Did you wanna head down again next week?”

  What in the heck was next week? They were making standing dates now? See, I was completely irrational, but I blamed that
on the jealousy I wasn’t used to feeling and didn’t know how to cope with.

  “Yeah. Tonight went better than I expected. Thanks again.” He waved on his way out, leaving me with more questions than answers. But I didn’t want to turn into that boyfriend. I didn’t want Gabe to think I didn’t trust him, because I did. Was I jealous of the time they’d spent together? Yeah, but that was mostly because I didn’t realize they’d gotten close.

  “Hey, you okay?” Gabe asked once we were alone. He walked across the room and started massaging my shoulders. This had become one of my favorite parts of every day. The time Gabe had spent playing sports and managing the teams had taught him how to use his hands for a heavenly massage.

  “I’ll be fine,” I told him. And I would, as soon as I figured out how to rein in these unwanted, and unwarranted, emotions. Gabe could have friends. Heck, I’d even encouraged him to get out of the room before I’d left. It wasn’t his fault he’d taken my suggestion.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t text you to let you know I was taking off,” he said softly, still working at the knots in my shoulders. “I didn’t want to interrupt your study session. Did you at least get my note?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” I was sitting here trying to dissect his motives for not calling or texting, and it turned out he was trying to be considerate. That made me feel like a steaming pile of crap.

  “Are you mad that I went with him?” he asked, sounding uncertain. Gabe didn’t think twice about ticking off most people, but he’d never dealt well when he’d upset me. I knew this, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to let him off the hook completely.

  “I’m not mad that you have a life outside of us,” I assured him, before laying on a thin layer of guilt. “But I was a little hurt that you’d never mentioned you and Seth were friends.”

  Gabe shrugged as if it wasn’t a huge deal. “We weren’t, not really. A few nights when I felt sorry for myself sitting around the dorm, I asked him if he wanted to grab dinner together. Tonight I was going to see if he wanted to head to Port Java, but he had other plans and invited me to tag along.”

  “Can I ask what you did or is it some big secret?” I closed my eyes and allowed my head to fall forward. “I’m trying really hard to not be intrusive, but I am curious. If it was something he wouldn’t want me to know, don’t tell me. I’ll respect your decision.”

  “Babe, I’m not going to keep secrets from you,” he insisted. “I mean, if it was something really fucked up and he asked me not to tell you, I’d have to figure out what I’d do, but I’m not going to get in the habit of keeping shit from you.”

  He was infuriating when he got flustered. There was something about their evening he didn’t want to tell me, but I had no clue what it might be. And I’d promised I wasn’t going to pry, so I was stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I reminded him in case this was one of those situations where he wasn’t sure what Seth would want him to say.

  “No, it’s nothing covert or anything. We just… okay, so when I got to his room, he was heading out to a club meeting and he invited me to go with him.”

  “It was a Magic: The Gathering club meeting, wasn’t it?” I teased. He chuckled, and I knew that’d been the right approach. “Gabe, I know every embarrassing thing there is to know about you, including the time you came down from your bath butt naked, not realizing Pastor Simms and his wife were there to make sure everything was okay because your parents hadn’t been in church for a while.”

  “You weren’t supposed to speak of that. Ever.” It was one of those moments far too hilarious to let him ever forget. It might not have been so bad if Gabe hadn’t been in a phase where he was obsessively interested in his penis and thought everyone else should share his wonder.

  “Man, I thought my dad was going to piss himself laughing when your parents told mine about that.”

  “Do. Not. Speak. Of. It.” Every word came out clipped and terse, but I was laughing too hard to stop myself.

  “Sorry, but you’re the one who asked the pastor’s wife if she wanted to see the Statue of Liberty.”

  The poor woman had apparently said it was a sight she’d always wanted to see and Gabe lay down in the middle of the living room and tugged at his Vienna sausage.

  “I swear, if you ever tell anyone, I’ll be forced to retaliate by telling them about the time you yelled out that you were sucking your sausage in the middle of Easter brunch.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would.”

  “Dang, you’re savage.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, so now that we got that out of our systems, are you gonna tell me about this clandestine meeting?”

  “Promise you won’t get pissed?” He seemed anxious, like he honestly thought I might be upset with him for having a social life.

  “Unless you were at an orgy or sacrificing little humans, I’m pretty sure I’ll deal.”

  “Okay… so… we…,” he stammered. I grabbed his hand and pulled him around into my lap. We probably looked ridiculous since he had a few inches on me, but it felt right. He held me when I was upset; now it was my turn to return the favor. “He was on his way to an LGBTQ Alliance meeting and asked if I’d go with him.”

  “As moral support.” I repeated his words from earlier, wanting to know what his role at this meeting was.

  “Well, that too, but he sort of…. Trev, don’t get pissed, but he knows about us.”

  “You told him?”

  “No. He⁠—uh⁠—apparently even though the walls are cinder block, it doesn’t dampen all the sound.” His entire face turned beet red and he couldn’t look at me.

  My heart threatened to beat out of my chest, but this wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Close, but not quite. And I didn’t picture Seth as the type who’d blab our personal business.

  “You weren’t worried about the meeting, were you?” Gabe shook his head. “You were worried I’d be upset that you’re not locking your closet door?” He nodded. “Oh babe, I’m sorry. This is another one of those talks we should’ve had sooner. I don’t want you feeling like a dirty little secret.”

  “I don’t.” I clamped my hand over his mouth. Now it was my turn to speak. I needed to clear the air fully between us.

  “Listen to me,” I demanded. Gabe stirred at the deep, commanding tone of my voice. It wasn’t the sort of play we got into, but I filed that knowledge away for future reference. “You know why I’m not ready to be out. I know it shouldn’t matter down here because no one knows us, but I can’t stop worrying that we’ll run into someone from high school, and they’ll know. I’m trying, you know that.”

  “I do,” he agreed. “And I really don’t want to drag you out with me, but being out isn’t just about being in a relationship. It’s part of who we are at our core.”

  “The other issue is, once I’m out I know I’m not going to want to hide away when we’re around family. I do want to get to the point where I can tell everyone how much you mean to me, but I’m not there yet. That doesn’t mean I want you to stay completely hidden too. I want you to live your life, and if an LGBT club is where you find your tribe, so be it.”

  “You’re really okay with this?” He finally looked up at me with hope in his eyes.

  “Yeah, I am. There may be times I tweak about stuff, but as long as you’re not telling people certain details, I’ll try and play it cool.”

  Gabe got off my lap and held out a hand to me. “Does that mean we can go to bed? It’s been an exhausting day.”

  “Yeah, I’m beat. I keep waiting for the day when I’m treading water instead of drowning, but I’m sure that’ll come next semester. Maybe.” I followed Gabe into our room and changed for bed while he grabbed his shower caddy. As tempting as it was to take another shared shower, the rest of the guys would be home before long, and it seemed we already had issues with someone being quiet.

  By the time he go
t out of the shower, I was falling asleep while trying to read my assignment for tomorrow’s lecture. He took the book out of my hands and carefully placed it over the arm of the smelly chair so I wouldn’t lose my place. When he returned, he carefully took off my glasses and set them on the nightstand. He climbed into the bed, pushing me closer to the wall. “Next year, we convince the ’rents to let us get a place of our own. I can’t keep doing this twin bed bullshit.”

  “Could we not talk about them while your dick is nestled against my butt?” I still wasn’t comfortable with the number of lies we were telling our parents.

  “Deal,” he agreed. Gabe pulled my body closer to his, holding me tight, as though he was afraid I’d disappear if he dared to let go. He kissed the back of my head, allowing his fingers to trace patterns across my stomach.

  “You sleepy?” He asked, his husky voice making me aware he had other ideas than closing our eyes for the night.

  “I could be persuaded to wake up.” It’d been a long day in a painful string of long days, but I wasn’t going to say no to whatever Gabe was suggesting. We’d been toeing ever closer to having what I thought of as “real sex” and I realized holding ourselves back might be part of the reason we both felt so much uncertainty about what was going on between us.

  I rolled in Gabe’s arms, lifting my hand to his face. His jaw was rough with a few days’ worth of stubble, but I loved that rasp against my palm. Shifting closer, I noticed his eyes narrow on me. His breathing sped up and grew shallow.

  “I want to try something tonight, Gabe,” I whispered before sealing my mouth over his. His lips parted on a surprised sigh, and I allowed my tongue to enter his mouth. He tasted like the bubble gum toothpaste he still used, despite the flack he caught for using kids’ toothpaste. His distaste for anything mint was adorable—just one more facet of his personality which endeared him to me.

  Gabe moaned as I deepened the kiss, pressing our bodies together, writhing against his erection. The more noise he made, the more emboldened I became to do what he’d once suggested and take control.