Worth Searching For

by Wendy Qualls

  The quad was starting to awaken too, some students stumbling blearily into the campus coffee shop and others wandering between early classes. Someone was bravely attempting a game of Frisbee shirtless, despite the temperature. Paul tried not to look, but it was hard not to notice that whoever-it-was had a lot to show off. He settled himself onto the low stone wall outside the psychology building and pulled out his phone, angling the screen to compensate for the bright glare.

  “Paul Dunham?”

  Paul looked up. A striking dark-haired man in khakis and a smart jacket stood before him. “Hi?”

  The man grinned and held out his hand. “Been a while, so you may not remember me, but I sure as hell remember you. Brandon Mercer—we were hallmates freshman year.”

  Paul shook the offered hand on autopilot. It couldn’t be, after all this time. Brandon Mercer. Holy crap! “Of course I remember,” he said, his voice breaking a bit. “You were pretty memorable.”

  “So were you.” Brandon took a seat on the wall next to him and cocked his head. “You teach here now?”

  Paul smiled and shrugged, careful to seem casual. “Psychology. Finally got on the tenure track last year, so hopefully I’ll be sticking around for a while. What have you been up to?”

  “IT consultant,” Brandon said. “Mostly security issues and such.”

  “I should have guessed from the beard.” Paul nodded toward Brandon’s neatly groomed chin. “Your look screams ‘computers.’”

  Brandon laughed; the humor lighting up his eyes. “I’d say you were exaggerating, but you’re right—in this field, it’s practically a uniform.”

  It looked good on him. Very good. Brandon had been handsome enough ten years ago, when they were both eighteen-year-olds on the tail end of puberty, but the beard sculpted his face a bit and brought out the angle of his jaw. Which in turn matched the very nice angles making up the rest of him. Handsome was now a grossly inadequate word.

  “What brings you back here, then?” Paul asked, managing to keep his thoughts from coming through in his voice. “I assumed you were off to make your mark on the bigger world.”

  “I’m based out of Atlanta now, but St. Ben’s wanted someone on-site to take a look at something and I thought it would be interesting to see what’s changed around here.” Brandon raised his head and looked out over the quad, a small smile on his face. He was much less subtle about ogling the shirtless Frisbee player. “Not a lot, I’m guessing.”

  That was truer than Paul wanted to admit. “I like it better from this side of the desk, at least.”

  “Oh, I bet.” Brandon fixed him with a knowing smirk and one delicately raised eyebrow. “Should I even ask?”

  “Um.” Paul could feel his face heat from the insinuation behind the otherwise innocent question. Not really the time or place to talk about my personal life, especially after Dr. Kirsner’s attempt to ream me out this morning—

  And Brandon seemed to get it. “Coffee,” he announced. “You and me. Not here. Well, if you’ve got time, that is? I’m parked just around the corner. It’d be nice to catch up.”

  Paul swallowed and nodded. “That…sounds good. Thanks.”

  * * * *

  The coffee shop was an independent little hole-in-the-wall, one Paul had heard of but never been inside. Its primary benefit seemed to be its distance from campus; the coffee certainly wasn’t anything to write home about. Paul and Brandon got a corner table in the nearly empty dining area and sat in silence for a little while. It felt oddly normal. And didn’t at all explain the butterflies in Paul’s stomach.

  “So,” Brandon started. “You finished up your degree at St. Ben’s, then stuck with psychology?”

  “Yeah.” It had been the only field that interested him, even back then. “It’s a pretty campus and it has a good cognitive program. Once I finished undergrad I went ahead and applied for the graduate program—it’s close enough to my hometown to see my parents sometimes, and I didn’t really want to go farther away.”

  Brandon nodded. “And St. Ben’s doesn’t have a problem with you being gay?”

  Paul couldn’t suppress his flinch, even though he knew nobody was listening. “I, um…”

  Brandon’s eyes widened. “You’re still in the closet? Seriously?”

  Like I have a choice. “Coming out isn’t really something I can do right now,” he admitted.

  Brandon took a long sip of his coffee and didn’t say anything, but the silence was just as eloquent as words. Finally he put his cup down and sighed. “I don’t regret leaving, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t… I mean, I assumed my parents would freak out. When I came home that summer and told them I was gay. But they were fine with it. My mom gave me a hug and my dad and my brothers clapped me on the back and the next morning there were brochures for Emory and Georgia Tech sitting outside my room. Mom even called to get all my transcripts and paperwork from St. Ben’s, so I’d have everything ready to transfer whenever I wanted to. And I lucked out. Georgia Tech doesn’t usually take transfer students that late, but my dad’s got a friend who works in admissions there and somehow they managed to pull some strings.” Brandon flashed Paul a crooked smile. “It was the best thing to ever happen to me.”

  And it left me behind. Paul tried to smile back, but it probably came out more as a grimace. One year, then nothing. One year of longing looks and the uncomfortable awareness that this attraction wouldn’t go away. One fabulous night when fate happened to put them both in the right place at the right time to admit to each other it was mutual. Paul had been forced to confront the fact that yes, he really was gay. And then finals were over and they both went home, and Brandon had never come back.

  “How did you…” Brandon seemed to be picking his words carefully. “How was it for you? Staying?”

  “It wasn’t anything, really.” Confusing and frustrating, but that was nothing new. “I just went back to not doing that. Nobody thought anything of it. Plenty of students here don’t really date.”

  “So did you ever…” He trailed off and waved vaguely.

  Paul stared down at the polished wood of the table with more focus than was probably warranted. There was a slight wave to the grain under the varnish. “Once,” he admitted quietly. “Sort of. When I was in grad school there was a guy, and we kind of clicked. We got an apartment together eventually, to save on rent. It went from there.”

  “You said ‘sort of,’” Brandon pointed out. Paul didn’t look up, but he could hear his amusement. “How’s that work?”

  God, this is awkward. How can I possibly describe Christopher? “He was—is—kind of a lot to take in,” Paul finally explained. “Friendly guy, but abrasive too. We never made it official or anything, but I never said no either. He made it clear he was interested in me after we had been living together for a while. We tried that for a bit, but I just couldn’t. At least, not with him. It ended badly.”

  “You dumped him?”

  “I guess so.” Paul let out a long breath. “I didn’t want to…to do everything he wanted to. We got in an argument and he wouldn’t let it go. I finally moved out about a year and a half ago, when I realized nothing was going to change. Got my own place. He stayed at St. Ben’s until this past September—not my department, but I still had to see him sometimes and it was always awkward. Honestly I was kind of relieved when he quit; the new IT lady is much easier to work with.”

  “And all this time, you stayed in the closet.”

  I did, and it sucks. “Pretty much.” The words came out more evenly than he expected. “I had to, though—I can’t leave St. Ben’s. I have another year or two until my tenure review. And even though they don’t require a statement of faith from their faculty anymore, having an openly gay professor isn’t something the administration could easily overlook.”

  “I see.” Brandon leaned
back in his chair and studied Paul for a long moment, his face inscrutable. “So you’re not claiming you’re straight now? Dating women?”

  Not really. He wasn’t in denial, didn’t argue with the label, just—being gay was inconvenient. Paul made a vaguely negative noise.

  “You’re missing out, you know.”

  He winced. Yes, he knew. The whole darn world seemed to be conspiring to tell him exactly how much he was missing out on. That kind of life wasn’t compatible with working at St. Ben’s, though. Speaking of which… Paul checked his watch and stood. “Look, I hate to cut this short—”

  “Don’t suppose you’d want to do dinner sometime?”

  Paul snapped out of his self-pity party and only barely prevented himself from gaping at Brandon. “Like, dinner-dinner? Or date-dinner?”

  “Either.” Brandon smirked. “Don’t you feel like we got separated too soon, back then? I agonized for ages over whether to call you once we went home for the summer, and even now I’m not sure why I didn’t.” He leaned forward in his chair, his long fingers practically caressing his little paper cup of coffee, as if he was about to impart a secret. “I truly would love to hear what you’ve been up to and all,” he confessed, “but I’d also love to…well. I’ve got some time—I have no idea how long it will take me to tease out these glitches in St. Ben’s servers, but it will probably be at least a week or two. I assumed I’d spend it skulking around my hotel room and feeling stupid sitting all by myself in restaurants, but spending some of that time with you would be infinitely more appealing.” His tone—and the glint in his eyes—made it clear exactly what he was offering. “Dinner-dinner would be perfectly fine, of course, but I’d love it to be more than that.”

  He leaned in farther, close enough Paul could smell the coffee and a hint of toothpaste on his breath, and ran one gentle forefinger over the vein in the back of Paul’s hand as Paul clenched his cup. “I get that you’d rather keep your private life private, but I’m not exactly a coworker,” he murmured. “And after you were so absolutely breathtaking freshman year, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for ages. Kept wishing we’d had the chance to do more. And if you’ve decided to never do anything like that again—in that case, I’d say it was a real shame. Because I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years too, and I’m a pretty damn good teacher.”

  Oh God. Paul berated himself for each and every time he lay awake at night, fingers tracing over the outline of his cock, remembering back to how Brandon’s confident hands had felt on him. They say you never forget your first time. Well, whoever “they” were, they seriously understated the situation. “You will obsessively replay the encounter over and over” would have been more accurate. And it would be so easy to lapse back into that memory, to give in and take Brandon up on his offer and try to recreate that one golden middle-of-the-night experience, but then where would he be? Alone again afterward, furious with himself and twice as miserable as before. A heroin junkie relapsing after staying clean for the last year and a half. (Almost a year and three-quarters, a voice inside his head pointed out.) Even if the physical sensations left him darn near rapturous, it wouldn’t be enough to counterbalance the negatives.

  He must have been quiet too long, because Brandon sat back again and made a big show of finishing his coffee. “Sorry,” Brandon finally said. “I guess I forget what it was like, before. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s fine.” Paul forced a smile. “And I’m flattered, really, I just… It’s a no. I’m sorry.”

  Brandon nodded, a hint of disappointment on his face. “I understand. Come on; we should both probably get back to campus.”

  Meet the Author

  Wendy Qualls was a small town librarian until she finished reading everything her library had to offer. At that point she put her expensive and totally unrelated college degree to use by writing smutty romance novels and wasting time on the internet. She lives in Northern Alabama with her husband, two daughters, two dogs, and a seasonally fluctuating swarm of unwanted ladybugs. She’s a member of both the Romance Writers of America and way too many online writers’ forums. Wendy can be found at www.wendyqualls.com and on Twitter as @wendyqualls.