“Hey.”
He nodded, eyes locked on his library book.
“You gonna be here all night?”
“Yup.”
He’d have to leave eventually to get food, but he didn’t see the need to mention that now. Maybe if Reese thought he wasn’t going anywhere for the rest of the evening, he’d stay in too, as opposed to going out fishing for another late night hook-up.
Not that Tom cared what the kid did with his free time.
Reese heaved a sigh and flopped back onto his own bed.
“That sucks. No offense.” Tom could see him out of the corner of his eye, staring up at the ceiling, head pillowed in crossed hands behind his skull. “I’m bored. And hungry.” He popped up like a marionette on strings, or a twenty-year-old with enough energy to go for days. Tiredness wrapped itself around Tom’s bones simply being near this kid. “I’m gonna order a pizza. Want in on it?”
He chewed on his lip. Shit. The last thing he wanted to do was shut down this wilted olive branch offering from his roommate, but he knew the town pizzeria scalped the student crowd, a captive and frequently intoxicated audience. He didn’t want to blow fifteen bucks on half a pizza when he could get an Italian grinder at the deli in the dodgy neighborhood six blocks away for half that.
“Forget it. If you’re not interested—”
“Keep your panties on, kid. I’m in.” He’d stick to ramen and mac and cheese on the hot plate in the kitchenette for a couple of days. “No mushrooms, ’kay?”
“Ugh. Mushrooms are gross. Meat special, okay?”
“Yeah, I like meat.”
“You and me both, sailor.” The kid actually winked at him and the heat of a blush raced over Tom’s face. He shook his head as Reese pulled his phone from his front jeans pocket. It’d be worth it, sharing a pie with his roommate like ordinary college students. Instead of their fucked up back and forth, with sex and resentment and a hint of fear that bothered Tom every time he picked up on it.
Maybe for tonight they could manage to eat and study and be normal together. Or at least as close to normal as Tom got these days.
It wouldn’t last, but for one night, he’d take it.
The rhythm of Tom’s days had settled into a steady heartbeat that steadied him. After two more weeks of cohabiting with Reese, he knew when to expect company in their room and when he would find himself alone. Sunday nights meant quiet study and easy conversation, as easy as it got with his touchy roommate, for both of them.
Tom’s eyes were gritty with the need for sleep. His bones ached with exhaustion. The two hours of sleep he’d grabbed, catnapping behind the wheel while waiting at Logan airport for a fare, were a single row of sandbags trying to hold back the surging flood of sleep that wanted to overtake him. The door to their room was open an inch, light spilling into the hall. It was so unlike them that he stopped and looked up at the number on the plate above the bulletin board, flashing back to the first day he’d arrived on campus, tired enough to cry and wondering if he was in the right place.
Funny how that feeling never really went away.
23B.
Yup. Right place.
Even those words in his head made the warmth spill over in his chest.
He hadn’t had a right place in a very long time.
He laid his palm flat against the ribbons and papers on the bulletin board, spreading his fingers around the bright pink, blue and green pushpins, and swept the door open in front of him as he strode into his right place.
Reese whirled around so suddenly his loose hair flew out in an arc like a raven’s wing. The legs of his desk chair screeched across the floor as Reese yanked it between him and the door. His bare chest rising and falling above yoga pants, Reese inhaled harshly as if he’d sprinted a hundred yard dash and couldn’t get enough oxygen in his lungs. He gripped the seat back with white fingers, eyes wide and blank. Tom froze, afraid Reese was going to lift the chair right up into the air and shove it at him.
Like a lion tamer, but way less fun than that kind of make-believe implied.
Because Tom didn’t think Reese was playing.
Raising both hands, Tom hunched in on himself, taking up as little space as he could. He ducked his head and bent his knees reflexively.
“Easy.” He kept his voice low and quiet. “Friendly forces here.”
The shudder that wracked Reese swept from the top of his head to his arms and his legs, until the toes of Reese’s bare feet tightened against the floor, his hands spasming on the chair. The sharp smell of sweat and fear flooded the room. Tom twitched his nose but left his hands in the air.
“I didn’t hear you open the door.” Reese’s voice was ragged, heavy cardboard ripping wetly.
He nodded slowly.
“It wasn’t shut all the way. I just pushed it open.”
His roommate’s eyes darted to the door, still open at Tom’s shoulder, as if he could see into the past to check if Tom was lying or not.
“I’m sorry I startled you.” He moved his hands slowly, stuffing them in his front jeans pockets, wanting to put them away like suddenly unnecessary weapons that now looked out of place at a tea party.
Reese’s nose turned pink and he blinked his eyes like they stuttered, caught on a sound. He pulled his hands off the chair with a wrenching twist of his shoulders, as if he couldn’t get them to let go of their own accord. He turned his back on Tom and sniffed, hands flying up to drag across his face. The severed wing jut of his shoulder blades framed the delicate line of his spine, curving forward as he hunched over, arms wrapping around his own waist, holding himself together.
“Sorry.”
Tom pushed the door shut behind him with a soft click. He walked close to his own closet and dresser, moving slowly until his knees brushed his bed and he could sit, not having stepped an inch farther into the open space in the middle of their room than he had to.
“Don’t be. I should have made more noise. Or said something.” His hands were in his lap, like naked baby birds, useless.
Reese turned around. His skin was blotchy with pink on white, his lashes dark, hair hanging in his face. He bit his lip and looked at the chair, abandoned in the middle of the room. Looked at Tom. He put his hands on the chair, gingerly, as if he didn’t really want to touch it, and pushed it neatly into the well of his desk.
He perched on the edge of his own bed, facing Tom.
“Listen, I know that sometimes my reactions aren’t quite…normal.”
“Anybody who says they’re normal is probably fucking crazy.” Fuck. He was so not the right guy for this. He didn’t have a fucking clue what the right thing to say was. “You seem mostly okay to me, even if you are a little jumpy.”
Understatement of the century.
“You asked before why I was here? In Perkins, I mean. It’s what the school had to promise my dad before he’d let me come back here. And so he wouldn’t go to the press.”
Reese scooted back as far as he could on his bed, digging his heels into the mattress until his back was wedged in the corner of the wall and his desk. He wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his mouth behind them, his restless eyes barely visible above the sharp bend of his tucked legs.
Tom didn’t say anything. Asking the wrong question felt like sneaking up on Reese all over again, only this time Tom could see it coming. So he kept his mouth shut and listened.
“My, um…” Reese coughed and his eyes were bright, “…roommate last year was an athlete. We obviously weren’t a good match, but he mostly ignored me, except when his friends came around. He was on a team and those other guys were real assholes. Fuckers. When they were around he’d call me a fag and laugh when they asked me if I liked taking it up the ass.”
Tom had a bad feeling he knew where this was going. The ache in his stomach was nothing compared to what he was now sure Reese
dealt with on a daily basis. Living and breathing the air at the same place where this bad thing, the thing he’d seen shadowing Reese’s eyes and making him twitchy, had happened.
“One night they, um, came in while I was sleeping and held me down. Did things to me.” For a moment, Reese’s eyes locked on his, willing him to understand, to get it without Reese having to go into detail after humiliating fucking detail. He’d no doubt done that than once already. “I was pretty drunk. Had been at a party all night with some friends. I don’t even remember who walked me back to my dorm. I was pretty out of it. So I couldn’t even say for sure who was there. Except for my roommate.”
“What did the school do? When you told them, I mean.”
“There wasn’t much they could do. I didn’t tell anyone right away.”
“But—”
“But nothing. There was no evidence.”
“None?”
“Not all jocks are stupid.” You couldn’t even call that shattered scrape of sound a laugh. Heat flared in Reese’s eyes and he reared his head back like Tom was gonna argue with him. His voice got loud, sharp staccato shots across the room. “When a bunch of guys hold you down with a pillow over your head and someone sitting on your back, while one guy lubes up his finger before sticking it up your asshole and asking if you like that better than the last fag who fucked you, it doesn’t leave a mark.”
Tom held himself still. Reese wasn’t in the room with him, mentally that is, and Tom didn’t want to frighten him with any unexpected motion. His hands were shaking, though, and he grabbed his own elbows because he needed to grab something. Hard. To squeeze the life out of something and make it hurt for the tears sliding down Reese’s face while his voice didn’t waver once.
“My dad finally found out something was wrong, and when I told him, he was fucking awesome. I mean, you wanna see a Swede on a revenge mission, just tell my dad you messed with his kid and watch the fireworks.”
“Good.” A small tight spot in his chest eased at knowing that Reese had had someone on his side. Had had backup. Even if it wasn’t enough to protect him from the bad shit in the first place. “How’d he figure it out?”
Reese stared intently at his toes digging into the bedspread.
“I was reported for having sleeping pills without a prescription.”
“Had a hard time sleeping?”
“Ya think?” But then, “That wasn’t why I had them, though.”
Tom didn’t have to ask. He knew. Could see it in Reese’s face that this was a battle he was still fighting, maybe not every day, but enough. He felt like he was two seconds away from puking in his own lap. No wonder Reese had been shaken by reading about Tom’s dad.
“It’s kind of weird, though. Because I couldn’t really get mad at my roommate. I mean, he wasn’t really a bad guy, deep down.”
The words ripped out before he could stop them.
“Jesus, kid, how fucked in the head are you?”
Reese flew to his feet, hands balled in fists at his hips. But his head was turned to the side, as if he was bracing himself for Tom to haul off and punch him, and he wanted to ease the blow.
“Stop calling me kid.”
Like that was the awful thing he’d said. He shouldn’t call Reese crazy or yell at him. He knew that. It was so fucking mean and awful he hated himself in that moment. But there wasn’t anyone else in the goddamn room to yell at and someone had to take it.
“Then be a fucking grown up. That asshole is a bad fucking guy.”
“He didn’t do anything really. I mean, that night. I could see him, for a moment, and he wasn’t anywhere near me.”
“Did he stop it? Did he say fucking stop?” Tom beat at Reese with his questions, knowing he was fucking up, but so full of anger his skin was tight and his temples throbbed. What had happened to Reese was bad, so bad, but hearing him defend this guy was somehow worst of all.
“No.”
“Then he’s a bad fucking guy, Reese.” Something felt strange in his mouth. It took him a moment to realize that it was Reese’s name. Was it possible he’d never said it out loud before?
“Reese.” Simply saying it felt like dropping a hand on his shoulder and holding on, steadying this almost broken guy in front of him. Tom didn’t move from his bed, though.
The pull of his name drew Reese’s gaze to his at last.
“What’s his name.” It wasn’t a question so he didn’t say it like one. He needed to know.
The corner of Reese’s mouth quirked up, a barely visible twitch.
“You sound like my dad.”
Tom shuddered and hoped he masked his reaction. “Don’t say that.” His voice was gruff, deep. “I’m not your dad.”
“I know.” Reese’s eyes flicked up and down his body and he looked wary. Whether because Tom was too big, or too much like the last roommate—although please God let Reese not think of that guy when he saw Tom—he wasn’t sure.
Tom only knew one thing.
“If I see that guy, I’m going to put him on the ground.”
He didn’t say it to brag. It was a fact.
“He didn’t come back this year. The dean called me up over the summer. He, uh, had some issues with depression, tried to cut his wrists.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Yeah, lotta depressed people these days, huh?”
“Jesus.”
“I feel kind of bad about that too.” Reese put up a hand immediately. Stop. “Don’t yell at me, okay? I’m not up for a lot of yelling.”
“Sorry. It’s just—” he trailed off. No need to say that the whole situation was fucked up. That wasn’t exactly news to Reese.
“I know.” Maybe the kid could read his mind. It was kind of weird how they usually knew what the other one was thinking. Tom couldn’t remember the last time he’d been around someone who didn’t want explanations from him or to grill him with questions about what he knew. The relief that came with being understood was intense. Like every muscle letting go and your brain unkinking from the knots it tied in itself after you sucked on a hash pipe.
Not that he was going to talk about the time he got high during a high school trip to Paris with the kid whose most recent drug contact was an attempt to stockpile enough sleeping pills to kill himself.
“It’s fucked up.”
The words, yanked right out of his head.
“I know it’s fucked up,” Reese repeated himself. “But I’m…pretty fucked up.”
Tom had noticed. Reese didn’t drink. Didn’t stay out late at parties. Didn’t seem to hang around with friends, really, at all. Except for Steph. He studied hard, if hours spent at the books counted. And he brought home strange guys and sucked them off and then ushered them out the door five minutes later. And that combo didn’t fly in the “Mental Health Manual” Tom had cobbled together by a close look at his own neuroses.
If the kid, the guy, partied, or had a boyfriend instead of a bunch of nameless hookups, or even spent time with friends, Tom wouldn’t worry. But the total social isolation combined with the reckless sex adventures, while an excellent script for a porno, did not sound like the sanest way to handle your PTSD.
Reese was still talking about his last roommate. The fucker.
Tom realized he hated that guy even more for making Reese afraid of him, which he was now abso-fucking-lutely certain had been the case from the moment he’d come home to find Tom standing in the middle of his room that first week of school.
“I just…don’t want to think about anyone else feeling like this.”
“He should feel it. Feel like killing himself.” He bit the words out, certain he stood on solid ground.
“No, he—”
“Because he’s an asshole scumbag who has something to feel guilty for. And I hope he feels like a bag of shit for the rest of his life. Asshole
. You, on the other hand, might be, well, a mess now—”
Reese raised an eyebrow and delicately pressed the fingers of one hand against his chest.
“Yeah, I said it.” He almost grinned at the kid. Damn. At the guy. Who could make fun of himself in the middle of the heaviest conversation of Tom’s life.
And that was saying something.
“You’re going to get past this. Maybe it’s gonna take a hundred or a thousand hours with your therapist or whatever, but you’ll be okay. For real.”
“I don’t have a therapist.” Reese was picking at a loose thread hanging from the side seam of his stretchy pants, head down, not looking at Tom. Again.
“What? The school didn’t set you up with anyone?”
That thread was seriously fascinating. And important. “Nah, they did. But I just haven’t…gone, I guess.”
“Well, shit, ki—man. Even I know you need therapy. Dude. That’s, like, a no-brainer. And you’re a smart guy, so I know you know it too.”
“Yeah.” Reese sank back onto his bed. He pulled a pillow onto his lap and hugged it to his chest. “But I don’t think they wave some kind of magic wand, you know, and make it all better.” He flopped back and rolled onto his side, hanging onto the pillow and pulling his knees up in a tight tuck. “Pretty sure the getting there sucks ass.”
“But there probably feels better than here, you know?” The vibration of energy in the air that he felt on his skin, the tiny hairs on his wrist, subsided to a low hum. He got up long enough to snap off the overhead light and kick off his shoes, but lay back down on his bed fully dressed. Taking his clothes off felt like an act of aggression now.
“Wouldn’t be hard.”
“So maybe it’s worth a try,” he said, speaking into the shadowed room.
“Been to practice lately?” When Reese’s words landed, a knife thrown at Tom’s heart, he knew exactly how his roommate’s eyes had narrowed and his lips thinned.
Hit and score. The downside of letting someone get to know you. They knew exactly where your soft spots were.
“Not the same.”
Off Campus Page 9