Off Campus

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Maybe he could say all that in the dark but not in the fucking Campus Center. And they were sleeping in separate beds most nights lately. A twin mattress was too hard to share when two people were rigid boards trying not to touch each other.

  He and Reese had scored an L-shaped sofa in the far corner of the balcony and Reese sat next to him on the short end of the L. Carrying trays full of cups and junk food, Cash and Steph had returned and sprawled out on the long end. He ignored them as they pretended they weren’t playing footsie. Tom wasn’t conscious of how close he was sitting to Reese until the voice cracked out from behind him and he froze.

  “So we put you in a room with a twink and he turned you gay? Or were you already a cocksucker keeping it a secret?”

  He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Jack. Fuck. The Evil Nemesis nickname had been a joke. Something to transform the stress of having a kid who clearly hated him into comic relief. But lately it felt like he was being stalked. And as much as he’d seen the dean bark at the guy that one time, he didn’t doubt Jack had the inside track if he wanted to complain about Tom.

  “That’s it.” Cash grabbed Steph’s feet from his lap and set them carefully to the side. Tom didn’t know which felt worse: wishing his friend would ignore Jack until he went away or realizing he was the kind of guy who did nothing when confronted with a bully.

  “Just ignore him,” he urged. But it wasn’t Cash who got up.

  Reese levered himself to his feet, a hand on Tom’s chest holding him back as Tom surged instinctively to stand with him. For a moment, he’d almost done the right thing.

  Jack took a step forward, shoulders back, doing his best to loom over Reese.

  “Oh hell no. I might be scared of guys like him…” he jerked a thumb at Cash, “…but you? You don’t fucking fool me at all.” He scraped a glance over Jack from head to toe. “With your highlights and your little porn mustache. You’re so gay you’re probably pissed you didn’t get a chance to suck his dick.”

  Clearly unwanted, Tom slumped in the corner of the couch and shaded his eyes with one hand. Excellent. He was proud of Reese for standing up, of course he was. He wasn’t a total asshole. But did it have to be this guy he found his balls for?

  Cash leaned forward, bracing thick forearms on his knees and cracking his knuckles in a totally non-threatening way.

  Holy fuck. This was such a disaster.

  “What are you? Boyfriend number two?” Once again, Jack didn’t have any friends with him. If anything, he looked the worse for wear, hair lanky with oil and hipster mustache sagging at the corners. His bravado frayed under their collective resistance. “You gonna kick my ass?”

  “Just enjoying the show.” Cash leaned back again, arms stretched out to either side of him the length of couch. Steph leaned her head toward his hand and he ruffled her hair. “Kid’s got you pegged and played, far as I can see. He doesn’t need any help from me.”

  Reese squared off against Jack until the taller man backed up a step. And then another.

  “I’m tired of self-loathing queers like you giving me crap for stuff you’re too chicken shit to do.” He was fierce, Tom’s boy. And he wished Reese would shut up and sit down. “Go away. Or I will fuck. You. Up.” Each word a step forward for Reese. A retreat for Jack. “And then I’ll get you fired.”

  Jack hung on for one last moment, swiveling his head to stare at Tom, who refused to meet his eyes.

  This has got nothing to do with me, asshole, he thought hard in Jack’s direction until he finally turned his back on them and left.

  The Evil Nemesis was halfway across the room when Reese dug deep for one last ounce of ass-kicking, his shout turning heads.

  “And stop stalking my boyfriend, asshole.”

  Tom reached under the table for the strap of his backpack.

  Cash was playing hurt puppy dog on the other end of the couch. Though it was Cash, so he probably wasn’t entirely playing.

  “Jump back, kid. Are you really scared of me?” He frowned at Reese who was standing triumphant over their coffee table.

  Reese paused, giving the question serious thought.

  “I was. A little.” Reese picked through the red Solo cups on the table to find the one with Diet Coke instead of beer. “Then I realized you’re just a giant puppy. Like, this monstrous poodle or something.”

  “A poodle?” Nobody played fake outrage like Cash, who started digging into a bowl of green Jell-O and Cool Whip with undisguised joy. The man had a ridiculous addiction to crap food for a health nut. “Jesus, kid. Can’t I be a pit bull or something?”

  Reese wrinkled his nose and kept up the teasing.

  “A Bichon Frisé, maybe.”

  “A bitch what? That’s not even English!”

  Tom would have been proud, if he wasn’t battling the roiling, greasy waves in his stomach, knowing that the first thing that asshole was going to do was head straight to the dean. He stood up abruptly, drawing everyone’s attention.

  “I gotta jet. I owe Quillian a stack of quizzes.”

  Tom carried the frozen looks of his friends and his boyfriend with him as he headed to Quillian’s office, determined not to make himself a bigger liar than he already was. He stayed away past midnight and gritted his teeth when he saw Reese had waited up for him. Muttering about needing a shower, he escaped to the bathroom and wondered if there was any chance Reese would fall asleep before he finished.

  Sixty seconds later, the opaque white shower curtain rattled on its metal rings as Reese slid in with him.

  He hung his bathrobe, black silk, on the empty hook across from Tom’s navy terry and held out his hand for the shower gel. He lathered up, then turned Tom to face the wall and started washing his back, waiting until his hands were sweeping up and down Tom’s spine before saying anything.

  “You know leaving like that was not cool, right?” His voice was calm and his hands didn’t skip a beat.

  Anger surged like a fever in him. He turned, soap lather tickling as it slipped down his legs. “Neither was what you did, Reese.”

  “What I did?”

  “I have to ignore that guy. You know that the dean is on my ass—” But Reese had had enough. He snapped like breaking a pool cue over your knee for a fight.

  “No, Tom. I know the dean did everything she could, within the rules, to help you get back on campus this semester. I know you have the same right not to be harassed as any other student on this campus.”

  “It’s not the same.” He was being stubborn and he knew it. Maybe Reese was right. God knows, he usually was. Maybe Tom could run naked hand-in-hand with his boyfriend across the Green and no one would bat an eye.

  “It is. If you’d just show me that letter…”

  Tom had told Reese he couldn’t find the letter from the dean warning him about the need to keep a low profile if he wanted to stay enrolled at Carlisle. He hadn’t looked. It was an argument he didn’t want to have with Reese. Or maybe he was worried that if he looked at the letter again, he’d see Reese was right. There was nothing holding him back from telling Jack to fuck off and making out with Reese at a campus movie night like any other horny college student.

  That was a shitload of maybes for something that would save or damn the rest of his life. This was it. His last chance to keep a toehold on something like the life he’d grown up in. He knew he’d never hit his father’s level of success, had trained himself not to see that as an automatic failure. But he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life scrabbling to pay his bills. He needed this, needed to finish school with a good record and move the fuck on from these past two years. Start living his own damn life.

  Even if he didn’t need to worry about getting kicked out of school, there were still journalists, to elevate them higher than they deserved, to duck on sight and principle. Reese might not understand what it had been like, b
ut Tom would never forget weeks of being a prisoner in his own home, afraid to leave because men and women with cameras were stationed at every exit, ready to pounce. He’d never eat a red kidney bean again, after opening can after can, once the rest of the pantry was empty. The local grocery refused to deliver after someone keyed their car when they tried to push past the press.

  Too many factors. Too many risks. He wasn’t proud of himself. He’d learned two years ago that pride wasn’t something he could afford, only to find out that when it came to sharing his difficulties, he still had too much of that useless emotion.

  Reese rinsed lather off his hands until it spun around the drain in the center of the floor. The smaller man didn’t bother to towel off before shoving his arms in the sleeves of his robe, which promptly stuck to his wet skin in patches.

  Tom wasn’t proud of himself, but he knew there was one thing he needed to say.

  “I was proud of you.”

  Reese yanked the knot at his waist tight and pushed past the curtain.

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

  “It’s just a formality. We outed someone to their parents once, which sucked for that kid, so now we always get an okay first. So, are we good to go?”

  Tom’s hand on his phone ached with holding it so tight. This was it. The thing he’d known was going to come sooner or later, that would spell the end of him and Reese. Because Reese would never forgive this.

  The editor of the campus LGBTQ newspaper had caught him as he was heading out, the ring of the landline halting him at the door.

  He’d known that Reese had started working with the paper as part of his therapy, reintegrating himself into a social group that offered him support and a way to acknowledge his own trauma. Tom had known this but hadn’t really absorbed what it might mean. He wasn’t getting much of an update from Reese on things like this, since they barely spoke.

  The editor was wrapping up the layout for the spring issue. Reese had referenced Tom in the interview he’d given, talking about hate crimes and how there was still work to be done on awareness. Talking how his boyfriend’s support and encouragement was what allowed him to get help.

  “No.” He could practically hear the clang of the cell door closing on him. Solitary confinement. “Don’t run it. Or cut me out of it.”

  “Uh, okay.” He could hear the confusion in the guy’s voice. “We’ll, uh, do an edit. Right. Sorry. I’ll, uh, tell…are you gonna tell him or should I?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  He hit End Call with a stiff finger and threw the phone as hard as he could at the wall.

  The cordless handset cracked in half, guts and wires falling out, and Tom calmly did the math in his head, deducting the money from his bank account to replace it. “Fuck.”

  He dropped to his knees and felt under his bed for the pieces.

  Maybe it wasn’t completely broken.

  Maybe it could still be fixed.

  He’d paced their room long enough to start talking to the walls, arguing the inarguable and losing to himself. Badly. There was no possibility Reese would see this as anything other than a betrayal. Which wasn’t fucking fair, because they had agreed that Tom wouldn’t have to do this.

  Even as he argued with himself, he knew his position was a shitty one. Reese had made it clear from day one that he couldn’t wait forever for Tom to figure it out.

  He shoved his books and another stack of the endless ungraded papers into his backpack, determined to leave before Reese returned and Tom took the last step on the road to Assholeville by accusing his boyfriend of betrayal for sharing his own hard story.

  A few hours weren’t going to change anything and he was fucked up the ass, metaphorically speaking, either way. But if he could get his own emotions on lockdown, approach this in a calm and rational manner, he might be able to talk to Reese. To make him see what Tom needed, to get through these last two semesters. That’s all.

  He didn’t expect it. Was pretty sure he’d be better off with the naked Green sprinting. His fingers were still buzzing with anger from hearing his name tied to the exact kind of public attention he’d been ducking for almost two years. And it hurt, to know that Reese didn’t take him seriously.

  He hadn’t told anyone about the days before and during the trial when he was home, alone in that big empty house because his dad was on suicide watch at the jail. Except he was never really alone, not with news crews camped out on the sidewalk twenty-four seven. They weren’t supposed to come on the property or block access, but Boston cops weren’t hugely sympathetic to a guy who’d ripped off middle class workers.

  When he drank himself stupid the day he read about an investor who’d shot himself rather than admit to his wife and family that he’d lost everything, Tom found out that they were going through his trash too.

  Sure, the photo of a ripped open trash bag full of empty beer bottles that hit the local news the next day under the headline “Worthington Home Full of Booze, Drugs?” could have been staged. But it looked like the trash he’d taken out early the next morning to catch the curbside pick-up, skull pounding under the hoodie he’d pulled down low.

  He’d been isolated and humiliated and nothing had felt like more of a relief than the first time he realized that a month had gone by without a new item about him or his dad hitting the websites.

  Not explaining all this to Reese had been a mistake. But he’d hoped for once to have something taken on faith. To have earned that kind of trust for himself that would mean Reese would stop pushing on this one last thing.

  That he hadn’t earned it, that Tom knew he didn’t deserve it, pushed all the wrong buttons.

  If he could go, hide and study or hit the trail and run, maybe he could drain some of this frustration and betrayal and pure pissed-offness, mostly at himself, that had his teeth chattering.

  Exiting the building, he almost ran down Reese on the wide front steps of Perkins, losing his balance on that one loose step that wobbled under your ankle. Enough so that Reese grabbed his arm in support, even though the emotionless mask on his face spoke clearly of a newspaper editor who’d been unable, or unwilling, to let Tom break the news.

  It was nothing but bad luck and poor balance. The two combining as Tom yanked free of Reese’s grasp with an angry arm sweep that knocked his boyfriend back a step.

  Just in time for a student with a camera the size of a small dog to snap the first of a dozen pictures of Tom as the angry young man backhanding his boyfriend on the front porch of their residence hall.

  Even knowing that this had to be a coincidence—that as much as Reese might want to show him that the sky wouldn’t fall if the worst happened, he would never invite a reporter or photographer into their life—Tom couldn’t listen.

  He didn’t even hear what Reese said.

  The roaring in his ears that drowned out everything else.

  “Couldn’t wait, could you?” The words were bitter on his tongue.

  It was the first time he realized he’d hoped Reese would.

  Wait for him.

  He didn’t even know he was hoping for Reese to deny it, to reassure him that he hadn’t talked about Tom in an interview, until he saw guilt on his face.

  “Fuck.” So. That was that.

  “Tom. I’m sorry—”

  He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it. But Reese’s hands raised in surrender and his stuttering apology were pretty fucking hard to misunderstand. Tom pushed past him, ignoring the photographer still clicking away. He had to get out of here. “Don’t wait up.”

  “Tom. It isn’t about you.”

  “Save it.”

  It was about him.

  It was always about him.

  He might have forgotten for a while, let himself be tempted by Reese’s belief that he deserved a normal life, but the subterranean river w
hispered the truth. Not yet. He knew it wouldn’t last forever. Had hoped, apparently, that he and Reese could stick it out long enough to get him across to the other side.

  Looked like they weren’t going to make it.

  Without thought, his weight shifted forward, pounding steps switching smoothly to a fast jog that carried him away, feet searching out the patches of bare pavement in the dirty slush to keep his feet securely under him.

  All that running was good for something after all.

  Cash didn’t ask questions when Tom showed up at his room and asked to crash. The big man was on his way out for a “study date” with a girl he’d met in the kitchen during the party they’d hit the previous week. Steph had been giving him crap about his crush on this girl, claiming it was doomed to failure since it was driven almost entirely by Cash’s appreciation of the girl’s enormous rack. Tom was pretty sure Cash was only going out with this girl because it got on Steph’s nerves, but his run across campus must have taken it out of him, because he was too exhausted to give Cash shit. He waved him out the door and collapsed on top of the comforter on Cash’s bed.

  In the quiet of the room, the buzz of his phone on vibrate was easy to hear. He fumbled for his coat pocket.

  Eight missed calls. Six texts.

  When the screen lit up in his hand, he didn’t have to look to see who it was before he answered.

  “My interview wasn’t about you, Tom.”

  “I know. I figured out that that guy was there to take your picture, not mine.” He was so tired his eyes ached. He pressed his head into a crumpled pillow and the heel of one hand into his left eye, then his right. “Your editor emailed me the article and I read it. He told me his guy only took my picture out of habit. They deleted it already.”

  “Good. You were one sentence. Two. In a much bigger picture. And I’ve asked them not to use your name.”