“I figured.” He was cold now that the running had stopped. He yanked the edge of the comforter out from the crack between the bed and the wall and tried to pull it over him, managing to cover one leg. “There were a dozen calls from reporters today. Probably because my dad’s hearing is Monday.”
“No wonder you’ve been tense. Have you talked to him?”
“Yeah, no. Not happening. But I should’ve known they’d be sniffing around.”
“I would never talk to one of those people.”
“I know. It felt the same to me. Even though I knew it wasn’t. It was shitty timing.” He left the rest of the words unsaid. Their timing had been shitty all along.
“So what now?”
He’d been asking himself that since ending the phone call he’d made in the empty back stairwell at Cash’s dorm. “That kid complained about me. I have an appointment with the dean on Monday.”
“She’s not going to ask you to leave school because of that douchebag. She can’t do that.” Reese’s voice was firm, demanding that reality conform to his belief in its core fairness.
For someone who hadn’t experienced much fairness, Tom was always surprised to be reminded how powerfully Reese believed in it. He thought it must have something to do with Reese’s dad and his home, with rock solid support and a determination to do the right thing, always. He wondered if his own tendency to wobble under pressure could be put down to crappy parenting or if it was a defect in him.
“I’m trying to have faith, Reese.”
“But it’s hard.”
“Yeah.”
Reese paused for a moment, like he was waiting for something more from Tom, and then sighed. “It’ll work out.” He didn’t sound like he believed it.
“Thanks.”
The next pause was longer.
“Are you coming back?”
His throat was tight. He needed to clear it to speak. “I don’t think so.”
“Tonight?”
He couldn’t answer that. And not simply because he didn’t know if he’d be staying at school past ten a.m. on Monday morning.
Tom struggled to put it into words. “It’s like we get to take turns, isn’t it? Being angry.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re being patient with me right now, because you know I had a fucking horrible day. Because I lost my shit about the Pride article. So you need to be the one who keeps it together right now.”
Silence from Reese let him know that he was right. And this was a much bigger problem than a few paragraphs in a campus newspaper.
This was the thing that maybe couldn’t be fixed.
“How mad are you? If it’s your turn.”
“I’m not mad at you, baby.”
“Bullshit.” So tired. He rolled over on his side and curled up, phone squeezed between his head and the pillow. He closed his eyes and let Reese’s voice, so calm, roll over him. Sunlight was streaming weakly in the window in Cash’s room, but something about the phone and being alone made it enough like talking in the dark that he could say the scary things out loud. “You’re mad at me. And you should be. All you’ve ever asked is for me to not be a chickenshit. To push back, even a little. And I keep letting you down.”
Reese’s voice was fierce. “You think I think you’re not brave? Jesus, never, Tom. Do you hear me? Never.”
“Don’t believe you.”
“I’m not bullshitting you. Yes, I get mad at you. All the time. Because it’s hard to be with you and I never pretended it wasn’t. Being with you makes me feel like shit sometimes. But this is what grown ups do. We figure out how to get through the hard shit, even when we’re mad. So if it needs to be your turn right now, then I’ll deal.”
“Yeah, but what if it never gets to be your turn? It can’t be my turn forever.”
“It won’t be.” Reese laughed but it felt pretty hollow. “It can’t be.”
“Because no one would want to stay with someone like that.”
“It’s not gonna be like this forever, Tom.”
He shook his head. That was a level of faith he couldn’t find, no matter how deep he dug. “I told you. I told you that I wasn’t the right guy, Reese. You should have listened to me,” he said, tiredness slurring his words. God, he needed to rest. Sleep was pulling him under. “I gotta go.”
“Tom, don’t you hang up on me. Tom!”
He shoved the phone under the pillow so he’d feel it when it vibrated with the calls and texts he knew Reese would send him.
He fell asleep on a buzzing pillow and counted it a comfort.
The door to Cash’s room banging open what felt like thirty seconds later was barely enough to drag him into consciousness.
Cash’s gasping collapse into his desk chair and the lodging of his feet six inches from Tom’s face did the job, though.
“Oh yay. You’re still breathing.” The big man dropped his head back and hauled air in and out of a wide open mouth.
“I’m not suicidal, for Christ’s sake.” Tom tugged the comforter tighter around his shoulders.
“Well, then don’t be all I love you but I can’t be with you, goodbye on the fucking phone, Romeo. That shit’ll make people worry.” He sat up straight and stared at Tom, eyes narrowing. “Not me, of course. I was like, whatevs, when your boy called me and told me I maybe wanna keep an eye on you. Jesus, can you get me a water or something? I’m dying.”
Tom kicked the covers off and got up to dig through his friend’s mini fridge for a bottle of water. He found it behind the beer and tossed it to Cash from a crouch.
Cash caught it one-handed and cracked the seal, chugging half the bottle in one long swallow. “Ah, that’s good.”
“Run all the way here?”
“Like a motherfucker.”
Tom shook his head and got back on the bed, sitting up against the wall. “I’m fine.”
Cash eyed him over the clear plastic bottle as he chugged it. When he came up for air, he said, “Dude, you are so far from fine you can’t even see it anymore.”
Not arguing that one seemed the better part of valor. Tom’s stomach could only tolerate so much bullshit. “I’ll be fine. And I didn’t say that stuff.”
“Which part? The I love you or I can’t be with you?”
“The first one.”
Cash’s eyes opened wide. “Well, why the fuck not? You guys are, like, the disgustingly perfect couple everyone hates.” At Tom’s snort, Cash stuck his chin out and doubled down. “Okay, maybe not lately. But usually Steph and I can barely stand to be in the same room as you two.”
“That why you keep ending up going off alone with her?” Tom went for distraction as a defense.
“Fuck you. We’re talking about your mess. Not mine.”
A less than successful strategy. It was pathetic when Cash could out argue him.
“My mess is over. I just need a place to crash while I figure out what’s next. He doesn’t need to deal with me around all the time.”
Cash shook his head and stood up to stretch. He swiped the two Xbox controllers off his dresser top and tossed one to Tom, then grabbed two beers from the fridge and passed one over. He dragged his desk chair around to face the TV and sat in it, propping his feet back on his bed. They waited through the opening credits for their saved game to load.
“You want me to give you the heads up when your boyfriend is coming over for Call of Duty?” Cash asked after a moment.
“Dude.”
“What? Have you seen my numbers since we started playing with him? I’m not giving that up.” He called up their saved game and settled back in his chair, glancing over at Tom. “I’m kidding. Reese is your boy, but you’re my boy.”
Tom exhaled on a huff.
“Not like that. Don’t get any ideas.”
But he could see Cash
grinning out of the corner of his eye as he pulled up his player character and reviewed his weapons options. “I love you, man.”
With a quick glance at Tom and a nod, Cash started the game. They logged in to the network and waited to see if any of their regular competitors were online.
“Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Can we not be totally gay right now, though? I need to keep my manhood for tonight.”
“Hot date?”
“Don’t tell Steph. This chick thinks I’m a genius ’cause I’m gonna graduate in four years. She’s been here six. Steph’d kill me.”
He didn’t figure out the last piece of the puzzle until he pulled on the heavy external door of the hall of the administrative building and almost fell on his ass when it flew open as someone inside pushed the release bar.
Jack jerked back, holding on to the door for a second like he wanted to shut it in Tom’s face. When Tom held on and pulled it open wider, Jack let go. He flinched back a step.
“Jesus. You asshole. What kind of fairytale are you spinning for the dean?”
Jack shook his head and held his hands up, but the tips of his ears were pink and he didn’t look Tom in the eyes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The fuck you don’t. You’ve been trying to make my life miserable since I got back here. God, don’t bother denying it. For a total douchebag, you suck at lying.” He stepped into the building and Jack scrambled backward, tripping over the edge of the runner on the hall floor. “Relax. I’m not gonna—” He pinched his nose and mouth between his gloved palms and breathed into them. Jack still had his hands up like he’d taken tae kwon do in third grade. “I’m not going to fucking punch you, you moron.”
“I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What the fuck, man? Did I bang your girlfriend or something?” he demanded. Fuck this dude. He was pissed and for the first time in days he had a target he didn’t feel guilty about attacking.
“Don’t you mean my boyfriend?”
Ahh. Jack wasn’t quite down for the count.
Neither was Tom.
“Listen, you homophobic jackass—”
Jack’s laugh was short and harsh. “God, you’re an idiot. I’m not a homophobe. I’m gay.”
“What?” Tom pulled his head back. “But then why…?”
“Because I could tell it bothered you so much. God forbid anyone should think the great Tom Worthington the third might be a faggot, right?”
Tom flinched, wondering for a split second if anyone else had heard that, before he tamped his self-consciousness down and let his anger take the wheel.
“Seriously, dude. What did I ever do to you?” He cornered Jack between an overstuffed leather armchair and a credenza in the long hall. For the first time in months he let himself feel his own size, looming over the smaller man, broadening his shoulders and standing with his feet wide apart. Jack ducked his head and looked down at his feet. God, he felt like a bully and it felt good. Let this fucker know what it was like for once. “Did I take your spot on a team? Interrupt your first bathroom blowjob at a party?”
He was spitting in Jack’s face.
“You and your dad. You really don’t give a shit about anything, do you?” Jack’s eyes were bright when he tipped his chin up and looked at Tom, his body curved away protectively. “You fucking suck.”
In an instant, Tom deflated. Every hot flush of rage and superiority swirled out of him like piss down a drain. He backed up until he felt the opposite wall of the hall behind him and tipped his head back until he banged it.
“Shit.”
“The least you could’ve done was have the decency not to come back.” Jack dragged the back of one hand across his eyes and spat the words at Tom.
“What happened?” His voice was dead, no threat now.
“Don’t act like you give a shit.” Jack straightened up and hitched the strap of his backpack more securely against his shoulder. He wiped his nose. “This is my last semester here because of you.”
He didn’t even try to argue that it wasn’t him. That he’d been fucked just as hard as Jack—or more likely Jack’s parents—had been, watching their son’s college fund disappear in the smoke of a Ponzi scheme. It didn’t really matter. Certainly not to Jack. All that kid could see was the living, breathing representation of the guy who’d wrecked everything, back on campus to rub it in his face that he’d be here when Jack was finishing out his degree at a community college.
He might be wrong in the details, but Tom was sure enough of the big picture to know there wasn’t a damn thing he could say that would make any of this right.
Didn’t mean he was off the hook. He stood up straight.
“Man, I’m sorry.”
Jack lowered his head and turned for the door. His muttered Fuck you hung in the air for a minute after he’d left, while Tom stared blankly at the beige wall, barely breathing.
There was no end to the damage he caused.
“Dude. Get your shoes on. We’re gonna run.”
He was trying to sleep, the only activity he enjoyed at the moment. Being asleep meant a break from the voices in his head, berating him, rubbing it in over and over again, how much he’d fucked up.
They came in a lot of pitches, those voices. One of them sounded exactly like the dean, who had managed to loom over him despite being five foot nothing, as he slumped in the chair in front of her desk.
“I seriously question the appropriateness of your being a student at Carlisle, Mr. Worthington, if only because you are obviously an utter wreck due, I assume, to your difficult experience with your father and his criminal activities. I would never threaten a student with expulsion because of circumstances beyond his or her control and I am mildly offended that you would think so.”
The dean had proceeded to pull up a copy of her letter on her laptop, the letter that he had refused to reread, and walked him through it point by point. With her sitting next to him, scary as shit but on his side, all of the words meant something different. Instead of threatening, it was clear she’d written a letter explaining to him exactly what she thought he needed to do in order to be able to enjoy his year at school. She was advising him on what to do to protect himself, not making him responsible for protecting the school from unwanted disruptions.
He hadn’t known whether he should straighten up or slump so far he fell over as she continued to lecture him on not projecting his own fears onto the actions of other people and perhaps asking someone if he understood them correctly when their words or actions seemed egregiously unfair.
This entire time, the whole academic year he’d been at school, he’d been operating under assumptions that weren’t just a little bit off base, but wildly, insanely, wrong. He’d fucked up his relationship, his friendships, his entire ability to participate in life on campus, for no good reason at all.
God, he was more screwed up than he’d thought.
He stuck his head under his pillow. “Leave it alone, Cash.”
His temporary roommate, although after six weeks of sleeping on the guy’s floor he didn’t know how temporary the arrangement was, kicked the corner of his air mattress, jostling him.
“Seriously. I’m not kidding. Get the fuck up and get dressed and come run with me or I’m kicking your ass out.” Tom narrowed his eyes at Cash, who wasn’t cowed for a second. “I’m so not kidding.”
“What the fuck?” The hoodie Cash threw his way smacked Tom in the face.
“I can’t take it anymore. Your misery is sucking the brain cells right outta me. And I am not what they call a genius.” Microfiber shirt. Running shorts. Sweats. Thwap, thwap, thwap. Tom didn’t flinch. Let the clothes smack into him and slide down his chest. “You look bad. You smell worse. Get up off that stanky ass air mattress and come run or find someone else’s floor to cra
sh on.”
“You suck.” But he was kicking off his sleep pants and pulling on shorts and sweats.
“That’s your job, lover boy. Put a hat on. It feels cold.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I just got off your mom.” Cash spun around and winced at Tom’s horrified look. He waved his hands in the air frantically. “Sorry. I forgot. That was gross.”
“Little bit.”
“Sorry.” Tom relaxed back against the wall. A balled up pair of socks hit him in the chin. “But you still gotta get the fuck up.”
Cash wouldn’t be argued out of his annoying idea. Not even the threat of replacing all the porn on his laptop with Cockyboys double penetration videos was enough to shake his determination to get Tom out on the track, on the grass, on whatever fucking flat surface he chose, but they had to run.
The sun was insanely bright in his eyes outside and Tom winced at the idea that he hadn’t even noticed that spring—or hell, even summer, it was practically eighty, not cold at all—had come early to the Connecticut River Valley. He wasn’t speaking to Cash, who hung back at his shoulder and followed silently when Tom headed for the back roads that paralleled the country highway up to and over the notch in the mountains between their campus and the next big town.
He’d run. He’d run until the voices in his head shut up and if that didn’t work, he’d sleep until graduation.
When they made it back to campus and collapsed on the edge of the Green, Tom paused on his hands and knees for a minute, absolutely positive that he was going to puke. Cash broke out his phone and called for help.
Steph materialized like magic five minutes later. She was the lucky one, with a room in one of the smaller, old-fashioned dorms on the Green, crowing over the big bay window and hardwood floors in her room. She stood over them, a pitiless look in her eyes, and a white plastic CVS bag looped over her wrist.
“So are you guys, like, bananas and granola bars hungry, or turkey sandwich hungry?” Her eyes said they’d better pick the bananas.
“For the love of God, woman, give us the sandwich.” Cash spoke from his sprawl flat-out on his back in the sun.
“Okay, but that’s my lunch, and dinner for tomorrow too. I’m down to my last ten bucks until payday.” She kicked Cash’s feet to the side and sat in between the two of them.
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