Off Campus

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Cash sat up and grabbed the sandwich, unwrapping it and pushing half toward Tom on the open wrapper. “I will buy you ten more sandwiches tomorrow. Sweartagod.” He shoved most of his half of the sandwich in his mouth with one giant bite.

  Tom didn’t move from where he lay on his belly, head pillowed on crossed arms. When Steph pointed out the half sandwich in front of his face, he grunted.

  “Why’s he such a wreck?”

  He kept his eyes shut and let his friends talk about him as if he weren’t there.

  “Mostly because he’s an out of shape motherfucker. And he’s a sprinter.”

  “Ha.” That was about as good a retort as he could come up with, since he’d left his brain somewhere back on the other side of the Notch.

  “How far’d you go?”

  “I dunno. Maybe twelve? Fourteen?”

  “Miles?” The weirdly soft ripping sound turned out to be Steph peeling a banana, he saw when he cracked a lid open. “How do you do that? I’d be dead.”

  Cash shrugged, too busy stuffing a turkey grinder into his maw to bother to answer. Some vestige of polite social behavior refused to allow Tom to lie there in silence also. His voice felt rusty when he spoke.

  “Mostly it’s mental.” Steph turned her head toward him and scoffed out loud, mouth full of banana. He shook his head. “When you train, you learn that the messages you get from your body and your brain are only that. Messages.” He tried to think of examples. Thinking, period, was moving pretty slow in his brain. At least the run had killed his hangover, or he’d be dead now. “Like, I’m tired. Or, I need to stop. I can’t go any farther. They’re loud, but you don’t have to listen. You can just…keep going.”

  Steph bit off another chuck of banana, spring sun shining weakly on the faded blue wash in her hair.

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “What what?” She was playing dumb.

  He pushed himself up on his hands. If he could sit up without vomiting, then he’d eat. “Don’t gimme that. You’re thinking something.”

  “Well, I thought that maybe…maybe you should try to do that. You know. Ignore the messages you’re getting from your brain about how you can’t do something.” She lifted innocent eyebrows. “And just…keep going.”

  “It’s not the same thing.” He bit into the sandwich. His turn to use a full mouth as an excuse not to talk.

  “No?”

  “No.” He chewed what turned out to be maybe the greatest turkey grinder ever built by a deli sandwich maker. She stared at him, clearly prepared to wait until grass grew over him if that’s what it took. “Maybe.”

  Cash watched from behind Steph, propped up on his elbows, as she drove the message home with all the subtlety of a steamroller.

  “I think it’s exactly like that. When you think you can’t do it anymore. You have to ignore it and keep going. Trust in your training.”

  “I’m out of practice with that.”

  “What?”

  “Trust.”

  But he tried.

  He spent another week trying to figure out how to trust Reese. Or rather, how to show Reese that Tom did trust him, because as he thought about it, crossing the campus in the yellow-green light of new leaves and spring sun, Reese was about the only person in the world that he believed in. It was his absolute conviction that the rest of the world was out to get him, which to be fair had been accurate when barricaded in his old home with lingering paparazzi at the gates, that needed to be challenged. As a worldview, it was maybe the slightest bit off.

  He started trying.

  It turned out that trusting people wasn’t exactly like riding a bike, but it hadn’t broken any of his bones yet.

  He stopped restricting himself to behind the scenes work with the coach and one-on-one training sessions and started showing up for all-team practices and even the meets. Outdoor season was in full swing and Tom found himself more than once in the middle of hundreds of runners, refs, coaches and fans, his heart racing, convinced that every conversation he could only barely hear was a whispered gossipfest about him. Wondering if every flash that pulsed in the corner of his vision was someone pointing a camera at him.

  He learned to force himself to stand still, muscles twitching, eyes damn near rolling in his head like a wild pony, until the whistling roar in his ears muted to normal levels and he could breathe again without panting. He reminded himself that bracing himself for the worst was fine, as long as he didn’t let it stop him from having an actual life.

  But other than wondering if he should take his old competitors’ general fondness for giving him welcome back smacks on the ass personally, nothing much at all happened.

  Expanding the trust thing beyond the insular bubble of his running world was a little bit harder. He’d started with people who already considered him family, the equivalent of setting up a puppet show in your basement for your grandparents and calling it Broadway. The first time he spoke up in his advanced Ethics in Business seminar, he’d wanted to puke, waiting for someone to question his right to have any opinion at all about the subject. But all that happened was a girl with long, dark hair and serious eyes challenged his original premise, forcing him to articulate his thoughts more clearly in an extended debate with her over the nature of private and public information.

  He lingered in the back of the classroom until everyone else had left, reluctant to merge into the chattering group of students in case he’d pushed his luck far enough for one day. He was aware of being a bit of a pussy, but cut himself some slack for having made a move at all.

  “Back in the saddle, Tom?” Quillian asked with a raised eyebrow.

  He shrugged then flushed, knowing his professor deserved more than mute gestures. “Trying not to end up with a tinfoil hat, I think.”

  “Glad to have you back. We’ve missed your insight.”

  And it mostly went that way everywhere. In the dining rooms of Cash and Steph’s dorms—because somehow he hadn’t lost her friendship, although he was aware that she and Cash manipulated schedules to avoid bringing Reese and Tom together—he let the waves of lunchtime conversation wash over him and worked on not feeling like he was drowning. Participating in conversations turned out to help, as opposed to hunching over his plate silently and letting the voices in his head shout louder than the real voices across the table.

  It was hard to worry about outside attention when his taste in music was being crapped on from all sides.

  “Okay, Grandpa. Tell us again how nobody’s made anything good since the Stones.”

  “I didn’t say that! I said no one else comes close to their catalog and—”

  “I can’t get noooo satisfaction,” Cash yodeled out loud.

  Heads swiveled at nearby tables. Tom clenched his molars together and ignored the stares. Better to distract himself. “Hear that’s what the girl you went out with last weekend is still saying.”

  “Dayum.” Steph’s eyes were round for a moment, before narrowing as Cash made frantic slashing pantomimes across his throat. “Wait. What girl?”

  “A girl I met.”

  “Not that brick from the party last week.” When Cash didn’t answer, Steph spun in her seat and glared at Tom. “Tell me he’s not hooking up with that girl who believed him when he said he invented Velcro.”

  “Shee-it. Now you’ve done it, Worthy.”

  “Jesus, do you ever not think with your dick?”

  Tom could answer that. “No.”

  A balled up paper napkin bounced off his forehead. “Thanks.”

  Tom grinned at him, feeling his cheeks move stiffly. “Anytime.”

  Cash leaned back in his chair until it balanced on the two back legs. “Besides my dick is wicked smart.”

  “And modest.”

  “Your dick needs someone else to be in charge of its d
ecisions for a while.” Tom couldn’t read the look in Steph’s eyes that she turned on Cash, but it made the big man blush and wobble on his chair until he had to grab the edge of the table for balance.

  “Get in line,” was the closest he got to a comeback.

  Steph sucked on the straw in her soda until the last of the liquid rattled loudly in the bottom of the glass as she chased it. “You should be so lucky.”

  Tom felt the ache in his cheeks as he lifted his head to take a bite of his roast beef sandwich, still grinning. There might never come a day when he wouldn’t rather heat up a can of SpaghettiOs on an illegal hot plate in Cash’s room than eat in a dining room full of people, but being here with friends made it easier.

  Still, he was paddling around in the baby pool, all these maneuvers about as challenging as swimming in your own pee. Trusting in his friends and his teammates not to treat him like shit wasn’t exactly putting himself out there and having some frigging faith in humanity. So although the baby steps were nice, he didn’t want to pat himself on the back for them.

  He finished his sandwich and tossed his napkin on the plate, grabbing his backpack while he stood to clear his tray.

  “Gotta go. I’ve got my, um, thing.”

  Both sets of eyes on him were soft, sympathetic, which kind of freaked him out more than helped him. They knew where he was going, had listened to him talk about it since the previous week, when he’d first had the idea and then chickened out at the last minute. It’d be easier if they didn’t stare at him as if this was a big fucking deal.

  In a completely strange moment, he almost wished for his dad’s brisk, Suck it up, kiddo, attitude. Sometimes a lack of sympathy made things easier, he thought.

  “You could call him.” Steph, with her constant refrain.

  He shook his head. “And say what?”

  “How about, will you please come with me while I do this thing that’s really fucking scary to me?” She was snapping at him now, having made the same argument already to no avail.

  “I think he babysat me enough already.”

  “You know that’s what people who love each other do, right? Stick around and support you through the tough shit?” She circled a hand in the air to indicate the three of them in a less than subtle reminder.

  “Yeah, but it can’t always be my turn. Okay?” He stuttered to a halt when he realized that Cash was still ignorant of the details of Reese’s past. He turned to Steph. “Listen, you know that he’s had some serious…shit of his own to deal with, and he is.” He wondered when he’d started avoiding saying Reese’s name aloud. As if not hearing the word come out of his own mouth made it less painful.

  “I know too.” Tom looked at Cash blankly. His friend challenged him right back with a full-on stare. “What? We talk. You think I wasn’t gonna ask him why he said he was scared of me?”

  “Jesus. You asked. And he told you. Of course he did.” Tom shook his head, pressure building in his sinuses. He pushed his chair in, ready to leave. Or, not exactly ready, but leaving anyway. “You guys all just fucking share stuff like that. Like it’s no big deal.”

  “Hey.” Cash was the one whose voice was sharp now. “Not like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal.”

  “But you do it anyway.” He grabbed the back of his own neck with one hand and squeezed until it hurt. “It’s like you’re all twenty-seven miles down this highway that I’ve barely figured out how find the on-ramp to. He shouldn’t have to wait for me to catch up.”

  “He deserves to make that call for himself, don’t you think?”

  Tom pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  He hadn’t told them.

  Despite his inarticulate avowal not to burden Reese with his shit anymore, he’d caved quickly enough that first week. It had taken all of three days for him to give in and call Reese in the middle of the night, sitting in a corner of the back stairwell under flickering fluorescent lights so as not to wake Cash up.

  Three days had been long enough for Reese to decide that Tom was right after all.

  It probably didn’t help that Tom had had to drink most of the six-pack in Cash’s minifridge before he worked up the nerve to call Reese at two o’clock in the morning.

  He hadn’t managed to get much more than a pathetically slurred I miss you out before Reese interrupted him.

  “You know what? You were right. It is my turn to be pissed. I would have waited, Tom. I was waiting. But you don’t have any faith at all, do you? Not in me. Not in yourself. And we know you don’t have faith in the rest of humanity, miserable lot of privacy-invading shitheads that they are. God, you can’t even call me to say you miss me without getting hammered first. It’s not enough. I deserve better.”

  Tom had been saying that all along.

  So he didn’t answer Steph when she suggested that Reese deserved to make up his own mind, because Reese already had. All he could do was work on catching up and hope that Reese might still listen to him when he got within shouting distance.

  He was pretty sure that he was fooling himself that this was even possible, but it seemed as if that was an inextricable part of the having faith thing. Doing something when you had no idea if it was going to pay off, because you hoped, you trusted that it might.

  “God, are we really going to go with that? Isn’t everybody tired of the traumatic coming out story being the only story we tell? This isn’t the eighties, you know.”

  Tom felt Paul’s eyes on him. The president of the biggest organization on campus for gay students—a tall, skinny guy with dark hair and a confident smile whose picture Tom had tracked down after finding out that he was also the editor of the Carlisle Pride newspaper—had stopped in the middle of a conversation when Tom had pushed open the classroom door with numb fingers and forced himself to enter the room. The question of whether or not anyone in this bi-monthly meeting would recognize him had been answered in the first two seconds. But Paul hadn’t done any more than nod at him, not questioning Tom’s presence in the room as Paul shepherded the group through a debate about their next big project.

  Now they were discussing whether or not they could really call themselves representative in any way, considering that they were all upper or upper middle class white kids with liberal New England parents.

  Tom could hardly keep track of the arguments.

  “Hey, we are who we are. If this is who is interested in participating in the group, then that’s life.”

  “There’s nothing stopping us from going out and finding other students who represent a different experience. In fact, I’d argue that we’re obligated to do that.”

  “My story as an out gay man whose parents didn’t blink twice isn’t less valid than someone who was kicked out of their house at fourteen, Bianca.”

  “I never said it was. But you have to admit it doesn’t exactly challenge anyone.”

  Paul took advantage of a gap in voices to refocus the conversation. Tom had perched on the edge of a chair at the far end of the conference table. He twitched in his seat when Paul asked if anyone had additional opinions to share on whether or not the idea of coming out was still relevant today and then froze in horror as several sets of eyes turned his way.

  “Tom?” Paul’s invitation was clearly a command for the rest of the people in the room to stay quiet for a moment to see if the new guy had anything to say.

  Fuck, no. He didn’t have anything to say. Wasn’t showing up and listening enough, for Christ’s sake?

  No one was more shocked than Tom when he opened his mouth and started speaking.

  “I think it’s not so much the coming out, but the volume, the projection, that’s so easy to get with your private life now. I didn’t care that any one person knew when I was with my boyfriend…” though his voice wobbled and he knew the people in this room could hear it, “…but the thought of so many people knowi
ng and talking about my private life made me, um, afraid.” Might as well come out and admit that. It wasn’t like admitting to the fear was the hard part.

  Although the more he thought about it, he might be wrong about that.

  The more steps he took out onto what had felt like the skinny, swaying branch of a sapling, but turned out to be the broad wide branch of a hundred-year-old oak tree—this dare he was challenging himself to accept, to live his life as if he weren’t afraid of the world—the more he wondered if he’d welcomed the invasive spotlight of the public eye during his father’s arrest and trial. It had given him the perfect excuse to withdraw, to narrow his world down so much there wasn’t room for anyone else in it, right when he was supposed to be getting ready to widen it. He hadn’t had to admit to being afraid of anything else—of figuring out what he wanted to do with his life after graduation, of becoming more aware that there wasn’t a convenient, societally approved gender restriction on who he might want to spend that life with—because he’d been able to point at a real bogeyman right outside the front door to blame for his fears.

  Awfully convenient, that there paranoia.

  “Yeah, but, no offense, newbie?” It was the girl with long, dark hair from his ethics seminar, he was surprised to see. He judged himself for assuming a girl with long hair was straight. “You’re a special case. Most of us don’t have reporters following us around for months on end, putting our picture in the paper.”

  “I think the ubiquity of social media means we’re all potentially exposed to the public eye on a previously unimaginable scale, whether or not we want to be, and that’s something that still affects people when they come out, even if their personal revelations are maybe less negative today.” Using the twenty-five-dollar word distanced him from this argument, made it feel more academic than a bunch of strangers sitting around discussing his personal life. He’d take it.

  “But it can be a good thing too, right?” The little guy with pink hair looked familiar as he bounced in his seat, tossing a wink Tom’s way that made him blush. The blush turned into a raging inferno when he realized that the kid was one of Reese’s old pick-ups from a million years ago. Or rather, eight months. His room had reeked of this kid’s come while Tom fell asleep on his bed. “Like that guy who came out to his parents with a YouTube video. That got, like, a million views and there was a ton of positive impact.”