by Anne Tenino
Following her directions, Toby found a second, smaller building with a gravel parking area in front of it, more like what he’d expected—not as quaint or as old, with some touches that were clearly for expedience rather than beauty. But still plastered with bleached-out sunflower, ringed by plants, and set behind a patio with a sitting area. “This is where the—what do you call them again? The boys who are part of your ‘Greeks society.’”
“Uh, fratbros,” Toby said unthinkingly, caught up in the glimpse of perfect blue pool water behind and to the left of the place. “We’re separate from the main house?”
“Oui. I will show you.”
The setup was pretty utilitarian, but also very French. Hopefully this was what the guys were expecting, rather than some kind of resort. The furniture was cheap, the floors were tile of course, the walls sometimes met at crazy angles or had warped surfaces, but it was in actuality awesome to his eyes. Two bedrooms on the top level, a third long skinny one tucked in under the eaves off an oversized landing in the stairs, and a large, open, timber-vaulted main floor with a kitchenette at one end and a single bathroom that was reached by stooping through a hobbit-sized doorway under the stairs. Toby checked out the television (huge), the Wi-Fi (functioning), the weight room the guys had insisted they needed (taking up half the main floor), and the laundry facilities on the back porch. “This is great,” he said, smiling in some relief. From the rear of the house he could see down into a small village below the hill the bastide occupied.
Madame Bouvinet nodded, then motioned to the left. Toby followed her finger to a smallish, roundish in-ground pool with lots of teak lounge chairs on the flagstones surrounding it, and beyond that a teeny, tiny little hut. “You are the resident advisor, yes? That is your cabanon.”
French wasn’t his best language, but he could swear cabanon meant something like “shed” rather than “pool house.” Oh, it was cute, and as he traversed the deck to get a better look at it, he realized it wasn’t actually built for a garden gnome. More like a regular gnome. Assuming they were a little larger than the other variety, but to be truthful he didn’t know. Much like the bathroom in the main building, he had to duck through the doorway. He did it, holding his breath the whole time, seriously concerned about what he’d find.
It took a few seconds of rapid blinking to adjust to the dimmer interior after the brightness of the late afternoon. When he could see, he breathed a silent sigh of relief. Yes, it was tiny inside, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Tall enough for his five feet eleven inches (and possibly even for someone as big as, say, Jock). When the door opened or closed, it would brush the linens of the double bed shoved against the far wall. There was a bathroom closet with a sink, a toilet, a drain in the floor, and a shower nozzle mounted in one wall. To round out the amenities, a broad shelf cantilevered out from one wall with an electric kettle sitting on top of it and a small fridge underneath. Shoved up next to it were an old-fashioned water cooler and two barstools.
Madame Bouvinet insisted on giving him the tour, standing between the bed and the counter, turning and pointing as she explained what was perfectly obvious.
“It’s wonderful,” he said after a minute of her explaining how the cabinets set into the walls had been cleverly fashioned by her son, and how the two “rather adequate” windows were new.
It was wonderful. It was his own tiny space, filled with light let in by the disproportionately large windows and wafting with the breeze through the open doorway. Looking out of it, Toby had that same view down into the valley that the laundry porch did. From the cast iron table and chairs set up in the small gravel area in front of his cabanon, he could watch the wind or the sky or the small cars crawling out of the small village.
He wanted to get his stuff, throw it on the bed, and dig out the carafe of wine he’d stopped at the supermarché for. He’d also bought olives, sausage and cheese, bottled water, and an alpillette—the small local version of a baguette. He could lie on his bed or sit in his patio set while he ate. Then he’d watch the sun sink slowly, maybe swim even if it was far too cold still . . .
“—meals will be in the main house, petit dejeuner and lunch only.” Madame Bouvinet was prattling on, but she stopped suddenly and turned to him. “You are tired, are you not? Bon. I will give you the keys and leave you. You have something for your dinner?”
Toby assured her he did and went to get his stuff out of the car. He did the minimum possible, simply pulling out his food and wine, something to change into, and a book. Nothing erudite or academic. Science fiction.
Tomorrow would be early enough to go through the newest material he’d collected for his thesis and work it into his outline. Get into the right mindspace for writing before his charges arrived. They’d be showing up over a couple of days, and by design or by accident, Jock’s plane came in last.
Three days later, the night before the first of the bros showed up, Toby got half-drunk and all philosophical, butt settled on one chair out in front of his place and feet up on the other. He was doing well—already he’d completed a decent introductory overview of his paper, and he felt like he had his ducks in a row to finish this damn thesis. As for his other duty while here, time would tell if herding the boys would suck as much as he worried it might. Really, though, how bad could anything be when he got to spend the next almost-three months here?
This place fucking rocks.
As the plane made its descent into Marseille, Jock caught glimpses of the city, the Mediterranean, and the French countryside. He had to crane his neck, looking over the heads of the other passengers, because he’d snagged an aisle seat. Mostly he caught flashes of sky, but he confirmed that it was all as sun-drenched as he remembered. He’d have liked a window seat, but being six-four made that torturous. At least with an aisle seat all he had to worry about were his legs getting run over by a food cart.
He was so fucking relieved to be getting out of the United States. Not so much the US, but the attention he’d been getting there. By the time he’d left, things had cooled down, but he’d been getting even more of the kind of attention he most wanted to avoid: the people who wanted him for their cause.
Three months in a foreign country sounded perfect. Except for the part about Toby being there.
Because of course Toby was going to pick him up at the airport. Which was no big, right? So what if they were going to be together a lot for the next few months? So the dude had popped his cherry (sorta); that didn’t mean they had to have any sort of, like, future sexual interactions.
But the tension in his shoulders wasn’t listening to him, so he used the trick of focusing on his immediate problems and ignoring (potential) future problems. He stood in line at immigration, mentally bitching about how slowly it moved and fidgeting with his passport. Then he fought his way to the baggage carousel for his suitcase, wheeling his luggage cart right through customs after that, passing bored-looking agents who waved him on.
Focusing on the present worked right up until he got to the frosted glass sliding doors that marked his official entry into France. When they parted—reminding him of a theater curtain even though he’d never been on a stage—fate kicked him in the nuts. Toby was standing front and center, smiling and laughing with Noah, surrounded by the rest of Jock’s Theta Alpha Gamma brothers.
What, they all had to come see Jock and Toby’s reunion? And what was Noah doing being all friendly like that?
No one noticed him. Well, not no one, but Toby didn’t, not right away. Not until Noah jogged Toby’s elbow with his own, and a smiling, bright-eyed, laughing Toby turned to him and immediately sobered up.
I never should have come.
Whatever, too late now.
Jock set his jaw and kept walking forward, until he was engulfed in bro-hugs and a chorus of greetings, yet burningly conscious of Toby hanging at the back of their small crowd the entire time. The guys moved around him in a swarm, jostling for position, different faces and voices coming at h
im, but he didn’t really register who said what until he came face-to-face with Toby. All the activity around them continued, but static held them both in place, looking at each other across a small stretch of industrial carpeting.
Toby stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, dark hair flopping over his forehead and framing his deep brown eyes. Still mostly expressionless, just a slight curve to his lips that Jock couldn’t interpret. Up on one side of his mouth and down on the other.
“How was your flight?” Toby asked after a few seconds of silence.
Jock shrugged and glanced over the guy’s head. “Fine. Long.”
“You hungry? We have a two hour drive back to EuroTAG.”
“EuroTAG?”
Toby’s lips tilted up a little more, in a tiny smirk. “That’s what the fratbros are calling it,” he said just loud enough for Jock to hear. Then he jerked his eyes away, scratching his temple with an index finger, as if he had to devote all his attention to it or he might miss and scratch something he didn’t mean to. “Um, so, you need to eat?”
“They fed us breakfast a couple hours before we landed.” Not that he’d eaten much of it. He bent over and grabbed his pack, slinging it over his shoulder and using the motion to step away from Toby. Gomer and Danny noticed, and started arguing over who would carry Jock’s suitcase.
“No man, you do it. You’re a junior TAG brother,” Danny was saying, pushing Gomer toward the cart.
Gomer tried to hold his ground, but he stumbled back when Danny pushed harder. “What’re you talking about, dude? We’re all seniors except Noah and Jock.”
“Yeah, but I’m only a first-year senior—you’re a second-year senior.”
“How does that make me the junior brother? Besides, Ricky’s a second-year senior, too.”
Danny gaped. “Ricky’s still using a cane, he can’t carry a suitcase.”
“It’s got wheels, doofus!” Gomer stabbed his finger at the ground. “Right there.”
“You’re gonna make an injured man pull that thing? That’s cold, man.” Danny shook his head, pursing his lips. “Real cold.”
Noah stepped between them and grabbed the handle of the bag, rolling his eyes at Jock. “This might be a long term, dude.”
Jock’s lips twitched, like maybe they’d like to bare his teeth, but he held them still and nodded before turning away. “Which way?” he asked no one in particular.
They answered as a group, herding him toward the exit, then toward a white van in the parking lot. As they loaded in, Jock couldn’t help feeling like he was getting on a school bus. It didn’t help when Toby told him quietly as they loaded his luggage in the back, “Only you, Gomer, and Ricky came in today. I tried to get the other guys to stay at the gîte, but they were all too excited about going on a ‘field trip.’”
Jock shrugged and walked around to the side door to find that the guys had left him a decent spot. It was after he was settled in the second seat back that he realized Noah had taken the passenger’s seat, next to the driver. In other words, next to Toby.
He tried to rest, balling up his sweatshirt and using it as a pillow, leaning his head on the window. But he mostly watched Noah and Toby talk. And laugh. A lot.
He was an aggressive guy, Jock knew that about himself. It came with playing center. Except he wasn’t a hockey player anymore but he was still aggressive, so maybe he had that backward. Thing was, his aggression was getting worse. Little things fed into it, like Noah’s flirty sideways glances at Toby, and it just kept growing. Enough that some people might call it anger. It was probably better if he removed himself from public until he got over his shitty mood and maybe adjusted some of his expectations about how he was going to get through the next twelve weeks with these guys. So when they finally got to “EuroTAG,” he retreated into the cramped little room off the landing that he had to share with Noah—that’d teach him to show up last—and had bread, cheese, salami, and fruit for lunch while everyone else went up to the “main house” to eat.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Toby warned him as he headed up the stairs. “It’ll take you a week to adjust to the jet lag instead of just a day or two.”
Jock didn’t respond. Better to say nothing than blow up at the dude.
Yeah, it’s gonna be a long three months.
Jock didn’t seem happy about the sleeping arrangements. Actually, the sleeping arrangements were only the most recent thing that he seemed unhappy about. He’d seemed unhappy about the van they all had to ride around in, and unhappy about the length of the drive from Marseille to the gîte, and unhappy about the attempts everyone made to talk to him. He’d mostly just grunted.
Toby suspected Jock’s real unhappiness lay in Toby’s presence. So much for that bubble of hope.
“He’s gonna be more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” Noah said, standing on the main floor and looking up the stairs. It had to be an illusion that the door was reverberating from the force of Jock’s annoyance, didn’t it? He hadn’t slammed it or anything.
“It’s probably just jet lag,” Toby said. Noah rolled his eyes along with his whole head to give Toby some serious side-eye. “Or something,” Toby added lamely.
“Oh yeah. I’m sure it has nothing to do with you,” Noah muttered right before he walked off, leaving Toby alternately glancing up the stairs and then watching Noah’s back, wondering how much he shouldn’t read into that comment.
“Yo!” Danny yelled from right behind him. Toby didn’t jump—he was getting used to the dude’s enthusiasm and volume. It would be excellent training if he were ever on the front lines of a war. “It’s time for dejeuner.” He grinned when Toby turned to him. “See? Learning French already, dude. C’mon, Madame Bovinary is waiting for us.”
He’d given up on trying to get them to call her Madame Bouvinet when he’d figured out they weren’t being malicious. The problem stemmed from a few of them having read Madame Bovary by Flaubert in a lit class last year. Or, as Gomer called him, “Flow-bert.”
That was the point at which Toby had started to think of Gomer as “Oxymoron,” the least intelligent of his overgrown frat-dwarves.
For her part, Madame seemed to think they were cute. “The fratbros are amusing, no?” she’d whispered to Toby at yesterday’s “dejeuner,” when the guys kept asking each other to please pass the “pain” and then flicking each other between the eyes shouting, “I got your bread right here!” She even found it amusing when Julian fell over backward in his chair trying to escape Turbo’s overly enthusiastic (or actually, that might have been malicious) thumping.
“No,” Toby’d answered, even though he kind of agreed with her. Mostly he found them taxing. He supposed he could spend less time watching over them, but he didn’t trust them not to get themselves in trouble, which translated into Toby babysitting them the two days they’d been in France so far. He couldn’t wait until the term started next week and he could have some time to himself to work on his thesis. There was something he never thought he’d be grateful for.
For now, though, he’d follow the guys up to Madame Bouvinet’s huge kitchen table and eat his share of the huge lunch she’d made them. Hopefully he could get the bros down for a nap afterward.
The only one who napped that afternoon was Jock, and he slept right on through dinner. Toby didn’t envy him the next week at all.
Jock came to suddenly, jerking onto his back, trying to remember where he was—in a room so long and narrow the two single beds were placed end-to-end. The floor was warped, aged wood, while the dressers pushed up against the opposite wall were made of brand-new, laminated pressboard. Windows high in the wall next to him were bleeding the dim, bluish light of dusk.
France. Provence. Toby.
He wanted Toby. With the clarity of mind that came from sleeping well, Jock couldn’t lie to himself about that anymore. He wanted to be with Toby, and it scared the hell out of him, because Toby might want more than he could give. Like his virgin ass.
Totally should
not be that big a deal, dude. Oh, but here was that hollow feeling in his stomach again that came along whenever he thought about what it, like, meant for him to let someone do that.
“Get over yourself,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
Noah walking in the door surprised Jock out of his moment of clarity, but not fast enough to stop himself from saying, “Sorry if I was a dick earlier.” Okay, random. The dude just wanders in and I’m apologizing. He tried to cover up his gaffe with a stretch, but his hands hit the wall when he raised them over his head, and his toes got tangled in the pillow of the bed at the foot of his. Noah’s bed.
His roommate shut the door softly and looked at him from under his brows. “You were a dick.”
Jock let his arms thud back down on the mattress. “Jet lag.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Noah said dryly, then sighed and leaned his shoulders against the wall. “If you want me to stay away from Toby, just fucking tell me, dude.”
“Are you trying to hook up with him?”
“Honestly?” Noah straightened up, and Jock held his breath. “No. I mean, I wouldn’t turn him down, but I wouldn’t turn Turbo down if he offered me a handjob, either.”
Jock nodded, holding Noah’s gaze. “’Kay.”
“If it makes any difference, I don’t think he’s into me.”
Jock studied the windows in the wall above him. They were set so high up that even standing he’d probably barely be able to see out of them. “We got screwed on room assignments, man.”
“I could’ve gotten a better room, but I wanted to room with you.”
Jock had to smile at that. “’Cause the other guys are freaks of nature.”
“Oh yeah, they are.” Noah rolled his eyes and shoved a hand through his hair, then turned toward one of the dressers. “And I hadn’t figured out how hot Turbo is yet. Help me look for toilet paper.”