Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Well, anyway, thanks for listening.

  Evan

  After checking his trash file, Jock found out he had three more similar emails from teenaged guys. The first one was almost a month old, and it was like a punch to the gut, knowing this high school football quarterback in rural Mississippi had reached out to the only guy he thought would understand and Jock had ignored it. Not intentionally, but still. He wrote back to all four of them, giving them his new email address and telling them why he hadn’t responded earlier. But he couldn’t figure out what else to say, because he didn’t want to say too much and talk down to them, and they already knew he understood their situations.

  In the end he went with the tried-and-true cliché. It gets better. No matter what happens to you or how bad things seem, even those times when you don’t see how it’s ever gonna work out, just believe in that. Email me anytime you need to talk, or we can set up a chat or whatever.

  He hadn’t been fighting going back to Oregon, but he did wonder how things were going to be. He’d heard from Brad that a forty-something philosophy professor had shown up to class stumbling drunk and wearing only a flotation device around her midriff, so most of the Calapooya campus was focused on her potential lack of sanity right now. Jock didn’t expect to draw a lot of attention anymore. But he wouldn’t have minded staying here, either.

  Now, though, he suddenly felt like it was time to go home.

  The next few days were a blur for Toby. The college somewhat successfully imposed a sort of house arrest on the guys. They still walked down to the village, but Danny was the only one who didn’t do so furtively. “What’re they gonna do to me? I’ve already been arrested as a terrorist and dropped out of school.”

  Then Toby had to start shuttling guys to the airport. Everyone but Danny had decided to go back. Toby’d be the last to leave, and whether by accident or design, Jock was the second to last. He accompanied Toby every time they had to say good-bye to another one of the bros—all the remaining guys did—and in spite of his conviction that it wouldn’t be sad when they departed, it was.

  “Do you think I actually kinda like these guys?” he asked Jock on the way back from dropping off Turbo and Ricky for their flight home. They were the last to leave before he took Jock down tomorrow afternoon.

  “Babe, I know you do.”

  That night, they could have rented a hotel room in Marseille, or stayed in the now-empty EuroTAG—Danny had moved into the main house, of course—but they chose to stay in their cabanon. Toby tried to temporarily suspend their “fuckatorium” as they’d started calling it, but Jock talked him out of it, mostly by the means of a blowjob.

  Toby tried to argue. “But I want you to do me.”

  “Let’s wait,” Jock said. “It’s only been a few days, that doesn’t seem like long enough to, you know, reboot. Make it special.”

  At least that’s what Toby thought Jock said, but some of it was muffled by his dick.

  Afterward, before round two, Toby lay on his boyfriend’s chest, playing with the few light hairs that ringed his nipples. “I don’t have any place to live when I get back,” he said.

  Jock kissed his head. “You can stay with Brad and Sebastian for a while. I already talked to them.”

  “You did?” He rested his chin on Jock’s pectoral and looked at him. “How did you know I needed—”

  “You told me. You were bitching about how you thought living with Larry the Breeder sucked, but now that you didn’t even have that option it was starting to look not so bad. I happened to be chatting with Brad and I know you’ve barely had time to think the last two days, so I asked him.”

  “That’s so sweet, baby. Thank you.” Toby rested his ear over the steady thump of Jock’s heart again.

  “Just taking care of my man,” Jock murmured, fingers massaging Toby’s scalp.

  “You’ve been online a lot. Did you hear from any of those kids that contacted you yet?”

  “All but one,” Jock said. “He’s the one I’m most worried about. He’s a black kid in rural Mississippi, says his parents are conservative Christians. I mean, my mom’s a Jesus freak, but she’s one of those liberal Christians, so she didn’t have a problem with me being gay. Not once she adjusted, at least.”

  Why had they never talked about this before? “What about your dad?” Toby asked.

  “I don’t know how he reacted at first, because Tank told him.”

  “What, did he take it upon himself to tell everyone for you?”

  “When I was seventeen and he came home for the summer, he asked me if I wanted him to and I took the easy way out and said yes. Tank waited until I went off to hockey camp and told Dad the day I left, so he had a week to get over it before I saw him again. I’d already told Mom, so that helped. He was kind of uncomfortable for a while, but once the season started up again and I was still playing, things started to return to normal.”

  “So he didn’t take it well when you got kicked off the team?”

  Jock snorted. “He called the school and threatened to sue. He was, like, breathing fire, going on about discrimination. I don’t think, if the same thing happened to Clancy—the kid in Mississippi—that he’d have as easy a time of it as I had.”

  Toby lifted his head up, dislodging Jock’s hand from his hair. “Baby, I don’t think many people would consider what you went through with the picture an easy time.”

  Jock smiled and stretched for a quick kiss. “But look at all the good things that came out of it. Those kids have someone to talk to, and I got you.”

  “I’m going to miss you when you leave,” Toby whispered.

  “It’s only two days, babe. Then we see each other again.”

  The next afternoon, standing in the Marseille airport, playing with the zipper of Jock’s hoodie, trying not to pout or sulk or—God forbid—get teary, Toby repeated himself. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Jock bent and kissed his temple. “Two days and we’ll be together.”

  Toby lifted his head to look in his boyfriend’s eyes, knowing full well he was pouting. “But we won’t have our little cabin.”

  Jock smiled at him. “We’ll have something else.” He cupped Toby’s cheek, holding him for a kiss. A long, explicit one that a month or even two weeks ago Toby never would have thought Jock would have indulged in in public. “I love you,” he whispered against Toby’s mouth.

  “I love you too.”

  Jock smiled one last time, then let go of Toby and headed toward security, waving once he got in line.

  Two days.

  Two days later, Brad picked Toby up from the Eugene airport, surprising the hell out of him. When he saw the dude standing next to the baggage claim carousel, he couldn’t help but lean over and try to see behind him, in case Jock might be hiding back there. He wasn’t, of course, and it would have been nearly impossible anyway. Jock was a few inches taller than Brad, and at least as broad-shouldered.

  “Jock couldn’t make it,” Brad said, giving Toby a brief hug. “He said he’d see you once you get home.”

  “Home,” Toby confirmed. He couldn’t exactly say where home was. He didn’t feel like Brad and Sebastian’s spare room could be called that, but he couldn’t imagine any other place it might be. He was too fucking exhausted to figure it out. “Hope I have time to take a nap before he shows up.” He was pretty sure he was swaying on his feet. Brad stepped to his side and gripped his arm.

  “Dude, when’s the last time you slept?”

  “Ummm . . . has to be at least twenty-four hours, but I bet more. We didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before Jock left—”

  “I bet.”

  “—and the last couple of nights I’ve been having crazy dreams that wake me up.”

  “What kinda dreams?

  “Every time I fell asleep, I dreamed someone was breaking down my door about to arrest me for having sex with a minor.”

  Brad scowled. Not at him, he didn’t think, just in general. “Jock’s not a m
inor.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t make sense, but I couldn’t convince myself of that, I guess.” He must have been swaying again, because Brad grabbed him and the luggage stopped tilting in that funny way. “Oh, there’s my suitcase,” he mumbled, watching it slowly glide by.

  Brad hauled it off the belt. “C’mon dude, you can nap in the car on the way home.”

  Toby fell asleep once his butt hit the seat and his head hit the window.

  What seemed like seconds later, Brad was shaking him awake. “We’re here, dude.”

  Toby rolled his head back onto the headrest, slowly opening his eyes and taking visual inventory. Cars, fir trees, rain, asphalt, manicured grass, meandering paths. It took him a few seconds, but he would swear this was a campus parking lot. “Where are we?”

  “Oh, I gotta stop by the frat for a minute. It’s important.”

  Toby rolled his head to the side and stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Jock will be there. He’s waiting for you.”

  Toby comprehended that.

  It was a loooong walk to the frat-dorm from where Brad had parked though, or at least Toby thought it was as he stumbled along, but when he mentioned that, Brad looked at him funny and said, “It’s the closest lot. It’s, like, two hundred yards.”

  Seriously, if he didn’t know Jock was in that dorm, he’d have lain down right here in the rain and told the dude to do whatever he had to do and pick him up on the way back to the car. But seeing his boyfriend superseded sleep. Although seeing him in bed would be the best of both worlds.

  “We’re here,” Brad announced. He grabbed Toby’s arm when he tried to keep walking, pointing up to the sign over the door. Toby had to close one eye to be sure, but there were two banners—one said “Welcome to the temporary home of Tau Alpha Gamma” but with the “Tau” crossed out and a “theta” scrawled in above it, and underneath that banner . . . “Welcome Home, Tobes,” the hand-painted sign read, colors starting to run in the rain.

  He had to clear his throat, and he couldn’t swear the moisture in his eyes came from the clouds. “Those freaks did something nice for me.”

  Brad grinned. “Yeah, they did.”

  “Awesome,” Toby mumbled. “Now take me to my boyfriend.”

  Brad laughed and led him inside. They had to take an elevator up to the third floor, and Toby leaned against the rear wall, directly across from the doors, so that when they slid open after the short ride, Jock was standing front and center. Blue eyes smiling at him, hair still long in front, hands in his pockets, legs braced wide.

  Toby jumped him, fully prepared to climb his boyfriend in front of a large audience of straight fratbros. It took him a few seconds after he’d wrapped his legs around Jock’s hips, still kissing him, to realize they were alone. He pulled away and looked over his shoulder just in time to see Brad’s waving hand disappearing behind the elevator doors. “We’re alone?”

  “I love you,” Jock said, kissing him hard and fast. “I’m in love with you.”

  Toby hitched himself up higher on his boyfriend, pressing their chests together. “I’m in love with you, too.”

  Jock cupped his ass and smiled. “That was the way it should have been.”

  “The first time you told me? Yeah. That was the most perfect reenactment ever, baby.”

  Jock smiled at him, letting Toby slide down his body and stand on his own two feet. “I have something to show you.”

  “You do? Is it a bed?” Toby could feel his eyes getting heavier, like finally seeing Jock was akin to eating most of a turkey on Thanksgiving. It made him warm, content, and sleepy. “You’re the L-tryptophan of love.”

  Jock bit his lip, still smiling broadly. As if he had a most excellent surprise. “It is a bed, as a matter of fact.”

  “Can you carry me?”

  “Uuum . . .”

  Toby sighed. “I’ll walk.” He did, but barely. Jock held him so tightly around the waist, pulling him so close, that it was more like a very sedate three-legged race than a lovers’ stroll down the long hall to the left, nearly to the last door. Jock opened it while Toby watched his face. He had an odd smile, almost smug. Or at least satisfied. Like things were going his way for once.

  “I missed you.” Toby stroked his neck.

  Jock turned to look at him, eyes going heavy and soft, leaning down and skimming Toby’s nose with his before kissing him. “I missed you too, babe. Now here’s your surprise.” He lifted his head, eyes focusing somewhere beyond Toby.

  So, of course, Toby had to turn and look.

  It was Jock’s dorm room. At least Toby assumed it was Jock’s. And front and center, right under the windows, was a bed so large it almost skimmed the wall on either side.

  It looked sooo soft. Toby found himself walking toward it in some kind of hypnotic trance. Like it had bewitched him and called him forth. When he got to it, he dispensed with pleasantries and pitched himself over the foot of it, landing on its pillowy, welcoming, non-airplane-seat-shaped surface, hugging it tightly. “Oh Jock,” he breathed, eyes closed. “It’s beautiful.”

  He felt Jock’s weight settle next to him, laughing. “I’m guessing you don’t get the significance of this.”

  “Of course I do,” Toby objected. “It’s a significantly comfortable bed.”

  “It’s a queen-sized bed in a dorm room, hon.”

  Huh. That did seem unusual. Toby lifted his very heavy eyelids. “This is your dorm room, right?”

  Jock propped his head on his elbow next to him, watching him. “It’s our dorm room,” he said after a few seconds. “If you want to stay here with me.”

  Toby pushed up from the bed, trying to blink sense into what Jock had just said. “You mean, like, I could . . . what about Collin? Isn’t he technically your roommate?”

  Jock tilted his head. “Technically, yeah, but he said if you wanted to stay, he’d move out to Eric’s. Then he said if you didn’t want to stay, he’d move out to Eric’s.”

  “So . . .” Toby had to swallow to dislodge his heart from his throat. “You’re asking me to live with you?”

  “I am,” Jock said softly, holding his gaze. “And I know we can live in a space this small, because we just spent the last few weeks in the cabin.”

  “Our cabin,” Toby echoed. This was a lot like their little cabin. It had a dorm fridge and windows and a bed. So, pretty much the same. “Can I really live here? I’m not in Theta Alpha Gamma.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jock made as if he were trying to wipe the smirk off his face, but it was still there while he finished speaking. “Ricky successfully petitioned the brotherhood to make you an honorary member for ‘valor under fire.’”

  Toby dropped back to the bed. “I don’t know whether to feel happy about that or not.”

  “Be happy, because I talked them out of having an induction ceremony for you.” Jock smoothed one of his huge palms down Toby’s spine, spreading lots of shivers in his wake.

  “I’m very, very happy about that.”

  Jock lay down next to him, nearly touching Toby’s nose with his own. “Well?”

  Toby just had to make sure he understood, because his brain was fuzzy and so much had happened and now he had so many warm feelings lying next to his boyfriend like this. He didn’t want to make a mistake and get it wrong. “So, you’re saying we’re going to live together? Here?”

  Jock nodded. “If you want to.”

  He bit his lip a second. “Of course I want to, but, like, what if things don’t work out in the long run?”

  Jock sighed. Exasperated but not really upset, Toby didn’t think. “Why do you keep implying that we aren’t going to last? I don’t get it. You did that a couple of times in France. The whole shirt thing was about that.”

  Toby traced around Jock’s mouth, following his finger with his eyes. “I don’t wanna offend you, but baby, you’re only nineteen. A lot could happen for you over the next few years.”

  Jock took hold of Toby’s and kissed i
t, then scooted just a little closer, sliding one hand over Toby’s waist. “There are a lot of people who meet the right person at nineteen and spend their life with them. Brad met Sebastian when he was only a little older than me, and they’re planning on being permanent.”

  “Yeah. But there are many, many more who don’t.”

  “Are you saying I’m not going to be your favorite shirt for the rest of your life?”

  Toby had to smile at that, but he also had to be realistic. “I’m saying I might not be your favorite shirt forever. What if I go out of style?”

  “This is the way I see it.” Jock pushed himself up again, rolling Toby over so he lay on his back, looking up at his boyfriend looming right over him. “If you can’t go into a relationship thinking it’s going to last forever? Maybe it’s not one you should be in. I’m going into this relationship thinking it can last forever.” He paused to take a slow, deep breath. “And, I guess I’m asking if you think that too.”

  “I do think that.” Toby lifted his hands and cupped Jock’s face, maybe a bit too tightly, but he was trying to contain the wobbly feelings inside, the ones that made him swallow hard and his eyes get misty. “I want that.”

  “So, say yes,” Jock urged.

  “Yes. I’ll live with you.”

  Jock’s smile was radiant, and his kiss was just as strong and dominant as always, but slower, like they had the rest of their lives to kiss if they wanted it.

  As much as he loved this man and as warm and fuzzy as his chest had gotten, Toby was exhausted, and mixed with this much happy it made him almost delirious. “Baby,” he whispered, when Jock pulled away to find that spot below his ear.

  “You need to take a nap.”

  “Kinda, but before I do, I need to tell you two things.”

  “Anything,” Jock breathed into his ear, rolling so he was blanketing Toby’s body, but not crushing him. Holding him close.

  “First, I’m ending the fuckatorium. When I wake up? I want you to make love to me. It’ll be special, I promise.”