by Vicki Tharp
“Fuck you.”
Roman left. Without looking back, he yanked on the classroom door. It slammed against the wall, the crack echoing throughout the classroom before the door slammed closed.
Fuck.
Now who’s the asshole? Roman didn’t deserve the way you treated him. You are as responsible as he is for what happened between you two. Scratch that. More responsible.
Demetri laid his elbows on his desk and held his head in his hands, staring down at the scarred metal surface. All those years teaching at Winston college down the drain for what? Sucking a guy off?
And Demetri hadn’t even come.
Unless you call all the jacking off he’d done at home with Roman at the center of his fantasies.
Demetri didn’t know how he’d pivot from this. How do you recover when you have destroyed your good name? No other university or college would hire him. And the local high schools wouldn’t even go so far as to read his résumé.
His art sold, but not well enough to pay his mortgage.
Too bad Niko only used straight guys to shoot his gay porn.
The calendar notice on his phone binged, reminding him the dean’s meeting was in ten minutes. He stood and glanced around the room at the array of easels and the supplies Roman hadn’t put away. Demetri loved this room even if it was windowless and in the bowels of the building.
Would this be the last time he saw his room?
Would he be escorted to his office after the meeting by security to get his things?
Jesus Christ. What had he done?
The long walk to the conference room on the second floor of the art building felt like a convicted killer’s final walk down dingy corridors to the execution chamber.
He slipped into the half-filled classroom and found a spot at the back. If he were smart, he would have found a place near the front so that he could make an easy escape after all the humiliation Pittman would deal him ended.
The room filled, and sweat beaded on his brow and dripped down the length of his spine, his dick so shriveled he’d need a microscope and a pair of tweezers if he ever hoped to find it again.
Voices buzzed in the room, a quiet cacophony of intrigue and excitement. Nothing this scandalous had hit the art department in his memory. If this were the theater department, it would have been just another day. Or the science department. Turns out those science nerds were kind of kinky.
Pittman came in and nodded his head for the person closest to the door to close it since he was too important to do it himself as he came through.
He mounted the podium and stood at a lectern, an expression on his face that Demetri couldn’t quite read. Somewhere between barely contained excitement and glee, as if Pittman couldn’t wait to deliver the news.
Demetri’s colleagues quieted. Pittman always refused to use a mic, but he had one of those voices that carried.
“These are unfortunate circumstances,” Pittman said, his grip tight on the lectern. “One that brings embarrassment to the department and to our sacred home here at Winston College.”
“If I could say something first,” Demetri raised his hand, trying in vain, it would seem, to minimize the public scalding he was about to receive.
“You’ll have a chance to speak at the end.” Pittman glanced around the room. “And I would appreciate it if the rest of you will hold your questions until then.”
Demetri sank lower into his seat and dried his sweaty, clammy palms on his pants legs.
“Following rumors of impropriety, I spoke with Professor Chadwick, and to minimize embarrassing the department, he has agreed to step down as the art department chair and render his resignation after confirming to me that the rumors of an affair with a freshman student of his were true.”
In the middle of the room, Sampson, who taught sculpture and pottery, laughed. “Mr. Rogers’ doppelganger? Are you kidding me? He’s, like, ninety.”
Chadwick, the art history professor, was so old that people joked the historical artists were his contemporaries. And Chadwick’s likeness to a certain children’s show host from the late sixties was uncanny. Apparently, there were unplumbed depths beneath that button-up sweater that no one had been privy to, except an unsuspecting coed.
“That Viagra prescription must be working well for him,” someone muttered.
Light laughter rolled around the room. Pittman’s scowl deepened, and his complexion turned ruddy.
Pittman started talking again, but Demetri couldn’t hear over the buzzing in his ears. It sounded as if a hive of industrious bees had taken up shop. Had his heart stopped? Or would the relief washing over him make him pass out?
The nausea that had been rooting around in his belly all day intensified instead of eased.
He dashed out of the classroom, the door to the men’s room slapped against the rubber stop as he crashed through and entered the first available stall. He leaned over the toilet and emptied everything in his stomach. Someone in the next stall over coughed, then flushed, leaving Demetri to his misery.
Demetri leaned against the stall wall until the heaves passed. He could practically feel the whoosh of air next to his skull as the bullet he’d dodged skimmed by him with millimeters to spare.
He wretched again, but he came up dry.
Finally, he straightened and rinsed his mouth at the sink. He couldn’t remember a time he’d felt so physically and emotionally drained. The anxiety that had clawed and fought with him all day had been a formidable foe.
Instead of returning to the meeting, he walked to his car in a daze and drove straight home. He ended up in his driveway beside Joss’s Jeep sometime later, not even remembering how he’d gotten home.
He walked through the unlocked door as Joss came down the hall. “Hey, I thought that was y—”
Joss did a double-take as Demetri walked by him headed for the refrigerator. “What the hell happened to you?”
Demetri stood in front of the open refrigerator door, staring blankly at the shelves. What had he been looking for?
Joss moved him out of the way, grabbed a couple of beers, and herded him outside to the loungers on the pool deck. “Sit.”
Demetri sat, and Joss twisted off a top and handed him a bottle. Demetri took a long swallow and then another. When he’d drained it, Joss gave him his beer and disappeared inside.
When he returned, he had what must have been his lunch cooler stuffed with ice and a few more beers. The bottles prevented the lid from closing, but they could always get more ice if needed. But at the rate Demetri was sucking the beer down, running out of ice first wouldn’t be an issue.
Joss pulled up the lounger beside him, construction dust on his face, the ghost of his mask and eye protection still visible. Resting his elbows on his knees, Joss took more conservative sips of his beer. “I’m happy to sit here all night. You don’t have to talk. But if you want to, I’m here.”
All of Demetri’s thoughts swirled around in his head, a tornado and a hurricane coming together in an epic storm of chaotic emotions.
“I almost got fired today.”
“What did you do?” Joss’s tone held no judgment. He didn’t seem like that kind of man.
Demetri shook his head, not knowing how to begin. When he’d been that big of an idiot, when he’d made many poor decisions, where did he start unraveling the shit show that had become his life?
“I’m kind of seeing this student of mine.”
“The naked kid that was here the other day? Not my type, but good on you.”
Demetri huffed out a laugh. “No. Not him. A kid—a man in my life drawing class.” And maybe it was the beer hitting Demetri fast on an empty stomach or maybe it was because it felt so good to talk about something he’d been holding inside, but he told Joss everything from the back-alley blowjob to following Roman home for ‘dinner.’ He didn’t care what secrets he divulged, not anymore.
Not when he didn’t plan on seeing Roman again outside of class.
When he fin
ished, Joss deadpanned, “Maybe I need to go to more art openings.”
Demetri threw back his head and laughed, the tension easing. He supposed that had been Joss’s goal all along. “Jesus Christ. If that’s what you got out of that...”
He didn’t know how to finish that thought, so he didn’t.
“What I got out of that was that you’re human. That you’re not immune to being led around by your heart.”
“Or my dick.”
The look Joss shot him landed somewhere between reproach and ain’t that the truth. “I don’t think if it were your dick talking you would have let it get that far. If that were true, I think when you found out Roman was a student, you would have shut it down. But apparently, there’s something more to him than his charm or his good looks.”
“I wish I knew what the hell it was. Maybe then I could get one of my friends from the science department to find a way to inoculate me against it. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“After losing Dan, all I know is that some things, some people, some connections are worth more than your job. Finding that special person can be more important than all the rest.”
“Does that mean you’d give up flying if the right guy came along?”
“Touché.” Joss polished off his beer, reached into the cooler, and twisted the top off another. He offered it to Demetri. He didn’t turn it down, not when he had a good buzz going and no good reason to stop it.
“And there’s a twist to this saga, that makes sacrificing my job for a man that much more craptastic.”
The sun had started to set, the colors shifting until it lit the horizon ablaze with pinks and oranges. Out of sight behind his fence, the sliding glass door of the neighbor behind him open and closed. A splash and the rhythmic strokes of a swimmer. A classic rock station playing the Eagles’ “Wasting Time” came through his neighbor’s outdoor speakers, soothing him.
Demetri didn’t hem or haw or beat around the bush about what he had to say. He came right out with the truth. “I’m poz.”
How had that been so easy when telling Roman had proven impossible?
Because you have nothing to lose by telling Joss.
Joss connected the dots. “And he doesn’t know it.”
“Bingo.”
“Well...” Joss sighed and pulled a long swallow of beer from his bottle. “Fuck.”
They both fell silent, and Joss turned and put his legs up on the lounger, his beer between his thighs and his hands behind his head as he stared up at the darkening sky.
Sometime later, after Demetri’s neighbor finished his swim, the speakers went quiet, and the sky went dark, Joss said, “I lost a lot of friends back in the day. I’ll be honest, back then, I never thought I’d live to make it to my forties.”
Demetri grunted. He was younger than Joss, so the worst of the bad years of AIDs had passed by the time he’d started dating. That he’d gotten infected now, in this day and age of screening and PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis—he almost couldn’t believe it. But that’s what happened when your ex was a lying, cheating piece of shit.
“I also have quite a few friends who have been in serodiscordant relationships for years. Being poz with a negative partner doesn’t mean it can’t work out.”
Intellectually, Demetri knew that. But Demetri had known many more relationships that hadn’t survived the disclosure.
“I’d wanted to disclose at the beginning, but I let Niko talk me out of it. Now the thought of disclosing fucking terrifies me.”
Now that he’d decided to tell Roman they couldn’t see each other anymore, he still wrestled with disclosing even though now it shouldn’t matter. It went to show how screwed up he was.
Then again, after how unfairly he’d treated Roman, were they even together?
“Rejection’s not easy. Take it from a guy whose relationships have consisted of anonymous hookups for far longer than I care to contemplate. You’re navigating this thing the best way you know how. You don’t need my approval or consent.”
Joss should have been a diplomat, not a pilot.
“It seems like no matter what I do, I’m equally fucked.”
Roman typed in another message to Demetri. Well, not a message. More of a WTF with a bunch of question marks after the previous four texts he’d sent over the last several hours hadn’t been answered.
Which should have been answer enough.
He doesn’t want to talk to you. He made that clear in class and by his radio silence. Do you need him to turn his rejection into a club and clobber you with it for you to take the hint?
But his father had taught Roman never to give up on people. The way his father hadn’t given up on Roman when he’d tried to distance himself from him and do more things with his friends even when his father kept trying to find common ground something, anything that they could do together.
His father’s truth was probably the one thing Roman could probably never forgive him for. If his father had been honest with him, if Roman had known he was dying, that he was so sick, Roman would have spent what little time his father had left with him while he had the chance. And if his father had told him that he, too, was gay, that might have changed his experience of living at home with his homophobic, angry mother. It might not have made his life easier, but maybe it would have made everything easier to understand.
Roman sent off another text. To Grant this time. The response came with no questions. Roman appreciated Grant minding his business.
Plugging in the address Grant had given him into his map app, he drove a few miles away from campus and pulled in front of Demetri’s house. A Jeep sat in the driveway next to Demetri’s car. Demetri’s mid-century modern had huge windows in the front and rear, allowing him to see all the way through to the backyard.
Without the shades drawn, Roman saw a watery reflection off the windows from the gentle glow of the pool lights.
He almost drove away. But he couldn’t leave. Not without knowing if he’d destroyed Demetri’s career. He couldn’t stand the thought of waiting until his next class to find a substitute teacher in Demetri’s place.
Besides, if Demetri had lost his job, Roman owed him a huge apology.
He got out of his car and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. The doorbell didn’t work, so he knocked. And waited. And knocked again. Either Demetri couldn’t hear him, or he was refusing to answer the door.
Go home. He doesn’t want you here.
Probably. But Roman wasn’t leaving until he knew that for certain.
Roman backed away from the front door and went to the side gate, promising himself if it were locked, he’d drive away. He grabbed the latch, and the gate opened.
His heart rate jacked up. His stomach had been flipping and flopping since class. Now it performed a couple of back handsprings and topped it off with a cartwheel that left his head spinning. He caught his hand on the fence for support. Maybe this wasn’t his best idea.
But no, if he needed to apologize, he would. If he could salvage anything, he’d damn well try.
He walked through the side yard and turned the corner to find Demetri and another man relaxing in a couple of loungers, drinking beer.
“Hey,” Roman called out as he approached. He didn’t want to risk Demetri spotting him lurking in the shadows like some kind of creeper. Demetri and the other guy sat up, swinging their feet to the pool deck. “I tried the door, but there was no answer.”
Roman stopped a few feet from Demetri. Demetri still wore the clothes he’d had on in class, though he’d unbuttoned the top button, the collar of his shirt laying open, exposing his white T-shirt beneath.
Roman wanted to unbutton all those buttons and tug the undershirt out of Demetri’s pants and get him naked in the pool. A stupid fantasy. “I wanted to talk, but if... if you’d rather I go...”
Demetri sat there, his mouth hanging open in surprise. The man on the other lounger stood and offered his hand.
“I’m Joss Kincaid,
” the man said. “I’m the carpenter, and I was just leaving.”
“You don’t have to go,” Demetri said, more of a plea than an offer.
“I should get back up the hill. I’ve got some parachutes that need repair.” He patted Demetri on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
Roman waited until Joss disappeared inside before taking the abandoned lounger. “You wouldn’t answer my texts. What happened at the meeting. How much trouble are you in? Did you get suspended? Fired? Do you have any recourse, any way to let me speak to them and explain—”
“You going to let me talk sometime? Or should I let you keep going?” Demetri reached into a tiny cooler and handed Roman a bottle of whatever the two men had been drinking. “Here, I think you need this as much as I did.”
Roman tossed the bottle cap into the cooler on top of the half-melted ice. “Okay.” He took a sip and let the cold liquid slide down. “Talk.”
“It wasn’t me.”
It wasn’t him who wanted a relationship? It wasn’t him who’d made the first move? Tilting his head, Roman said, “What wasn’t you?”
“The professor who had an affair. Well, to be fair, it was, but it wasn’t me the department caught.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” Roman didn’t bother asking who. All that he cared about was that it hadn’t been them who’d been found out. Roman let his head fall between his shoulders, his stomach finally settling, and the knot of muscle at the back of his neck relaxing.
“I can’t...” In the quiet of the backyard, with nothing but a few insects and the low hum of the pool skimmer, Roman heard the quiver in Demetri’s voice. He glanced up, and Demetri’s confliction reflected back. “I can’t do this.”
“I get it.” Roman didn’t hesitate.
“It’s not what I want.”
“Same.”
“You’re not mad?”
Mad didn’t even register in his mix of turbulent emotions. Relief being the foremost. Sadness. Regret for what couldn’t be. At least not yet. “I’m not mad. I’m glad you didn’t lose your job. That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”