Out in the Open

by A. J. Truman

  He shot Lorna a crooked half-smile. Ethan was in a relationship with a hot, smart, funny guy who seemed to get him. He knew that was rare to find, especially in college. It should have been enough, but something nagged at him. Something tugged at the one loose string in this perfectly knit union.

  He tossed his spoon into the dish, clanging against the glass. “Thanks for dinner.”

  Φ

  Ethan knew Lorna would be at her sorority house for most of the night. It gave him the perfect opportunity to check in on her roommate. He shook out his hand and psyched himself up before knocking on Jessica’s door.

  “Lorna isn’t here.” Jessica wore her favorite Browerton sweater and flannel pajamas, as well as Ethan’s least favorite facial expression: the face pinch. Jessica immediately had her walls up.

  Ethan couldn’t let that stop him.

  “I’m sorry about getting drunk in your room with Lorna.” He searched for the right words, without letting on that he knew about her dad. “I know you don’t like drinking, and I should have respected that in here.”

  He could almost hear her wall cracking slightly, the bricks scraping apart.

  “I appreciate that.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I got real sick the next morning.”

  “Preston told me. He said he’s never heard such violent throwing up before, and he spent a summer as a camp medic.” Jessica took her hand off the door, which Ethan took as a cue to enter. Neither of them chose to sit. Ethan’s nerves kept him upright, and he assumed the same for her.

  “Did you really think that we would actively exclude you when we went out?” Jessica asked, almost hurt. “You’re my friend.”

  Ethan’s throat tightened, and tears blurred his vision. The good kind of tears. He didn’t realize how much those words could mean.

  “You didn’t know me in high school,” Ethan said in a scratchy voice. “I got excluded a lot.”

  He realized that he was sensitive about being left out in the same way that she was sensitive about getting drunk. To the outside world, they were weird quirks, but to friends, they made perfect sense. The past was always in their present.

  He refused to wait for cues or for walls to come down. He hugged her—lightly at first until she squeezed him back.

  “How did you know we were at the movies?” she asked him.

  Ethan stammered for a second and hoped she didn’t catch it. “I saw you guys go into the theater.”

  “But how did you know we saw Liberation?” She was going to make a fantastic journalist.

  They were friends, and friends deserved the truth.

  “I was in that showing, in the back row. Hooking up with a guy.”

  Her eyes nearly flew out of their sockets. The girl who loved to argue was rendered speechless. She made sure to close the door before asking in a hushed tone, “What do you mean by hooking up, exactly?”

  How much truth did Jessica deserve? Ethan worried about her response. His arrangement with Greg was a lot of truth bombs to absorb and completely went against everything she knew about him. But if she’s really my friend, then she’s not going anywhere. Ethan sucked in a deep breath and gobbled up his remaining courage.

  “He gave me slob—a blowjob.”

  That she had to sit down for. Ethan stared at the floor and stretches of carpet peeked out from Jessica’s mess.

  “I’ve been hooking up with this fraternislut—this guy—around campus. An empty office, the library, Slevin concert hall.”

  “I’ve seen shows there!” she said in a sharp how-dare-you tone. Her words sent a burn through his chest. In that moment, though, Ethan didn’t regret telling her. If this was how their friendship would end, at least he didn’t blend into the background and let himself fade away.

  Nobody said anything. The dorm was too quiet. The silence gnawed at Ethan’s ears.

  And then a laugh busted out of Jessica’s mouth. Even she seemed surprised at it. “Wow.”

  “I know. I can’t believe it either.”

  “Well, um…” Her eyebrows wiggled around her forehead as she searched for an answer. She settled into a state of calm and looked Ethan in the eye. “Good for you.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ve been acting different, but you also seem happier. You’ve had this glow about you.”

  “Fresher?” He remembered Lorna’s word choice, and it felt more than applicable.

  “Yeah, that’s a good word for it. At first, I thought it was the booze or drugs. I’m glad it’s something else. You really seem to like him.”

  Ethan had never seen her act so genuine, so caring. He couldn’t believe she saw all of that. He was happier with Greg, and not just because of the sex or the secrecy. Just being around him lifted Ethan up.

  “I really do,” he said. “So we’re good?”

  “Yes. I’m still a little creeped out that you were getting some a few rows behind us, and you can save all the gory details for Lorna.” There was that laugh again. “But yes.”

  A tsunami of relief washed over him. Things were good between them, better than they’d ever been before. As much as Ethan enjoyed having his dirty little secret, honesty felt much more satisfying.

  “Maybe I can meet this guy soon,” she said.

  Determination gelled within him. “Maybe you will.”

  CHAPTER twenty-eight

  The frat quad was strangely quiet tonight. No fraternities threw parties on Monday nights. It was the start of the week and, for them, a recovery night from the weekend. A few students ambled along the paths, but it was pretty much tumbleweeds as Ethan walked up to Kappa Kappa Sigma. He still felt nervous entering North Campus. It would forever be forbidden territory to him.

  He knocked on the front door.

  “Ethan!” Sahil greeted him warmly, but not in his rowdy party voice. He had on reading glasses. Even frat boys needed to study.

  “Hey. Is Greg home?”

  “Yeah, he’s in his room, I think. What’s up?”

  Ethan swallowed a lump in his throat. “I need to ask him a question about our Constitutional Law class.”

  Ethan entered his second Greek house of the night. He was becoming a pro. He couldn’t believe that he’d been here not too long ago. The place looked completely different in the light. The living room was full of comfortable couches surrounding a big screen TV where some guys watched football. Two extremely tall brothers played pool. In the dining room, he witnessed a study group in action. A study group! The sordid, private lives of fraternity boys. He chuckled to himself.

  “Oh, Lorna left her scarf here during that party. Don’t tell her, but one of my buddies accidentally threw up on it. I got it dry cleaned. Can you bring it back to her?”

  “Sure.” Ethan was shocked that Sahil knew about dry cleaning. Geez, they’re in a fraternity, Ethan, not savages. “So what’s the deal with you two?”

  “She’s, like, my one female friend. With a little bit of benefits when we’re both drunk.”

  Ethan held up his hand. He got it. He didn’t need to hear about Lorna’s sex life secondhand.

  They traveled upstairs to the row of bedrooms. Memories flooded Ethan’s mind of his drunken escapades. He really hoped no pictures circulated from his “sexy” photo shoot on Greg’s bed.

  “I’ll grab that scarf,” Sahil said, but Ethan wasn’t listening. He was preparing himself for Greg, getting a speech in his head ready.

  He knocked softly.

  “Folly?” Greg wore ratty mesh shorts and a Browerton T-shirt. Ethan held back a laugh. It was a total peek behind the curtain at the Kappa house tonight.

  “Can we talk?”

  Ethan stepped inside and closed the door. Greg pulled him in for a kiss, a deep kiss that you needed your whole body to receive. Greg’s lips on his scrambled his circuits momentarily.

  “This is a pleasant surprise,” Greg said.

  Ethan tried to slip his hands under Greg’s shirt, but Greg rebuffed him. He looked behin
d him, double-checking that the door was shut.

  And Ethan remembered exactly why he’d trudged up to the frat quad on a Monday night. “I can’t do this. I can’t be your permanent secret.”

  Tears blurred his vision. He thought he could hold them in longer, but putting this relationship on the line had sent him through the ringer.

  “Folly.” Greg wiped a tear off Ethan’s cheek. “What’s going on?”

  “I like you, Greg. I want to be with you, but how long will I have to wait?”

  “I don’t know.” Greg stumbled backward to his bed. Ethan knew that he wouldn’t be joining him there. “I thought you were okay with this. We’re each other’s dirty little secrets. I thought you were okay with that for now.”

  “You’re not my secret anymore.”

  “You told your lame friends?”

  “They’re not lame!” Ethan shouted. Jessica seemed to appreciate Ethan and Greg’s relationship more than Greg. She knew that it had changed him for the better, and she didn’t want him to hide. Ethan fumed with anger. Greg was being the lame one.

  Another pair of tears rolled down his cheeks. He wanted to stop crying, and he was hurt that Greg didn’t start. “I can’t keep living a secret life. I’ve done that for so long. Not with you, but with myself. I always kept a part of myself hidden from others, scared that they would reject me if I showed them the real me. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to filter and second-guess everything I say whenever I’m in public. I don’t want to tell your fraternity brothers that I have a question on the homework every time I want to see you.” The tears kept coming, flowing like a babbling brook. “You think what we were doing was like a fuck you to Browerton, but only you can hear it. Your dad can’t hear it, your brothers can’t hear it, Professor Sharpe can’t hear it. If you want to shake things up with them, then do it already. Sneaking around isn’t a fuck you to them; it’s a fuck you to me!”

  Greg stood up and wrapped him in a hug. Ethan breathed in his scent. “Calm down, calm down.”

  “Are you happy, Greg? Like this?”

  “I’m happy with you.”

  “In private?”

  “All the time.” Greg hugged him harder. Ethan felt his muscles pushing against his frame. “Come on, I hate seeing you cry.”

  Greg kept one arm around him while he wiped Ethan’s face off with his shirt. Ethan knew he couldn’t force him to come out, but he was glad that he’d let himself be heard. He sank into this moment.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes. Ethan caught flecks of green sprinkled in the dark brown. Greg lowered his face to Ethan’s and kissed him again, this time softer, telling him everything he couldn’t say aloud. Ethan savored every moment it.

  “Hey, Ethan—”

  Sahil stood in the doorway, Lorna’s scarf in hand.

  Greg’s eyes went wide with shock and fear. Sahil’s jaw swung open. They were three deer caught in each other’s headlights.

  “Sorry.” Sahil placed the scarf on Greg’s desk and shut the door.

  Ethan glanced up at Greg, who kept staring. He was a stone statue, and Ethan had to untangle himself from his arms.

  “It’s okay. He didn’t see anything. He thought he saw something, but he didn’t,” Ethan said. He took a step back to examine his immobile boyfriend. “Greg?”

  “Fuck,” Greg whispered. Movement slowly returned to his body. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, FUCK.” He faced out the window. Ethan could make out his pummeled expression in the reflection.

  “It’s okay, Greg.”

  “Fuck. Holy shit.” Greg heaved in deep breaths of air.

  “Calm down. It’ll be okay, Greg. Sahil will be cool.”

  Greg pivoted around and stared daggers. “How the fuck would you know? My life here is ruined.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you plan this?”

  “What? No.”

  “I said I needed time, and you just pushed. Who gives a fuck what I’m feeling and thinking? You couldn’t bear the secret. Even though you get to go home to your hippy dippy South Campus life, and I live here 24/7. This is my life, and it’s all gone. But you couldn’t bear the secret.”

  Ethan broke out into tears again. Greg wasn’t that far behind him.

  “You wanted Sahil to catch us, didn’t you?”

  “No! I didn’t plan anything. I just wanted to talk.”

  “I am so fucked, Ethan.” Greg paced around his half of the room.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  Greg didn’t say anything. He kept pacing. The pin in his grenade had been ripped out.

  “I’m so sorry, Greg.”

  Every muscle in Greg’s body tensed. His short, labored breaths were the only noise in the room.

  “Greg?”

  With a sweeping arm, Greg knocked all of his bobbleheads to the ground. The pieces crashed and clanged against each other. Ethan felt a part of him crash with them.

  “Just get out. GET OUT.”

  Ethan raced down the hall, past the studiers and TV watchers, and bolted into the peaceful frat quad. He’d never thought the most drama in North Campus would stem from his own life.

  CHAPTER twenty-nine

  Ethan dreaded the awkwardness that awaited him in Constitutional Law class on Tuesday. Even standing on the opposite side of the room like he’d done before wouldn’t be enough to stifle the weirdness between him and Greg.

  Luckily for him, it wasn’t an issue. Greg wasn’t in class.

  Ethan sat next to his empty chair. He didn’t have to worry about being distracted by Greg on his phone, by his snoring, by his tart comments. Nope.

  No distractions.

  No awkwardness.

  No Greg.

  Ethan slumped down in his chair. He took notes, but only every third sentence or so. He wasn’t keeping track. He knew he could get the notes online, that Professor Sharpe never veered.

  Greg had taught him that. Ethan felt cold all of a sudden, like he’d just discovered a hole within him. A frown weighed down his face.

  The sound of the bobbleheads slamming to the floor reverberated in his head. Louder and louder. Like cymbals in a messed-up symphony.

  Maybe Greg was right. I said I needed time, and you just pushed.

  What they’d had hadn’t been terrible. But Ethan wasn’t happy, and he knew that, deep down, Greg wasn’t either. People with double lives were never happy; they were too exhausted covering their tracks.

  The annoying girl in front of him turned around and seemed to be looking for something.

  “What?” Ethan asked.

  “It’s so quiet back here. It’s weird.”

  Yes, it was. But weird would have to be the new normal for Ethan.

  Φ

  Ethan attended the off-campus Halloween party thrown by Lorna’s sorority sister. They trudged through downtown Duncannon in the kind of cold rain that was mere degrees from ice. Each drop pricked at Ethan’s skin. Lorna shivered in her sexy bee costume, while Ethan had chosen to wear comfortable overalls for a non-sexy farmer getup. He offered her his straw hat, but she declined.

  “I don’t want to mess up my hair.” She clutched her umbrella to her chest. “Why didn’t I go to school in Florida?”

  “Hurricanes, humidity, and hillbillies.”

  “Right.”

  They scurried past the quiet, darkened storefronts of the town. Ethan felt like he was one virgin away from being in a horror flick.

  Music thumped from the apartment complex. Kids smoked on the back porch. This was the place to be on Halloween night.

  “So have you spoken to Sahil?” Ethan asked.

  “I tried asking about what happened, but he refused to talk about it. Probably some bro code bullshit.”

  Or he wanted to spare Ethan’s feelings. If Greg hated him and never wanted to speak to him again, he didn’t need to go through a messenger to get the point across.

  They climbed three flights of rickety wooden steps to reach the party.
Ethan passed through a nuclear mushroom cloud of cigarette smoke. A skull-and-pumpkin doorframe decoration welcomed them. Apartment parties were different than frat parties. The music wasn’t as loud and came from someone’s computer rather than a sound system. People seemed to have more genuine conversations, huddled in hallways and corners. The only thing the parties had in common was alcohol.

  Lorna scooped a cup of Halloween punch for her and Ethan. He figured it was probably jungle juice tinted orange.

  She raised her glass. “Chug on the count of three?”

  “Actually, I’m going to nurse this one.”

  “Suit yourself.” They clinked cups, and Ethan sipped his drink while Lorna’s disappeared.

  Ethan didn’t feel like getting drunk. Tonight, he promised to pace himself. All the times he’d drank, he’d gotten drunk. Really drunk. He wanted to try just getting buzzed. He didn’t have to be a loud mess every time he consumed liquor.

  They meandered into the dining room, where people talked around the table, yet nobody sat. June, whose ample cleavage was on display in a slutty Ragged Ann costume, chatted with a thin, kind of short guy who made up for his height with lush, wavy brown hair and thick eyebrows.

  “Hey guys,” Lorna said.

  “Hi Ethan! Twice in one week!” June said. “This is my friend Henry.”

  He and Ethan shook hands. That explains why we made a beeline for the dining room. Had all that shit not gone down with Greg so recently, perhaps Ethan would have been interested in being set up. But right now, looking for love was at the bottom of his list. He still hoped that he and Greg could patch things up. He didn’t know if he was being a fool, but he would let himself have this time to remain optimistic.

  The girls, of course, had to go to the bathroom, leaving him and Henry alone. Ethan wound up consuming drink one faster than he had hoped.

  “So where’s your costume?” Ethan asked.

  “I’m dressed up as a straight guy.”

  “Where’d you find the costume?”

  “My roommate’s closet.”

  Ethan laughed as he took another sip. Henry had a beautiful face, with high cheekbones and delicate skin. He belonged in fashion magazines, not in a grungy college apartment. They had a brief conversation about majors and where they were from and if Ethan knew his camp friend who was from Seattle. He didn’t.