Love Is In the Title

by RJ Scott

  Luke sighed. He could never stay angry with Mitchell, but his friend’s behavior had pushed the limit, even for him. They had a bond, the two of them, a blood bond sealed at seven years old with a rusty penknife, and never broken before this time. And then, suddenly, Luke found out the bastard had known about Cameron and he’d never done so much as hint at a thing. Strong on the tail of that, he felt a sudden pride in his friend that he’d managed to keep what was clearly an important secret for so long.

  "I promise I won’t be angry with him," he lied, already imagining the sweet taste of revenge on his supposedly best friend. He understood the secrecy thing, but Mitchell still needed to suffer for teasing him.

  "I don’t want you and him to fall out over this."

  "We didn’t fall out over the great Millennium Falcon incident; we won’t fall out over a kept promise," Luke finally offered, and he returned Cameron’s easy smile.

  "Should I ask for details about the Millennium Falcon incident?" Luke smiled to himself, wondering if perhaps that was the revenge he could get on Mitchell. "Nah." He shook his head. "But it did involve a lot of glue."

  They exchanged smiles, Luke’s chest tightening at the expression on Cameron’s face. It changed right in front of his eyes from wry humor to lost and sad.

  "Can I be honest with you?" Cameron asked, leaning closer as if he didn’t want to be overheard. Considering only nocturnal wildlife might be listening in, it seemed like overkill, but Luke leaned in as well.

  "Any time."

  "I am not doing so well at the moment." The sadness in his words curled around Luke’s heart, and empathy welled inside him.

  "So why did you come out?" He stopped. He wanted to say this the right way. "I mean, why come out now? We don’t have too long to graduation, and college is a lot more…" How did he want to phrase this? He was hoping UVA was more liberal and he might finally be able to relax whenever he was around his peers.

  "I don’t know… It felt right. The guys on the team were railing on the whole brainy geek thing. They don’t get it. You and your friends are the ones who will go on and make a success of your lives, get degrees, careers. Then they started in on the gay crap." Cameron shrugged. "The floodgates opened. God, I shouted it so damn loud I’m surprised you didn’t hear it at home. Everything spilled out in this huge rush of admission, and it felt right. I’d been thinking about it for so long, and the secret was eating away at me, not to mention all the pretending. Faking it drove me nuts. At the end of the day, I didn’t want the secret anymore. It was all too much, the excuses not to have sex—"

  "The girls?" Luke interrupted seriously. Girls at Westmoreland had actual bitch fights to be the new other half of the rich and gorgeous Cameron Anders.

  "Yeah." Cameron grimaced and shuddered. "And the girls." Luke felt like he needed to take a breath, slow things down, and get his feet firmly back on terra firma. "So. You came out, your team is kinda pissed, and you wish they would come to terms with it. You blame yourself for the losing streak, when, in fact, it may simply be better teams and bad luck. Or something more likely is that your team acting like idiots and freaking out on you means you lose games. And you’re dreading when the announcement filters down to all the girls in the school."

  Cameron snorted another laugh and leaned in to bump shoulders again.

  "Kinda sums it up. It is starting to spread around the school. I’m surprised it has taken this long." He paused, leaning back to look up at the stars in the wide expanse of cloudless Virginia sky.

  "Guess the guys were embarrassed to admit their captain was a homo." Luke snorted his amusement, and for a few minutes, they shared laughter.

  "God, Luke. The pressure that went away when I told them was huge. I just wanted to be honest with myself and with others before I apply to UVA."

  "UVA? You want to go to UVA?" Luke hadn’t even begun to consider where the love of his life was going to be studying for the next four years. He’d always imagined the money in the Anders family meant Ivy League. His stomach clenched at the multitude of possibilities suddenly jockeying for position in his imagination. Was it possible that in the rarefied air of college the attraction he felt for Cam could be returned? Maybe if he made a "new" Luke, started to style his hair better, or tried to get some designer jeans or something?

  He had squirreled away the money he earned at the diner; he could spend it on being a new Luke. Maybe even be the type of guy Cam would want at college as a friend.

  He felt his breath hitch; the whole situation teetered on the edge of being too much to handle. Cameron talking to him was too much. Cam defending him to the jocks, announcing he was gay and then adding he planned to attend the same college? It was enough to make Luke ready to run. Nearly.

  However, Cameron kept on talking as if they were discussing the weather.

  "Yeah, UVA has sports science; it looks like a good major, and I’ve spent enough time in sports to see the benefit of it."

  "Me too. I want to go to UVA, I mean," Luke blurted, shut his eyes in sudden embarrassment then added quickly, "Not sports science, obviously." With his hands, he indicated the six foot, still-growing, gangly lack of coordination that was one Luke Holston. "Engineering and Applied Science," he finished with a flurry of hand motion and a grimace.

  "An engineer, eh? You always were the clever one," Cameron offered with a shoulder bump.

  "Meh," Luke replied, lamely. He cringed inwardly as he exposed his social skills for the pathetic heap of spazzing nonsense they were.

  "So, Luke, I have a question for you."

  "Yeah?" Luke was lulled into a false sense of security by Cam’s sexy voice.

  "I wondered how long you’ve been phoning the radio station."

  "About four months—" Shit. Luke’s jaw dropped, and he flushed bright red, feeling dumber than a box of rocks at his sheer stupidity. Shit. Shit. "I—" Shit.

  "Four months, eh? I’m guessing, since it’s you requesting them, and you are gay, that the songs aren’t for a girl?" Cameron sounded more amused than accusatory, more interested than astonished by what Luke knew was the sheer idiocy of phoning WXKV to request songs.

  "No, not a girl," Luke started, wanting to spit the whole thing out. To start from the beginning and get the entire sorry mess out in the open. His pining away for the straight football captain, who Mitchell said was bi, who was now revealed to be actually gay. The same boy who was sitting next to him and asking him the most leading questions of his whole eighteen years.

  "So tell me, Luke. Tell me if I am wrong here…" Cameron leaned forward, a half hopeful look on his face. "I don’t want to look stupid, so please don’t laugh, but…" He ducked his head in clear embarrassment. "Were those song requests for me?"

  Luke wanted to die. He wanted to curl up in a small ball of misery and be left to expire and turn into a pile of mulch in the park. How the fuck was he supposed to answer that one? If he admitted Cameron was right, it would leave him open to more teasing. He could lie and tell Cameron he was wrong. That would be the end of everything as far as Luke was concerned. Cameron looked pathetically hopeful, his eyes wide with expectation, his soft lips parted on a breath. There was nothing else Luke could say.

  "Yes, they were." He shivered, more from the extremes of his emotions than the cold, but Cameron seemed to notice. Saying nothing, Cameron slipped off his letterman jacket, black and white and emblazoned with the school crest, and leaned over to place it around Luke’s shoulders. Luke could feel the puff of Cameron’s breath against his neck, could smell the scent of shower gel and something else, something he assumed was uniquely Cameron, and he shivered again. He pulled back with a sudden question at the front of his mind.

  "How did you know I was…" looking at you, loving you, wanting you.

  "I see you in the hall. You’re always listening to music."

  Luke shrugged at this comment. He used music to block out the shit that sometimes got thrown his way. That didn’t immediately in his head lead to making his crush
on Cameron in any way obvious.

  But then Cameron continued, "I used to catch you looking at me sometimes. With this whole big-eyed look of confusion on your face. It was cute." Cameron smiled at him, and all Luke could do was blush. He was never gladder for the dim streetlight that would hide the rising stain on his skin.

  "Pathetic more like," he finally offered, "if I made it that obvious."

  "You don’t get it, Luke." Cameron hesitated. He entwined his fingers with Luke’s and laughed low and soft. "I only saw you looking at me ‘cause I was watching you back."

  "Oh." Well, that sounded more on the cool side than the pathetic.

  "Luke," Cameron said quietly, leaning in closer still, until only a breath separated them, "will you go out with me?"

  "On a—on a—a date?" Luke stuttered, wishing for just once his grasp of the English language wasn’t so feeble when he was in shock. Then he blinked.

  Suddenly he wished Cameron would close the small gap and kiss him, so he could see what it was like. It never occurred to Luke to lean forward and take the initiative, though he had gone so much further than mere kissing in his fantasies.

  "On a date," Cameron confirmed. "Saturday, me and you, the movies, holding hands in the dark, popcorn, maybe some kissing?"

  "Kissing?" Luke wasn’t sure if his voice could get any higher, and he coughed to clear the tightness in his throat.

  Cameron moved an extra tiny bit, placing a gentle kiss on Luke’s lips, soft, dry, nothing hard or pushy, and Luke kind of melted there and then. He chased the kiss as Cameron moved back, his fingers, of their own accord, reaching to touch Cameron’s smooth skin. When he tilted his head to expand the kiss, Cameron obliged, tongue parting his lips as he tasted Luke for the first time.

  Breathless, Luke pulled back. This time Cameron chased the kiss. For hours then, after texting their parents and reassuring them that they were okay, they sat in the dark, in the quiet park, kissing and talking low about math, Cam’s ex-girlfriends, football, being a senior, and their upcoming first year of college.

  "Last week, Mitchell said he thought he was bi," Luke said. "He was playing me, wasn’t he?"

  "How much trouble is he in if I tell you he most likely was? I can honestly tell you I do not want to get into Mitchell’s pants."

  "I’m extremely grateful for that."

  They talked about the songs Luke had chosen and why, starting with the first one. "It was this song I heard, and you’d come into school and you looked so unhappy."

  "What was that one?"

  "Kind of obscure, an old song by Gene Pitney, ‘Just One Smile’."

  "I don’t remember hearing it. You really call the station every week?"

  "Every Friday. Music is kind of a hobby of mine. I have songs for all situations."

  They chatted about each event in Cameron’s life that made Luke love him from afar, and about how much each song meant to Cameron when he heard it play. They talked for a long time, huddled close together on the bench, Luke’s butt having gone numb some time before.

  "So, I have a question. Well, more of a statement, I guess," Luke finally said. He knew they needed to get this out of the way if they were going to move this thing forward. He was dreading the answer, but he couldn’t wait to ask for another day.

  "Go on."

  "Cam… look, no one needs to know about us. It won’t bother me if you don’t talk to me at school; I get it will be difficult for you." Even though he’d said it, there was a desperate hope that Cam was going to shoot the statement down in flames.

  After a moment’s hesitation in which Luke imagined every possible scenario of what he would say, Cam said, "Fuck that. First thing Monday, we are walking into school holding hands."

  "We can’t do that! We’d get so much shit." Luke’s voice held a definite squeak.

  "Luke…" Cameron had a wide-eyed expression, as if he couldn’t believe what Luke had just said. "You’re like this tall, super brilliant giant, and I’m a freaking football quarterback. We’ve got brains and brawn between us. How much damage can they do if we’re together?"

  Cam made it seem so easy, but Luke wasn’t naive. The other boy was new to people knowing he wasn’t straight, and he hadn’t experienced all the things in life that Luke had. They weren’t always going to be together in the corridors, but now wasn’t the time to break Cam’s illusions that it was all going to be easy.

  Being labeled as boyfriends, they would have to weather an awful lot. Taunts, sly comments, out and out hostility, and it would start with the wrath of ninety percent of the entire football team. Still, being together, being strong was a freaking good start, and Luke wasn’t entirely scared. Cam clearly had a different approach to life, and Luke considered that he might have a valid point or two.

  Maybe he should stand taller in the corridors. It was certainly possible with Cam at his side.

  As dawn colored the sky with a pale pink light, they talked about Forever, and how much of Forever two eighteen-year-old boys had left, with college around the corner and the world at their feet.

  And the song list in Luke’s head, the songs that never failed to remind him of Cam, changed in that early morning. He smiled inwardly when he realized a very important thing.

  Every single one of the new songs had love somewhere in the title.

  THE END

  You can contact RJ Scott via email - rj@rjscott.co.uk or visit her website - www.rjscott.co.uk

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