I woke up early the next morning, like I always did, but this morning was different. This morning, my entire body ached in a good way. The entire room reeked like sweat and cum, but I was too warm and fuzzy to do anything about it. I’d expected Gabe to stop last night’s events before things went too far, but I’d never been happier to be proven wrong. We’d stopped short of full-on sex, but I no longer felt that was because he didn’t want to go all the way. After the first round of orgasms, which left us both sated and sleepy, we’d woken up in the night for round two. As we’d drifted off following round three a few hours ago, Gabe had promised we’d pick up where we left off, only leaving the room this weekend to eat. That sounded like a good plan to me.

The thought of food made my stomach rumble, a loud reminder that we’d skipped dinner last night. Gabe forgot all about ordering pizza after I’d tricked him into the shower with me, and we really hadn’t thought about anything other than being together after he dried me off.

As tempting as it was to throw on clothes and sneak down to the dining hall before anyone else woke up, I needed another shower. The downside of sex seemed to be the stench that remained when you were too exhausted to get up when it was done. I rummaged through my dresser for a change of clothes without turning on the light and sneaked into the bathroom, careful to not disturb Gabe. I’d bring back something he could eat when he awoke, but I knew better than to wake him when he didn’t have anywhere to be.

I tripped over my own feet when I came out of the dining hall to the sound of familiar voices. What the hell? It wasn’t even eight in the morning, which meant they had to have been on the road before six.

“Oh, Trevor!” My mom called out when she noticed me trying to right my tray before everything spilled to the floor.

“Mom, DeeDee, what are you doing here?” I asked. They absolutely could not come up to our room. They’d take one whiff and either figure out what we’d been doing or think one⁠—or both⁠—of us had company last night. Their natural assumption would be Gabe, but where I was the one awake and he was still sound asleep, they’d assume I was the one who had a late-night booty call. And then Mom would want to dissect the evening, asking who the lucky girl was, and I wasn’t ready to have that talk with her. Not yet. It’d have to be soon, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet.

“You didn’t come home this weekend, so we decided to make the drive down here,” Mom said, as though it was totally normal to get in the car before dawn to check on your son you haven’t seen in an entire week. We’d dutifully returned home every weekend so far this semester, even though Gabe complained there was no reason. It wasn’t like we were doing anything when we were there. It was all about proving to the moms that we were still alive and capable of taking care of ourselves. Six days apart, and she couldn’t help herself. She’d lose her mind if I wound up getting a job out of the Triangle area.

“Gabe forgot his laundry last weekend when you left, so I suggested to Gwen that we bring it down. We don’t want to monopolize your entire weekend, so we’ll be heading to an arts festival down by Sunset Beach a bit later.”

“You didn’t think it might be better to stop here on your way back?” Dang, Gabe was a bad influence; his snark was rubbing off on me.

“You’re always up early, so I didn’t think it’d be a problem.”

“Mom, I love you, but you can’t drop by unannounced.” The more I thought about what she might find upstairs, the more annoyed I became. Gabe was right; my mom had zero boundaries when it came to me. It was a good thing he was the person I wanted to be with because, otherwise, I’d have to worry about her pushing away any potential partners with her helicopter parenting.

“Well, maybe you’ll remember this the next time you decide at the last minute that you can’t be bothered to come home for the weekend. When you said you wanted to come to Wilmington for college, you promised you were going to visit.”

“And I have!” My voice echoed through the empty lobby. Mom flinched at the angry tone in my voice. “I never said I’d come home every single weekend. And even if I had, it’s not feasible with my schedule.”

“Are you having trouble? Do you need to drop a class or two?”

“I’ll be fine, but I need to focus. I can’t do that when we’re spending five hours every weekend in the car. That’s time I could spend reading or working on my assignments.”

“I can see your point,” Mom conceded. “But we haven’t even seen your room. We should’ve been here for move-in, then maybe you wouldn’t be stuck in a suite hall.” I doubted mom would be as upset about our living situation if she knew why we’d requested the hall we had. She should be grateful we were living in a suite, where we didn’t have the same ability to lock ourselves away from the rest of our classmates. Besides, once you took our relationship out of the equation, both Gabe and I were happy with where we lived. It was nice to not have to worry about using the same bathrooms and showers as the rest of an entire floor. Everyone in our suite seemed cool about keeping the commons areas picked up and cleaned. Sure, it’d be nice if I hadn’t somehow been put on permanent bathroom duty, but it was fine because at least then I knew we wouldn’t have a thick layer of funk by the end of the school year.

“You’re making it sound like we were assigned to a cardboard box. It’s a nice place,” I told her, waving my hand around as though I was giving her the grand tour.

“Good, then you won’t mind showing us where you live,” she responded with a satisfied smirk.

“Well, I sort of do. It’s early, it’s the weekend, and I’m pretty sure Gabe wouldn’t be happy about company when he’s sound asleep.”

“Well, he needs to get up, anyway,” DeeDee interjected. “It’ll do him no good to sleep the weekend away. I was hoping some of your good habits would rub off on him.”

“They are, just not waking up early. But I promise, he’s not planning to sleep all weekend. We were up late last night⁠—”

“Not at a party, I hope,” Mom interrupted. I wasn’t sure if I wished I’d stayed in bed or not. If I had, I wouldn’t be stuck down here trying to take on the team of moms, but at least we’d have been able to fight them together if they’d knocked on our door. Gabe was much better at smooth talking them.

“No, we weren’t at a party. Remember, homework. I have a paper due Monday morning and I’d assume he was doing the same.”

Guilt soured in my stomach. I didn’t outright lie to my parents. Sure, I’d kept things from them, but I’d always been taught that there was more trouble to be had when you lied than there was when you were honest. Lies had a way of compounding; you know, sort of like not telling them about my sexuality led to me not telling them I was attracted to my best friend, which meant I had to come up with a reason for attending UNCW when I’d always dreamed of going to Duke, and now I was lying about what had Gabe so exhausted this morning. I was a crappy son.

“Maybe we can let him sleep for a bit and go to breakfast. We could bring back something for him,” DeeDee suggested. I could’ve kissed her for stepping in to help with my mom. I wondered how panicked I must’ve looked for her to have such an abrupt change from insisting Gabe get his lazy butt out of bed. When my mom turned to assess our accommodations, DeeDee winked at me to tell me she knew something. But was she speculating or did she know about us? I wasn’t sure which I feared more.

“Actually, how about I run this upstairs. I’ll write him a note to text us when he gets up, and then we can take off. Maybe we can head down to the beach or something.” Playing tour guide wasn’t my idea of a fun Saturday morning when I’d been promised a weekend filled with sexual exploration, but it was light-years better than letting them walk into our room while it stank.

“Sure, honey.” DeeDee patted my cheek and told me she and mom would wait for me out front. Loved that woman hard.

I hammered on the call button for the elevator, willing it to hurry the hell up. As soon as the doors opened, I stepped inside and waited close enough to the door that I’d scare anyone who was waiting in the hall when they opened.

The door opened and I sprinted to our suite, tossing the tray of food on top of our nightstand dresser. “Babe, you gotta get up.”

“Go ’way,” Gabe grumbled, tucking the blanket over his head. “Too early.”

“I’m not playing, Gabe. You have to get your butt out of bed. I went down to grab breakfast since we skipped dinner, and I had an unpleasant surprise.”

Gabe shot upright. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? No one tried fucking with you, did they?”

“No, my knight in shining armor, nothing so pleasant,” I teased. Eventually, his incessant need to take care of me would grow old. I was totally capable of taking care of myself if I felt threatened. I didn’t need to call my boyfriend to my rescue. “The moms are here.”

“What do you mean they’re here?” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, reaching for the coffee he’d gotten used to me having ready for him when he woke up if I wasn’t already in class. I shook my head and crossed the room to start the brew as I explained the surprise attack this morning.

“They think you’re still asleep, so I’m going to go to breakfast with them and then maybe head down to the beach for a bit.”

“Why do you get to go for breakfast on their dime and I have to stay here?”

“Because while they complain to me about how we’re forgetting that we promised to visit, you’re going to clean the room. It stinks and we need to make sure there’s nothing we don’t want them to see. If they had their way, they’d have come up here with me.”

Gabe looked around the room as he sipped his coffee. “It’s not that bad in here.”

“No, but it stinks. Cleaning everything to make sure it passes a white glove test will make the room smell more like responsible adults and less like horny teenagers.”

“But we are horny teenagers,” Gabe argued.

“Yeah, but are you ready to tell your mom we’re screwing around?”

Gabe shrugged. Crap. Was he thinking about telling them the truth? No, he’d have told me if he was going to do anything like that. “We’re going to have to break it to them at some point.”

“Yeah, but do you want that to be what we do this weekend? Because you know they’re going to have plenty to say about it. My mom will cry because I didn’t tell her I was gay as soon as I knew, then she’ll lose her shit because I’m with you.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad.” Gabe tossed a pillow at me and I threw it back, nearly dumping his cup of coffee all over the bed.

“You know they’re not going to accept us being together. Even if both families are cool with us being gay, being gay together is totally different.” If I wasn’t careful, I was going to work myself into a full-blown panic attack. Every fear I had about our families finding out about our relationship came spewing out of my mouth.

Gabe set down his coffee and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me into the bed with him. He held me tightly, letting me vent all my anxiety. When I was done, he rubbed my back and kissed my shoulder. “Feel better. Now?”

“A little, yeah,” I admitted. Giving a voice to everything that’d been running through my mind should’ve compounded my fear, but instead, I realized partway through how ridiculous I sounded. Some of my worries were completely justified, but I knew, deep down, that Gabe would be there to help me face whatever came our way. “I’m sorry. I know you want us to say screw it to what everyone else thinks and do our own thing, but I’m not wired that way. As much as I care about you, I do worry about the family turning their backs on us because they think we’re freaks.”

“We’re not freaks, perverts, deviants, or anything else,” he said with conviction. “If anyone thinks that, that’s a failing on their part. Is our situation ideal? No. But you know what, every relationship has hurdles to jump. Ours just happen to be a bit higher and more complicated. But we’re worth it.”

“I know.” I sighed, wishing I didn’t have to get back downstairs to head out for breakfast. Even if we didn’t do anything else, laying here with Gabe was my idea of a perfect Saturday morning.

“But to answer the question that started this entire spiral, no, I’m not thinking about coming out to them anytime soon. I’m not stupid enough to think I’ll be able to hide the way I feel about you forever, but maybe by the time we’re ready to admit what’s been going on, they’ll have their suspicions and it won’t be a shock. They’ll see how we treat one another and they’ll eventually agree we’re what they always hoped for in partners for their kids.”

“Well, except the whole part where we’re guys. I don’t know about DeeDee and Joel, but my mom and dad weren’t dreaming of me falling in love with a man.” I decided against telling him I had a hunch his mom knew something was up.

“Is that your way of admitting you do love me?” His voice was more uncertain than I’d ever heard it.

“Did you doubt that I did?”

“Well, every time I brought it up, you changed the subject as quick as possible, so I wasn’t sure.” This raw vulnerability from Gabe was new. Unnerving. But also reassuring, because it proved the one thing I’d been on the fence about; there was no longer any doubt he was as serious about us as I was.

“I’ve loved you since before I knew how to put a name to the emotion. When other kids at school started talking about the girls they liked, I wished I could tell them I felt that way about you.”

“Damn, it’s too early for this many heavy conversations.” I glanced back and noticed Gabe’s eyes looked suspiciously shiny in the low light peeking between our curtains. “I’m glad you finally told me. That’s part of why I hadn’t wanted to do more than fool around with you. I told myself it’d be easier that way if you decided you wanted to see other people.”

“Never,” I assured him, nearly adding a quip about how I didn’t have time to date anyone who wasn’t sleeping in the same room as me to break the tension. I stopped myself, because I was beginning to see how fragile Gabe’s ego was when it came to us.

“As nice as this is, you should probably head back downstairs before your mom comes up to see if you got lost,” he told me, playfully pushing me out of the bed. “I’ll clean up, open the window, maybe find one of those air freshener things Seth sticks everywhere, and then I’ll text you.” He seemed determined to not let me down on this. He understood now just how much it’d messed with my head to think about our families finding out what we’d been getting up to since moving away from home, and I had faith he’d do everything in his power to help me keep us a secret until we were both ready to make a big announcement.