Chapter Thirteen
“So, I have to go home this weekend,” Brandon told Alex as they walked back to campus after spending a few hours in town.
“Okay.” Alex twisted his wrist around like some kind of ice cream contortionist, but he couldn’t stop it from dripping all over his hand. Vanilla drops rained on the sidewalk. He hastily slurped the other side of the cone to prevent disaster there. Then realized Brandon was looking at him funny. “Sorry. What?”
Brandon bit his lip.
Oh. The licking and the sucking and the omigod-vanilla-ice-cream noises he was making. He stuck his tongue out and lapped up the side of the cone. Slowly…slowly…catching a glob of ice cream on the tip of his tongue.
“Fuck,” Brandon whispered.
Alex was just wondering what other sexy things he could do with his ice cream when he tilted his wrist too far and the scoop fell off the cone and landed on the top of his shoe with a splat. “My ice cream! And my shoe!”
“Serves you right for playing with your food.”
“I think I was playing with you.” Alex dumped his cone in the closest trash can and wiped his sticky hands on his jeans. “So why are you going home this weekend?”
“It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary, and they’re renewing their vows. It’s kind of a big deal.”
“Cool. You’re not going to miss the Academic Challenge, are you?” They were up against the Tea Club next. Nobody had expected the Tea Club to make it this far, but they had some seriously smart people on their team. The competition was definitely getting, as Matt had said, to the pointy end.
“No, my sisters are picking me up on Saturday morning, and I’ll be back by Sunday night. I won’t miss anything.” Brandon flushed. “Except you.”
Nobody had ever said anything so sweet to Alex in his entire life. “Oh. Oh wow.”
Brandon’s face got even redder, and he stopped and looked in the window of a shop. “Anyway, I need to get them a present since I kind of flaked for my dad’s birthday and my sisters had to bail me out. But I have no idea what to get them.”
“What anniversary is it?”
“Twenty-fifth.”
Alex peered into the window beside him. “Yeah, I think that’s silver or gold or something. Not baby supplies. Omigod! Look at that cute octopus!”
“You don’t think you’re too old for a plastic octopus?”
“Brandon, its arms are xylophones.”
Brandon laughed, and bumped his hip against Alex’s.
A few shops down they found a jewelry store with a display of clocks in glass domes in the window.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What are your parents like?”
“Like…like parents, I guess. They’re nice, you know.”
Alex pointed out the photo frames. “You could get a frame and get it engraved. And put a picture of you and your sisters in it!”
Brandon moved away slightly. “I don’t know.”
“C’mon, it’s a great idea! I mean, you probably don’t have time to get a professional photo done with your sisters, but maybe you could find one from when you were kids. I bet you were the cutest little kid!”
“No!” Brandon’s face was suddenly shuttered. “I’m not doing that.”
Alex was confused. He reached out to touch his hand. “Why not? What’s wrong with my idea?”
“Ruined,” Brandon whispered, his hand trembling under Alex’s. “Don’t.”
Alex’s eyes pricked. “What? What am I ruining?”
A few minutes ago he’d been teasing Brandon with ice cream and octopus xylophones. He didn’t know how they’d got from there to here—wherever here was—so quickly. How could he be Brandon’s hero if he didn’t know what Brandon needed?
Brandon was staring at the ground. “This is Alex. Alex. Alex.”
“You’re scaring me,” Alex managed, his voice cracking.
Brandon pulled his hand away. He stared through the window at the clocks again. Squared his shoulders. “Sorry.” He didn’t look at Alex, and his voice was flat. “Sorry. I’m okay. The photo frame was a good idea. Maybe I can get it engraved and they can put their own photo in.”
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t Brandon. This wasn’t them. They weren’t back to where they were supposed to be yet. They were stuck in some weird mirror universe where everything looked almost the same at first, except everyone had goatees and turned out to be evil. “Brandon?”
“I’m sorry,” Brandon said to his reflection.
“Why won’t you look at me?” Alex hated the way his voice was shaking. He was scared though. Scared of whatever was hurting Brandon. Scared that they’d never be able to get back to ice creams and xylophones and an afternoon looking at the shops in town.
“I’m sorry.” Brandon turned his head at last. His eyes shone with tears. “I’m really sorry. I’m so fucking stressed right now. This thing with going home. I hate going home. They’re like—” He huffed out a breath. “I mean, I love my parents, but it’s like everything there is just like there. In my face, every second, you know?”
Alex had no idea what he was trying to say.
Brandon shook his head. Blinked, and a tear slid down his cheek. He made a face and scrubbed at the tear with the heel of his hand. “And my dad… God. He hasn’t looked me in the fucking eye in years, and now I’ve gotta tell him, t-tell him I’ve got a boyfriend. Everything he ever wanted for me, everything I ever wanted, I just disappoint him. Every time.”
“You don’t have to tell him.” Alex’s throat ached. “You don’t have to. Not until you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Alex wanted to cry too. He thought of Hannah from the GSA and the scar on her collarbone. Thought of all the kids he’d heard about with horror stories. “If you’re never ready, you’re never ready. I don’t care. If you want us to be a secret, we will be.”
“I don’t. I want to tell him, but I can’t. I can’t.”
Alex reached out and caught his hand. It was shaking. “Will he be angry? Or violent?”
“N-no!” Brandon’s chest heaved. “He… I miss him.”
Okay. Alex tried to think what he needed when he cried—which happened at the end of every Pixar movie ever and anytime he got less than an A on an assignment. He usually wanted a hug, but hugs made Brandon tense. So, um…be cool. Be cool and let Brandon talk. “What would happen if you told him that?” he asked gently.
Brandon drew a shaky breath and stared down the street. “I don’t know. I really don’t. He might not even know what I mean.” He paused, then said, voice barely audible, “That would be the worst, I think.”
Alex tried to imagine not being able to talk to his parents about something that was bothering him. Sometimes it was hard to bring things up with his mom, like wanting to go to Prescott instead of a state school or wanting to rush a fraternity—just because he knew she’d go off on a dramatic shouted monologue, complete with hand gestures. But she never meant anything by her rants, and she always settled down and listened eventually. And nothing he did ever seemed to disappoint her.
“You could try explaining it to him,” Alex offered lamely.
You could try explaining it to me.
“I might do that.” Brandon’s voice was still faint. He cleared his throat. “Could I, uh…could I call you after I talk to him?”
“Of course!”
“Thank you.” Brandon surprised Alex by turning and hugging him. Hard. He had to stoop to do it, and Alex got on his toes to help him out. They stayed like that awhile, in front of the store window. A lady with a dog walked past, and then a police officer on a bike, but nobody seemed to look twice at them. “Hi,” Brandon whispered finally in Alex’s ear.
Alex smiled into his shoulder. “Hi.”
“I promise I’m not crazy. It’s just a weird time.”
“I know.”
“Do you want that octopus?”
“Kinda.”
“Let’s get it.”
They went and bought the octopus. And bypassed the photo frames.
* * * *
On Thursday night, Alderaan Duran defeated Everything is Assam— “We wanted to be called the Tea Baggers, but the school said no”— by a narrow margin. Tony told Alex and Brandon they’d carried the team. Even Drew, who’d come out to support them, gave Brandon a high five, and pointed out that Phi Sig only had to win three more matches to qualify for the regional tournament, to be held this year at Penn State.
“Where they rape little kids and cover it up in the name of football!” Drew announced loudly.
Brandon was in too good a mood to go where that comment wanted to take him.
The match had been held in the Tea Club’s salon—striped wallpaper, with a border of hummingbirds and firebush. Decorative plates and flatware in glass cases. Mark, who claimed he was only there to scope out the competition—not to support Phi Sig—ended up in a lively postmatch discussion with Everything is Assam’s captain about the “pinky up” tradition.
“It’s not actually good manners,” the captain, Julie Brady, said. “That’s a misconception. See, in the Roman times, the elite ate with three fingers, and commoners with five. So some people think the pinky up is a bastardization of that idea.”
“So you don’t drink tea with your pinky up?” Mark asked.
“No.”
“So all those gestures I was doing on the sidelines, where I was miming sipping tea with my pinky up, that was probably pretty offensive?”
“I wasn’t personally offended. I just ignored you.”
“That’s what a lot of people try to do. My boyfriend says it’s hard because I’m so good-looking.”
“And so modest.”
“His words, not mine. So how do you drink tea?”
“We don’t really have any rules here,” Julie said. “People drink however they want. Sometimes we don’t even use tea cups.”
“Get out.”
“We just drink out of thermoses or to-go cups or whatever’s handy.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Hey, Cooper,” Brandon called, hoping to give poor Julie time to slip away. “Quit fraternizing with the competition.”
“Phi Sig is my only real enemy,” Mark called back. “Don’t think just because my own personal Ivan Drago dropped your team you’re not still number one on the Numbats’ shit list.” He turned back to Julie. “My team’s probably going to be disqualified before we face you, so I just want to say it was lovely meeting you.”
“You too.” Julie smiled.
“Does it give you, like, a very real pang of regret to think about Americans throwing all that perfectly good tea into the harbor?”
“Not really.”
“You’re a nation of wasters.”
Brandon took Mark by the elbow and steered him away.
“Will you read my tea leaves sometime?” Mark called.
“I don’t do that,” Julie called back.
“She’s really pretty,” Mark said to Brandon. “Good thing Deke’s prettier.”
“Have you ever met anyone you wouldn’t talk to?” Brandon asked.
“I don’t think so. My mum says I used to talk to a tree in our backyard. I named it Peppy.”
Brandon stationed Mark outside of the salon then went back to get Alex. Alex was in a corner talking to a couple of people Brandon didn’t recognize. Alex introduced them as Hannah and Scoops from the GSA.
Scoops. The name sounded familiar. Blake’s gay friend, Brandon remembered suddenly.
He felt a faint sinking in his stomach. He knew Alex went to GSA meetings, and he knew it was probably a great group that did awesome things. Brandon just wasn’t ready yet for all that…pride.
Brandon watched Alex say his good nights and wondered briefly what he’d do when all this was over. When he’d graduated and actually had to find something to do with an economics degree. When there weren’t any more dorm rooms or student centers or dining halls. When he didn’t have Mark or Deacon or Gavin, or…
Will I still have Alex?
Please say I’ll still have Alex.
That I’ll still have all of them. The things Brandon had taken for granted would last forever—his closeness with his father, the security of being a kid, being protected from the world’s evils—had slipped away too suddenly. The other night, Mark and Deacon had said they loved him. But for how long? For the few years they spent in college together, hammering out their beliefs, their characters, their futures—needing allies? Or forever?
Was it possible for anyone to love anyone forever?
“Brandon? You ready to go?”
No. The thought came to him suddenly, fiercely. I don’t want to go. I want to stay right here. You and Mark and everyone else—you’ll all move on and you’ll slowly forget what happened here. You’ll have grown-up lives, and this will all become a hazy good time—maybe you’ll recall one or two great stories to tell your kids and grandkids. But I’ll remember everything. Every good moment we had together. Every time I felt safe. I’ll know exactly what I’m missing when I don’t have it anymore. I’ll remember everything about you when you’re snapping your fingers ten years from now, trying to come up with my last name. “I dated this one guy, Brandon…Brandon…”
“Brandon?” Alex repeated. “Earth to Brandon Mills.”
“Mills, that’s it. Yeah, he was a weirdo.”
“Yeah.” Brandon tried to smile. “I’m ready.”
No use feeling sorry for himself. He had nearly three more years at Prescott to figure things out. To gather enough good memories that there wouldn’t be any room for the bad ones.
He was going to fucking enjoy himself.
* * * *
Friday night was the drag show, which, in Alex’s opinion, couldn’t have gone any better. Blake’s group, the Walnut Blondies, was easily the biggest hit of the evening. Alex was a little nervous about the number of student newspaper—and, holy shit—local newspaper staff in attendance, and the number of camera clicks he heard during the Walnut Blondies’ routine. But Blake didn’t look the slightest bit fazed, up there in his hot pink dress and massive platform shoes, lip synching with Stasia.
From where he was positioned with the soundboard in the wings, Alex could just glimpse Brandon, Mark, Deacon, and Chelsea sitting in a group to one side. Chelsea whooped louder than anyone while Blake was performing, and was the first on her feet during the standing ovation. The crowd was incredibly enthusiastic, and the show seemed to fly by. Alex cried a little during Samantha Shenning’s poignant dance to Sinatra’s “Cycles,” and Blake gave him a wad of tissues that had been stuffed in his bra.
Donations taken at the door, Gretel said afterward, had totaled over a thousand dollars.
Alex was still humming along to the music he’d heard when he went back to the Phi Sig house with Brandon. Gavin was out at a party, so they went up to Brandon’s room. They lay on Brandon’s bed and talked about the show, and how great everyone had been, until finally they ran out of things to say and they were kissing instead. Alex was startled when, after making out for a few minutes, Brandon started working his way lower.
“Omigod,” he whispered as Brandon slipped his boxers down. Brandon stared long enough for Alex to nearly have a meltdown—did Brandon think he was too small? Should he have shaved or something? Was it weird how his erection pointed straight out instead of up? Then Brandon tentatively closed his thumb and forefinger around the base of his dick, and it was all Alex could do to hold still. He was pretty sure if Brandon moved his fingers even a millimeter along his shaft, he’d come.
Slowly, Brandon leaned down and licked Alex’s cock. The sudden, wet heat made Alex squirm, and how had he not come instantly? Brandon Mills had his mouth on his dick! Alex’s brain short-circuited right about then, or melted or something. He moaned, and wondered if he was hallucinating. Brandon paused with his tongue against the head of Alex’s cock, and Alex had to look away, had to close his eyes and think of—of the Tea Club, of blowing his nose in Blake’s sweaty bra tissues, of what a hollow place the world would be if Emma Watson died suddenly of some freak cancer—anything but the way Brandon looked with his tongue on Alex’s dick.
“Is this okay?” Brandon whispered, looking up. His lips bumped the end of Alex’s dick. “If I do this?”
Alex nodded frantically. Omigod, if Brandon didn’t do it, nothing might ever be okay again. “If you want,” Alex forced himself to add. No pressure or anything, just, omigod, please…
“I want to,” Brandon said.
And he was just about to, when Tony’s voice called from downstairs, “Alex! Brandon! You’ve got to come see this.”
They both froze. Looked at each other. “We could ignore him,” Brandon said, pulling back slightly. But just then, Anabelle snuffled outside the door and nosed it open. She stared at them for a moment, then turned and waddled toward the stairs.
“Guys, seriously!” Tony said.
Alex pulled up his boxers. Brandon scrambled up. They both fumbled for their clothes. “Do I look, um…?” Alex gestured to the front of his sweatpants.
“Uh…here.” Brandon rummaged through his drawer and pulled out a T-shirt. “My shirt’ll come down farther on you.”
It was the shirt. The one Brandon had lent Alex the first day they’d met. Alex put it on, leaving it over his head long enough to get a good inhale.
They went downstairs.
In the living room, the TV was on, and several Phi Sigs were crowded around it. A local reporter with short dark hair stood beside an icon of a rainbow-colored football. “—dence that players like Dawson have made it possible for other gay athletes to come out.”
The camera cut to a young man about Blake’s size, wearing a Carnegie Mellon athletic shirt. He was identified as Garrett Armstrong, linebacker for the Tartans. “Yeah, when I heard that, like, Blake Dawson was bein’ totally open about it, I decided to stop hiding. My team’s been real supportive.” He smiled at the camera. Laughed. “I guess I gotta give Dawson props. Thank you, bro!”
Back to the reporter. “Blake Dawson isn’t the first openly gay college athlete, but it’s been particularly difficult for LGBTQ youth to find role models in football. According to Dawson, the time he spends active in his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance is invaluable.”
Cut to a shot of Blake in his partially unzipped dress at last weekend’s Drag Show rehearsal, talking to an interviewer. “Yeah, man, doin’ this show has been the most awesome thing, you know? It’s good for my playing too. ’Cause dancing’s a lot like football, except in football you’re trying to knock people over.”
“Omigod,” Alex said.
The reporter again. “Critics of Dawson and other openly gay athletes say that conversations about sexual orientation have no place in the sports world. They champion a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy among athletes.”
Cut to an interview with a beefy man with a white beard. “Why they gotta go grabbing the spotlight? Huh? It’s the game that matters, and they’re distracting other players, distracting the spectators, with their…with their coming out. Newsflash: We don’t care!” He wiped his hands on his pants. “Also, you gotta look at the colleges these guys are coming from. Carnegie Mellon, Prescott. These are small, liberal arts colleges. That’s where the gays flock to. The schools that are major contenders—D-1 schools—they don’t have gay players. So think about that.”
The reporter: “Despite some opposition, general public consensus seems to be that Blake Dawson is the hero who sports fans, gay and straight alike, have been waiting for. Back to you, Craig.”
“Holy shit,” Brandon said.
Tony turned to them. “Is Blake gay?”
“No,” Alex said. “But, um, everyone thinks he is. And, uh, Blake doesn’t know. I don’t think.”
“Oh, God.” Drew put a hand over his face. “Oh, I would kill to be there when he finds out about this.”
“He is gonna freak the fuck out if people think he’s gay,” Tony said.
“No.” Alex shook his head. “I don’t think he will.”
“Neither do I,” Brandon said.
“Blake is totally, one hundred percent okay with who he is. He doesn’t care what people think.” Alex paused. “I know it sounds weird—but that guy totally is a hero.”