EIGHTEEN

 

 

One thing had become very clear to Tristan as the days wore on, and that was that he needed to warn Grant.

Sure, part of him, some petty, immature part, though that it might be sort of funny for Grant to be caught by this prank. High and mighty, judgmental Grant, Grant who thought he was too good for Tristan, who had broken Tristan’s heart so completely, he could stand to be pulled down a peg or two, right?

And it was a stupid prank, anyway. Immature as hell. No one would get hurt by it. Or so Tristan could console himself, but then, he knew very well how proud Grant was. How hard he had worked to fit in here, how cruel a trick this would be.

So what? Tristan argued with himself even as he made his way through the hallways of the frat house, frowning at his own inability to let this go. It wasn’t his problem. Grant’s life, Grant’s pride, it was none of Tristan’s business, because Grant had made it very clear that he didn’t want it to be. It hadn’t been Tristan that left.

But nothing had changed, not really. Tristan still loved him. Even as time went on, even as Tristan tried to bury himself in his school work, he found himself utterly unable to move on. Maybe giving in to this nagging urge and letting Grant know, strictly below the radar, of course, that this stupid prank was incoming, maybe that would finally help him to move on.

One thing that he probably should have remembered from his all too brief stint as Grant’s roommate was that Grant could be a difficult man to get ahold of. When he poked his head into the room that Grant was now sharing with Manny, the tall, handsome, blond quarterback was nowhere to be seen.

Too bad. He wasn’t even going to get any eye candy out of this, it seemed. Damn it. The party was only a few days away. He didn’t have forever to have this out. He could text Grant, he supposed, but it seemed awfully impersonal. Besides, as he poked his head in, he couldn’t help but notice that Grant’s phone was plugged neatly in beside his bed.

Grant could ignore his phone for days at a time. He could legitimately just not look at it until after the party, and that would be completely in character for him.

“Uh, what’s up, bro?” Manny asked, and Tristan tried not to roll his eyes. He even mostly succeeded. He had nothing against Manny, who seemed like a decent human being, and who hadn’t been anything but friendly to Tristan the entire time that he’d known him.

“Is Grant around?” Tristan asked as he slipped into the room as Manny waved him in. They weren’t really very close, he and Manny, but the guy was friendly and open with everyone. He genuinely seemed to like everyone, and people tended to like him in return.

“Grant? Nah. He’s at work.” Manny shrugged and gave a slightly cautious, but friendly, grin. “He’s usually at work. Why, do you need to talk to him?”

Tristan held back a derisive snort. He could talk Manny’s ear off if he let himself. Just chatter at him, tell him how he was in love with Grant, how he missed him, how he was desperate to see him, to talk to him, again. It was actually a little pathetic. Tristan would never have thought of himself as the sort of guy who couldn’t get over an ex, if that’s what he and Grant even counted as.

“I have to tell him something,” Tristan managed to be somewhat cautious. Because while Manny was friendly and open, he also had a reputation as a bit of a gossip. Not in a malicious way, he just liked to talk. Tristan could relate, at least a little bit.

“Is it about the party?”

Tristan blinked as he perched cautiously on the edge of Grant’s bed. It felt too good to be there, and it was momentarily distracting. Grant’s warm, spicy, masculine scent rose around him and for a moment, for just a second or two, it felt almost like he was back in Grant’s arms.

It had been the only time in his life that he could really remember feeling safe, when Grant held him. And it had all been a lie. But Manny’s eyes called him back to himself, and he pulled himself forcefully away from the allure of Grant’s scent, not allowing himself to notice it.

“Maybe.”

They were both being so cautious, and it really wasn’t like either of them. Something had to give, and just as Tristan was deciding that it was worth the risk, that Manny seemed to have some genuine affection for Grant, Manny spoke again.

“Look, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Grant, too. But he doesn’t answer his phone. He doesn’t even bring it with him half the damn time,” Manny grumbled. “I keep missing him. So maybe you’ll catch him, and you can warn him.”

Tristan frowned and leaned forward, suddenly much more alert, more intensely focused on Manny. Warn him? A lot of his wariness eased because it seemed like he and Manny had the same end goal here.

“I came to warn him, too,” he admitted. “About Warren, and the party.” Warren had, he remembered, mentioned that some of the other guys had been in on this, too. Was this Manny getting cold feet about the whole thing, thinking better of it just like Tristan was?

Manny sighed and shook his head, his cheerful, pleasant face much more solemn than he usually let himself be.

“Yeah. It’s so stupid. Sometimes I wonder when Warren is gonna grow up.” Manny gave a helpless little shrug, and Tristan empathized with that a little bit too much. Warren’s ridiculous shenanigans were getting old, for sure. “I mean, the Carrie glitter bucket was bad enough, but there’s the banner now, too. I think it’s just going one step too far.”

Something about that one seemingly innocuous little word, banner, seemed to freeze Tristan right through his whole body, right into the very center of himself. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Manny because he hadn’t heard anything about any damn banner.

“What banner?” he asked, and the terrible, sickening sensation deep in the pit of his stomach only deepened as Manny spoke again.

“I thought you knew about it. Warren said you did.” Manny peered suspiciously at Tristan as Tristan silently shook his head, and then Manny frowned deeply. “I caught Warren making it. He said that I was the only one that wasn’t in on it.”

That sounded achingly familiar to Tristan. Warren had told him, too, that everyone else was in on it. Funny how he hadn’t even thought to check until now.

“What banner?” he repeated, feeling like a broken record, his mind skipping recklessly over the same question over and over again.

“I don’t want to say the word,” Manny spoke reluctantly. “But it’s a pretty rude one. You know, to call someone gay.”

Oh, God.

Somehow, he had known it would be something like this. Something deep inside him, some shrinking, scared part of himself which was always so terrified to be caught, had been screaming at him that he was in danger.

But it wasn’t him. Or not really, not directly. No, it was just the man that he loved. Somehow, that wasn’t actually any better.

Grant had so much on the line, though, and he worked so hard that it actually sort of blew Tristan’s mind away. He shook his head, not because he didn’t understand Manny, nor even because he didn’t believe him, but just in sheer denial that such a thing could happen to Grant.

Not with how much of himself Grant had given. His whole being cried out against it.

“We have to warn him.” Tristan was shaking, he realized. It didn’t seem to matter. He was acting suspicious, and Manny wasn’t actually stupid. It was easy to think that he was, with his cheerful grin and round, pleasant face. But it just didn’t seem to matter that much.

“Why do you care so much?” Manny asked, and he didn’t sound exactly hostile. He probably didn’t actually have hostility in him. If anything, he sounded surprised, and maybe just a tiny bit suspicious, and it was only then that Tristan put the pieces together and realized that Manny thought he was in on this. That he was a part of something so reprehensible, and toward someone that Tristan loved.

And he wasn’t even sure he could blame the man. When had Tristan ever been willing to show anyone that he cared about Grant? Or about anyone? Old habits die hard, they said, and that had never seemed so true to him as when he realized what he had been doing all this time.

“Because,” Tristan found himself saying, found his mouth running away with him, in the same way that had gotten him into trouble back at his first high school before he had learned his lesson, or when he should have learned his lesson, anyway. “I love him.”

When he heard the words in his own voice, when he realized that he hadn’t simply thought the words but actually spoken them aloud, he clapped his hand over his mouth and stared at Manny. This was when the punching started, in his experience. Manny didn’t seem like the sort of guy who would get too homophobic about it, but sometimes, it was hard to tell until a person was actually faced with it.

“Oh,” Manny commented, drawling out the word in a tone of sudden understanding, as Tristan looked at him, horrified by what he’d let out. “That explains it.”

Now, what the hell was Tristan supposed to make of that? That explained it? It wasn’t like he’d wanted to be beaten up or anything, but that, at least, he would have known how to deal with. That, he had experience with. Someone who just made understanding noises, that he had no knowledge of at all.

“What do you mean, that explains it?” Tristan demanded. “That explains what?”

“It explains lots of stuff,” Manny told him, his tone patient in a way that normally would have infuriated Tristan but there were too many other things going on right now for him to worry about something relatively small like that. “Why you switched rooms. Why he’s been bummed. You guys must have broken up or something, right?”

Manny was talking as though breaking up with another man, and therefore, by extension, dating another man, was a totally normal part of life. Like it was no big deal.

Like he would talk about it if Tristan had been dating a woman. Like it was every bit as legitimate. It was just like what Tristan had hoped, deep down, college would be like while suspecting it wouldn’t really be like that anywhere.

“That’s all you have to say?” he finally managed, his body shaking with the reaction of it as he realized that he wasn’t about to be pummeled. But the full force of it wasn’t even fully hitting him. He was pretty sure. Not just yet.

“What else am I supposed to say?” Manny asked, and he sounded genuinely curious, maybe even confused. Could it be that he really didn’t have a problem with it, to the point where it actually just was a complete non-issue for him?

“I don’t know,” Tristan spoke quickly, the words tumbling frantically over each other in their desperate flow from his mouth. “You’re supposed to call me names or tell me to stay away from you. Or …”

He could have gone on. Long before he’d actually left his first high school, there had been rumors about his sexuality, rumors which he’d only confirmed. He knew how people reacted when you came out, and this wasn’t it. This was altogether too calm, too rational, and he couldn’t equate that with the hate he had seen before.

So yes, he could have let far more words spew out, but Manny frowned and stood up, crossing the room to him. Tristan snapped his mouth shut, gazing up at the huge, undoubtedly strong, man, and just waited. What other choice did he have?

“I believe in love, not hate.” Manny dropped down onto the bed. “I don’t really give a crap where that love comes from. So if you’re freaked out that people are gonna be dicks to you, I think you might be surprised.”

Manny paused for a moment, but Tristan’s desperate stream of words had completely slowed down. He couldn’t seem to conjure up one single word, much less a whole sentence, and he just sat and stared as Manny, with a few words that were better chosen than he probably knew, spoke again.

“This isn’t high school anymore, you know.”

It was nothing but an offhand comment, not for Manny, at least, but for Tristan, it was everything. It shed light over all of his worries, the ones that he had carried for years now. In a minute, his assumptions were challenged, and everything became as clear as day.

It wasn’t high school anymore.

Without another word, Tristan rose to his feet, and truth to be told, he was barely paying attention to what he was doing. He only dimly thought that he was being rude, and he couldn’t make himself do anything else. He would apologize later.

Right then, he had to find Grant. More than ever, it felt crucial, absolutely necessary, that he talk to the other man, tell him, finally, that he loved him. Grant had said the words on his way out, but Tristan had never said them back.

It wasn’t that he exactly had hope. Certainly not on any logical level, because it had, after all, been Grant who had done the leaving. Tristan might have had this epiphany, but that didn’t mean Grant would even consider taking him back. Grant might not even want a real, public relationship with another man, not with his football career on the line.

But what he absolutely needed to stop doing, and this was crucial, was assuming. He had assumed all sorts of things without having any way of knowing if they were true. So he had to find Grant, not just to warn him about this but to have it out with him, to lay it all out on the line.

Of course, he already knew, just because it was how things always were, that it probably wouldn’t be exactly easy for him to contact the other man. He could wait for him, and he would, but otherwise, all he had was the hope, probably a vain one, that Grant would actually check his phone for once.

I need to talk to you. Soon. It’s important.

It said all that he could say through a text. He just had to hope against hope that not only would Grant get the message but that he would care enough to consider answering.