The English Year - 14. Homecoming Part 2: Left, Right, Left

I wanted so badly to lie to him. I wanted to tell him that, no, it wasn’t the cadet he’d just seen me walk out the front door with. But I couldn’t. Who else could it have been? Who else would be walking behind me, wearing a crisp white uniform, holding onto my lower back?

So I didn’t lie. I told him the truth.

“Yeah, that was him,” I said casually, as if it was no big deal at all.

“Oh,” Pete replied, looking at me. I tried as hard as possible to look into his eyes and read his thoughts, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell what was going through his mind, and it frustrated me. I studied his face. It was stoic, beautiful, English. But it betrayed nothing.

“But he’s gone now?” he asked, almost sounding like a little kid trying desperately to understand.

“Yeah.”

“Is he coming back?”

“No,” I said, shifting my weight.

“Do you want to come downstairs with me?” he asked, taking a step towards the door. “And dance?”

“Of course,” I smiled. I followed him downstairs and immediately pushed my way through the crowd towards the bar. I motioned to Dom that I needed four beers, handed Pete two, and followed him to the dance floor.

The only way to describe Late Night is by saying it’s a shit show. Our basement was a large rectangle with a large bar island in the middle. The original piping and wiring hung, exposed on the ceiling. A series of windows sat perched at the very top of each wall, and they were all covered in seat cushions to block the sound from going outside.

The seniors last year had spent their gift money painting the room a grey color that had since melted back to red from the heat of the packed bodies attending every party. We had hung hundreds of lights from the exposed industrial ceiling. On one end of the room was the stage that DJ Swayze had set up. There were benches on the adjacent walls, all the way to the back. On the far wall were two doors that led to our back porch pit.

By the time Pete and I went downstairs at ten minutes to two, the entire front half by the stage was packed. You couldn’t walk through, let alone dance. You were never more than a centimeter away from someone’s genitals. There were dozens of couples already making out.

The area on the other side of the bar was less packed. People stood there shotgunning beers, talking, and shoring up hook up plans for the rest of the night.

“We have our beers,” I shouted to Pete once I’d cracked one and stored the other in my pocket. “Do you wanna dance?”

He took a big swig of Natty Light and then smiled at me.

“Sure!”

We pushed our way to the center of the dance floor where the Chi Betas of old had rigged up two dance poles on platforms about three feet high. They were coveted dancing real estate, and I almost took out a Phi Kap and his Chi-O date to get Pete and myself up there.

“This is intense!” Pete shouted.

“Huh?”

“Intense!”

“I know!” I screamed above the music. I stood on the platform with the Phi Kap behind me and Pete in front of me. I held on to the pole with one hand and my beer with the other. I smiled at Pete, hit my can against his and took a long swig without breaking eye contact. We danced to Please Don’t Stop the Music when we first made our way up to the platforms. The guy behind me ground hard on his girl, and as Rihanna begged the DJ to not let the music stop, I got pushed right into the Brit’s arms by an overzealous dancer’s ass.

I almost slid off the platform, but luckily Pete put his hands around my waist. We stood there, hand in hand, chest to chest, and face to face.

I listened to the words of the song almost as if they described our very moment. It sounded as if Rihanna was in the room right then singing to the two of us and no one else.

Without missing a beat, I turned around on the platform so that Pete and I were dancing crotch to ass. It didn’t take long for him to scoot in behind me, and for me to grind up in front of him. I was sweating from the get go, and every few measures, I’d turn my head and make eye contact with the sexy Brit behind me.

In that moment, there was no cadet. There weren’t a thousand students having a rhythmic orgy below us. It was just Pete, me, and Rihanna… and no one else.

“I miss you!” I heard him shout from behind me. His voice had to have carried at a million decibels for me to hear it.

“Huh?” I yelled. I turned around, maneuvered on the pole and faced him.

“We don’t hang out anymore. I miss you!”

I swallowed. What did he mean by that? Why was he saying it? Why, all of a sudden, did I mean so much to him? I felt myself getting sucked in, getting pulled back by the accent and the face and the feeling of being close, but unable to get close enough.

I looked Pete up and down and searched every ounce of my being for the courage to kiss him. Had he been a stranger, I would have already, a long time ago. Had he been a guy that I could care less about, I would have sucked it up, pulled him in, and planted a wet one.

But he was the opposite. He wasn’t a stranger. And he wasn’t a guy I didn’t care about. He was a friend. A good friend. Someone I wanted to know more of. Someone I was starting to love. And if I was being honest, I missed him too. Since I’d begun the withdrawal process, I had been missing something from my life. Something that hadn’t been there a month before, but something I needed now.

“I miss you too!” I said. I put my hand around his neck and pulled our faces together. Instead of kissing him like every follicle of my body wanted to, I put our foreheads together. We held like that for a good thirty seconds before I pulled back.

That was as close as Pete and I had ever been. It was magical. It was beautiful. But it wasn’t anywhere near close enough.

After our moment, I turned to DJ Swayze and waved at him. He smiled, nodded at me, and put a thumb up.

“You’re going to love this!” I said to Pete, taking his hand and leading him off the platform and to the corner where I knew Amanda, Tamia, and all of the girls we knew would be dancing. I led Pete there because I needed more room for what was about to transpire.

“What is it?” he screamed. A second later, the beat started, followed by the infamous words ‘Oh, baby baby.’

“Oh my God!” a million girls screamed at once.

“What is this?” Pete asked again, taken aback by how excited the room got in single heartbeat.

“It’s the Britney Spears medley!” I explained, my voice straining to be heard. Pete and I were still impossibly close, but I had come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to try and kiss him. Close had to be close enough, at least for that night.

“What is that?”

“It’s a fourteen minute long Britney Spears mash-up that Swayze made just for Late Night,” I shouted. “It’s amazing.”

I stopped talking, pulled Pete close to me, and danced with him. We danced to every single one of Britney’s hits, from Oops I Did It Again to Stronger to Womanizer to Me Against the Music.

By the time the last Britney song played, I was drenched in several people’s sweat, my breath was heavy, and I was ready for a break. I led Pete to the bar where we got four more beers, and then outside where the steam from our bodies floated off of us into the cool air.

“You’re smoking, killer,” I said as my ears stopped ringing. We settled on the stairs that led up to the lawn from our side porch pit.

“So are you,” he smiled. “Shotgun?”

“Of course,” I said. We shot our beer, and I did everything in my power to keep from upchucking. It was then that the night got fuzzy.

“How’d you like Late Night?”

“It’s insane. It’s amazing. It’s…”

“Happening again tomorrow night,” I said. I took a step and veered. “I’m gonna go upstairs.”

“Want me to come with you?” he asked. I looked at him and tried to decipher how he meant it. Any other guy and I would have led him straight to the condoms and lube. But it was Pete. For all I knew, we’d go upstairs, play with my cat, and fall asleep. And I’d want to do nothing more than kiss him, but I’d have the courage of a fly, and I wouldn’t do so.

“If you want to,” I said with a slight shrug.

“Do you want me to?”

“Pete, I can’t tell you to or not.” I felt myself starting to get annoyed. I felt myself returning to the place I had been before I iced him. I was frustrated by what he’d said because I didn’t know exactly what it meant.

I miss you.

“Sometimes I feel like you don’t like me,” he said as if he was reading off a menu. It was so matter of fact, so casual, I wondered why he was bringing it up outside in the cold in the middle of a porch pit.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes. I tried not to blink, but instead focused my gaze on him.

“Lately, I feel like you don’t like me all that much. As a friend,” he added quickly. He was partially correct, I had to admit to myself. I didn’t like him as a friend. I liked him as so much more. And that was the problem.

“I like you just fine,” I said, punching every word and wondering where the attack was coming from.

“Do you? You keep ignoring me. We don’t hang out anymore.”

“I have other things in my life,” I said, making an excuse. I danced around the issue because admitting that I liked him so much that I had to control myself around him was just too embarrassing for me to do.

“I know you’re Mr. Hotshot, but when I met you O-Week, you were just as busy, and we hung out all the time.”

I swallowed. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. I was too drunk to have this conversation, and yet there it was. The conversation.

“Look,” I slurred. “I like you. I like you a lot. I just… you need to make as many friends as possible here, and I’m letting you do that.”

It was a cheap cop out. It was weak, and we both knew it.

“Who asked you to let me do that?”

“Why are you attacking me?” I said. I suddenly felt defensive, hurt, and angry. I hadn’t wanted to alienate Pete by any means, but by keeping my distance, by playing it safe, by guarding my heart, I’d hurt his in the process.

“I’m not, I just…”

“I like you,” I deadpanned. I raised an eyebrow. I shrugged two shoulders. I felt the drunken word vomit about to erupt, and I couldn’t stop it. This wasn’t how I wanted to confess my love for Pete, but I knew it was coming like a wave of projectile truth. “What else is there to… what else do you want me to say? I like you.”

I watched him process my words, my body language, and my shrug. It was like he was reading the end of a novel and everything was suddenly starting to click. It was closest thing two drunk men were going to get to a DTR, or determine the relationship. I’d laid it out there the best I was going to. The ball was in his court.

And then, in a split second, he smacked me with it.

“I’m not gay,” he said flatly. It hit me like a brick to the forehead. It was the first time I’d confessed how much I’d liked him, and it was the first time he flat out told me he wasn’t gay.

There was no arguing with that. I didn’t believe him, but I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t say ‘Yes, you are’. He was telling me what he wasn’t and I had to take it at face value.

I also had to play it cool. I couldn’t show my disappointment for a second. To sulk would have been to admit that I wanted him to be gay. That I wanted him, period. We both knew that I did, but with that slap in the face, I couldn’t show it.

“I know,” I said, doing everything in my power to keep my voice light. I took a deep breath. “I never said you were.”

“I know, I know. I just… I think maybe you wish that I was.”

It took me a nanosecond to realize I had to play this perfectly in order to save face. The worst thing in the world would have been showing my frustration in that moment. And so I didn’t.

“No, I wish that we weren’t having this conversation right now,” I slurred.

“Okay. I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“I’m sorry you feel neglected,” I said. I started walking towards the back entrance of the house. I turned to see if Pete was following me. He hadn’t moved from his spot at the bottom of the steps.

“Are you gonna come up?” I asked, extending the invitation.

As I led Pete up the stairs, I had to say the words to him. It was the only way to save myself from the humiliation that had transpired downstairs.

“You know people do think that you’re gay, right?” I said. I figured that if I made it seem like others thought he was gay, not just myself, it would make me feel less like a loser for liking him.

“I’ve heard people talk.”

“They do. And they’ve painted you the colors of the rainbow, my friend,” I said, leading him into my bedroom. It didn’t take but one second for Mister to cross the room and circle Pete’s leg. Pete bent down and picked up the kitten.

“I guess if they’re talking about me, I’m on my way to being as cool as you,” he reasoned. I turned and gave him a half smile.

“Beer?” I asked, opening my mini-fridge. I had six beers inside, the last drips of a bottle of vodka and a pitcher of lemonade. I didn’t know where any of that shit had come from, but it was in my fridge, so I was going to drink it.

“Yeah, maybe one.”

I tossed Pete a beer and we spent the next hour hanging out with Mister and trying to avoid the awkward conversation that we’d had downstairs. I was a master at not dwelling on uncomfortableness, so within ten minutes, it was like it had never happened.

As I talked to Pete that night, I tried to dissect our rapport. He was straight, or so he claimed. And I so clearly was not. Most straight guys, even the most open minded of straight guys, wouldn’t take a gay guy as their best friend. I could see it if that gay guy was in the closet and not telling his straight posse, but I was as open as a book in the library. And yet Pete wanted to be my friend so badly.

There was something there, I thought.

I couldn’t take his words for what they were. Not when he said things like ‘I miss you’ first. Still, they nagged me, even as I spent an hour playing with Pete and my cat pretending that they didn’t. They nagged me deep. I wanted to believe him. Believing him would have made things so much easier. It would have allowed me to move on. But I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t sit there and watch how he played with Mister, and sat so close to me, grazed my arms, made eye contact for days, and used every excuse to touch my back. I could sit there doing that with him, but I couldn’t believe the words he’d said.

And that was the issue.

“I’m tired,” I said after my third consecutive yawn. The music was still blaring downstairs, but it was decidedly less loud than it had been.

“Okay,” Pete replied, making no move to leave. He looked at me and then at my bed. “I’m tired too.”

He leaned back on my couch, put his hands behind his head, and Mister immediately jumped onto his chest.

“I don’t think Mister wants me to leave,” Pete said looking at my cat and petting it. I rolled my eyes.

“You’re welcome to stay.”

I stood up and crossed to my light switch. I turned off my light so that my room was almost pitch dark. I undid my pants and walked slowly towards the bed.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked softly. It was the kind of question I’d dreamed of him asking, but from Pete, I knew it would lead nowhere.

I was already frustrated sexually. A handjob to a Cadet wasn’t sex, and sex was what I wanted. Now I was going to sleep with a Brit and actually sleep. It would take every ounce of my being not to have a wet dream that night.

“If I say no, you’ll think I don’t like you,” I said walking to my bed, pulling my shirt off and climbing in. “There’s plenty of room for you if you really don’t want to walk home.”

I closed my eyes, and less than ten seconds later, I felt another body hit my mattress.

I guess this is how it had happened all of those nights during O-Week that I had blacked out for. It wasn’t anything special. It was a sleepover between friends. Had we been eight, we would have been in ninja turtle pajamas, probably with feet. Anything sexual about it was caught in the six inches that separated us.

Being relatively sober for it this time, I wondered how in God’s hell we’d never had sex. Had I been any drunker, I would have jumped his bones whether he liked it or not. But I was just sober enough to hear the words he’d said, reminding me just how close our relationship was.

‘I’m not gay.’

“Are you asleep yet?” I asked after what felt like an hour. It was weird that I had been so tired a minute ago, but feeling Pete so close to me just made me want to talk to him.

“No. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just… do you miss England?” I asked. I hadn’t really thought about what to say when I asked if he was still awake. That question was the first thing that popped into my head.

“Sometimes,” he said. “I miss the guys on my team. And my mum and sister, although I wouldn’t see them much more than this during the school year anyway.”

“What team? What did you play?” I asked. I immediately thought of Pete playing one of the quintessential gay sports: Swimming, Volleyball or Wrestling.

“I did crew,” he said.

“Really? That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah. I asked around about it here, but they apparently already have a full roster.”

“I can get you on the team,” I said, my mind already working on who I knew and how I could manipulate them.

“Really?” I felt him perk up.

“For sure,” I replied. I stretch out and my body realigned even closer to Pete than it had been before. I didn’t want him to think I was hitting on him so obviously, so I turned around in the bed and faced the same way he was facing. I was his little spoon, only he was a couple of inches away from me.

Still, the heat of his body radiated towards me. I couldn’t have melted in that heat.

“I’ll get you on the team, killer,” I yawned, closing my eyes and letting myself slip asleep.

There were so many more questions I wanted to ask. Who was his sister? Why were they so close? Where was his dad in the picture? The fact that he hadn’t mentioned him made me wonder. As I drifted into sleep thinking about Pete and his past and his life that made him him, I could have sworn I felt him move in and put his arm around me. I have no way to prove it, no way to verify. I was passed out as soundly as someone could be. But I had a feeling. And to this day, I’m sure we spent that night spooning.

When I woke up the next morning, Pete was as gone as a Samsonite man. I scratched my eyes and looked around the room. There was no evidence he’d even spent the night there.

I got up and took a quick shower, trying not to think about all of the questions Pete ahd left in my mind from the night before. I needed to talk to someone I trusted about the things he’d said juxtaposed with the things he’d done. I was confused, frustrated, and tired.

It was just after eight o’clock, and I knew in a couple minutes everyone would be waking up and wondering about our tailgate plans.

I put on sweat pants and walked to Roberto’s room. He was the other early riser of the group, so I knocked and let myself in.

“Hey, you awake?” I asked, peeking my head into his room.

“Yeah,” he said. “Give me a minute, okay?”

“Okay. Can I come in?” I asked, inching the door open.

“Give me a minute. Dude, I’ll be out in a second.” I could sense in Roberto’s tone that there was a reason he didn’t want me coming into his room. Usually he was like, yeah come on inside.

“Go wake up Austin,” he said.

“Okay, but we need to clean the downstairs and I want to talk to you, so get up,” I said, closing his door. I walked to Austin’s room and heard music playing from his iMac, so I assumed he had to be awake. I knocked, he answered, and I walked in.

“What’s going on with ‘Berto? He sounded weird this morning,” I asked Austin, who was playing FIFA in his pajamas.

“I dunno. Let’s go wake him up,” Austin replied. As we walked to ‘Berto’s room, I told him the plan for today.

“We need to clean the basement and reset everything for Late Night Redux. And then we need to clean the Great Hall and set up the tables for dinner. The caterers will be here at 5:30, so I’ll deal with that while the cocktail party is happening.”

“And for the game?”

“We’re supposed to be having a tailgate at Red Light, but I haven’t heard anything from the seniors. And then after the game, we’re having a lawn party here, and the seniors are supposed to set that up too.”

“I’ll call Dom,” Austin said as we approached Roberto’s room. Just as we were rounding the corner, I caught a glimpse of a girl’s body going down the stairs. We walked in to Roberto’s room, and I immediately knew what all of the hoopla was about.

“Who was that?” I asked, as ‘Berto sat up in his bed and rubbed his face.

“Who was what?”

“Who was that girl?”

“What girl?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Austin chimed in. Roberto opened his eyes and looked at us.

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost nine,” I said. “Which means we need to get this shit going if we’re going to tailgate.”

“Well let’s go then,” Roberto said, swinging his legs and climbing out of bed.

“We’re not going anywhere, however, dear, until you tell us who that was…”

“It was Allison Glass,” he said.

“Volleyball player?” I asked.

“Nice,” Austin added. Allison Glass was the former volleyball team setter. She was good, but not a rockstar, and a freshman had come along this year to take her spot on the starting roster. She was still on the team as a serving specialist, and was good friends with Meghan Simpson, who’d gotten me my cat.

“Did you hit that?” Austin asked. Roberto had stood up and was putting on a pair of pants. He looked at Austin with a loosely veiled glare and a twinkle in his eye.

“Ah, he hit that!”

“You hit that,” I said, adding to the joke.

“You two can suck it.”

“Someone beat us to it!” I laughed. It was fun making fun of Roberto for having sex because it happened so rarely, not because he couldn’t get girls. He was one part picky and one part awkward. There were girls that wanted him, for sure, but the ones he wanted, he didn’t have the game to get.

After joshing Roberto for a couple of minutes, we walked around the halls waking up sophomores and giving people tasks. The biggest part of the job was getting the Great Hall cleaned and set up before anyone left for the football game. After the game, there’d barely be enough time to shower and change before the cocktail party, and I didn’t want to be rushing.

I assigned my class, specifically Hutch, Roberto, Austin and myself, to pick up the cans from the basement. The seniors would do a beer run and restock the troughs in the afternoon.

“So Corb,” Hutch asked after we’d gotten plastic bags and were filling them with empty Natty Light cans. “How was your date with the cadet?”

“It wasn’t a date,” I clarified.

“Yeah, yeah, we know… hanging out not going out. What-the-fuck-ever,” Roberto said. He sounded aggravated, but I knew it was only because he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

“It was good. We hung out. I gave him a hand job in my bed while he was wearing my pants.”

“Way too much information,” Austin protested.

“Y’all asked.”

“Did you see the Brit last night? I saw him dancing with Tamia at Late Night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We hung out for a little while.”

“I think I saw y’all on the pole while I was tending bar,” Hutch said.

“To get away from Hayley,” Austin accused him with a smile.

“Actually, she was back there helping me. She’s a gem, that little one,” he snarked back at Austin.

“So wait. You hung out with the Vmee and the Brit?”

“Not at the same time, fool,” I replied. “Pete saw me leading Mike out the front door.”

“Because we don’t have a backdoor, or a fire escape, or a basement exit, or any of that,” Roberto snipped.

“Funny you know that all of those exits exist and yet Allison Glass still used the stairs…” I countered. ‘Berto gave me a touché look, and I continued.

“So Pete asked me to dance and we did. And then while we were dancing he said he missed me. Out of nowhere.”

“Unprompted?” Hutch asked.

“Yeah. Completely random. But that’s not all. So we go outside after the Britney Medley to cool off, and we’re talking and he says that he thinks I don’t like him anymore.”

“Wait, he said what?” Austin stopped picking up cans and looked at me. I took that as my cue, and instead of picking up more beer cans, I hopped up on the bar and sat down.

“He goes ‘I don’t think you like me’. And it was so bizarre and so weird, and then I told him that I did, because I do, and his exact response was ‘I’m not gay’.”

It felt weird telling them the entire story. It was equal parts embarrassing that it had happened to me, and equal parts confusing. I swallowed my embarrassment from essentially being called down by a straight dude so that my brothers could offer up some of their commentary.

“I think he clearly is gay.” Hutch was the first to speak.

“Then why would he say he isn’t?” All I got from that was a shoulder shrug from my shortest friend.

“What else happened?” Roberto asked.

“We hung out some more. He came upstairs, asked if he could sleep over, and we went to bed.”

“Together?”

“Not together, together,” I clarified. I told them the rest of the story of the night, and it seemed to clear things up, at least for Hutch and Roberto.

“Yeah, dude. I’m going with totally gay,” Roberto voted.

“I don’t know, y’all,” Austin said. “I think he likes you, yes Corbin. But I think he was drawing a line. Like you two might be comfortable enough to dance and sleep in the same bed, but at the end of the day, he isn’t gay. It’s that simple.”

“When was the last time you spent the night dancing with a guy, sleeping in his bed, and still telling him that you aren’t gay?” Hutch asked Austin the hard question. He got no response, and I was getting nowhere.

“It doesn’t bother me that nothing happened,” I said to the guys. “What bothers me is that it was like he was reminding me of something. Like, I miss you, but don’t get to close because, oh by the way, I’m not gay.”

“But he knows you are?” Roberto asked.

“Of course he knows that I am, what are you talking about?”

“Dude, he’s totally gay,” Roberto said. And that was that. We changed the subject to Allison Glass and Roberto long enough for us to finish picking up the basement, but the whole time, I kept thinking about Pete.

Last night had been a cluster fuck, even I could admit that. From Mike to Pete to everything in between, I’d been all over the place. But what Pete had said and what he had subsequently done, I just couldn’t decipher.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that Pete was either not gay but in love with me, or he was gay but not in love with me. I took that conclusion straight to the bank, where I participated in a mild form of fraternity embezzlement.

Every time DJ Swayze comes to town for a double Late Night, he offers to do a lawn party for three hundred dollars extra. His equipment is already there, all he has to do is point the speakers out the window and spin mix tapes all afternoon.

In order to finance these lawn parties, which are never a part of our budget, Austin and I cook our books. You see, every house is required to have two sober drivers at every registered event. The going rate for a hired driver is 80 bucks per driver, per night. That’s 320 dollars for two nights. So after the basement was clean, Austin and I wrote four separate checks to each other, claiming we were the sober drivers for the weekend. In reality, the sophomores drove. They always drove. And we paid them nothing.

Once the money was cashed, we went to Walmart and bought 320 dollars worth of grilling food, cheap champagne, orange juice, and what beer we could get. Everything else would be BYOB.

The rest of the preparation for the second day of Homecoming was pretty standard, besides the pain in my ass of rounding everyone up and making them help.

Once the house was cleaned, I had the available brotherhood wheel the tables and chairs into the Great Hall. I set up one example table with a tablecloth, napkins, plates, glassware and silverware and had Newby oversee all of the duplicates. After that, I went outside and set up the lawn party with a couple of my classmates. We brought out the grill, made sure the volleyball net was up, set up a croquet course, and unrolled our trusted tarp down the hill for a slip and slide.

“How much dish soap did you get?” Dom asked me, freaking out about every detail of the set up.

“Enough,” I answered shortly.

“Who’s setting up the cocktail party tonight?”

“The house mom.”

“What time are the caterers getting here?”

“Dom, chill out,” I finally told him. “I have it all taken care of. Okay? Now go grab a screwdriver, and calm it down, please.”

The key to getting everything done for Saturday’s festivities was doing it all before people got drunk, and that’s exactly what I did. I had the house cleaned and set up before the bottles started popping for the tailgate, and by eleven o’clock when everyone was soaking up the sun and getting ready for the game, I could sit back and rest easy that I was done for the day.

There’s nothing quite like a Homecoming tailgate. It was a Founder tradition for the girls to bring bottles to the guy’s house for the annual tailgate, and so by the time we rolled over to Red Light, the kitchen was stocked with beer, champagne, and assorted spirits.

The best thing about Red Light was that it was right next door to Amanda’s house, so I swooped her up around 11:30 and we walked over together.

“Did you have a good night?” she asked me.

“I did. It was fun.”

“Did Mike hit on any of your Kappa friends?”

“Why do you give the guy such a hard time?” I asked, squinting my eyes through my sunglasses as I led her up the stairs to Red Light.

“I don’t mean to, I just… forget it.”

I let it go, walked in and immediately made myself a Midori Vodka to start off my morning. I wasn’t in the mood to hear terrible things about the guy I was bringing to homecoming. I understood that people didn’t like him, but in all truth, no one at OD knew him. They knew the obnoxious drunk Mike, who did get rowdy on occasion and flirt with girls in front of me. But was that any worse than the guy that led me on all night and then deftly reminded me that he wasn’t gay as soon as I thought something might be happening?

I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of seeing Pete that morning, but I should have prepared for it. At noon, he and Tamia walked into Red Light in their Saturday morning best, already drunk from what I could tell, and ready to keep it going.

“Want a Pimm’s cup?” Pete asked me after they’d made their rounds through the room.

“I’m afraid if I say no you’ll think I don’t like you,” I smirked.

“Oh, ouch. Shot through the heart,” he said, pretending to pull a knife out of his chest.

“Let me guess. I’m to blame…”

“You give love, a bad name!” he sang. I couldn’t help but smile after that. I graciously took a cup of Pimm’s and made small talk, trying not to be awkward around Pete. After a couple of minutes, my phone vibrated. I pulled it out, and it was Mike.

“Hey babe,” he yawned, sounding like he had just woken up.

“Hey, what’s up?” I looked at Pete, and mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry’ to him.

“Nothing. Are you at a party?”

“A tailgate for the football game.”

“Oh cool.”

“What are your plans today?”

“Besides seeing you tonight?”

“We’re having a lawn party this afternoon if you want to come by for that,” I said. I could have invited him to our football game, but it seemed strange to pull him to a pretty hostile environment and ask him to get dressed up for it.

“I have to run PT for the rats this morning,” he said, referring to the first year cadets. “Otherwise I’d be there.”

“Well, I’ll call you when we’re done with dinner here, and you can slide over whenever.”

“Sounds good, man,” he yawned again. I hung up, realizing that I had a smile plastered across my face. I looked up and saw Pete watching the entire thing. He didn’t say anything, but simply shrugged at me and mumbled something about being out of a drink.

After an hour of chugging beer, playing Chandeliers and Kings Cup with mimosas, and dancing to Girl Talk master mixes, our party walked back to campus and to the football game, solo cups in hand.

The collective student body had all gotten dressed up and spent two hours pregaming the game for the forty minutes that most of us were there. We all stayed through halftime where we watched the Chi Beta Homecoming Queen nominee, Rebecca Kahil, get second place and our banner win the Gopher trophy of excellence.

After that, the stands cleared out, and everyone except diehard Founder fans left the stadium. Even the deans and faculty filed out of the bleachers to attend whatever cocktail parties they’d been invited to. It was a tradition, and very few people strayed.

Each sorority house hosted a cocktail party at their house, much like they did during every home game. The only difference that time was that freshman girls were allowed to attend. It was the only time of the year besides formal rush that freshman girls were allowed in sorority houses.

Like the invitation that went out to freshmen boys from the frat houses, the srats were forced to tip their hats to the girls that they were interested in. It was a blatant display of favoritism, and it was the precise reason why all eyes were on who went where; the entire rush season was affected by who attended which halftime party.

I didn’t realize that eyes were also on me that year. I knew that my column had upped my popularity quotient, but for the first time, I got texts telling me to come to four of the five houses. The only one that didn’t extend an invitation: Chi Omega. No love was lost there.

“Are you ready, babe?” Amanda asked me at halftime.

“I sure am,” I replied, standing, securing my flask, and following her down the steps towards the srat houses. I had made sure to pregame the game, but to not overdue it. Pete and I had been way too messy last home game, and I was determined not to make that a habit.

I walked into Pi Phi behind Amanda and was immediately greeted by a sprawling spread of finger foods and the delightfully nosy Pi Phi house mom. Amanda and I mingled for a bit, showing face to all of the usual suspects. Adam West was there with his date. So was David Marcossi with a freshman girl I was sure would be a Pi Phi. I saw Pete and Tamia from afar, and thought about going to say hi, but I figured if Pete wanted to talk to me, he’d come talk to me. After twenty minutes of forced smiling and social greasing, I decided it was time for me to dip. I walked across the room, hoping to catch sight of Pete again. He saw me walk by him, and instead of saying anything, he turned and struck up a conversation with a girl I completely hated who’d transferred to our school from Tulane.

I felt slightly slighted, and as if I didn’t need another reason to leave, I pulled Amanda aside and told her I needed to get back to the house and set up for the lawn party.

“Thanks for coming to the cocktail party,” she smiled. “Going with you to Homecoming has its perks.”

I smiled.

What I didn’t tell her was that I was going to make a pit stop at one of the other houses first. I had gotten texts from Emily Watts to come to KD, Alexandria and Helen to come to Kappa, and Meghan Simpson and my good friend Kourtney to come to Theta. I didn’t for once think that my presence was the cornerstone of their rush season, but I did know that the more popular faces you could fill your house with, the better you could sell your house to impressionable freshmen.

I made my choice, and spent another fifteen minutes mingling with Alexandria and Helen at Kappa while my jaw physically grew sore from smiling. I did my part, met some of the girls they were rushing, and gave Alexandria the thumbs up.

“Get the scoop on some of these familiar faces,” she whispered with a smile. She knew if anyone out there could get to the nitty gritty on some of these girls, it was me. By the time these frosh were hanging their rush hats in January, I’d know which ones belonged where.

I darted out after fifteen minutes so that no one at Pi Phi would see me leave Kappa. I rushed back to the house and finished setting up the lawn party.

People started to arrive just as I was standing over the kiddie pool with a hose pipe, filling it up for people to put their feet in. It was turning into a mild October afternoon, and I was sure someone would want to get wet. The grill was warming up with Dom and Austin at the helm, and the sounds of the 80’s were in full swing out of DJ Swayze’s speakers. The cooler was stocked with the beer everyone was bringing for themselves, and I was finally able to sit back and relax.

I put the hose pipe back with the slip and slide, told Austin I wanted a hot dog, and sat down for a minute before Amanda turned the corner holding a brown bag, and followed by a Brit.

“We come baring gifts,” she grinned.

“What is that?” I asked, squinting through my shades. I didn’t make a move to say anything to Pete. If he didn’t want to talk to me at the cocktail party, why should I go out of my way to talk to him? There was clearly something up with him, and it only served to annoy me.

“We made jello shots this morning,” Amanda said. “As a thank you from Tamia, Steph, and me.”

“That’s sweet,” I told her, standing up and taking the bag. I pulled out four trays of jello shots and set them on the table where I’d set up the food. They were green and blue and fit perfectly with the rest of the buffet.

“This looks amazing,” she told me, giving me a side hug.

“Thanks doll,” I replied. I turned to Pete, not sure what to say. “Hi.”

It was the only thing I could think of.

“How are you?”

“Tired,” I smiled. He gave me an awkward smile. “What time did you get up and go this morning?”

“I left before you opened an eye, of course,” he replied with a nod.

“Like you always do.”

“Like I always do,” he said softly. Luckily, just then, Roberto came running up to me.

“Hey, maricon, we’re playing volleyball. Are you in?” I looked at him.

“You would be interested in volleyball, Mr. Glass,” I smirked.

“You asshole,” Roberto replied, grabbing me around the neck and pulling me towards the volleyball net. I shrugged at Pete, and he smiled back at me.

“What are the teams?”

“Can we play?” I heard a girl say. I turned towards the street and saw Allison Glass, Meghan Simpson, and two of their housemates walking towards our house. Both of the other girls were on the volleyball team. Kaitlin was a tall boxy girl with beefy arms and saggy boobs, and Rachel was a svelte athletic looking girl who I could have sworn was a lesbian. All except Allison were Thetas and they were all crossing over our knee-high lawn divider.

“Girls against boys,” Allison challenged. There were four of them, and somehow, I made the team with Roberto, Austin, and Brian, despite there being more athletic Chi Betas in attendance.

“Y’all can do six, if you want,” Rachel said. “Seeing as to we’re professionals.”

“Professionals?” I retorted. “Who died and made you Destinee Hooker?”

“I’m so glad you know who that is,” Meghan said to me. I knew she was from Austin and I knew she got the reference to the powerhouse Longhorn.

In the end, we settled on fours, with Austin and I setting and defending at opposite ends and Roberto and Brian hitting at opposite ends. It was a sophisticated arrangement for a frat lawn, but we knew we’d need to be organized to beat the ‘professionals’.

“You can do it, Corbin!” I heard Amanda scream from the top of the hill.

“You serve,” Roberto said to the girls, tossing the volleyball to Allison Glass. “Ladies first.”

“Well then you should definitely go,” she smiled, tossing the ball back to Roberto. Austin jumped in front of it, caught it walked over to the line.

“How about I just serve, and you two cool it?” he said, cutting the sexual tension like a hot knife on a slab of butter.

I wish I could tell you that the game was a sweep for the guys. I wish I could tell you that I was amazing, and that I contributed to a win over the girls. I wish I could tell you those things, but I can’t. We were sorely outmatched. The girls ran a well-crafted system that reeked of practice, discipline, and athletic talent. We were tenacious, but we weren’t that good.

With that said, we did better than we should have. I set Roberto up well to my right, and that was about it. On the defensive side, the girl’s spikes across the net were too much for my tips reaction time. Even after I rolled up my jeans and put down my beer, I couldn’t quite connect.

2 sets, two beers, and countless jello shots later, the guys resigned to the girls’ superiority.

“You’ll have to tell me where you girls learned to play like that,” I joked, slipping into my flip-flops and following the crowd up the hill. I got a drink from the cooler, not caring whose beer I was drinking, and sat down next to Amanda. Pete was on her other side, soaking his feet in the pool.

“How’d I do?” I asked.

“You were actually the worst one on the team,” Amanda laughed.

“Shut up,” I retorted. “Where’s Tamia?” My question was directed more towards Pete than anyone else.

“I dunno,” he slurred. I was amused at just how drunk he was. “So she’s over at... cuffed something?”

“Cuffed in the Country,” Amanda finished, soaking in the sun.

“Why is she at Cuffed in the Country?” I was surprised. Cuffed in the Country was usually a pretty exclusive event for Sigma Chis and their dates. Everyone paired off with a pair of handcuffs and each person had to drink a bottle of champagne before the cuffs were removed. It was a big shitshow, and one of the biggest reasons for alcohol poisoning on Homecoming weekend.

“She ran into a Sigma Chi last night who didn’t have a date,” Amanda explained. “You know Tamia.”

“Ah Pete. You weren’t invited?” I asked, toeing a piece of grass as I spoke.

“No, this was strictly a party for two, I’m afraid,” he said. He kicked the pool, prompting me to look up at him. Had we both not been wearing shades, I’m sure we would have made eye contact.

I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by Pete. It was stupid, but I kept going back to his reminder from last night.

I’m not gay.

The words were etched. They were engrained, and I couldn’t get them out of my head. No matter how close Pete and I ever got after that, there would always be that dangling modifier. He wasn’t gay. I was… and that was a problem.

That damp cloth on our relationship hadn’t been there the night before. Hell, it hadn’t been there last night, but that was mostly because I was still too drunk to internalize how his words had affected me. At that point, his message had been loud and clear.

After casually laying out with Amanda and a mostly silent Pete for a few minutes, I felt my phone vibrate in my shorts. I pulled it out and checked it.

Incoming Call: Vmee Mike

“Hey,” I said, sitting up and perking up just slightly.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hanging out,” I said. “Am I gonna see you tonight?”

“Of course,” he replied, his voice bouncing in and out as if he was running with his phone. “What are you doing right now?”

“Just hanging out.”

“Are you home?”

“Yeah.” I raised an eyebrow.

“Are you outside?”

“I am,” I answered skeptically. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Stay outside.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. I started to ask what he was doing again, but he hung up his phone.

“What was that?” Amanda asked me.

“It was Mike.” My voice betrayed just how confused I was.

“What did he want again?” Pete asked. He kicked his kiddie pool again.

“He just wanted to see what I was up to,” I said, cutting my voice back at him. It wasn’t his business. He wasn’t gay.

“When do I get to meet your mystery man?” Pete asked.

“He’s a not my man,” I replied. “And he’s hardly a mystery.”

I looked at Pete, and I’m sure he knew what I was hinting at. He looked back at me, and I could see his eyebrow raised just above his sunglasses. I ran my tongue over my top teeth, not intending to have an acidic attitude, but not succeeding in suppressing it.

I waited for Pete to reply, but he didn’t. Instead, he picked up a handful of grass and threw it out one piece at a time.

“Wow,” Amanda choked. “Who needs a jello shot?”

I told her I would take one, realizing just how awkward Pete and I were being. I didn’t know why I was so bothered by last night and the snub at the cocktail party, but I was bothered, and I couldn’t help it.

Just as Amanda was coming back with our jello shots, I heard what sounded like the faint beating of a drum. I looked over at where Swayze had his speakers hanging out the window, and I immediately knew they weren’t coming from there. This beat was coming from somewhere else. Somewhere behind me.

“What is that?” Pete asked, looking at me and tossing a tuft of his hair back.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

We heard the cadence call long before we saw the actual runners. Everyone in the lawn had stopped what they were doing and were listening to the deep voices, booming from the street catty corner to my house.

Corbin Crowley, can’t you see?

What VMI has done to me.

Put me in a barber’s chair,

A snip and a snap and I had no hair!

If I die in a combat zone,

Box me up and ship me home.

Put me in my crisp dress white!

Comb my hair and fix me nice.

Pin my medals to my chest.

Tell Corbin Crowley I did my best!

Lay my body six feet down,

‘Till you see it touch the ground.

Corbin Crowley can’t you see?

What VMI has done to me!

I stood up and walked to the sidewalk beside our house. I was shaking my head from the second I saw Mike coming over the hill with what had to have been forty VMI rats.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted with a smile.

“You like it, Mr. Crowley,” he said with a wink. “Hey rats, I don’t think Mr. Crowley can hear you!”

“Stop it,” I shook my head. The freshmen repeated the call even louder than before.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. Mike had stopped, but his troupe of cadets was following their running track down the Washington Street hill.

“I felt bad I couldn’t hang out this afternoon, so here I am, killer.”

“Better late than never,” I smiled. “I can’t believe you’re here. Isn’t it like eight miles back to Lexington?”

“Seven point four,” he said. “Which is point six less than their work out on Friday.”

“Oh, what a bargain,” I smiled.

“I should catch up with those guys,” he said with a smile. You couldn’t have paid me to wipe the grin off my face.

“You really should,” I smirked. I watched him sprint to the front of the line, pushing his guys to yell louder and louder. Every time I heard the cadets scream my name, my heart skipped an extra beat.

And then, as if I wasn’t already blushing, Mike took his running shirt off at the end of our block and threw it into our lawn. Several of the girls at the party cheered him on, and I could see his grin all the way from where I stood.

The voices of forty cadets faded off as they ran through Clifton Hill, chanting their Jody calls with me in the subject line.

I turned and walked back to where I was sitting, stunned at what had just happened. I sat back down where I had been before, on the other side of Amanda.

“Wow,” she said. She must have known how stunned I was. “That was insane.”

“He’s never done that before,” I chuckled.

“I’m sure,” she replied. “It’s kinda hot.”

“Hands off,” I said with a smirk. I knew that Amanda had absolutely no attraction to Mike.

“Oh, honey. I didn’t mean Mike was hot. But I’d pay to have a cadet lead his rats by my house… shirtless… and singing.”

“Pretty intense, wasn’t it?”

“It was certainly the highlight of my day,” Pete chimed in, his voice dripping with sarcasm. I looked up at him, and this time there was no mistake that his eyebrow was cocked well above his eye. I didn’t respond, but simply shrugged in his direction.

“He must like you,” Pete pressed. I wasn’t sure what he was digging at, but he was determined to dig. Again, I didn’t respond.

“Personally, I think it was a bit obvious, don’t you?” His voice wasn’t loud enough to be a phrase, but it wasn’t soft enough to be a mumble. That was the last push that I was going to sit there and take. Instead, I leaned back, pulled my glasses off my eyes and perched them on to my head.

“You know, you and Mike have a lot in common, actually,” I said to Pete without turning my head in the slightest.

“Like what?” he asked, as if Mike was from a completely different planet. He pulled his glasses off and looked right at me.

“Like, for example, you and him… are both not gay… in the exact same way,” I said, cutting my words. I looked at him and watched the blade of my voice sink into his chest. He threw down what grass he had left, stood up, using his knees for support, and walked directly to the cooler.

“You’re a bitch,” Amanda whispered to me. I felt a breeze chill across the yard and right down into my bones. As the air outside cooled, the blood inside of me reached a boil. I thought Pete was going to the cooler, but instead, I watched him walk up the stairs and in to the house. I stood up immediately, like a cat whose senses had been awakened, and I stalked across the porch and into the house. I noticed Amanda stand up to follow me out of the corner of my eye, and I was grateful when I realized Hutch had held her back by the shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, my voice echoing through the empty Great Hall.

“I’m going to take a nap, is that okay?”

“Stop,” I shouted, reaching him on the second level of the hall. “Stop! Where are you going?”

“Look, I’m not going to sit around and watch…” he chuckled, bit his tongue and regrouped. We squared off in a room full of set tables and clean table cloths, but I had the feeling things were about to get very messy very fast. “That’s not something that a friend does for someone he’s hanging out with.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“That’s what you said… hanging out.”

“Why do you care, Pete?” I asked, my voice softer but every bit as intense. “Why do you even give a care? Yesterday, you said…”

“Corbin, his shirt is on your lawn like a flag. How am I supposed to… what am I?”

“Say it. Say it!” I shouted when he began to hesitate. “Tell me why you care. Tell me. Say it to me right now. Why? Tell me.” I put my finger in his chest. I could feel my eyes narrowing, growing heavy with tears. I was surprised that my voice hadn’t faltered. I looked Peter in the eye and waited for him to say something. Anything.

“I just… I can’t…” was all I got. I sighed and shook my head.

“I’m not asking you for the world, Pete. I’m really not. I’m just asking you for one reason to pick up this phone and call Mike and cancel. Give me one reason.”

I felt my brain stop. I felt my heart skip a beat. I knew that it was then or it was never. The ball wasn’t in anyone’s court anymore. It was lodged right there between us. I felt my body tremble and my knees grow weak. I had been chasing someone who didn’t want to be chased, and yet there I stood face to face with him, waiting for him to make a decision. Waiting for a moment I’d played in my head a million and one times.

And then the moment passed. Like every other time with Pete, he looked at me, blinked, and shrugged his shoulders.

“You can’t,” I answered softly, rolling my eyes in my head to keep the tears from falling out. “You can’t give me one reason.”

“The problem is, Corbin, you don’t want me to.” His voice was soft and even. Tempered. It was a statement of absolution. And it pissed me off.

“You have no clue what I want,” I spat at him. He turned slowly and he walked away.

I had tried my best, I thought as I watched him leave my house. I had done everything I could to forget about my feelings. I had buried them deep down and I had waited for that burning ache to go away. But I realized, with a reaction like I had just had to a boy I had never even kissed… those kinds of feelings don’t just melt away. No matter how many cadets, and how many freshman, I was stuck. I was stuck in relationship limbo with a British man who couldn’t, for whatever reason, tell me how he felt.

And for me, that was purgatory.

I didn’t even bother going back outside. Instead, I went straight upstairs to my bedroom, picked up Mister, and fell into bed. I was determined not to cry over Pete. He’d fucked up his last chance, and I wasn’t going to sit there like a school girl and cry about it. I’d laid it out for him. I’d gotten as close to saying what I needed to say as I was going to until he gave me something, anything, to work with. And for that reason, I wasn’t going to cry.

About a minute after I’d laid down on my side, curling up like a cat with my cat, I heard my door open. I looked up and saw Roberto creep in.

“Are you okay, mijo?” he asked softly. I nodded. He walked quietly towards my bed and crawled in, putting an arm around me. I could feel his heat on my back, and smell the sweat and grass from his body.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked. I sniffed in, and turned my head.

“There’s really nothing to say,” I said softly. Instead of replying, Roberto just sat there with me, holding me, listening to me breath, until I fell asleep, thinking about Pete and wondering if that was the day that I lost him.