The English Year - 20. Father Figure

There was no denying that I had been through a lot in the last couple of days, and in dealing with all that I’d been through, there were several different roads I could have taken to help me cope.

I could have called one of my best friends, who’d talked me through different pivotal moments in my college years before. Amanda would have come over in a heartbeat and given me some much needed advice. She also would have editorialized her advice with commentary on just how cruel I’d acted. I knew exactly what our conversation would have looked like, so I decided to give that call a skip.

I’m sure my pledge brothers could have been counted on to at least distract me from everything that was going on. But the idea of listening to them judge me over my current situation didn’t sound like a good idea, even if it did involve Mario Cart and beer.

Part of me wanted to call Pete. A big part of me wanted to reach out to him. I knew that his sheer presence would make me feel better. Him being there, him being close, and him being him would have awakened my senses in a way that no one else on campus could have done. But I couldn’t help but know that he would have asked me about everything that was going on. And although I’d seen him earlier that day, talking about that particular situation was the last thing I wanted to do. So I decided that Pete wasn’t the call I needed to make just then.

And finally, there was Lee, who I’m sure I could have counted on to at least come over and fuck all thoughts of Melanie Chu away. If I had played that call right, he would have come to my room, stripped down, and hopped on top of my cock as if he’d been waiting for it all day. I’d used that free pass with him the weekend before to get clarity on the Pete/Mike conundrum, and I wasn’t ready to use it again so soon.

And so I called the one person that I knew could make me feel better without prying, make me feel good without judging, and make me forget why I was in such a terrible mood without making me hate myself for it in the morning.

I called Mike the Cadet. And like a fairy tale Prince, he showed up at my door a little after midnight, dressed in casual clothes, and looking good enough to eat.

“You aren’t in uniform,” I noticed, sneaking him into the house through the landing, walking quickly passed the party that was still going on down the hall, and ushering him into my room.

“Well when you called me, I was already naked and in bed,” he smirked. “I wasn’t going to put my dress blues back on and sign off campus for an hour.”

“So you snuck out?”

“Bryant is on watch, and that kid owes me a million favors, so I’m good. You called on a lucky night,” he said. He peeled off his sweater, folded it neatly, and set it at the edge of my couch. I watched every muscle on his body move as he did, wondering if I’d made the right decision, but refusing to dwell on it.

“Does that mean you can stay the night here?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how watch worked, or what it meant for the cadets, but I felt like having his best friend working watch meant he didn’t have to be home by two a.m.

“Not the whole night, no. I can stay as long as Bryant is on duty, though,” Mike replied. I sat down on my bed and watched as Mike took his shoes off, and put them neatly next to the couch, just under his shirt. He looked at me, read the look on my face, and then slowly raised his lips into a smile.

“So why exactly did you call me over here at midnight? You look stressed.”

“I called you over for some stress relief,” I said, smiling back at him. My arms were holding me up on the bed, and my legs were just spread enough that my intentions were more than clear.

“Now the last time I saw you, I was under the impression that we weren’t going to be… relieving anymore stress together,” he said, knowingly. He took a step towards me.

“I was in the middle of some very confusing boy drama when I said that,” I whispered, trying my best to give him come hither eyes. “You caught me on a bad night. And you made it worse being in your dress whites, and being sexy, and kissing me… it was all just… it was too much.”

Mike knelt down on the ground next to where I sat so that our faces were eye level.

“Too much? Killer, I want you and me to be the simplest boy drama that you have,” he said, inching his face towards mine. I wasn’t sure if he was going to kiss me or not. I guessed that our fucking the week before erased the no kissing rule.

And then he did. He pulled his face close to mine, connected with my lips, and effectively evaporated everything that was going on in my head. I moaned involuntarily, releasing everything that had been building up inside of me. I didn’t realize how tense I was until I was able to let go.

Mike pushed me back onto the bed with nothing more than the force of his energy. He followed my body with his own until he was lying on top of me, grinding into me, and pushing his tongue further and further into my mouth.

It was a new side to Mike. All my questions after our night at the Days Inn were slowly being answered. I knew that Mike had probably been thinking about the warmth of that night since it had happened. I knew that he had probably been wondering when he’d have the chance to feel me again, and I knew that he had been reeling when I all but closed the door on us over the weekend.

But if I’d thought that he’d want to do fuck me again so badly, I might not have waited so long to let him.

And then, as I began to let my head race, as I began to slip into that “What does this mean?” I caught myself and pulled myself back. I stopped my mind from wandering too far down that dark and twisty path, and focused on what was lying on top of me, grinding in to me, making out with me.

As if I was physically pushing my thoughts away, I pushed Mike onto my bed forcefully and climbed on top of him. I grinned down at his smiling face as I straddled him, bending over to kiss him just like he’d been kissing me. He pulled my head into his, and planted his tongue so far into my mouth, I could taste him.

I moaned like I meant it, reached down to his belt line and felt Little Mike Loggerman, hard as a rock in his shorts.

“Is that what you want?” he panted. I smiled.

“Fuck yeah,” I said, pulling his dick out of his shorts. “This is what I want.”

“Where do you want it?” he asked, tugging at my own jeans, fumbling with my button and reading ‘Lucky You’ on my zipper as he raced to get my pants off.

“I want it in my ass,” I said like an oversexed teenager who couldn’t strip his clothes off fast enough. Within seconds, Mike and I were both naked. I didn’t even bother taking my shirt off. I wanted Mike inside of me so bad, I didn’t care about the rest of the foreplay.

As if we’d choreographed the perfect dance, Mike pushed me over on to my back, stood in front of me like the force of nature his body was, and pulled my legs up on to his shoulder.

“Are you ready, babe?” he smiled devilishly. I could tell he wanted it almost as badly as I did. I could see the fire in his eyes, and the lust literally written across his face. I let out a deep breath, pushed towards him, and felt his cock bury itself into my ass.

I thanked my lucky stars that Mike’s dick wasn’t too big. He knew exactly how to work what he had in a very fluid motion, but had it been any bigger, any thicker, and any harder, he might have torn me into pieces.

I felt his dick vibrate once it was inside of me to the hilt. It pulsed bigger and then retracted. Mike pulled back, not breaking eye contact with me, and not once letting go of his seductive smile. He almost pulled out all the way, and then he pushed back in slowly, sending me reeling as the head of his cock gently massaged my prostate.

“Oh god,” I breathed. A second later, after pulling out and pushing back in one more time, Mike dropped my legs and fell into me, catching himself with two powerful fists on either side of my body.

And that’s when Mike Loggerman began to fuck me like a real pro. He’d told me stories about the girls he’d fucked and how much they enjoyed his moves. He’d told me those stories, and I’d filed them away under things straight guys brag about.

But being under him that night, not thinking about what him fucking me meant for us, I knew that all those stories were real. I knew that a girl could get addicted to a guy like Mike. Fuck, it was our second fuck, and I was melting under his weight.

He pounded me, slowly at first, building up the speed and ferocity of his thrusts. Before my moans could even catch up with my pre-orgasm, I was panting like I’d just run a marathon. I grabbed his head, pulled his lips to mine, and kissed him as he pounded my ass like he owned it.

I started to feel his sweat. I started to feel my shirt ride up and his stomach glide across mine, creating a friction, a heat, that I can’t adequately describe with words.

In that moment, in that fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds, I forgot about everything. I forgot about Melanie Chu and Dean Watson. I forgot about The Ad Class, Professor Brown, and the Brit. I forgot about my fraternity, being suspended, and Dom’s threats.

I forgot it all.

And I couldn’t have been more grateful.

Mike pulled me back down to reality when he pushed himself up, grabbed a hold of my ankles, and exclaimed that he was about to cum.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, rubbing my hands on his stomach and chest. “Are you going to cum for me?”

“Fuck yeah,” he shouted. “Oh fucking god.”

I felt myself go first. A rope of hot ejaculate hit me on my neck. A second rope hit my chest, and a third rope drenched my stomach. After that, I couldn’t tell which cum was mine and which was Mike’s. He pulled out of my ass, leaving me feeling empty for just a second, pulled off the condom, and sprayed my torso with his hot cum.

“Oh fuck yeah,” he shouted, shooting on me like I was target practice. “Oh god. Oh fucking god, Corbin.”

He collapsed next to me, still moaning, panting, and saying different combinations of the words Fuck, God, and Oh.

He craned his neck as he came back down from his orgasm and kissed me. Both of our faces were hot, and I could feel a radiation coming from Mike that I’d never felt from another guy before.

“That was bananas,” he said, sitting up and wiping his forehead on my t-shirt which had made its way to the side of my bed. I sat up, pulled a towel from my dresser and wiped my stomach off.

“Did I get it all?” I asked.

“You have a little on your neck,” he replied. “Here.”

He took the towel and wiped the cum from my neck.

“Jesus, that was incredible.”

“And that’s what we call stress relief,” I said back to him. He crossed to my couch and pulled his pants back on, swinging from left to right in front of my cat. It was the first time I’d thought about Mister and what he must have been thinking, seeing me fuck two guys in one week. I wondered if my little cat was judging me, and then I pushed that thought out of my head.

“You’re not going to ask what this means for our relationship now are you?” Mike asked, sitting next to me on the bed and crossing one leg under the other.

“Shut up,” I replied, hitting him on the chest. “I learned my lesson last time.”

“Corbin, I just…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” I interrupted.

“I don’t want you to give up on me.” It was that kind of thing that drove me crazy. Why would he say that? Why would he say not to give up on him, when every conversation we ever had involved us not having a relationship or a future. Between him and Pete, the guys I wasn’t even dating were more complicated than any guy that I had.

“Does this look like giving up?”

“No. I guess it doesn’t, no.”

“Thank you for coming over,” I said sincerely. “I needed that.”

“What’s got you down so bad?”

“You agreed not to ask, remember?” I still didn’t want to talk about. Even though I felt better, I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

“If you’re going to use me for sex, don’t I deserve to know why?”

I gave him a look indicating that, no, he didn’t deserve to know why. That was the arrangement. He didn’t want to take our relationship any further than where it was, so I wasn’t going to include him in what I was dealing with personally. He had laid out the terms, and I was just taking advantage of them.

“You’re tense,” Mike said, reading my face and coming to the same conclusion I was projecting. “How about you just tell me what happened, get it off your chest, while I give you one of my famous massages.”

“Famous massages?” I joked.

“Yessir,” he said. “They’re so good I should charge money, but for you, I’ll do it for free.”

“Well, how generous of you?” I rolled my eyes, pulling my shirt off and lying down long ways across my bed. I felt so fluffy next to him, untoned and ridiculously out of shape. I pushed my insecurity out of my head. He was there with me. He didn’t care that I didn’t have an eight pack like him and the rest of the Keydets.

I felt Mike straddle me and begin to knead my shoulders.

“So what happened, kiddo?” he asked softly.

“A girl got fingered on the dance floor-“ I started.

“How come you never introduce me to those girls?” he interrupted. I turned my neck and shot him a look.

“Sorry.”

“A girl got fingered on our dance floor and I wrote about it in the school paper. She convinced the Dean to put me up for suspension, so now she has a hearing scheduled.”

“To suspend you?”

“To suspend me, yes.”

“If you’re suspended, where would you go?”

“Home.”

“To Texas?”

“Yes sir.”

“We can’t have that,” he said, bending down and licking the small of my neck. I stretched out under him like a cat whose human had pet the right spot.

“We can’t?”

“No sir,” he whispered. “Who else am I going to get to worship my abs?”

“You’re an idiot,” I replied flippantly. Mike laughed.

“But seriously. That’s not good. What exactly does this girl want from you?”

“She wants me to print a retraction and apology in the paper.”

“So why don’t you do that?” Mike asked. It was the million dollar question, and one I was beginning not to have an answer to. I could have ended this right then with a promise to apologize and retract. But I couldn’t. I was stubborn. I was prideful. And I was learning that pride definitely came before the fall.

“I can’t. I can’t give her that satisfaction, one. Not with the punches she’s trying to pull. And I can’t apologize in the paper without looking like a chump. I have a reputation to protect.”

“Hmm…” Mike sighed.

“What?” I asked, wondering if he was judging me like everyone else was.

“Nothing. I just… it’s funny that she wants you to print an apology in the same paper that burned her. If I was her, and I was truly embarrassed by this whole thing, I’d want everything to just go away. I wouldn’t want to drag it out with another issue.”

I thought for a second. Mike was right. Why drag out the embarrassment. A retraction would have to call back to the original article and my apology would have to remind people of exactly what was done in the first place. Melanie Chu’s name would still be out there for another week or so, circling around my apology. She’d be known as the girl who got fingered and then forced an apology out of Corbin Crowley.

I rotated between Mike’s legs to face him. Looking up at him, I had a light bulb moment.

“Mike, you’re a genius,” I said.

“I am? No one’s ever called me a genius before.”

“Well buddy, you are. Melanie Chu doesn’t want an apology. She wants the limelight. She wants the fame that I’m giving her. She wants her fifteen minutes.”

“So maybe you give her that, but on your terms.”

It was an interesting idea. How could I get Melanie Chu the public notoriety that she craved now that she tasted it without going down with the sinking ship that was my life?

That was what I had to figure out if I was going to make it out to this Melanie Chu situation, more or less unscathed.

The next day was packed with class, a meeting with my editor about the meeting I’d had with the Dean, and a two-hour long chorus dress rehearsal for the Parents Weekend concert that Saturday evening.

During my meeting with Alexandria, she wanted to know exactly what the Dean had said about the article.

“Basically, she just said it was tripe and that I should apologize and retract it. I told her I wouldn’t and she said that I’d be going up before the Student Faculty Hearing Board,” I told her over lunch at Blue Roof Bakery.

“Did she mention anything about the paper being in trouble?”

“No,” I said, not at all surprised at how blatantly Alex was trying to cover her own skin. One thing I loved and hated about that girl was that she never put up a front about her intentions. She was number one in her mind, and that was that. “The paper is fine, I’m thinking. Unless you’ve heard something.”

“No,” she replied. “But listen, we’ll stand behind you. You didn’t write anything wrong. We’ll testify if we have to, do whatever it takes to get you out of this mess.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, taking a bite of my black bean salad and then briskly changing the subject to something far less depressing.

After lunch, I had a two hour break before chorus. I walked to the music building, set up shop in the computer lab, and spent some time thinking about what Mike and I had talked about the night before. I drafted a couple different versions of my peace treaty, read them over, and decided that nothing I’d written in the last hour was good enough.

Right before it was time to go downstairs for chorus, I checked my email. There were a couple of people still offering their critique about my article, and I quickly sifted through those. The one that caught my attention, however, was the one from Dominick, sent at exactly two minutes prior, at 4:26.

To Corbin: The members of the Standards Committee will be meeting this evening at 6:00 to discuss recent actions by one brother, Corbin Crowley. This meeting is closed to the general brotherhood, but you, as the subject, are welcomed with the right to attend.

It was CCed to the rest of the committee: the five officers, and one member at large from each class.

I almost spat at the screen when I read Dominick’s formal words. I’d sent out that email to someone the year before. I sat on the Standards Committee, and reading over who had gotten the email, I realized that Hutch was the junior member at large for this case since I couldn’t preside over my own hearing.

How dare Dom call a Standards Meeting before I’d even heard anything about my real hearing? Standards weren’t a pre-emptive thing. It was the brotherhood’s way of punishing someone who’d gotten in trouble on campus already. The committee was only established to begin with as a way to self-police so that nationals wouldn’t get involved if a student got in trouble with the school. I hadn’t gotten in trouble yet. And therefore, Dom was jumping the gun with this one.

I could barely focus on chorus. As I raced down the stairs of the music building to make my 4:30 call, I took out my phone and dialed Hutch’s number.

“Hey,” I breathed heavily. “I need you to stall this meeting.”

“Standards?”

“Yeah.”

“It starts at 6:00. Right after dinner.”

“I know that,” I said, running down the stairs. I was already on the cusp of being late. “He did that because he knows I have chorus, I’m sure.”

“He wants this whole mess done with before Parents Weekend so that we don’t have to deal with it then.”

“And he can’t wait until Monday?”

“He thinks you’ve screwed the pooch on this one, Corbin. He’s got a bone in his mouth, and he’s positive that by Monday you would have found a way to weasel your way out of it.”

And then I realized what he really wanted. Dom didn’t want me participating in Parents Weekend. He didn’t want me tainting our image in front of the impressionable mothers and fathers that the freshmen we were rushing might bring over. I was beyond livid. My mind was filled with smoke. If this meeting happened, and this vote went through, did Dom plan on sending me packing before Friday? Did he plan on suspending me from any fraternity events effective immediately?

I approached the music hall door and dropped my voice to a whisper.

“Listen, just stall the meeting. I’ll be there at 6:30 as soon as I get out of here. Please, Hutch.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

I put my phone in my bag and then threw my bag in the pile of bags right outside the door. Nothing but your sheet music was allowed in the room during chorus. I looked down at my watch and realized I was exactly two minutes late. I took a deep breath, and walked in.

Professor Myer was in the middle of explaining the line up when I came in. Mine was the only seat that was empty. I walked to my spot on the second row of tenors, avoiding eyes with Pete, as well as my brothers Sam and Jackson.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Crowley. The tenor one section was looking a little bit light.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. Instead, I sat down and joined the group as we warmed up and went through our song list for Parents Weekend. As we sang, my mind was a million miles away. I couldn’t believe I was being called in front of Standards. And I couldn’t believe that Dominick was being so sneaky about it. It was a bitch move, emailing me an hour and a half before the meeting. Technically, he had to give me written notice, but there was no specificity on how much notice was required. It was a sneaky move, one I might have used had the situations been reversed.

As I half sang through our tour of Germany set list, I thought about what the committee might say. Technically, my behavior the last few days warranted being called in front of Standards. I’d written that article that had made its way to nationals. I had verbally trashed a freshman in front of other freshmen, and I had verbally attacked Dominick in public. But to me, the right thing to do would have been to wait and see what the university planned to do with me before calling a Standards Hearing.

Standards Hearings were extreme.

The members of the committee basically had the right to levy any punishment, from a fine to social probation, to a four-fifths vote for expulsion in front of the entire brotherhood. If I didn’t like their punishment, I could appeal, but that would require getting nationals involved and hoisting an official investigation. Most people took their standards punishments because most standards punishments were a slap on the wrist. I had a feeling this would be more than just a slap.

Instead of concentrating on singing, I thought about the guys on Standards and what I knew about each one. The senior members on the committee were President Dominick, Vice-President Oliver, and Member-at-Large Tom, all of who would vote how Dominick wanted. The members from my class were Treasurer Austin, Secretary Brian, and interim Member-at-Large Hutch. Brian always voted to do the right thing, but I couldn’t see him voting yes if Dom’s punishment was too extreme. He was a wild card, and that scared me. The sophomores were Sergeant -at-Arms Newby and Member-at-Large Cherry, both of whom could be swayed either way, although from my experiences with Cherry, he had somewhat of a blood lust.

With the configuration being three seniors, three juniors, and two sophomores on the committee, I couldn’t count on the numbers being on my side. I couldn’t count on my class backing me up, and in turn convincing the sophomores to back me up.

I couldn’t risk it. I had to make it to that meeting before they took a vote. I had to scare the living shit out of everyone in that room before they exacted the punishment Dom had been waiting to exact on me since I defied him with Chi-O and generally wasn’t being his social puppet like chairs past.

I shot out of my seat as soon as chorus was over. I didn’t even wait to say anything to Pete or Sam or Jackson. As soon as Professor Myer announced that our call on Saturday was 4:30, I was out of my seat, and out of the room. I sprinted up the hill to Chi Beta, not willing to lose a single second.

I was sweating and out of breath by the time I made it to the house.

It was 6:36 and they had been deliberating for upwards of half an hour.

“What do we have here?” I asked, filling my lungs with air before barging into the library. Everyone on the committee was present and accounted for. Dom looked like he was staring at a ghost when I came in. Clearly, he thought they’d be at the voting stage before I had a chance to make it to the meeting.

“It looks like you all are having a Standards Meeting without the accused present,” I said, forcing a cheerful lilt in my voice and a sarcastic smile on my face. “But we can’t be doing that, because that would be against protocol wouldn’t it?”

“You got my email,” Dom said softly. “You had plenty of notice.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” I said. “I did appreciate the heads up. I’m here now, and that’s all that matters, so I’d love to be caught up to speed.”

“Actually we were just getting ready to vote,” Oliver said, matching Dominick’s tone if not his Russian lisp. The seniors were clearly on the same page. I swallowed, afraid of what they had recommended.

“Where you, Oli? Without hearing from the accused first. And without telling me what the recommended punishment is. You’re a political science major, that’s Due Process 101.”

“We called for you,” Dominick said.

“And you knew I was in chorus,” I said, staring him down. I was the only one in the room not sitting at the board table that centered our library. I dropped my voice almost a full octave. “You’re playing shady, Dom, and you know it.”

“Fine,” he said, sitting up and taking a breath through his nose. “If there’s anything you’d like to say before we vote, now’s the time. The recommendation is a semester of social probation, and contingent on the verdict of your Student Faculty Hearing Committee, a suspension from the fraternity.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said. That was about as extreme as it got. “Social probation even if I don’t get suspended from school?”

“The deed is done, Corbin, and the deed is what needs to be punished,” Dom said stoically, clearly not backing down from me yet.

“And since word of your impending complaint has already made its way to nationals, we, the officers, thought it best to get the ball rolling on our end as quickly as possible,” Oliver chimed in.

“You mean you couldn’t wait a weekend to kiss Dreiling’s ass,” I snarked. All of the brothers, including my class, hissed at my use of profanity in the library. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“Did you write the article?” Dom asked.

“Yes,” I swallowed.

“Did the article defame that girl’s character? Was the article fundamentally ungentlemanly?”

“That’s up for debate,” I exhaled.

“Well we’ve finished our debate,” Dom replied smugly, satisfied.

“Do you know what people were talking about before I wrote that article, officers?” I said, dragging that very word through the mud. I was thinking fast, and had to degrade them at every turn. “They were talking about Chi Beta being the house where girls go to get over served and molested. They were saying that our house condones guys slipping it to girls when they’re too drunk to stand on their own. Those where the whispers, and I cut those whispers off before they became full-fledged rumors. Imagine how many freshmen girls would be hanging around if they thought they were next. I changed the narrative. I put the blame where it was due, and took the heat off this house.”

“Do you want a medal?” Cherry chimed in.

“No, Cherry, but I’d appreciate not getting crucified across the front gates,” I charged, staring him straight in the eye.

“Corbin, we can’t risk that sort of scrutiny this year. We’re already on thin ice and what you did cast an undue light on this house,” Dominick said, playing his hand harder than he needed to. I knew he wanted me gone, but I didn’t know it stemmed so deep. A punishment before the hearing; suspension contingent on my hearing… those were Dom’s ideas and his way of putting me in line. I wasn’t going to bend, I couldn’t. It was time to bring out the big guns and show this house that I meant business.

“You know what, you folks do what you have to. But before I leave you all to vote on whatever punishment it is that you’re voting on, let me make two things perfectly clear to you. I will not be going up against the Student Faculty Hearing Board. That isn’t going to happen. I’m handling this situation, and I’m handling it my way. With that being said, I will not be getting suspended either, so get used to seeing me. Dominick, you’ve had it out for me since the second I stepped foot on campus, and quite frankly, I have no idea why, but I’m sick of it. Know this, and do not mistake this for a threat because it very much isn’t one. I will come after every single person in this room who votes against me with everything I have. What I’ve done to Melanie Chu will be considered child’s play when I’m finished you. Rest assured. And since I won’t be getting suspended, your little contingency expulsion process won’t do shit to protect you from what I’m capable of.”

Dom’s eyes were big. No one moved. No one even breathed.

“We’ve heard that threat before, Corbin,” Dominick broke the silence. I snapped my head and slowly circle to where he sat at the table. I put my arm on his shoulder and proceeded.

“You have, Dom. And I’ve never meant it more than I do right now, so you might do well to take it seriously this time. In fact, standing here, I’m not sure why I’d even want to remain in this fucking fraternity, but just know that if I leave it’ll be on my terms or else this whole house of cards will come crashing down. And if you for one second think that I’m bluffing, Dominick, then why don’t you tell everyone why it is Chi Omega calls you the #2 Pencil Pusher? I’m sure we could all use a laugh right now.”

Dom craned his neck to look at me.

“You’re out of line,” he said.

“No, you’re out of line. I have done nothing in the past two months except serve this brotherhood, and I’d appreciate a little bit of credit. You’ve heard my threats before, Dominick, because you continue to try and sting me like a pesky little spider. I’m not sure who you think I am, Dom, but I didn’t take on this role in this house to bend to your will. I’ve admitted when I’ve made a mistake, and I apologized for it, but instead of working with me and doing this the easy way, you’ve jumped at every single chance to get me kicked out. Know this, Dom… in fact, all of you know this. When I see a spider, I don’t trap it and take it outside. I crush it. The biggest mistake you can make right now is to assume that my threats are as empty as your heads and go through with this vote.”

I looked around the room. No one wanted to make eye contact with me, because no one wanted to admit to themselves that I was right. I wasn’t going to sit there and take it from them like a bad little kid being spanked. I was going to stand up for myself, and if that meant threatening even the guys in my class, I was going to just that. They all knew I knew enough to burn Chi Beta to the ground. From the underage drinking to the embezzlement of dues, there was enough in my head to topple the house down. And if I were no longer welcome there, I would no longer be under any obligation to keep their secrets.

I knew I had them, and so I changed my tone.

“Since no one has anything left to say, I’m going to assume this meeting is adjourned.”

I took a look around. The sophomores, Tom, and Oliver were all looking at Dominick. The guys in my class where smiling smugly. Hutch even gave a silent hand clap.

“I’m sure if you ask him nicely, he’ll give you your balls back,” Newby said softly, breaking the silence, and getting a laugh out of everyone but Dom.

My work there was done. I rarely had to resort to threats, but when it came to Chi Beta, I would do whatever it took to stand my ground. I wasn’t sure if the guys mistook my homosexuality for some sort of hyper-masculine weakness, but they weren’t going to walk all over me, and they certainly weren’t going to make me their cause in hopes of protecting the house.

I didn’t have the energy to go out that night, and instead stayed in my room to do work. I sat at my computer and pulled up Melanie Chu’s Facebook. I stared at her face for a while, stalking her pictures, and backstalking some of her comments from earlier in the year. I was doing my reconnaissance work in hopes of finding something that would help me make a pitch, and strike a deal with the devil.

At around 11, Hutch came in to see how I was doing.

“Better now that the standards Nazis have disbanded,” I replied, sitting up on my bed, and folding my copy of Daisy Miller over. It was the latest reading for my English class, and even though I’d just started, I got the feeling that I was going to like the protagonist a whole lot.

“You can’t call them Nazis,” Hutch said, coming in and closing the door. “Tom is part Jewish. And God knows what Dominick is.”

“I just can’t believe he seriously thought suspending me from Chi Beta was the best option to dissolve this whole thing.”

“He’s short sighted,” Hutch said. He sat down on my bed next to where I was. “But if you are suspended by the university, the witch hunt starts up again, you know that right?”

“I won’t be suspended,” I replied. “I’m working on something.”

“Are you going to apologize?”

“Fuck no,” I said too quickly. “Melanie Chu is eating this whole situation up. She loves the spotlight, and she loves being the center of a Corbin Crowley induced scandal.”

“If it’s notoriety that she wants, she did a good job.”

“And imagine how much more she’ll get if she successfully gets me suspended. Even if it just goes to a hearing and I’m acquitted. That’s all she needs to go down in the books.”

“So what are you planning?”

“Nothing specific just yet. I was doing some recon work, and I found out she just applied to be in K.E.W.L. a couple weeks ago, so there’s that.”

“Keep Encouraging Women Leaders? How does she think her little incident is going to help her get in to that fish factory?”

“I’m hoping that it doesn’t.”

“What are you planning?” Hutch asked, squinting his eyes. I could sense a nervousness in his voice.

“Meghan’s roommate is the president of KEWL,” I explained.

“Meghan who gave you the cat?”

“Yeah,” I said, forming the plan as I said it out loud. Up until then, I had only thought about the separate elements, without putting together how I could use them to my advantage.

“There’s no way they’ll let her in after her little stunt. But there has to be a way that I can use my influence with Meghan and Katy to strike some sort of a deal with Melanie Chu,” I said, more to myself than to Hutch. Even then, I wasn’t sure how I was going to put it all together.

“Anyway, what’s up?”

“Did I hear the Vmee stop by last night?” he asked after I’d changed the subject.

“You might have.” I laced my voice with just enough coy to make myself feel less slutty.

“Seriously? Are you backtracking into that?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “I just needed to be around someone that wasn’t on this campus. That could take this whole mess off my mind.”

“What does that mean for you and the Brit?”

“There is no me and the Brit. There’s just two friends, one of which wants to bone the other, but can’t.”

“Are you buying that he isn’t gay?”

“The only thing I’m buying is what he’s telling me. And he’s made it perfectly clear to me that he is not gay.”

“I still think that kid is hiding something.”

“You, me, and all of Old Dominion,” I retorted. I had tried not to think about Pete since our sing-off the weekend before, and up until he came to visit me in the library, I’d been successful. But with Hutch bringing him up that evening, I couldn’t help but let him creep back into my mind.

I guessed that’s how it was destined to be. Me playing the friend to his face, but constantly thinking about him as more than a friend every time his name came up in mixed company.

My mind didn’t stop that night, and I thought about solutions to my Melanie Chu problem well into the night. Solutions came and went, creeping into my mind even as I slept. I was tired the next morning. Tired of worrying, contemplating, and plotting, but mostly, I was tired of Parents Weekend before it had even begun.

My parents hadn’t come up for any one of my Parents Weekends, and that year wasn’t any different. My dad hadn’t been to Virginia to visit me since I’d moved in, and my mom and siblings usually only came when I had some sort of a performance going on. I didn’t mind them not being there my sophomore or junior year, but it was still tough to see people’s folks with them on campus and make excuses for mine.

Instead of waiting for my parents to come into town the next morning, I woke up, showered, and met with our house mom about the cocktail party that evening.

I managed to get her to agree to most of the set-up, and promised her that a couple of sophomores would be at her disposal at 6 for any heavy lifting that she needed.

I felt my phone vibrate as I was leaving her office and wondered who was calling me at nine on a Friday morning. My first instinct was that it was Pete, but that was my instinct every time my phone rang.

“Hey there,” I heard Mike’s voice on the other line when I answered the phone.

“Why, hello,” I replied with a smile and a voice full of surprise. “To what do I owe this phone call?”

“Well I’m on my way to guard duty,” he said, “And I just thought that I’d check on you and see how you were doing.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” I said with just a hint of snark. He wanted something, I surmised, but the gesture was still sweet.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Well its Parents Weekend, so I’m sure I’ll be hanging out around the house with the guys.”

“I was thinking maybe you’d want to escape campus for a while,” he said tentatively, his voice lifting at the end of the sentence, as if he was sure I was already going to say no.

“Escape campus and do what?”

“Well my dyke is having a cookout at his girlfriend’s house in town,” he explained. “He told me I could bring whoever, and I thought, if you’re still over everything going on over there, you might want to hang out here instead.”

I could have melted at how sweet Mike was being. It was a truly thoughtful invitation, and I could tell that he was genuinely concerned about me.

But I wondered what seeing him in such a blatant date-like manner would do for my psyche, especially when I was still trying to sort out exactly what our relationship was and wasn’t.

“Are you sure bringing me to a cookout is a good idea?”

“I think it is,” he said. “Look, I don’t want to cloud you up any more than you already are. It’s not a date, so don’t get crazy. I just thought maybe you’d like the night away from it all.”

“Mike… I…” I stammered. “I have no reason to say no.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said. I could tell he was smiling on the other end of the line, and I wondered why he was pretending it wasn’t even a date to begin with. He’d asked me, he was picking me up at a specified time, and he was taking me into public with him to hang out with his friends. It was a date, and yet I would have been the crazy one for suggesting so.

Mike hung up before I had a chance to air any of my other concerns about going on a non-date with him. I looked at my phone for a second, bewildered by what had just happened, and went back about my day.

Parents Weekend is great for a couple of reasons. One, you got to see just how everyone was raised, and questions about their personalities started to make perfect sense. Two, you got every meal paid for by someone’s parents that weekend.

Austin’s parents hadn’t come to OD the year before for Parents Weekend, but they decided to come by that year, mostly because their younger daughter was a junior and wanted to see her older brother’s college. Hutch’s parents were in town because they were the Chairparents of the TexVA Student/Parents/Alumni Association, the largest and most well-endowed university sponsored organization. Every year, TexVA hosted a huge tailgate on Saturday afternoon that drew more attendance, and donations, than the Parents Weekend football game.

Roberto’s parents weren’t in town, but having spent the summer at Austin’s in South Carolina the year before, he was rightly adopted into their family for the weekend. Brian’s dad was in town for one night, mostly because he was a Chi Beta alum and loved to plan business trips around stopping at the house for special occasions.

Of the rest of my pledge class, Sam, Pamuk, and Ben were floaters just like I was, and I’m sure they’d attached themselves to some casual events to keep busy.

“Want to come to dinner with us after the cocktail party?” Austin asked me that afternoon as we unloaded the liquor for the cocktail party into the library. “My parents made an eight o’clock at the Dominion Inn.”

As much as I loved the idea of Austin’s dad buying me a four-star dinner that I probably couldn’t have afforded myself, I had plans that night.

“I can’t,” I replied. “I’m going to a grill out.”

“Oh yeah? With who?”

“Mike,” I answered, setting the brown paper package of tequila down on the table.

“Mike the Cadet?”

“Mike the Cadet.” I refused to be embarrassed by it. Sure I’d backtracked considerably from where I was a week ago, but Mike had reached out to me. That was progress in our little non-relationship.

“You’re kidding.”

“What? I told him I needed a break from campus, and he offered to take my mind off of everything for a while. It was quite generous of him.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” Austin said, sounding more like Roberto than himself. He usually let his best friend do all the snarking while he remained silently judgmental. That evening, he was in the driver’s seat.

“It’s the perfect night to get away. Momma and Poppa Crowley aren’t here, everyone is going to be with their families, and I can escape to have some real fun without worrying about anyone asking me about FingerGate.”

Austin shrugged. He couldn’t deny that flying under the radar was the best option I had that weekend. It was what the officers had wanted, after all, albeit in their own sneaky and bitchy way.

We finished unloading the beer, liquor, and wine from the senior’s car and stayed around briefly to help set up. Laney, the house mom, had commandeered help from Newby and Hutch’s parents, and after saying my hellos to Mr. and Mrs. Newell and Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson, I went upstairs to shower and change.

I was greeted by Mister and a missed call after my shower. I listened to the voicemail, left by none other than Pete.

“So, we haven’t really spent any time together since last weekend’s sing-a-long, and since I’m parentless this weekend, and Amanda tells me that you’re parentless this weekend, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to be each other’s father figures tonight… not like that. I didn’t mean that to sound as creepy as it did. But if you are looking for a father figure, let me know. Okay… that’s enough of that, I suppose.”

I noticed that I was smiling by the time the message was over. Something about his message was charming. He was nervous to call, I could tell. I didn’t know why he was the nervous one. He was holding the reins. As I made the decision to call him back, and tell him that of course I’d want to hang out that night, I couldn’t help but think of the George Michael song as the tune and lyrics went through my brain.

Sometimes I think that you’ll… never… understand me. But something tells me together, we’d be happy…

I pushed the song out of my mind just as I remembered one important fact keeping me from being able to have Pete as my father figure that night.

Mike the Cadet had asked me out first. And while I sat there, waiting for Pete to answer, I couldn’t help but think that I had two non boyfriends who had both asked me on two non dates for the very same night.

“Hey, killer,” Pete answered. I lifted my head back, closed my eyes, and put my hand to cranium. What a clusterfuck, I thought.

“Hey,” I replied breezily. “I got your message.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, it made think of that song. I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine,” I sang.

“I will be your preacher teacher, everything you have is mine,” he sang back. I smiled. God, I thought. Why had I told Mike I would see him in exactly an hour and a half when Pete was right there, being Pete. Being better. Being the best.

“So what are you doing tonight?” he asked after going through the rest of the chorus with me.

“Yeah, about tonight. I wish you had called me earlier,” I said. I had every intention of being a friend and telling him the truth. But once I started to give my reason for not hanging out with him, I stopped, dead in my sentence, and realized that telling him I was going out with Mike would have hurt him more than lying about it. “I already agreed to host some of the freshmen and their parents here at the house. You know, I have to rush, rush, rush.”

The lie rolled off my tongue like butter on a hot skillet. It sizzled, and I felt it, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. Even though Pete and I were nothing more than friends, if you could even call us that at this point, telling him what I was actually going to do felt like too much of a betrayal.

But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think that if I had any indication that something could have happened with Pete that night, if I thought for a second we would have talked about our feelings for each other, I would have cancelled with Mike like he’d done to me a million times and gone out with Pete.

But I knew how Pete and Corbin nights ended. They always ended the same, and that same wasn’t enough for me anymore. That same had played out over the first half of the semester, and faced with the choice between same and different, I chose different.

“I understand,” Pete replied. I could hear the disappointment in his voice and it crushed me.

“We can pregame the chorus concert tomorrow,” I said quickly, unable to hurt him with a hard rejection. A soft one would at least ease my guilt about lying. “I can get you into the TexVA barbeque, and then we can walk over to the concert together. TexVA is the hottest ticket in town tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to take me on as your charity project,” he said, his voice dripping with even more disappointment. I cringed, rolled my neck, and prayed I could fix this.

“You’re not. I just… I want to see you, I just can’t tonight,” I said. There was a lump the size of an egg in my throat. How was this happening to me? A week ago, I couldn’t get anyone to ask me out, and now both Mike and Pete were vying for my company. It was aggravating, to say the least, that I was having to choose.

And yet there was nothing to choose. Pete had drawn his line in the sand more than once, and every one of my attempts to cross it had ended in disappointment. This decision, I thought, was what I needed to actually get over him. I’d talked the talk for long enough. Choosing Mike, not bending in order to protect Pete’s feelings… that would be walking the walk.

“Okay,” he said flatly. I felt guilty, as I ended the call and got dressed, however I knew deep down inside that I had nothing to feel guilty about.

I had made the right decision, I told myself. I had to tell myself that I had made the right decision.

If I had any hope of enjoying myself with Mike that night, and to be honest, I had every hope of enjoying myself with Mike that night, then I had to make sure that the Brit was the furthest thing from my mind.

And yet, if we’re still being honest, I can tell you that he definitely, unequivocally, and hopelessly wasn’t the last thing on my mind.