The English Year - 25. Punch. Drunk. Love.

The next ten to fifteen minute of my life were more like an out of body experience than anything I’d been through before.

The split second after Mike knocked Pete across the face, I jumped between them, forming a barrier between the two guys that I had been orbiting like a dysfunctional moon. My forearm caught Mike’s stomach as I watched Pete fall to the ground, pushing a bikini clad Chi-O sister back as he fell. He was down for a second, his eyes wide, wondering what had just happened, before he sprang back up and began shouting in Mike’s face.

“You’re a fucking brute! What the fuck, you barbarian!”

At this point, a small crowd had formed around where Mike and I stood, taking the verbal pounding that escaped from the usually composed Brit.

“I’m gonna knock you on your arse, you fucking psycho! What the fuck?”

I must admit, at this point, his fierceness amazed me. I never would have pegged him for a fighter, but the way he instantly stood up and defended himself to Mike made me think of him differently.

Meanwhile, as my brothers swam through the crowd to investigate the commotion, Mike took his turn to hurl insults back at the Brit.

“Leave Corbin alone, you fucked up little pussy! I will fucking fuck you up, you little pussy bitch! I will fuck you up all fucking day!”

I felt like I was in the middle of a trailer park war, and there was nothing I could do about it besides keep the two of them apart.

Within twenty seconds of the punch, Dominick and Austin reached the landing where we were. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dom pull Mike with his right arm.

“You’re out of here, Vmee. Let’s go!” I knew instantly that this wasn’t going to end well. As amped as Mike already was, I watched as he yanked his arm away from Dom’s grasp, sending the skinny Russian flying backwards about three feet, straight into four coeds who had managed to ignore the ruckus up until that point.

The flinging of a brother sent Austin off, who was quickly joined by Roberto, and together, they managed to grab both of Mike’s arms and drag him towards the door.

“He’s with me!” I shouted instinctively, turning my back on the Brit and choosing to protect the man who had defended me.

In that second, I had to make a decision. I looked at Pete one more time before following the brothers that were dragging Mike off towards the front door.

“He’s fucking with me. Austin, wait!” But there was no waiting for those guys. Mike had broken too many rules, and there was no way the brothers were letting him stay in the house after that. I followed through the door, looking out into the night sky and seeing at least three other cadets running down our front steps. They knew not to be involved in an OD brawl at the risk of getting in trouble back on their campus as well.

“Control your rat, Corbin!” Austin shouted at me as he and Roberto flung Mike onto the porch.

“You want some, too, little man?” Mike yelled at Austin.

“Mike, shut the fuck up, right now.”

“I will fuck you up, bitch,” Roberto got in on the action, defending his best friend. Of the three Chi Betas standing outside, Roberto was the only one who could match Mike in size, however, as a swimmer, probably lacked the fighting prowess that Mike had as a wrestler.

If it came to that.

I made my way into the middle of the pool of testosterone, and attempted to talk Mike down. I put my hand on his chest.

“Babe, calm the fuck down before you do something permanent.”

“Get these bastards out of my face,” Mike said, his voice still loud, but his resolve melting as his adrenaline adjusted to the still cold air outside.

“These guys will have no problem jumping you, no matter what I have to say,” I reasoned, not sure how much time I had to make this situation right.

“Listen, to your girlfriend, rat,” Roberto hissed.

Apparently I had zero seconds. As Roberto escalated the situation, the front door opened, revealing Hutch and Brian, just as Mike reacted to what Roberto said. I had to lift both my arms to keep Mike from swinging at Roberto, and by the time I had restrained him, my entire pledge class and some of the seniors were outside, ready to tar and feather Mike Loggerman.

What a clusterfuck, I thought.

As much as I wanted to defend him, there was nothing I could do. He’d crossed the line, and even if I was grateful that he’d done that for me, I was in the worst possible position. I had to think fast, and I had to act even faster.

As I held Mike back from the brothers, not even attempting to decipher the shouts that were coming from the guys on the porch, I whispered in his ear, “If you want to get out of this with a full face, you will let me handle it.”

My voice was low and stern, and Mike, even as pumped as he was, knew that I wasn’t playing around.

“Fuck this,” Mike said, pulling away from me and taking a step back. “Fuck this bullshit.”

“Mike, you can’t go anywhere right now. Your keys are upstairs.”

“Fine, I’ll go fucking get my keys. Fuck this, shit. I’m done with this shit.”

I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, whether he was done with this particular party, or done with me in general, but in that moment I didn’t care how he felt. I was drunk, but sober enough to know that I needed to be in control of the situation. Mike and I could determine what this fight meant for our relationship later on. For now, I just had to make sure we survived.

“No, you will not go back inside that house,” I said, turning my back on the house and pinning Mike in the chest. His face was furrowed, and he looked like a kid during a tantrum, who was purposely making himself look more upset than he really was.

“Fuck that,” Austin said. “That kid’s not coming anywhere near this house.”

“I’ll get his keys; where are they?” Brian asked.

“I will get his keys,” I turned and replied, reluctantly. I didn’t want Mike to leave, especially the way that things were. What if he’d meant that he was done with me? What if my reaction to his reaction wasn’t what he’d expected? If he left in that state, I wondered if he’d ever come back. I had to make sure that we were both on the same page before he went back to VMI, but with the lynch mob behind me, I wasn’t sure I could buy myself enough time if I was Warren Buffett himself. “This is my mess, I’ll go up there and get the keys.”

And then I had an idea. I knew it would take an act of God to pull this off, but if I managed, somehow, I was sure I could have enough time to at least talk to Mike before he left.

“Do you remember where you put them, Mike?” I asked turning around to face him. I was hoping he could read my face, and know that I was trying to convey that he should trust me.

“In my hat, on your desk.”

“Okay. Okay… you know what? I can’t go get those keys. If I leave Mike down here, those two will kill him,” I pointed at Roberto and Austin, who didn’t deny my accusation. In fact, Austin let out a shrug, like yes, he would in fact kill him.

“No one is killing anyone,” Hutch slurred. The one pledge brother who might have taken my side long enough to listen to reason was drunk as a skunk, I thought. Wonderful.

“We won’t hurt him,” Austin reassured. “Just hurry up and go get his shit.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, making a fast move up the stairs to feign urgency. When I got to the porch landing, I stopped suddenly. “Who’s gonna drive him home? The kid’s drunk as shit.”

“Doesn’t he have to be home by two anyway?”

“No, he was going to spend the night,” I lied. “He’s too drunk to drive back. I’m too drunk to drive him.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Mike said. I shot my head around to face him and glared down where he stood. He mouthed ‘Ohhh…’ and I was pretty sure my plan was about to backfire in the time that it took for Mike to let it sink in.

“He’s lying. He’s drunk,” I replied. “How about this? How about, I walk him to my room and we sit there until he’s sober enough to drive home. Out of the way, away from the party, I will watch him and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Too fucking late, bro,” my pledge brother Ben said. “Stupid has come and gone.”

“Fuck that,” Austin said, still visibly upset at Mike’s attempted assault. “That fucking bitch is not coming back in to my house. Ever. Again.”

“Austin, calm down for a second. He reacted. I’m sorry. But if he drives home now, he will get into a wreck,” at this point I shifted my gaze to Dominick. “And if he manages to survive that wreck, which the drunk driver always does, it’s the family coming home from vacation that ends up dead… if he manages to survive, he’ll tell them that he was coming from a party at Old Dominion. And when they ask which party, and he says it was the tropical one, they’ll know in a second it was our house that let him leave with his keys when he could barely stand up straight. How long do you think before the Student Faculty Hearing Committee is at our doorstep? How long before Dean Cole-cole…”

“Coleman,” Dom finished.

“Dean Coleman. Before Dean Coleman is giving us a strike. And then when the police arrest him, and he testifies that he was over served at our house and that we let him leave, how long before nationals is pulling our charter?”

I stood back and let my Hail Mary sink in for a second.

“Let me take him upstairs and we’ll wait this out. I promise, he will be out of the way. No more trouble tonight. Right, Mike?” I turned to him. “No more trouble tonight?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, like a scolded toddler.

Dom looked at his cell phone.

“You have two hours and then I’m driving him home myself,” Dominick said.

“Oh, come on,” Austin protested.

“Inside,” Dom asserted. I smiled to myself at how I’d managed to turn that around. I watched as the brothers filed back into the house. I wanted to wait with Mike for a few minutes until the commotion died down before we attempted to walk up to my room, through the hoards of people who had surely seen the hit heard round campus.

I turned and walked back down to where Mike stood, his hands behind his head, and his chest rhythmically filling in and out in my tight Hawaiian shirt. He looked marvelous standing there, his blood filled with adrenaline and steaming pouring off his warm face. I needed to know why he’d hit Pete. I needed to know what he meant when he said he was done. I needed to know what this meant for us. I needed answers to a million questions, but I knew not to start the conversation outside, in the cool November air, with my brothers just inside the house ready to kill him at any turn.

Instead, I took a deep breath, and asked Mike if he was ready to go.

At that point, that night, I would have given a million bucks for a secret staircase to my room. Instead, Mike and I were forced to circle the building and go up through the back landing. There were folks smoking cigarettes and nursing beers outside, and luckily, I didn’t recognize any of them as more than just party acquaintances.

My biggest fear was that I would run in to Amanda… or worse yet, Pete. I couldn’t face them that night, and I was sure when I’d ever be able to, and so as Mike and I made the solemn walk of shame up the back stairs, I thanked God that Pete and Amanda had already vacated the Chi Beta house.

That’s not to say that the walk up to my room wasn’t peppered with uncomfortable stares. It surely was. Everyone at that point had heard that a Vmee had clocked a Founder and that Corbin Crowley had stood up for the Vmee. No one attempted to hide their looks as we walked down the hall on the second floor to my room. One girl didn’t even attempt to hide her whispers.

“There they are…” I heard faintly as I led Mike into my room, pushing him forward by the small of his back.

I hadn’t breathed for the last twenty minutes, and it wasn’t until I closed and locked my door behind us that I finally exhaled.

“God,” I sighed. “Mike, what the fuck did you do?”

“I’m sorry, Corbin,” Mike said, having had time to come down from his act of violence, I could tell that he really was sorry. I felt bad for starting in on him, tilted my face, and shrugged. Mike plopped down on my bed with his hands between his legs. I watched as Mister jumped up to where Mike was sitting, smelled his arm for a second and then crossed the bed to my pillow to lie down. It was better than the days that Mister would head straight across the room, not wanting to have anything to do with Mike, but it was still a sure sign that of the guys she saw in my room, Mike wasn’t her favorite.

I walked slowly towards Mike, not wanting to rile him up or make him feel any worse than he already did. Instead, I knelt down gently in front of him, and rubbed the side of his face.

“Tell me why you punched Pete,” I whispered. It wasn’t a question. It was more of a therapist voiced command.

“I thought he was bothering you,” he replied.

“Is that the only reason?” I asked, not one hundred percent convinced.

“Was he bothering you?”

“I know what it looked like when you came back upstairs. I know how he was talking to me, and leaning in, and I know what I would have thought if I’d seen the same thing.”

I made an effort to keep my voice low and comforting. I wasn’t accusing Mike of anything, I just needed to know where his jealousy stemmed from.

“I’m not jealous of that guy,” Mike said defensively. “I just… I saw him leaning in to you, and I… I reacted. What else can I say?”

I knew I needed to make a decision. I could make Mike feel bad about what had happened. I could drill in to him that violence was never okay and that he’d really fucked up. I could tell him that I was going to need to go on a PR spin in order to make things right with my house, Chi-O, and probably Pete. I could tell him that he’d fucked up, over and over, until it sank in.

Or I could pretend that none of that mattered. I could stand by my man right then and there, and show him once and for all that he wasn’t second place to a guy with a shiner for an eye. That he wasn’t second fiddle in the band. I could support him, and assuage all the fear and insecurity that he’d shown that night.

And so that’s what I did. Without saying anything else, without answering Mike’s question, I leaned into him and planted my lips across his.

“Thank you for defending me,” I whispered directly into his lips. As if I had flipped some sort of horny switch in Mike, he pulled my head towards his, opened his mouth, and sucked my tongue into his.

I could tell that Mike still had adrenaline coursing through his veins. The way that he pulled me onto the bed with him like a ragdoll, into a straddling position so that I was sitting across his legs and his chest was upright to meet mine, told me that Mike was still rearing from his near fight with the Brit.

He didn’t let go of my lips with his tongue for a second, or my hair with his left hand. He pulled me in, and as we ground our pelvises together, I felt like I had done the right thing. The only sound in the still air of bedroom was the sound of my grass skirt ruffling underneath me as Mike scratched at my back, drawing me in closer, and opening his mouth to my tongue.

I moaned into him, letting Mike’s sheer passion take over my body. I felt as if his hands, digging into my back, were marking my territory, and I tried my best to clear my head and match his intensity. The feelings were there, but the admitted distraction about what had happened earlier forced me to focus my energy on the guy whose cock I could feel swelling between my thin grass skirt and his thin board shorts.

I moaned again, conceding to Mike’s touch, pulling my shirt off of his broad shoulders and feeling my chest press up against him. It was almost as if he was willing me into him, pulling me into submission.

“Oh fuck,” Mike moaned, opening his mouth wider and sucking my tongue in. I grabbed the back of Mike’s head, pulled myself up onto my knees, straddling him on both sides, and sighed, letting myself go.

I won’t lie and say that being with Mike that night was easy. I calculated every move that I made, forcing my body to respond to his touch, and allowing myself to match his passion for me. I pulled up again, rubbing my impossibly hard cock against his stomach, running my hands across his chest, and focusing on pleasuring his tongue with my own. Being with Mike was never work until that night, and for some reason I couldn’t get out of my head about it.

And then, with one move, Mike pulled me in and made me forget all of the craziness that had just transpired. He slipped his hands into my grass skirt and seamlessly pulled down my underwear and my costume. Without hesitating, I felt Mike fish around the front of the shorts he was wearing, and a second later, as I pulled myself down from another long kissing straddle, I felt the bare skin of Mike’s dick across my ass.

I moaned, this time involuntarily, as I allowed myself to be swept away by the one thing in my life I could still count on. I forgot about Pete for that moment. I forgot about my brothers who were ready to form a lynch mob right outside. I forgot about everything in my life that was swirling out of control, and I let Mike sweep me away.

The rest of the night was magical. I pulled myself off of Mike for a brief moment, standing above him, our lips still together, as I pulled my boxers and skirt off. Mike simultaneously tossed my shorts across the room, uncharacteristic of the military man that was so used to folding his clothes as he stripped them off.

He meant business that night, and when I crawled back on top of him, pulling his face in with my two hands just as he pulled my hips down to his crotch with his, I knew just how much business he meant.

I’d never felt Mike’s cock so hard in my entire life; not the first time we fucked, or any subsequent time after that. Not the time we bathed together, or the first time that he fucked me missionary style, looking in to my eyes. Never.

Until that night.

“Oh god,” I panted, losing my breath from merely making out with Mike for what felt like an eternity. “Oh god.”

I leaned back without pulling our faces apart. Our chests were welded together, and our hands hopelessly roamed each other’s bodies. And then, as if we were puzzle pieces, as if we were meant to go together like a key and a socket, I felt Mike enter me with surprising ease.

Don’t get me wrong, my body resisted for a split second as I felt Mike’s cock poke into me, and with a sigh and the will to pull him in without letting go of his lips, I sat back and felt the entirety of his dick slide right into me.

In that moment, I never wanted to let go. I felt like if I did, if I let us separate, even for a second, I would have to face the inevitable, and I didn’t want to do that.

Right then, in that moment, it was just the two of us, and that’s how I wanted it to stay.

A minute later, Mike pulled his strong hands down to my waist and sat up, leaning me back so that I was sitting directly on his cock, my legs outstretched on either side, allowing me to take even more of him inside of me. My own dick was pressed firmly against our stomachs, rubbing against Mike’s abs on one side and my treasure trail on the other, creating a sensation that completed a circuit between his body and mine.

I wasn’t sure that pleasure got that much better, as Mike leaned me back off the side of the bed, holding my entire weight in his arms, and thrust into me. His thrust felt like he was marking his territory, stabbing me for a reason unknown, making me fully aware of the fact that I was his and no one else’s.

I wondered for a brief second if Mike was aware of the changes his punch had caused in our relationship. I wondered if he could sense my hesitation as we walked back up to my room, and he was doing everything he could to fuck that hesitation out of me.

I felt like he knew, and I felt like in that fuck, in that thrust, Mike was apologizing for what he’d done.

And I let him. I let him apologize over and over, moaning as he apologized deeper and deeper inside of me. I scratched Mike’s back, at first afraid that he would let me fall backwards onto the ground. But his grip was so tight on my waist that I knew I was safe, and so I switched my scratching in time with my thrusting up and down on his cock, letting myself down to feel the entire length of his manhood, and then pulling myself back up until only the head of his dick was inside of me. I eased myself back down, filling the void, and letting his impossibly hard cock message every nerve ending inside of me that it could reach.

I felt like I could stay in that position for ever, and truly, had Mike not taken the reigns, I might have. But before I knew it, Mike picked me up off the bed, I wrapped my legs around him and grabbed a fistful of his hair, and let him push me into the side wall of my room.

“Oh fuck,” I screamed, gyrating up and down as he fucked me hard against the wall. I leaned back, creating the perfect angle for his cock to slide in and out of my ass, as Mike used one hand to steady me, and the other to create leverage against the wall. And then he went to work.

Until that point in my life, no one had ever fucked me like that before. The whimpers, the mixtures of pleasure and pain, echoed in my room, masked only by the sound of the raging party downstairs. Mike’s grunts were guttural, almost animalistic, as he marked his territory deep down inside of my body with every single inch of his. At one point, Mike bit down onto my shoulder, unable to control his sheer masculine adrenaline, and I let out a scream of passion.

“Oh fuck, Mike. Mike. Oh fuck,” I screamed, letting myself go. And after what felt like all night of fucking against my wall, I let my body pull off of him, slide back down onto him with a thud, and release every bit of pent up energy that was trapped in my balls.

I came so hard that it ricocheted off of Mike’s stomach and onto my own, sticking us together as I rode the wave of pleasure that his cock was causing to pulse inside of me. The feeling was intense, magical, indescribable. It was the feeling of two people in love, making love. And nothing else.

Within a second of feeling the most powerful orgasm I’d ever felt wave over me like a tsunami, I felt Mike fill me up. I felt his dick pulse. He got on his tip toes and smashed me backwards into the wall, let go of my back and pushed against the wall to steady himself. I held myself up on Mike’s cock by the sheer strength of my grip around his waist and my fingers against his back.

And then I felt him cum. It was like a gallon of his sticky sweetness filled the inside of me, pulsing over and over again. I’d felt that feeling before, but never like this. It was like Mike was unleashing every bit of masculinity he had into me, and could barely contain himself. He filled me up, and after a minute of milking him with my ass, I felt what wouldn’t fit dribble out and down my leg.

“Holy fuck,” Mike said, pulling my leg off of him and setting me gently on the ground. I felt empty; incomplete.

“That was incredible,” I replied, panting, breathing heavily, and sweating like I’d just run a marathon.

“Holy fuck,” Mike repeated, unable to form a complete thought. “That was… holy fuck.”

I started laughing, collapsing into his arms.

“It was… it was holy fuck,” I sighed.

We stood there, breathing into each other for a minute before Mike’s lips met the side of my neck, then my chin, then my lips, and he pulled me in, and we did it all over again.

I don’t know how many times Mike and I came that night, but I do know that we came together each time, in different places, and in different forms. I made a joke that in the morning, after all of our spent cum had dried, I’d be able to crack my blanket in half. Mike laughed, pulled me in, and moments later, we came together again.

I don’t remember when we finished, I just remember falling asleep in his arms, Mike’s chin on my by cheek, his entire body pressed up against me, and his big arms drawing me in, protecting me from the aftermath that I dreaded having to deal with the next day.

And then, on Sunday morning, waking up with a start and a stretch, I came crashing back to reality.

“Corbin!” I heard as someone knocked on my door. I shot straight up, realizing that Mike wasn’t next to me, and looked around. My room was flooded in natural light, and I squinted my eyes as I wondered how long I’d been asleep.

“Corbin, are you awake?” I recognized Austin’s voice.

“Come in,” I croaked. I heard my door rattle, but it didn’t move. “Come in!”

“It’s locked, dipshit,” Roberto shouted from the other side of the room. I got up from my bed, and stretched, realizing just how much jizz had crystallized across my chest as I moved.

“Shit,” I breathed. I felt as disgusting as I must have looked as I opened a window and let cool air into my room before crossing and opening the door for Roberto and Austin.

“What the fuck happened to you last night?” Roberto started in before I even had a chance to say good morning or pull a shirt on.

“What?” I scratched my eyes and walked backwards to my couch. Both boys looked like they’d been up for hours and had already been to the gym. I watched Austin cross towards my bed and take a seat.

“I wouldn’t sit there if I was you,” I said to him softly, my throat sore and my voice almost hoarse from whatever screaming, hollering, kissing, and sucking I had done the night before.

“Or there,” I said to Roberto as he tried to take a seat on my computer chair. I thought about all of the places Mike and I had fucked the night before, and I slowly remembered each of the three loads of cum we’d spilled all over my room.

“Where’d you go after your Vmee cracked the Brit in the face?” Austin asked, settling to sit down on my coffee table facing me on the couch. Roberto made a swift leap up to the top of my dresser.

“We just came up here and talked.”

Roberto shot me a look.

“Talked? Really? Hutch said he had to sleep downstairs because you were so loud. He can’t even look at you.”

“Well, we talked and then we did other stuff,” I said softly, wondering why they were even there.

“Look, I just wanted to give you the heads up that Dom is not happy with you,” Austin said, looking me straight in the eye and not appreciating the state in which I was in.

“How is that news?”

“He says that you promised the cadet would leave, and then you came up here and rewarded him for punching a Founder with… I don’t even want to say how you rewarded him, it’s disgusting.”

“Why is Dom so obsessed with my love life?”

“Love, really?” Roberto asked in the most immature fashion.

“And Pete is barely even a Founder. He’s a transfer student,” I defended.

“And Dom is a loyalist.”

I looked from Austin over to Roberto and wondered why the fuck they were bringing me this news. It had to be bad that Austin felt like he needed to warn me, and yet somehow I was indifferent. I knew I’d be in trouble for housing the guy that had caused a fight at our party. Security took violence really seriously, and almost always blamed the house that couldn’t control its guests.

“Did someone call security?”

“No,” Austin answered, “But I think your boyfriend went to the Health Center, so Dom wants you to find out what he told them.”

“Absolutely not,” I replied, leaning back into my couch and then immediately sitting up. I winced when I realized how raw my back was from grinding it against the wall.

“We need to get to the root of all of this,” Austin proceeded. “And since it’s your shitstorm, you need to find out what Pete told the Health Center.”

And there it was. The reason Dom had sent in the two pledge brothers I liked most at the moment was to get me to do some reconnaissance work on behalf of the house. What about what I’d been through the night before? What about me sorting through what to do about the two guys that were literally like oil and water in my life?

“I’m sorry, but no amount of what Dom wants is going to make me talk to Pete about this. He can fine me; he can kick me out; he can suck my dick for all I care,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

“I think there’s been enough of that,” Roberto chimed in. And that’s when I remembered something from last night. At some point in the evening, after Mike and I had fallen asleep, I remember getting up to rinse myself off in the bathroom and then coming back to find Mike throwing his clothes on in a panic. I remembered trying to convince him to stay with one more blow job for the night, but as the sounds of the party had wafted off in nothingness, I remember Mike frantically saying that he had to be back before Bryant’s watch ended.

“I need to call Mike,” I said suddenly, jolted that he might not have made it back to barracks. I wasn’t sure what the punishment was for getting caught outside of barracks after hours, but Mike said that he’d get ‘Boned’ if he did, and that didn’t sound good for a guy like him.

“Seriously, Corbin? The kid is dangerous. He proved that yesterday,” Austin said.

“He’s not dangerous.”

“He punched out Pete and he lunged at me,” Roberto said, pointing to himself, his eyes wide, like he hadn’t done anything to deserve being lunged at.

“He wasn’t going to do anything to you, Robbie,” I replied, knowing how much he hated when I used that name on him. “You heckled him, and he reacted.”

“Yeah, well his reactions are dangerous, and you need to stay away from him,” Austin said. I stood up, walked over to my bed, and grabbed my phone off the charger.

“Thanks, Dad,” I replied sarcastically, not even bothering to look Austin in the eye as I spoke. Instead, I kept my eyes on my phone, and pulled up Mike’s number. “Anything else?”

I looked at the two guys who had come in to do Dom’s dirty work with as much attitude as I could muster with my half awaken face, and waited for Mike to answer my call.

“Hey,” he said, sounding busy.

“Hey, Mike.” Austin and Roberto both shook their heads, stood up, and walked towards the door.

“You’re an asshole,” Roberto mouthed as he exited, and I waved him off.

“Hey, I just wanted to see if you made it back to barracks on time last night,” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Barely. Bryant was just coming off watch and he yelled at me this morning for cutting it so close. He wants me to cool it with the visits to Clifton Hill for awhile,” Mike answered.

“Okay,” I said nonchalantly, trying not to sound disappointed. “What does that mean though?”

“Just means I should follow the curfew rules everyone else does,” he said. “And that also means if we want more nights like last night, we’d probably need to start around eight so I can make it back.”

I smiled, relieved that it didn’t mean he couldn’t come visit at all. Honestly, in that moment, I wasn’t sure what I would do if Mike cut our visits off. I needed him, more than I admitted. I needed the contact of someone I knew loved me, someone I could count on, someone who could transport me away from the craziness that was Clifton Hill. I needed Mike, and after last night’s passionate finish, I wasn’t afraid to admit that.

“Either way,” Mike continued. “Thanksgiving Break starts Friday, and then we’re gone a week. When we come back, we only have two weeks of class then exams, so there won’t even be that much time to hang out anyway.”

I hated that he was right. The bridge between the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays were grueling. Every class counted. Every term paper or project was due, and every class had more reading in that two week span of time than they did all semester long— all leading to a week of exams that would make lesser students jump out of safety locked glass windows on the top floor of the library.

One great thing about OD however, was that we had a week to take our exams, and being that we operated on a strict honor system that everyone on campus bought in to, we were awarded certain freedoms during exam week. Some professors allowed for take home exams, as long as the proper open or closed note protocol was followed. In every other case, we could sign up for an exam slot to take our tests, meaning we didn’t necessarily have to take the exams when the professor would be proctoring them, but could sign up to take the test any time during the week with a general proctor. It was a system that allowed students to either front load their tests and get out of dodge or spread them out and give themselves time to cram between each exam.

Either way, when we got back from Thanksgiving Break, Mike and I would be so immersed in school work that it would be difficult to even see each other.

I swallowed that reality and kept our conversation going until Mike had to go. I stayed in my room and flipped through my notes for an English quiz the next day. There wasn’t much point in studying heavily with only a week of classes before Thanksgiving. I’d be packing my books and hitting them hard over the break. This was my last chance to blow schoolwork off until that wasn’t option.

After watching The Hills for a few hours, I walked downstairs in an attempt to sneak to The Commons on campus to get some food. I was starving after being holed up in my room all day, and watching Lo and LC eat pizza and drink champagne on the New Year’s Episode made me want pizza at least.

I knew I should have ordered Domino’s to deliver to my room as soon as I walked past the open library door on the main floor and caught the eye of a studying Dominick.

It was like he’d been waiting for me to pass him, and as stealthily as I tried to trot past him without being seen, he leapt out of his chair at the boardroom table and sprang into the Great Hall to meet me.

“Um, Corbin, can I see you for a second?” I heard the lilt of his Russian accent just as my hand grasped the backdoor. A second faster and I would have been in the cool November air. But I was caught, and I knew I was about to get lectured.

I followed Dom back into the library, where I noticed my fate was even worse. Three of the seniors, Hutch, and the sophomore Kaden Keller, who had thrown up on my couch while I was rushing him, and chose Austin as his Big Brother instead of me, were all sitting around studying in various spots around the room.

I took a seat next to Dom where he sat at the boardroom table, leaned back, and waited for the verbal assault.

“So what happened after the fight last night?” he asked calmly. I’m sure he didn’t want to start things at an escalated level, but I knew Dom, and I knew myself, and I knew things would escalate soon enough.

“I wouldn’t call one punch a fight any more than I would call one kiss a fuck,” I said, matching his tone and crossing my arms. My defenses were up, but again Dom remained still and even keeled as he spoke.

“Listen, I know that emotions were high last night. I know that putting the mixer together was stressful, and you did a good job with that, by the way. But we need to deal with this fight situation head-on. We can’t have Founders getting punched out on our dance floor, especially in front of girls and freshmen.”

I listened to what he was saying, and I agreed with him. If I hadn’t been the one responsible for the instigator of the fight, I would have been on Dom’s side lecturing whoever it was in my shoes. But I wasn’t on that side. I was on the defense, and therefore I had to defend myself.

I decided to keep things as low as possible, not wanting to get overly aggressive for no reason.

“I understand that, Dominick. And I can assure you that what happened was an isolated incident. It will never happen again, I promise you that.”

“I know it won’t,” Dom surprised me by responding kindly. “But we still need to figure out exactly what the administration knows about the fight. Do you have any clue what Pete might have told the nurses at the Health Center.”

I swallowed. This was it.

“I don’t know, no.”

“I need you to find out,” Dominick said, leaning his head, as if he was waiting for me to defy him. I swallowed again, licked my lips slowly, and searched my brain for an appropriate response.

There was no way in hell I was going to walk into Pete’s room and have a civil conversation with him. Like hell was that going to happen. But I knew that I was in the wrong here, and I knew that it was my responsibility to make sure the house didn’t get implicated in the mess I’d caused.

But knowing that it was my responsibility and deciding to take responsibility were two decidedly different things.

“Listen, Dom. Pete and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms,” I said, narrowing my eyes and cutting my syllables short. I could feel Hutch and Kaden’s eyes on me, but refused to take my gaze off Dominick.

“Find a way,” Dom instructed. It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order in the simplest way that Dom knew how to order. Up until that point in the conversation, he had kept things smooth and calm, and I knew he was waiting for the ticking time bomb that was Corbin Crowley to go off. I could see him bracing for my reaction, and instead of giving him one, I matched his tone yet again.

“Okay, listen. If it’s information that we need, it’s information that we’ll get. Kaden, can you call your pledge brother Adam and ask him to talk to Pete for me, please?”

I watched as Kaden darted his eyes between Dom and me like a puppy who was being called by two different masters.

“It isn’t Adam’s responsibility to take care of this. Your love triangle, your punch, your job to fix this situation,” Dom said, his voice rising ever so slightly.

“I get that, but given my involvement in this so called triangle, Dom, I’d rather recues myself and do this the least aggressive way possible. Adam and Pete are roommates, so I’m sure he can get the information that you need.”

Dom tilted his head again. I was waiting for it, ready for him to go off and threaten me and tell me that if I didn’t fall in line I’d be fined, kicked out, brought before Standards. All things I’d heard before. I was ready for it. But it never came.

“Corbin, you are probably the quickest person with words that I know, and I respect that. Put your money where your mouth is. Don’t be a coward. Figure this out, and make sure that the house is spotless on this. That’s all I have to say.”

And with that it was done. Dom meant business, and I could tell. I had to talk to Pete. I had to figure out what he’d told the school about the fight. I had to be the one to protect this house from the punch that Mike had caused. I had to do it. No one else. And as I walked back up to my room, forgetting how hungry I was, and wanting to do nothing but go back to bed, I dreaded every second of what I was going to have to do.

Luckily, I had a full day of class, group projects, and meetings to occupy my time. My advertising project group decided to meet right after class to finalize our deck. Presentations were on Wednesday and Friday, and we were almost done with our final presentation save a few tweaks that I volunteered to work on and send out to the girls that night.

On my way to pick up a quick lunch and then dart to the library, I stopped at the kiosk in The Commons to check my email. I had a message from Alexandria asking why I hadn’t turned in an article. She told me that everyone was running late that weekend, and if I had a piece in by five, she would hold print, and release the paper on Wednesday instead of that afternoon. I shot her a note saying I’d work on it for about an hour, and if I didn’t have anything solid, she could go ahead to print.

So with that, I sat down in the library with a fruit bowl that Vera had cut for me, and started typing. The words came out of me like water as I used a fist as a metaphor for the perfect relationship. Five fingers, five key components to what makes relationships work, I surmised. Trust, honesty, respect, communication, and attraction. Each important, each nothing more than a severed finger without the others. Together, you could punch through anything, I thought. And with that, I sent Alexandria my least subtle article to date.

After even more class that afternoon, I holed up in the computer lab in the business school to finish my tweaks for the Robitussin mock-campaign that we would be presenting. I had to stall the walk back to the house because the walk back would take me right by Pete’s building, and I wasn’t ready to talk to him. I couldn’t yet. And so I stayed in the computer lab until nearly everyone left to get dinner at their respective houses.

I chose to skip frat dinner, and instead texted Hutch to make me a plate and take it to Chapter for me. Since I didn’t have a social report to give, I decided I would sit quietly in the corner of the library, draw as little attention to myself as possible, and try not to piss of Dom and the other officers any further.

“Where’ve you been all day?” Hutch asked, handing me a plate that the house mom had wrapped in plastic wrap for me. It was meatloaf day, and I wondered if the meat was dry because my plate had sat out or if that was just how it had been cooked that day.

“Around,” I shrugged. I didn’t want to get in to it, and so I walked passed him in to the library. I wasn’t the only one eating at Chapter as the majority of the brothers had been on campus all day.

“So we’re going to speed through general housekeeping today and focus the majority of the meeting on rush,” Dom announced when he’d gotten everyone quiet. We talked through the requests the house mom had given us for that week, including a complaint about parties during the week that she could hear from her room downstairs. Dom instructed Hutch and I to get together on an outline for Christmas Weekend to have ready for the officer’s approval before we left for break, as the official Christmas Weekend was just one week after we got back.

After that, Hutch stood and went through the updated rush list. The same guys made up the list, and when Hutch got to Lee’s name, I swallowed hard and buried my head in my plate. Each class was assigned four different guys that we firmly believed we could convince to join Chi Beta. If we all locked our four guys, we would have a class of twelve, which would be enough to keep the house running. Ten was considered the bare minimum… anything below that, and Austin would have to come up with some creative financing to stretch out our dues for the year.

Once Hutch was done, Dominick released us into our separate classes to brainstorm how we would give a final push to the guys we were assigned.

“So,” Hutch started as he, Austin, Roberto, Brian, Sam, Ben and I all gathered around to discuss the guys we’d been given. Three guys from my class were missing, but seeing as to they hadn’t really participated to begin with, we carried on without them. “We’ve been given, let’s see… Lee, Brandon, David, and some kid named Moe.”

“Who is Moe?” Roberto asked. I was grateful that I didn’t have to.

“Apparently he’s friends with Lee, Brandon, and David. He’s been around, but he was rushing Sigma Chi hardcore. He might have burned some bridges there, according to Lee and Brandon, so they’ve been getting him to come over here.” Using freshman to rush other freshman was Rush 101. Having hall mates or sports buddies convince each other to all go to one place was easier than upperclassmen doing. The fact that Lee was part of the freshman rushing freshman crew made me nervous, especially after my conversation with him on Friday.

“How attached is he to those guys?” I asked nonchalantly, sipping a Gatorade out of a red Solo cup.

“I mean, if we don’t get his friends, we lose him. These three are a solid block, they have been since day one. It’s just about convincing them that they can have an immediate impact on the house once they pledge and hoping they can get their friend to buy in.”

I didn’t bother asking what would happen if Lee decided not to pledge. For the guys sitting in that circle, Lee not pledging wasn’t an option. I felt Hutch look at me a couple times as we talked strategies, who would hang out with whom, and what we planned to say to each of the guys as we got closer to January.

In the end, I escaped the meeting without losing my cool or drawing too much attention to myself. I was assigned to hang out with David a couple times after break and see if we couldn’t get him comfortable with other brothers besides the seniors and Hutch.

As we all filed out of the library, Hutch asked me to stay behind for a second.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing, I just… I texted Lee yesterday and called him today. He hasn’t responded. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

I raised a shoulder innocently.

“No,” I replied. “Honestly, I haven’t talked to him since you told me not to on Friday. He’s not slipping away is he?”

I surprised myself at how genuine I sounded.

“I hope not. Seriously, we lose that kid, we lose half the class.”

“I mean, it can’t be that deep, can it?”

“It is. They’re pledging together,” Hutch said, his voice solidly worried about losing his gold rush star. “They’ve said it a million times.”

“Yeah, but we all know how much things change that last week,” I said off the cuff. Hutch gave me a look, and I knew he was reading what I knew about the situation. “I’m just saying. Nothing is done until it’s done.”

I turned and climbed up the stairs before I said something incriminating. I took a deep breath after I got in to my room, and thought about Lee for a second. Maybe exiling him hadn’t been the best idea, I thought. Maybe dooming his fate to a different house wasn’t my best option. Maybe I’d made a mistake.

Lee was a cancer, I knew that. But what if in cutting out the cancer, I had also cut out some of the good cells as well. What if I’d severed the entire rush class in half?

But then, I thought, maybe I hadn’t. Maybe there was a way to turn this ship around without sacrificing the other guys. I had to come up with a play, and fast, and I decided I would hang out with David later that week and feel out the situation.

At that point, it was eight o’clock in the evening, I was tired and cranky, and ready for bed. I knew I had a mound of homework I could have done, and an entire DVR downstairs I could have vegged out and watched while the other guys studied. I could have gone to Monday Night Football at our off campus house, or better yet, and Lambda down the street.

I could have done anything in the world that night, but I knew that there was one thing that I had to do. I’d put it off, successfully for twenty-four hours, but there was no putting it off any further. I had to make the walk down to Pete’s and have the talk that I’d been dreading since I saw the punch land across his face.

I must have sat there for thirty minutes, aimlessly thinking about everything else I could have done instead, but there was nothing. There was no alternative. Dom’s words echoed in my ear, and I knew I needed to go do it.

I put on my black Northface, ran my fingers through my hair, and walked out of my room. I paused outside of my door, took a deep breath, and psyched myself to keep going. I paused again as the door to the frat house closed behind me, and again when I got to the alley that led down to Pete’s building.

Each step I took weighed me down further. I ran scenarios through my mind. Would he even open the door? What if he didn’t? What if he slammed it in my face again? What if he yelled at me? What if he punched me back? There were a million things I could have seen him doing, a million ways this could have played out, and not one of the possibilities was particularly pleasant.

It must have taken me thirty minutes just to walk from my door to his building, and another thirty just to climb the stairs. Why was I so nervous? I thought. What had I done wrong? Mike had delivered the punch. It was on my orders. I wasn’t there to apologize on behalf of Mike, whatever we were to each other, but rather to apologize on behalf of the house. This was a business call.

I told myself that as I stepped right in front of Pete’s door. I knew it was a lie, but in that second, it made me feel better.

I took a deep breath, raised my fist, and knocked.

I waited approximately half a second, and when the door didn’t open, I started to turn and walk away. I’d tried, I would tell Dom. I went over there, and he was nowhere to be found. I had done my part to save the house.

But my feet were locked. They felt like I’d stood in cement. I couldn’t walk away. I was welded there until Pete opened the door, and it must have been half an hour until he did.

And when he did, my mind went black. In that second, everything I had ever felt for him came rushing to the surface. The love I’d felt, the betrayal, the confusion, the anger. The anger. I looked at him, and everything I’d practiced to say for every scenario fled my mind.

He stood there, wearing a blue soccer shirt and jeans, looking at me with an expression on his face that I couldn’t read. It was a mixture of surprise and anger, with a little confusion peppered in. Why was I still standing there? Why couldn’t I say anything? And why hadn’t he shut the door.

“Pete,” I started. My voice was low, as I was afraid that it would falter. I cleared my throat.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. I tilted my head and tried to remember one of the many lines I’d practiced on my way to his door.

“If it’s any consolation, your face doesn’t look as bad as I’m sure it feels.”

Pete opened his mouth, caught what he was about to say, and then swallowed his tongue. His face didn’t look that bad. I’d expected a black eye or a dislocated nose, or some sort of bruise. Instead, Pete’s eye was a faint shade of blue, a mild shiner. The damage was under his eye, where he looked like he had a small cut that was scabbing over. The wound was shiny, like he’d put ointment on it, but other than that, his chiseled face looked fine.

“What do you want, Corbin?” he asked slowly, not shutting the door in my face. That was already better than half of the scenarios I’d thought through already.

“Listen, I came here to… um…” I closed my eyes and composed my thoughts. “The brothers want to know what you told the Health Center about your face.”

Pete looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s just that… you know, if you told them that there was a fight, the frat could get in trouble, and they just want to cover their bases.”

Pete continued to stare at me without responding.

“And I get that what happened that night sucks, but the house had nothing to do with it, and they just want to make sure that you didn’t say anything that could get them… us… it… in trouble. The house.”

I finished my word vomit with a deep breath. Pete continued to remain silent, and my stomach turned into a knot.

“Pete, I’m sorry.”

“And there it is,” he said softly.

“What?”

“You should have started with I’m sorry. You should have started with I’m sorry a long time ago.”

I tilted my head, and inhaled like I’d been drowning.

“I’m saying it now. I’m sorry that Mike punched you. I’m sorry that any of this has happened at all. Believe me.”

I didn’t know where my words were going to take me. This isn’t what I’d practiced to say, and going off book, with my emotions that high, was dangerous.

“Believe… believe me when I say that if I could go back in time and erase everything that’s happened, I certainly would. Hurting you…”

“… you didn’t hurt me…” Pete interrupted.

“You getting hurt was never my intention. And if I could go back to that day that we met at Amanda’s, before there was any drama or any expectations or any feelings whatsoever… if I could protect my heart from you, believe you me, I would. So yes, I am sorry. And yes, it’s long overdue, but I’m saying it now, and I hope that you hear it.”

“You want to go back to that first day?” Pete asked. I knew in his voice that it was a rhetorical question and that I was about to get laid out in that hallway. “You want to go back to that first day, before I knew that you were a manipulative, petty, selfish, and insecure individual? Why? So that you could show me each and every one of those traits again over the course of one semester?”

“Pete…” I was shell shocked at what he’d said. I was far from perfect, I knew that, but no one had ever called me any of those names before.

And yet, I didn’t lash out at him because I knew he was right. I had played the game too hard with him. I had tried to control every piece of our situation, and to what avail? I stood there, soaking in what he’d said, and wondering to myself how I should respond.

I knew that what I said in that situation would affect the rest of Pete’s and my relationship forever. Right then and there, I could alter the course of our trajectory, or I could bury any hope of any kind of friendship with him. I knew it would take more than one conversation to salvage what we’d had in the past, but I also knew that I could start here, start now, and start rebuilding what had been lost in the last couple weeks.

Despite him calling me manipulative, petty, selfish, and insecure, I wanted him still. Maybe it wasn’t in spite of that, maybe it was because of that. Maybe it was the idea of someone calling me out on my bullshit or standing up to the bully that I had I become. I wanted him, and I wanted to save what we’d had from my own self-destructive ways.

“Pete,” I started. I took a deliberate step forward, into his personal space, and put my palm on his shoulder. I felt him flinch under my touch.

“18 years,” I said, my voice low and soft, without a hint of attitude, sarcasm, or anger. It was matter of fact, calm, and deliberately slow. “I was in the closet for 18 years, and every day I hid who I knew I was to every single person around me. Until I came here, I lied to my parents, my siblings, my best friends. No one back home knew what I really was… who I really was. I couldn’t tell my mother.”

My voice broke.

“God, it would kill her. And my father. Pastor Crowley… how do you think that conversation would go? I lied to my best friend every day that we played tennis together. The guys on my team, my brother and my sisters… everyone. Until I got here, I felt like a visitor in my own life; like I couldn’t be myself every single moment for 18 years.”

I swallowed.

“And I vowed after that, that I wouldn’t hide anymore. I vowed that I would be whoever I wanted, and get those things that I wanted, and no one would stand in my way. And so I created this world for myself at OD that allowed me to be who I am. I’m protective of that world, because it’s all I have. When I go home, I’m no one. I’m the kid from Colleyville who went out east and turned gay; the kid who lied about who he was for eighteen years. The kid who was probably checking everyone out in the locker room or in the halls every time he saw you. I go back to being that scared, alone, introverted, untrusting little kid, and I can’t help it.”

I locked eyes with Pete, and I could tell that he was looking right into my soul. For the first time since that first week we’d met, I was talking to him, and baring my soul to a true friend.

“And so I protect this world that I built for myself. Is it selfish? Sure, I put myself first, I get that. I do what’s best for me first. But I can’t compromise who I am here for anyone. I can’t… I just… And if this world is threatened, if my world is under attack by something, do I defend it? Of course I do, and sometimes I go overboard, and sometimes I overcompensate my strength because I am so scared of being that pathetic little kid again that I have to control everything around me, I get it. And you’re right, it is so very, very petty. I know that, but I have to be in control. And I know that I have an influence over people, that’s no accidental thing… I work to have an influence over people, but Pete, we are all adults here, and we all make choices, and in the end, manipulated or not, influenced or not, we’ve all chosen to do the things that we’ve done.”

I blinked for the first time, and single tear rolled from my eye. I flicked it away quickly with the back of my thumb, hoping Pete hadn’t noticed, but the way that our eyes were locked, I knew that he had.

“And you can bet your ass that I’m insecure, because when I step foot on this campus, I am scrutinized for my every single move in a way that someone like you can’t begin to imagine. Don’t forget that we’re still in the south, and don’t forget that I am one of three out gay guys on this campus, the only one in the Greek system, and the only one with any semblance of social pull on this campus, and one missed step, one show of weakness, and that all comes crashing down, and that scares the living shit out of me. I created who I am to shield myself from who I was, because I hated myself for eighteen long years, and I refuse to do that again here.”

And this is where I raised my voice. This is where I put just a little edge into what I was saying. I swallowed, blinked, and put an intensity in my eyes that I knew Pete couldn’t miss.

“You knew all of this about me from the first time I saw you at Amanda’s,” I patted my hand against his shoulder again, realizing that I was shaking. “And I think that you’re mad at me for all of these things you think I am, but I think that you’re even more mad at yourself for falling for someone who is all of those things. I’m not perfect, Pete, far from it. And regardless of how deep your feelings go, I won’t even go there anymore, I promise. But regardless of how deep your feelings go or don’t go, there was something that attracted you to me. Something. Some redeeming quality that shines brighter than the insecure, petty, selfish mess you think you see right now. Remember what that something is, because you know you saw it, and you know that you remember it, and you know that you fell for it at some point.”

I looked at him, afraid to say anything else. I could hear the break in my voice coming from a mile away, and I knew that even though I had a million things left to say, if I opened my mouth one more time, I’d fall apart.

I watched Pete’s face soften. His eyes lowered their glare, and the steel behind them almost melted. He swallowed.

“Growing up, I thought that my parents were divorced. I didn’t see my dad, ever that I can remember, until I was about ten years old, and I realized that they weren’t divorced. My dad lived in the city, and my mom lived in our country house outside of London a few hundred miles, with my sister and me. And when I was fourteen or fifteen, I moved in to my dad’s flat to finish my A-levels in the city, and I started to realize why they even bothered with this arrangement at all. The mistresses that came in and out of that flat, you wouldn’t even believe. And I wondered who could live that way. And every couple of months, my dad would go and fetch my mom, and take her to Bond Street, and then to whatever gala or dinner or party was going on at Parliament, and parade her around as his wife, even though all of his colleagues knew better because they were all doing the exact same thing. But that was their arrangement, that’s what worked for them, and it disgusted me. And I know that I have trouble letting people in. I have trouble opening up to those around me, and I have trouble trusting people, and I get that. But that’s because as afraid as I am of becoming as heartless as my father, I refuse to ever be as naïve and pathetic as my mother.”

I digested what Pete had just said, and the dots began to connect, slowly but surely. When it came to trust, especially between he and me, I had been less than perfect at face value. There was The Vmee and there had been The Freshman, and there was swarm of guys that I flirted with if didn’t actually hook up with. Why should he trust my feelings for him? Whereas I saw having a backup to your first choice as a responsible way of protecting your heart, he saw my backup as a sure fire sign that I was ready to make a fool out of him.

I didn’t know what to say, and so I said nothing. I looked at Pete, as he blinked at me, and I felt the energy between us that had existed throughout all of that craziness. And even as he stood there with a cut underneath his eye that I may as well have inflicted myself, I could feel that energy, and I knew that I had to make things right between us.

“Pete, listen,” I said softly, taking a step back finally, after letting the brief history of his past wash over me. “I don’t want you to think I’m only saying this because of what you just told me. I want you to know that I mean it with every fiber of my being, and that hopefully one day you’ll be able to understand where I come from and forgive me for creating this… mess… in short, Pete… I’m sorry. For everything.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond because I didn’t want him to see my face break and another tear roll out of my eye. I turned and walked down the mile-long hallway, my feet growing heavier and heavier with each step.

I heard his door close just as I turned down the stairwell that led me outside, and I wondered if he’d stood in the hallway watching me as I walked away.

I didn’t think about Mike as I walked back to the frat house, or as I popped popcorn and cued up The Devil Wears Prada on my laptop, or as I scooped up Mister and sat on my bed to watch my favorite movie. I didn’t think about Mike once as I tried my best not to think about anything, but as I swatted away thoughts about Pete as they raped my mind and infiltrated my subconscious. I didn’t think about Mike one bit as I convinced myself that this wasn’t the end for Pete and I, as I wondered if he’d ever be able to let the last semester go and allow us to start over. I didn’t think about Mike as I told myself over and over that Pete would, and that even if nothing romantic ever happened between us, we’d be friends again, and I’d be okay with that.

I didn’t actually think about Mike until he called me, late that night, after I’d dozed off without touching a page of homework, and woke up with a start as my cell phone rang next to my ear.

I almost knocked the bowl of unpopped corn that had stuck to the bottom off my bed as I shot up and grabbed my phone.

“Hey,” I choked, my mouth dry and salty.

“Hey, babe,” Mike whispered. It was then and only then that I thought about Mike, and it was only right then that I realized his words would eventually come true, regardless of the outcome between Pete and I.

You’re going to break my heart one day.

But that Sunday in November wasn’t the day, and so I pushed that memory out of my mind, and resolved to love Mike until that day actually came.

“What’s up, babe?” I asked, sitting up and leaning against my wall. Even with Pete swirling around in my brain, my attraction and genuine feeling for Mike couldn’t be denied, and even though I hadn’t thought about him all day, sitting there talking to him in the stillness of the night, he was the only thing on my mind.

“Nothing, I just wanted to talk to you before I went to bed. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I answered with a smile. “I didn’t get booted from my fraternity because of you.”

“Good,” he replied. I could tell he was smiling. “They need you around. You give them street cred.”

“Or something like that,” I smiled. Talking to Mike was easy. Letting him cheer me up was simple. There were none of the same complications with Mike that I had with a simple conversation with Pete. Mike and I were easy, and I wanted to settle for easy so bad. But I knew that easy wasn’t always best, and that that was the hard part.

“What do you have planned this week?” Mike asked. I squinted my eyes, wondering why he was making small talk. Mike never made small talk.

“Just school. Compiling all of the things I need to study over Thanksgiving Break.”

“Is it a lot of stuff?” he asked.

“More than I think I could pack in my suitcase,” I joked. I suddenly felt uneasy. There was something weighing on Mike’s mind and I wished he would get straight to the point. I circled back to the words that had echoed in my mind when he called, and I wondered if I had it all wrong. Was tonight the night that Mike would break my heart? And was I ready for that?

“Mike, is something wrong?” I asked, my voice growing as tense as the knot that formed in my stomach. “You sound… you sound different.”

“No, everything is fine,” he said, his voice forced for my benefit. “It’s just… I don’t know how to tell you… um… I got boned today by one of the sergeants.”

I knew Mike had told me what getting boned meant, but in that moment, as my head raced I couldn’t quite remember what being boned at the VMI campus stood for.

“Boned?” I asked, my voice tense and agitated, waiting on one breath for Mike to explain.

“Boned. Written up, I guess you’d say. Someone at your school called the disciplinary office here on campus and told them that I punched out a Founder.”

I put my hand to my head and let him continue.

“I got called in to my sergeant’s office. I had to tell him that I did it, with the honor code and everything, I couldn’t lie, Corbin, and he knew anyway, as soon as he saw my face, he knew that I had done it. Luckily, I fessed up, so my punishment isn’t as bad as it could be, but I’m still in pretty deep shit.”

I swallowed.

“What’s the punishment?” I asked. My mind raced to a million different possibilities. Extra hours of PT? An earlier curfew? Maybe they would take away his leave rights for a couple of weekends. And the bomb dropped, and with it my chin to the floor.

“I’m in lockdown for six months.”

“No,” I answered.

“Corbin.”

“No, Mike. No way. You can’t be.”

“It’s not that bad really,” Mike said. How lockdown not be that bad? It was bad enough that he felt he had to call me in the middle of the night to tell me his sentence. It was bad enough that he’d had to butter me up with small talk before diving right into it. Lockdown was bad, it had to be.

“What is lockdown, Mike?” I asked, my voice one shade from dropping out completely.

“I have to eat by myself and sleep in a little closet by myself. I still get to run PT for the rats, which is fine, but I can’t participate in any of our social functions.”

And then he said what it was that would affect me most, and my heart skipped a beat.

“And I can’t leave campus, Corbs,” he said. “For anything accept to go home over break.”

At that’s when it hit me. No more weekends at my place. No more fucking until Bryant told him to go home. No more trips to his campus to Lexington to escape my private hell that OD became every once in a while. Mike may have been the one that got boned, but I felt like I was getting the shaft.

“So that means…” I started to say it.

“It means I’m not going to see you for a really long time.”

Mike spent the next four minutes talking me down, but my mind was still racing. I was thinking about what that meant for our relationship, as raw and incomplete as it was. Mike and I were at our best when we were physical, and even though we could carry on a conversation with each other, how long could these midnight phone calls last until either one of us decided it wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t think out to six months, and as fast as everything had progressed between us since the start of the school year, I knew relationships like this, and I knew how quickly they could fall apart as well.

Mike continued to talk me down as my brain shifted from what his sentence meant for us to how this had happened in the first place. Who placed the call to VMI? Who tracked down his sergeant’s number and told them what had happened. Who had gone out of their way to ruin his life, and mine in the wake?

My mind darted back forth between listening to what Mike had said and trying to determine who had been the cause of this impossibly horrible situation.

There was only one person I could think of who would do it, just to spite me. And that person had looked me in the eye earlier that day, and hadn’t given me the courtesy to tell me what he had done.

I let Mike finish what he was saying, but my mind was elsewhere. I was fuming. I was livid. I was a pot about to boil over, and it didn’t take a second after Mike said he loved me and hung up for me to be on my feet, racing downstairs to confront the person I figured it had to be.

I knocked on Dom’s door, and when he didn’t answer, I knocked again. I wasn’t going to back down until he confessed or told me who he’d sent to make the call. I was beyond angry, I couldn’t have painted the walls red with rage.

I knocked three times before I started banging on his door, not caring who on the first floor I woke up. I needed an answer, and more so, I needed an enemy.

“What?” Dom opened the door finally, looking down at me and taking step back. I didn’t give him a second to gather his thoughts before I banged on his chest the same way I had been hitting the door.

“What did you do?” I asked, my voice plush with rage. I continued to hit Dom, as he stepped back and grabbed my wrist. I realized that I was shaking with anger, and that my face was beet red and a hundred degrees.

“What the fuck did you do?” I asked again. I looked Dom in the eye, and in all that I’d been through with him that year, I knew this was the moment that would break me from this fraternity. I hit him in the chest one more time, as he stood up taller, finally understanding why I was beating against his door in the middle of the night.

“Do you have fucking clue what you have done?” I asked, as my suspicion turned to certainty, and my certainty turned into a wrath like none other.