The English Year - 31. Trial Run

“How was your break?”

“Huh?” I asked, turning to my left, and snapping back to life. I watched Nick as he navigated his car out of the BWI airport, and on to the freeway.

“Your break? How was it?”

I still didn’t fully understand what he was asking me. My mind was all over the place, and I couldn’t consciously bring it back down. I couldn’t focus, not after the phone call that had come through right before I took off from Dallas. Not after I turned my phone off, and decided not to answer. Not after I went to sleep for the three hour and twenty minute flight from Dallas to Baltimore, and certainly not after I turned my phone on, saw that I had a voicemail from the call that I thought I’d left behind. And most importantly, not after I listened to the voicemail moments before Nick Persons pulled up to the arrivals curb, put my suitcase in the backseat of his Rover, and pulled us away, back to Clifton Hill.

It was impossible to pull my head back down to where it needed to be, and for that reason, Nick had to ask me the same thing for a third time.

“Earth to Corbin,” he smiled. I turned to look at him. “It’s not a trick question, babe. I just want to know how your break was. Well, at least the part since I talked to you last.”

“Honestly, it was pretty uneventful. You know I spent New Year’s down in Austin,” I mentioned flippantly.

“Anything fun while you were down there?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” I replied, turning my head back to face the windshield. I took a deep breath and decided that I needed to focus. Focus on Nick. Focus on the ride back to Clifton. We’d be in the car together for at least three hours, barring any kind of traffic. I could make long work of the trip, or I could focus, forget the phone call, and enjoy it.

What I couldn’t do was tell Nick why I was having so much trouble focusing on him in the first place, and if I didn’t want the dreaded ‘what’s on your mind’ question, I needed to shake off that voicemail, and get back in the moment.

“Besides,” I added, clearing my head. “What fun could I really get into while my boyfriend was halfway across the country?”

“You make that word sound so sexy,” Nick said, turning to me, and giving me a wink. I smiled at him, put my hand on the inside of his thigh while he drove, and patted his leg comfortingly.

“You make it easy to say.”

“Have you told anyone?” he asked. “Any of your fraternity brothers or anything?”

“I haven’t, no,” I said. He looked at me. “I mean, it just… it hasn’t come up or anything. I was honestly just going to let it come out organically.”

Nick nodded, but I could tell he was apprehensive about my answer. Maybe it was the combination of me zoning out, or the fact that I had protested us using the word ‘boyfriend’ to begin with.

But at the end of the day, after spending most of exam week together; sleeping at each other’s respective houses every single night leading up to break; and after talking on the phone every night while we were away; and after Nick drunkenly let the L word slip after he called me on Christmas day… after all of that, what was I going to do besides agree to be his boyfriend.

And up until then, being a boyfriend, and having a boyfriend, was fun. I enjoyed his phone calls. I enjoyed him telling me he cared about me, asking genuinely how my day was going, being concerned. I liked that. I liked the feeling of having someone I could call, an equal who I could call my own.

I liked Nick. He was sufficient, I had come to decide. He was smart, and charming, and sexy as hell, and I had fun when he was around. I had fun when I thought about him. He was the kind of guy that made a great boyfriend.

There he was, sitting next to me in his Rover; and he was mine. Sufficient.

And yet there was still a phone call, a voice mail, baggage that nagged at the back of my mind, that kept me from being a great boyfriend to him. Baggage that kept me asking ‘huh?’ when Nick asked how my break had gone.

Once I let my mind go and focused on the conversation with Nick, the ride back to campus actually smoothed over. I was able to relax, and when my mind was at ease, things with Nick were easy.

“Do you want me to help you bring your stuff up and then go? Or are you okay if I just drop you off?” Nick asked after the three hour trip back to Clifton. We were passing historic downtown, and I turned to my left to look at him.

“I was hoping you would come up,” I replied, patting his inner thigh again. “At least for a little while.”

“Oh… okay,” he answered vaguely.

“Is everything okay?”

“You just seemed distracted most of the trip, is all. I wasn’t sure if it was because of me. If I was moving too fast with this whole boyfriend thing, and wanting to pick you up from the airport, and all of that.”

“No, God, no,” I answered quickly, selling my sincerity the best that I could. I couldn’t tell him about the real reason I was distracted, and so I had to think of something quickly. Something plausible. Something he could relate to. “No, Nick. Seriously, I had a bunch on my mind about rush on the flight, and then all the text messages when I turned my phone back on, and there’s my first EC meeting tonight.”

“I forgot about that.”

“Yeah. But I’m fine. I umm… I’ve just had a lot on my mind,” I answered honestly. “I really would like you to come up for some… well, boyfriend stuff.” I gave Nick my best smile, eased my hand further up the thigh it had rested on the entire trip, and gently patted what was between his legs. I felt Nick stiffen up almost instantly as he put his Range Rover in park, scooted back in his seat, and sighed. He leaned over, with my hand still placed firmly on his crotch, and kissed me from across the center console.

The positioning was awkward. Everything about the kiss was incredibly uncomfortable. His gear shaft poked right into my stomach, while the corner of the cup holder dug into my leg. But I didn’t move. Instead, I continued to lean into Nick, continued to let him kiss me, and continued to try and forget everything else that was in my head.

“Let’s take this upstairs, shall we?” he whispered sexily, licking my bottom lip ever so slightly, sending a tingle from that sensitive area all the way down my back. I moaned a yes, unbuckled my seatbelt, and followed Nick out of the car.

It took him a second to retrieve my bags from the back seat while I bound up the stairs like a school girl with a crush to get the door for him. Things really were easy with Nick when I was one hundred percent focused on him, and as I watched his shoulders pulse as he hauled my two suitcases up the back stairs to the third floor of my building, I decided that the ball was in my court. The effort was mine to make, and if I had any hope of getting that voicemail out of my head, I needed to focus on the muscular shoulders in front of me, and the man they belonged to.

I didn’t even wait for my door to close completely before I jumped Nick from behind, wrapped my arms around his body and drew him into me. I kissed the back of his neck as he nestled his back into my chest. He dropped my bags with a thud and turned around.

“I guess we’ll unpack those later,” he crowed, lifting me off the ground like I was nothing more than a sack of potatoes at the grocery store, and carrying me across the room to my bed.

I remembered using my last day in town to clean my room. It had been a habit of mine since I was a kid. Anytime I went out of town, or left my bedroom for a few days, I’d clean it so that I had a clean room, and a made bed to come back to when I returned. It was a safety thing, I’d thought. And at that moment, my safety mechanism was paying off in the form of a perfectly made bed and perfectly clean sheets, for my perfectly agile boyfriend to drop me onto.

“I’ve been waiting for this for three fucking weeks,” Nick purred, biting my ear, and running his hand under my shirt and up my torso. “I’ve missed you.”

I breathed in, kissing his neck and lifting my body off the bed to meet his. We’d come a long way in our rhythm since the first night we fucked, and lying there underneath Nick Persons, that first night seemed like a lifetime ago.

He pulled my shirt off before quickly sitting up and chucking his own shirt across the room. He dove back into me like a swimmer in a race, kissing me deeply, rubbing our bare chests together, and letting me feel the length of his hardness across my own impossibly full boner.

I felt Nick fumble for his belt buckle before I decided to reach down there, between our welded bodies, and pull his zipper down for him. The mere grazing of my hand against his cock sent Nick shivering, and I felt his body vibrate. He’d missed me, I thought. There was a guy out there who had missed me.

It was then, after contemplating his words and connecting them to his body’s reaction to my touch, that I started to feel guilty. I didn’t want to be preoccupied when it came to Nick. I wanted to be in the moment with him. I wanted to enjoy every moment, and yet I couldn’t.

“God, Corbin, you feel amazing,” he said into my neck. I turned my head to kiss him, drawing myself back into the moment, and letting my guilt, my fear of having someone like me so much, and my anxiety over the voicemail that still sat on my phone unaddressed… go… I let it all go. I let it all go as I pulled my own jeans down, guided Nick on top of me, and led his cock right to the entrance of my waiting hole.

It had been exactly three weeks since I’d been fucked. Feeling Nick slide into me with a resistance I hadn’t felt since the first time he penetrated me, reminded me of just how long it had been. By the time I left for Texas after exams, Nick and I were up to having sex twice a day, in the morning and at night, like clockwork. He didn’t fuck me every time, but we’d spent that last week hooking up with enough regularity that by the end of exams, Nick had no problem slipping right in.

But three weeks without a cock as big as Nick’s to stretch me open, fuck me deep, made that initial push hurt like hell.

“Are you okay, babe?” Nick asked, laying up on his elbows and looking down at me. My left leg was lifted over his shoulder, and my right wrapped around his waist.

“Just hold it right there,” I panted, needing a second. Nick lowered himself, kissing me, and easing most of the pain. It took a minute, and honestly, I was grateful for the distraction. There was no way a wayward phone call could come into my head when I was focusing on the eight inch cock that was desperately trying to impale me.

I kept breathing, kissing Nick, clawing at his back, and not thinking about anything else, until the pain subsided. I felt Nick pull out slowly, and with more ease this time around, push himself back into me. This time, he took himself in all the way, and connected us as far as two people could be connected.

I rolled my head back in sheer ecstasy over the feeling of Nick inside of me. His cock was like magic in my ass, and it literally drove everything away as he pumped in and out. In and out. Long, deep strokes of in and out. As he picked up his pace, Nick sat up, grabbed my left ankle, and began fucking me as naturally as two guys who’ve been doing it for years.

“You feel that, Corbin?” he panted. I rolled my head back.

“Oh fuck,” I moaned. Of course I felt it, I thought. “Oh fucking… oh fuck.”

The chorus of ‘yeahs’ and ‘fucks’ coming from Nick and I as he drove into me, over and over, clearing his path, and pumping in even deeper than I thought possible. I noticed that our rhythm, our technique, had picked up right where we’d left off, and I was grateful for that.

“Fuck me, babe,” I squealed as he did just that. I ran my hand up his chest, careful not to tickle the side of his torso. Nick pulled his body back between my outstretched legs so that we were in a traditional missionary position. This way, we could kiss like teenagers while he drove himself in and out of me, and I could pull him in as deep as I wanted with my legs wrapped around him. He ran his hands all over my body, up my back and through my hair.

“I thought you were getting a haircut over break,” Nick mentioned, tugging my hair as he fucked my ass.

“Huh?” I asked, not sure what that had to do with our task at hand.

“Your hair. I thought you were cutting it,” he panted between breaths. I wondered where the fuck that interlude had come from.

“I decided not to,” I moaned, still determined, still focused, concentrating on Nick Persons and his perfect cock, body, and rhythm.

“I like it long,” he tugged at my hair again. It had a natural curl to it, and I felt Nick wrap his fingers through the waves of my overgrown coif. “Gives me more to hold on to.”

And with that, Nick used his sheer athleticism to turn me around in one easy motion. Before I knew what was happening, I was on all fours, Nick kneeling behind me, his fingers wrapped into my hair, driving my face into my own pillow. I felt empty during the change of position. While Nick had pulled out, I felt like a part of me was missing.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for that part to be returned. Before I could even ask him, demand him to, Nick reinserted his cock into me, this time from behind.

I had never been much a fan of doggy style. It always made me feel like a slut, and even then, the fact that I couldn’t look into Nick’s eyes made me feel like I could have been being fucked by anyone. But once Nick picked up his pace and allowed me to feel every inch of him slide in and out of me, I knew that there was only one guy capable of making me feel that good.

I leaned up, fighting against Nick pushing me forward, so that his torso and my back could connect. I arched my back, kissed Nick on the lips, and concentrated on the amazing feeling he provided. Our sweat soaked skin glided against each other, as Nick effortlessly pushed into me, forced his rhythm on me, and fucked me.

“Why were you so distracted in the car?” I heard Nick whisper in my ear. He said it with the same sultriness that he whispered everything else while we were having sex that it took me a minute to compute.

“What?” I asked.

“In the car… when I asked about your break… why were you so distracted?”

“Are you seriously asking me that right now?”

“I am,” Nick whispered. I felt him pull his cock almost all the way out of me before gliding it right back in. Instead of giving him an answer, I moaned loudly and rolled my head back.

“Come on,” Nick panted. “I want to know what happened.”

“You’re inside of me, Nick!” I shouted. “Can we talk about this later?”

“So there is something to talk about?” he observed. It wasn’t a question. I couldn’t compute how he thought asking me what was wrong at that moment was a good idea, but I decided not to say anything I would regret. Instead, I moaned, indicating to Nick that I was preoccupied with the feelings at hand and not the conversation.

“I’m not asking because I’m worried or jealous,” Nick said, continuing to fuck me. “I just… if there’s anything I can help you with, I want you to know that I’m here.”

“I can feel that,” I replied, reaching my hand behind me, pulling Nick’s thigh into me, and driving him in harder and faster.

I took a second to contemplate why Nick was bringing up my vacant behavior in the car. Obviously, I hadn’t done as good of a job at hiding what was going on from him, but why did I need to hide it at all? Nick knew I came into this relationship with baggage. He’d been at ground zero with Pete, and he knew I was still working through whatever feelings those were. He was the one that suggested we take our relationship to the next level over break, much to my hesitation, and yet here he was, still asking me what was wrong, and expecting a full-on answer.

I jolted back to reality as Nick slipped the head of his cock past my prostate, causing a wave of sensation to fill my entire body. A couple pumps in and out later, and I was moaning like hell, telling Nick I was close, and then suddenly shooting my cum onto my pillow. Nick’s quickly followed as I heaved to breath, feeling him shoot between my legs, his cum intermingling with mine.

“I guess I owe you a new pillow set,” Nick commented, sitting back against the wall. He looked like a dream just hanging out there in my room, naked, his knees drawn up to his chest.

I’m crazy, I thought for a brief moment. I’m crazy not to let the rest of the world go and just enjoy what’s sitting there right in front of me. But I couldn’t. I was preoccupied, about that Nick was right. I was doing my best, and that was all I could really do.

And yet, I couldn’t wait for him to get out of my room. I didn’t want to chance him calming down and remembering that we had an unfinished conversation lingering above my bed. I wanted to escape before I got caught in his question again.

“I need to take a shower before the EC meeting,” I said, gaining my breath back and stepping off the bed.

“Okay,” Nick replied. My voice didn’t leave much room for an invitation, mostly because I knew that a shower with Nick would turn into more of the third degree. “I should probably go and unpack anyway. We have rush stuff first thing in the morning.”

Most of campus was trickling in that Saturday to prepare for rush that started with classes promptly on Monday. The first formal rush dates were Tuesday night, leaving the upperclassmen little time to get their shit together before they had to schmooze freshmen into joining their house above all others.

For Chi Beta, that meant an EC meeting Saturday night, mandatory rush workshop Sunday morning, about an hour of free time before another rush session, and then chapter Sunday night. I imagined that Sigma Chi had a similar schedule, so I didn’t feel too bad about watching Nick get dressed and head home as I headed into the shower.

I spent the first alone time I’d had in over four hours sorting through my thoughts. I liked Nick. I really did. He was winning me over, every single day, and in every single way. When I was with him, I hardly thought about the Brit, and that was a good thing. I’d released Pete, given him his time, and his space, and that void was filled perfectly by Nick Persons.

The thing was, Pete wasn’t the only thing lodged in my baggage. There was Mike, and there was Lee, and there was the possibility that none of those was the guy for me. I tried my best not to rank them in any order, wondering who I would pick over whom. The fact was, I was with Nick at the moment, and I needed to sit back and enjoy the moment.

And so I did. I pushed the rest aside, and I made a mental note that I owed Nick exactly what I told him I would give him when he asked me to be his boyfriend: a try.

Nothing more. Certainly nothing less. But a try involved full concentration, full cooperation, and limited distractions. Those others, they were memories as far as me and my try were concerned. If I tried with Nick and failed, at least I would fail knowing I gave it maximum effort.

And that’s what we had discussed over Christmas to win me over. A trial run. A solid effort. The trial of Corbin Crowley and Nick Persons as boyfriend and boyfriend.

I rinsed off my hair, which I had neglected to cut over break, opting for the overgrown frat flip look that I parted in the middle, and that hung past my cheeks with a slight wave to it. I liked what my hair did when I ran my fingers through it, but even another inch or two would bring me out of suave territory and into full-on homeless chic.

I wrapped my towel around my waist, blithely walked down the hall to my bedroom, and went inside to change for the EC meeting.

“Who was that leaving your room just now?” I heard Lee’s voice as soon as I closed my bedroom door behind me. I jumped with surprise, turned around, and saw Lee standing there next to my bed.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I asked, trying to bring my breathing back down to normal.

“I just saw someone leave your room. You’re coming out of the shower. There’s this on your pillow. Care to tell me what’s going?” I detected a gallon of jealousy in Lee’s voice that I hadn’t heard in a very long time, since the first week of school, probably.

“I honestly don’t think that’s any of your business, Lee.”

“We’re supposed to be working together to get me a bid, and the pledge class presidency. I think what goes on around here is my business. Was he freshman?”

“You’re delusional,” I said, taking a step towards my closet. I suddenly felt naked, and slightly unsafe. “He wasn’t a freshman.”

“Then who was he?” Lee asked. I turned to face him, unfolding a polo shirt in my hand.

“He has nothing to do with you. He has nothing to do with our plans to make you PCP. You have a girlfriend, and now I have a boyfriend, so this little jealousy act that you’re putting on needs to stop ASAP. It’s cause for concern.”

“What concerns me, Corbin, is that the EC is meeting in ten minutes to discuss who to back for pledge class president, and you’re up here giving blow jobs instead of solidifying our plan.”

“My plan,” I countered with a hiss. I suddenly beyond agitated, and I wanted nothing more than to put Lee in his place and then excise him from my bedroom. “I promised you the mountaintop, and that’s exactly what you’ll get. But do not pretend like you’ve done anything here except show up when I asked you to.”

“Oh come on.”

“I am moving chess pieces for you, Lee, and if you don’t trust that, then there’s the door. I could give a rat’s ass who becomes PCP of your class, but I chose you because I think together you and I can get a lot of shit done around here.”

“Really? So it’s your plan when it’s being put together, but then magically it’s a team effort when I’m in charge? When I have the vote that you need, it all of a sudden goes from you to us? How does that work, Corbin?”

“Are you unsatisfied with the terms of this arrangement?” I asked, lining my voice with razors. I could see a physical chill go through Lee as he straightened his back and stood tall across from me.

“I’m unsatisfied with being kept in the dark.”

He looked at me as if he expected me to answer any one of his phantom questions. He looked as if he thought I would fill him in, right then and there, about all that I was doing to get him elected. Instead of answering him, I glared back at him, and folded my arms across the Polo logo on my shirt, pursed my lips, and blinked.

“I have options, Corbin. Don’t forget that. I can pick someone else to be my fraternity big. Fuck, I can still rush a different house. I’m putting my eggs in your basket, and I don’t need you fucking some other freshman and leaving me behind.”

I took a deep breath.

“Exercise your options, Lee,” I challenged. “Be my mother fucking guest. Do whatever it is that you feel you need to do, but know this. Right now you’re in this boat with me, and this outburst aside, I’m committed to benefiting us both. If you cross me on this, in any way, I will throw you overboard so fast you won’t have time to grab a life vest. I will not look back, Lee, and you will be on your own. If that’s what you want, then be my guest and exercise every option you think you have.”

Lee blinked quickly, softening his stance.

“Don’t make me regret choosing you,” I finished, dismissing him with nothing more than my tone of voice.

I watched Lee shuffle out of my room, his head low, and his tail between his legs. I decided right then and there that I needed to amend my initial plan, enact a contingency for the possibility of Lee going off the deep end. That much was clear. What to do in case he did go off wasn’t so much.

I had to think fast. Lee was right. The EC meeting was right around the corner, and as I threw on a clean pair of pants and sauntered down to the Chi Beta library, I asked myself if I could trust Lee once everything I’d put into motion was said and done.

I got to the meeting just as it was starting. Dom, Oli, Austin, and Brian were already there and seated at the large conference table that took up the majority of the library’s floor space. Newby, the sophomore rep, was right behind me, and took a seat to my left. Hutch casually flipped through an Economist magazine on the couch in the corner. I assumed he had been invited to the meeting in a non-formal capacity to advise on any questions the officers had about rush. I’d done the same as social chair in the past, but now my seat was at the table with the others.

“Okay, I guess that’s everyone,” Dominick started, sitting at the head of the table, and making eye contact with everyone except me. “Let’s get started. First things, first. Bid/Ball is on Wednesday at 9, as soon as the last rushees leave the house. We’ve got to get it done in time to email our submissions to Dean Cole by 8 am.”

I cringed at the idea of Bid/Ball taking all night, but the possibility was a very real one. Deciding which freshman to extend bids to and who to not invite back for the final rush dates on Thursday was a arduous task that often resulted in blow ups between the classes. We’d be lucky to be out in a few hours, with the possibility of it taking much longer than that.

“How does that work again?” Newby asked. Of all of us sitting around, he was the only one who hadn’t been on this side of Bid/Ball, so Dom took a deep breath and explained it to him.

“Monday night, the freshmen will list their five houses in preferential order. They’ll be assigned their four rush dates based on their prefs and the prefs we submit on Sunday night. Hutch, I believe we’ll finalize that list in tomorrow’s first rush event.”

Hutch nodded. Dominick continued.

“ Rush dates on Tuesday and Wednesday are our last chance to decide if we’ll be extending a bid on Thursday, which is why we have until first thing in the morning to send out our list to Dean Cole. The school will only extend an invite to the final rush events on Thursday to the guys who are pretty much guaranteed a bid so that no one wastes their time suicide rushing a place that won’t take them.”

“What if someone shows up on Thursday that we don’t want to give a bid to?”

“They won’t get an invite if they don’t make it through Bid/Ball. And if they just show up without an invite, then… I dunno, we ask them to leave.”

“Oh. Okay,” Newby said, feigning as if he caught on. We continued to discuss the specifics of Bid/Ball, including the logistics on getting the house mom out of the way, and who was responsible for setting up our formal rituals that would have to take place that week. Bid/Ball was technically a formal chapter event, even though it wasn’t held in the formal chapter room, and it was stressed more than once that attendance was compulsory, or disciplinary action would be taken up with our national chapter.

Next on the agenda were the specifics around the No Contact party. It was decided that the seniors would host it at their off campus house and that Crystal, the rowing team coxswain who had dated a Chi Beta alumni for three years and hosted the No Contact party before, would handle all of the entertainment for the freshmen that we were bidding.

Friday was a strict no contact day between freshmen and upper classmen. It was meant to be a time for the frosh to make their decision on which bid to accept and which bids to tear on their own, without any influence from pushy frat guys. Interfering, and contacting a freshman during no contact, was strictly forbidden and had cost houses their entire pledge class in the past. We didn’t take any chances, and yet we left nothing up to chance.

The tradition was to host the party at an off campus house and have a girl close to the fraternity provide alcohol and friends for entertainment. Usually, the frosh just sat around playing drinking games with whoever was hosting them, but it was our last gesture before Tear Night on Saturday to solidify Chi Beta in their minds.

We discussed Tear Night next, and like the conversations prior, nothing was really up for debate. Dom went through who was responsible for setting up, picking things up, and getting things ready. The seniors would pick up the flasks for the freshmen. The junior class would set up the slip and slide and arrange the DJ and Late Night party to follow. The sophomores were in charge of making the jello shots and setting up the game room for the ‘cocktail party’ that started the night off. The social committee had already arranged for us to tear with the ladies of the UVA Kappa Delta sorority.

“So we really aren’t tearing with Pi Phi?” Oli asked, when I’d given my report on who was coming for Tear Night and what I’d promised them. The decision had been made after Tear Night the year before, and I had already gone through my share of flack for breaking a four year tradition of tearing with Pi Beta Phi, the bottom ranked sorority house on our campus. I’d made that call a year ago, launching the catalyst for my rogue regime as social chair, and I hadn’t looked back since.

“Asked and answered,” I replied flippantly.”I’ll give the full social report to the brotherhood tomorrow, but in a nutshell, the girls will be here at ten. They’re bringing jello shots, we’re stocking the bar. We’ll need beer for Late Night, which, who knows who from campus will show up for, but last year it was our biggest Late Night by attendance for the whole year, so…”

“Write up what you need from each class, and we’ll get things ready. I’m assuming you and Austin have already discussed the budget?” Dom asked.

“We have,” I nodded.

From there we discussed the incoming freshman class. One thing the EC did during their meetings was decide what stance to take on issues that could potentially divide the brotherhood. If something was up for a vote with the brotherhood at large, the EC wanted to make sure they formed a united front as leaders in order to sway any potential divergence. Most of the issues would create chaos if they went straight to the brotherhood without an official opinion by the officers, and so the EC met, hashed it out for themselves, and took their decision to the brotherhood to approve.

It was representative governance at its finest, and for the first time in three years, I was a part of the inner circle.

The topic at hand once we’d gone through and listed the potential pledges along with their likeliness of accepting a bid, was deciding who the EC would back for Pledge Class President.

Just as I’d told Lee, it was a selfless job that resulted in sleepless nights, more stress than any eighteen year old boy should have to handle, and more no-win situations between his pledge brothers and the brotherhood to make any kid lucky enough to be elected PCP go crazy.

It was also a surefire way to win favor across every class within the brotherhood. You learned more about leadership, delegation, persuasion, in those eight weeks than any leadership camp or course across the country could teach. Putting out fires became second nature. Talking your pledge class off every ledge possible became routine. Influencing the actions of others was the ultimate prize, and with those tools in hand, virtually every Pledge Class President elected at Chi Beta went on to eventually become president of the fraternity.

It was an important role, one that needed to be decided on with great consideration. That decision, who would likely serve as the fraternity’s leader in three years, couldn’t be left up to a group of freshmen boys who barely knew each other yet. It was up to the EC to choose, to carve out that legacy, and to influence that decision when the time came for the brotherhood to think they were making it.

I thought about all of that as the EC debated between two names that were firmly on the rush list as locks: Lee and Artie, who was the brother of a senior, and had been a lock since he’d stepped foot on campus.

I listened as the debate went back and forth. Artie had the family name, as well as the loyalty attached to that. He had favor with the seniors, something that would help him influence his class to go the way of the older brothers. He had clout. He was the Clinton of our decision, and come hell or high water, he would seal that nomination.

And then there was Lee, who had the money, the look, and the pedigree. He had the support of the junior class, who had glossed over his month long hiatus in rush, and now that he was back, a fully formed lock with renewed loyalty, the EC members in my class were ready to put their trust in him.

“What do you think, Corbin? You’ve been suspiciously quiet over there,” Dom said, looking across the boardroom table at me.

“Huh?” I asked, snapping back to reality. I couldn’t believe I’d let my mind wander long enough to lose my place in the conversation, but I had, and I wasn’t sure what the question was anymore.

“What do you think about Lee? Do you think he has what it takes to lead his class for eight weeks? Or will he flake again like he did halfway through rush?”

“I don’t think he’ll flake again, no,” I answered, turning my head and addressing the entire table. “I think Lee would make a fine PCP, and eventually, he would make a decent officer here at Chi Beta.”

I saw Hutch sit back with an easy sigh, grateful for my endorsement. But I wasn’t done.

“However,” I said slowly. “I have gotten to know Lee pretty well over the course of the first semester, and I question his mental fortitude.”

It was a word my tennis coach had used repeatedly when I was on varsity. It was the kind of word you saved for a rare and significant occasion.

“Fortitude?” Hutch asked, sitting back up, tensing again, and watching my endorsement of his golden boy fly out the window.

“Lee is fragile, let’s just admit it. He’s unpredictable, and he’s… weak,” I said with a straight face. “His decision making skills are questionable at best; the kid can’t even decide on a sexuality if we’re being completely honest. Do I think he could lead his class for eight weeks? Sure. But I don’t think he could survive it. Being pulled in every direction will physically rip him apart. And what happens if he folds under pressure? Having to call daddy and get bailed out will ruin any credibility he has amongst his peers. He’s been handed things his entire life, and I worry that throwing him head first into this kind of high pressure situation will be too much for him.”

I looked around with an easy gaze as if I’d done nothing more than read Lee’s name out loud, not eviscerate any chance he ever had of being elected PCP in the first place.

“That was a little harsh, if I say so myself,” Hutch chimed in from my left.

“But not entirely inaccurate,” I replied without looking at him. And then I went for the kill, teeth barred, claws drawn. I hadn’t planned on doing anything so definitive, fuck, I hadn’t planned on cutting Lee out of my plans to begin with, but I had to do something after his meltdown earlier, and that something needed to be swift, strong, and permanent. “Look, I like Lee, I really do. I won’t even argue that I wasn’t sold on him to begin with, but he’s won me over. And I’m sure he could do the same with the guys in his class. However, can we take the chance of electing him, throwing every ounce of clout we have behind him, knowing that he’s indecisive, compulsive, and that he has a history of disloyalty and fraternal abandonment? He’s not a safe bet, and at this point in our history, with this frat just starting to rebuild, we can’t afford to go up against the house on this bet.”

I shrugged, looked at Hutch, and knew that I’d put the final nail in his golden boy’s coffin.

“So if you had to choose,” Dominick asked, fixating his eyes directly onto mine. “If you had to pick someone for that class, who would you pick?”

“I would go with David Marcossi,” I replied with no hesitation. His name had been put into the mix early on, but he had been overshadowed by the Lee v. Artie camps. No one would buy for a second that I’d back the senior puppet Artie, and so if I wasn’t going with Lee, I had to throw a different name out there.

David was a good kid. He was smart, and he could handle himself with poise. And he’d come to me early on when Lee was still playing me for a bid, and so I decided over the course of the meeting that if I had to offer a name that wasn’t Lee, my best bet at having someone I could control on the EC was David Marcossi.

To be honest, however, I couldn’t have given more than a couple shits who got to be Pledge Class President. I just wished that they would pick a name so that I could start brainstorming how to influence that person. Either way, I’d be starting from scratch, and either way I’d need to rebuild my level of power over whoever they picked.

I sat quietly throughout the rest of the meeting, asking myself more than once why I’d wanted to be in the EC knowing that meetings were usually so dull.

Dominick adjourned the meeting a few minutes later, but not before asking me to hang around after everyone left.

I felt a pit in my stomach, wondering what I possibly could have done this time to piss him off or drive him into a paranoid frenzy.

“What was that today?” he asked.

“What?” I replied, unsure of what he was referring to.

“Throwing Lee under the bus like that. I thought you and him were getting along.”

“We are getting along.”

“So why say he’s unfit to be the incoming PCP?”

“Is the question are we getting along, or is the question is he fit to be the incoming PCP?” I asked, tilting my head and wondering where this was going. Surely I was getting in trouble for agreeing with Dom’s opinion on who should run the freshman class.

“The question is what do you have to gain by throwing the freshman that you’re closest to under the bus like that? I don’t get it.”

“Then maybe you aren’t meant to,” I replied with a little more slice than I’d intended.

“I just want to know what you’re after, Corbin.”

I tilted my head to the side again.

“You think I want that chair,” I said slowly. “You think that with your last six months here, I’m going to what, pull a coup? Get you voted off your seat of power and take over for myself? Kill Ceasar?” I cut my eyes at Dom. “I’ve told you once, and I will say this one more time. I do not want to be president of Chi Beta.”

“Then what do you want? You’re unpredictable—“

“—You’re delusional…” I raised my voice.

“—And that makes you dangerous.”

It was then that I started laughing. Right there across from Dominick, I stopped listening, and I laughed.

“It’s true what they say. That power is the first step to paranoia,” I chuckled. “I told you when you gave me this vote that I wanted to work together to make this house stronger. I meant that. I did that today when I voted for the person I thought would make a better, more efficient leader. I may have brought Lee back onto our rush list because Hutch asked me to, but that doesn’t mean I’m in his pocket or he’s in mine. He’s not what that class needs, and so I voted my conscious against him. End of story. You can put your conspiracy theories to bed.”

Without waiting for a reply, I stood up and headed straight for my room. The truth was, I hadn’t voted my conscious. I had voted my own paranoia with Lee. After our altercation that afternoon, I knew that he would eventually see right through me and go his own way. I could put him in charge of his class, get him an at large vote on the EC, but could I really control or even count on that vote? He’d proven more difficult to manipulate than I was comfortable with, and for that, not only did I need someone different in charge, but I also needed to show Lee that I still held all the cards in my hands.

I changed into a pair of grey sweats when I got into my room, grabbed a towel and stuffed it into my gym bag, and headed out to the school gymnasium for a run. I needed to clear my head. The whole day had been confusing to me, from the second I turned my phone off and stepped onto the plane, to the second Lee left my room full of threats and concerns, to the most boring EC meeting ever known to man.

I needed to sort through my thoughts, and after riding on a plane, sitting in a car, and schlepping through a meeting all day long, I also needed to work out. I walked to the gym in the brisk January air, seeing my breath under the sidewalk lights guide me. I locked my things away in one of the public lockers outside of the fitness center, and since there wasn’t an attendant working the front desk at that time during a school holiday, I signed away one of the keys that was attached to a clipboard, grabbed a towel from the stack on the right, and walked into the dimly lit, very quiet fitness room.

None of the machines were in use. There wasn’t a high demand for a stair stepper or weight benches at 9 o’clock on the Saturday before winter term resumed. Most students were either still en route or just getting back to campus. I had already been texted about a couple of kickbacks that night, and I imagined one of those laid-back, non-freshmen centered parties was where most students were.

And so I climbed up onto a treadmill, put my towel over the progress meter, put my headphones in my ear, and started jogging.

I tried my hardest to ignore my thoughts, and simply listen to the beat of Lady Gaga blasting in my ear. As loud as I turned up my music, I couldn’t erase the sound of the voicemail I’d listened to hours ago, before boarding my plane, and before getting into Nick’s car. I couldn’t get the words out of my mind, and four miles, and thirty-eight minutes later, I wasn’t any closer to clearing my head than I had been before.

I stepped off the treadmill and toweled off. A couple of people had come into the fitness center while I was there, and so instead of cooling off there at the gym, I deposited my towel in the discard bin next to the desk, signed my key back in, and stepped back into the cold night air towards my house.

“Some of your fraternity brothers said I might be able to find you here,” I heard as I walked around the corner of the gymnasium to Gentleman’s Green, the path that led me most directly back to Chi Beta. I turned to my left, and came face to face with the British voice I’d been trying to get out of my head since that morning.

“Hey,” I smiled, stopping and turning to face him. He was carrying a backpack and a coffee from the University Commons store. “How are you?”

I didn’t know what else to say, I couldn’t think of anything quickly enough. Clearly I’d been ignoring him all day, to the point that he’d gone to my house at some point during my run and asked one of my brothers if they’d seen me.

“I’m good,” he replied. “How are you?”

“I’m… okay,” I sighed. I shifted my weight, uncomfortable at what felt like an ambush at the time. I knew why he was there, that wasn’t the question. The question was, what was I supposed to do now?

“How was your holiday?” he asked.

“It was great,” I replied honestly. I could have elaborated, but I didn’t feel the need. Instead, I shifted my weight back, a clear indication that I wasn’t ready to have the conversation that he so desperately wanted us to have.

“Did you miss me?”

The words echoed, rehashed from the voicemail I’d tried all day to forget. Of course I missed him, what kind of loaded question was that. I’d be inhuman to miss the guy I’d longed for, wanted, fallen in love with over the course of a semester, and then hadn’t talked to for a second in five weeks.

“I thought about you,” I answered coldly, trying not to let any emotions build past the surface.

“Did you get my voice mail?” Pete asked, taking an inch of a step closer to me. He knew what he was doing. He knew what his words that morning had done to me. He knew that he was capable of sending me on this tailspin of emotion, and he did it anyway.

Of course I’d heard his voice mail. And of course I’d spent the better part of twelve hours not only ignoring it, but trying to erase it from my memory altogether.

“I have a boyfriend,” I blurted out. He needed to know. I needed to tell him about Nick before he came any closer and I lost all control. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, I’d reasoned. It wasn’t his call when I was allowed to care for him and when I wasn’t. Things were great with Nick. Simple, uncomplicated. And Pete’s motivation, as if he had a radar on me to sense the very second that I was ready to go with uncomplicated, had come in over the airwaves of my phone, and had tried to complicate things.

But I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t. I needed to be with someone like Nick who simplified things. I needed this time of easiness, not cryptic voicemails, and ‘I don’t knows’. I was done with that world. I was done with Pete, I had decided.

And yet, there I stood, like a magnet, unable to just walk away, using the one weapon I still had in order to repel him.

“Oh,” he sighed, taking a step back. “Is it…?”

“It’s Nick Persons. We made it official over the break, so… that’s why I didn’t call you back or anything.”

I could see the look in Pete’s eyes go from confusion, to hurt, to relief that I wasn’t officially dating Mike, and watching those emotions travel through his eyes, I almost took back my words. In the second it took for him to process what I’d said, and to immediately put his guard back up, I almost took back my words and crushed his guard once and for all.

But I couldn’t. Everything Pete had said in his message was almost there. It was almost perfect. It was almost everything I had wanted to hear. And standing there, watching his reaction, I couldn’t help but play his message back in my head one more time.

Hey killer. Just wanted to call and let you know I’m back in The States from holiday. I’m assuming you’ll be in Clifton tonight. At least my flatmate said you probably would. Listen, I missed you a lot over holiday. I missed everything about you, and I’m not afraid to tell you that. I thought about you every single day, and I thought about our last conversation before we left. Hmmm… honestly, Corbin, I still don’t have an absolute for you, and I know that’s what you want. But I want to try with you. I want to spend time together like we did before. I want to build our friendship back into what it was before… maybe more… I don’t know. I just… I want you back. That’s all I know for sure. Give me a call when you get this. Or when you get back in town. Or whenever. I will hopefully see you soon.

“So it’s serious? This Nick thing?” he asked, shifting back, retreating from me. I felt a brick enter my throat. I tried to clear it, but it felt like it lodged itself even deeper.

“I mean… it’s a thing, so…”

“So what I said?”

“What you said was… I’m there with you on building up our friendship. I thought about you during break as well. Fuck, Pete, I think about you all the time. But I have a sure thing here, and even with everything that you said, and everything that you want to try and figure out, I can’t give up a sure thing for… whatever it is that you’re offering me.”

“You like him?” Pete’s eyes bore into me like a rocket. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I felt paralyzed, and yet, after explaining myself and my decision, I felt at peace. Guilty and on the verge of throwing up, but at peace nonetheless.

“I do.”

“Does he make you happy?” I saw through the emotional manipulation that Pete had successfully wielded against me on so many lesser occasions.

“He hasn’t made me sad, yet… so there’s that.”

“I guess I earned that,” he whispered, taking a full step back. He sipped his coffee, still not taking his eyes off of me. I sighed. “I guess I’ll see you around then.”

I swallowed. Hard. For some reason, this conversation felt more final than any other conversation I’d had with Pete up until that point, and that made me take pause.

“I guess I will,” I replied, taking a step back. “Have a good semester.”

“You too, killer,” Pete said. I turned and walked back towards my house, leaving Pete standing there in the mist of our breath, wondering if the second half of an English Year would be any different, any better, than the first that I’d already had to endure.