The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 19. Freshman Year - Chapter 19

Kevin was pointedly not talking to me for the remainder of the night, which wasn’t exactly surprising. He didn’t seem angry—it wasn’t like the subtle freeze out he had been experimenting with for the last two weeks—but more contemplative. I could not exactly explain what the difference was, because it didn’t quite manifest itself externally, but I could feel it. I knew it.

And I felt like I had a pretty good idea on the thoughts going back and forth through the head of Kevin Malley: the voluptuous treatises on love, the clinical number crunching of the pros and cons, two divergent but simultaneous voices. I knew how he thought, and I knew the next thing

Baker and I fell into our normal segregation, watching everyone crowd around the fire. It was warm enough back where we were—the sticky heat of the Gulf seemed to infiltrate everything, even this late at night.

I did not know if Baker sensed that I had something on my mind, but I was certainly not being a suitable partner for any sort of conversation—any topic brought up seemed to fall apart on the launchpad.

So we burrowed into other conversations: Veronica and Maddie’s about the new waffle irons in Bruff, Morton and Rowen’s about the Saints lineup, Tripp and Dana’s about Hurricane Katrina recovery. All topics where we had no real stake and no real interest, but I was happy to drift around without being forced to participate in any of the conversations.

Instead, I watched Kevin, on the other side of the fire, be plaintive. He was better at faking social niceties; he smoked weed with Tommy Pereira, and he laughed with Dana and Maddie, and he quoted Aristotle to Patrick and Annie, but he had no words for me.

By the end of the night, we had all been pillaged by liquor and weed. Tripp had wandered inside, and passed out facedown onto the couch in the other Iota Chi house’s living room. No one thought to move him.

Baker and I began the emigration back to our house—Kevin did not follow us, and I would’ve stayed, but Baker in his drunken haze was insistent.

When I got into mine and Tripp’s room next to the kitchen, I realized exactly how drunk I was; I grabbed onto the doorframe to steady myself, then slowly pawed my way across the walls to my suitcase. I took a pair of boxer briefs, and held them as I shimmied off my swim trunks, and then pulled off my t-shirt. I was alone in the room, but living with a roommate for the last eight months had left me feeling like the stillness of the solitude could be disrupted at any minute. So I changed quickly, then dumped myself into bed

Which it was, by a dull knock on the door, a few seconds after I’d turned off the lights.

I leaned over, and turned the lamp back on. “It’s open,” I said.

The door opened just a few inches, and I was not expecting to see Kevin Malley peering through—I thought it might have been Tripp—but I wasn’t surprised.

“Hey,” Kevin said, slowly. “You got a minute?”

I nodded, and he came in, closed the door behind him. I was suddenly aware of my hastening heartbeat—the white smoke.

“Look,” he said, “I.” He paused. “You’re right. I’m not being fair to you, asking you to be ready when I’m not either. I’m sorry.”

Humility was an interesting shade on Kevin Malley, and I didn’t entirely know what to say to him. “I’m sorry too. For yelling. I don’t think you’re a basket case. No more than I am, anyway.”

He smiled at that, and it broke some of the tension, but he was resolute; he was going to say what he came here to say. “Well, the fact is I like you a lot. And I was mad, and I was hurt, and I was just confused over how I felt and what I wanted. And it was a hell of a lot easier to make it your fault than to figure any of it out.” He paused again. “So I’m sorry. Is really all I can say at this point. I’m scared of you, how I feel about you. But I know I don’t want to lose you. So.”

Words failed to materialize on my end. Instead, I pulled back the sheets, stepped out of bed. I was only wearing boxer briefs, but I didn’t feel exposed. I walked over to him, and I imagined that episode of Friends where Rachel walks across the apartment to kiss Ross for the first time--but of course it wasn’t like that; it was a tiny room, and I was drunk, and so I tripped and landed ass backwards onto Tripp’s air mattress.

Kevin attempted, for just a second, to hold back laughter, but he couldn’t--he was doubled-over, dying, and I couldn’t help but smile at the bend in his own smile, the way he seemed to emote with his entire face.

“That’s not the way that was supposed to go, was it?” he giggled. I gave him the finger, but then he offered me his hand, and I took it, and in one muscular tug, he pulled me back on his feet, and into his arms.

There were no words between us, no initiation; we both leaned in together, and kissed. I remembered my first kiss with Kevin Malley, four months ago, when we were shy. This was less tentative. He knew what he wanted; he was hungry for it. His hand migrated to the back of my head, pulling me into him.

“Lock the door,” Kevin said, his breath hot up against my lips. “In case of, you know.”

I reached around him, clicked the deadbolt into place. “No one’s coming.”

“I know,” he whispered back, and we kissed again, this time softer, this time his hand was on my cheek, and then on my chin.

“Your hands smell like Purell,” I told him, once we broke the kiss again.

His lips immigrated to behind my ear, and I let out an involuntary groan as I melted away. “I have excellent hygiene,” he whispered.

“You’re scared of germs,” I told him.

He flicked my earlobe with his tongue. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Bullshit.”

He moved his hand up my back, to my shoulder. “Just the overprescription of antibiotics and the Bush Doctrine,” he replied. Then: “Sorry. I shouldn’t be jokey.” He kissed down my jawline, punctuating each word with a kiss: “This. Is. Serious.”

“You’re so serious,” I deadpanned.

“Yes,” he agreed, turning back to my lips, kissing me softly one more time. “That’s why you like having sex with me.”

I made a face, mockingly. “It’s only okay.”

His other hand wound up on my shoulders, and he grabbed both of them tightly, spun me around, and smashed me into the door.

He reached around to my boxer briefs, and yanked them down. They fell to the floor and, behind me, I could hear him fumbling with his belt.

“If you think it’s only okay,” he whispered, kissing the back of my neck, “it’s because I haven’t shown you the A-game yet.” He pumped his hips twice, sliding his dick up and down my crack.

His dick was, unsurprisingly, already raring to go, and he kept it resting in the crease between my cheeks.

He kissed my neck again. In a rumbling, sexy voice, he said: “You know you want this, babe.”

I started giggling. I couldn’t stop giggling, even as I bit my lip.

“What?” he said, bitterly.

“That fucking voice,” I said, knocking my head twice against the door. “I feel like there’s some 1970s porn star behind me, with this big mustache and hairy chest.”

“I do not sound like a 70s porn star,” he said, more indignant than I thought he would be. “You’re getting my B-game, Becker.”

I turned around put my hands on his shoulders, and kissed him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun.”

He puffed his bottom lip out--he was back to Kevin Malley. “You’re hurting my self-esteem, you know. Not healthy.”

I bit his bottom lip, started kissing him.

When I stopped, he said, “How about a proposition? I fuck you.”

“That’s not a proposition.”

“I fuck you,” he said, “because it just makes sense. You have--” He grabbed a handful of my ass. “--the hottest little ass I’ve ever seen. And I have this huge dick. I mean, you have to put your best foot forward, Becker, you really do. Play to our strengths.”

He led me over to the bed. He had lube and a condom in his pocket already. Always prepared, Kevin Malley. Tried to make it look spontaneous, too.

I lied down on my back. He put his hands on the back of my knees, and pushed my knees to my chest.

I was rock hard watching this. Getting into position. Watching Kevin Malley stand over me, a gentle smirk on his face.

“Go slow,” I told him. “You’re big.”

He didn’t respond to that, but he smiled at me.

He squeezed some lube onto his finger, and pressed it to my asshole. It felt cold, and somehow good, and I gave a little moan, which made him smile.

“Yeah,” he whispered. He slowly eased in a finger. “How’s that feel?”

“It feels good,” I said. I’d had a finger up there before. My own finger. Just to see. Just to experiment. One finger was fine.

He slipped in another one, which I didn’t think would fit. It did. It felt tighter, and he asked me again how I was doing.

Three fingers, moving in and out, and I just started moaning. I didn’t think I would moan. You always see in porn, people moaning, and I just thought it was an over-exaggeration. Which it might’ve been in porn, but with Kevin Malley three fingers up, it wasn’t for me.

He took all three fingers out, and I felt empty suddenly.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

He tore the condom wrapper open, then looked at me slyly. He slipped it on his massive dick, squirted a few globs of lube on it, and then turned back to me.

“They didn’t make you take it yet, during pledgeship?” He paused. “Oh, right, that’s during hell week.”

“What?”

“I’m kidding, Becker--don’t look at me like that. You’re going to love it. Five seconds in, you’re going to want me to never leave.”

His hubris was intoxicating. I never thought Kevin was one that had this kind of confidence, but he did in bed, and it was a turn-on.

I felt the tip of his dick against my asshole. I took a deep breath, and slowly felt him ease in.

My skin was stretching. I could feel it stretching, as if it was going to rip, and I suddenly panicked. Or panicked in my head, because I was somehow motionless.

“Stop, stop,” I whispered. “It’s too big.”

Kevin ignored me. “You’ve taken it before,” he said, easing it in a little deeper. “Don’t say ‘stop’ unless you mean it. Power through.” He let out an involuntary shudder, and I felt him go in a little faster, deeper.

“It’s too big,” I whispered again.

And then, suddenly, it didn’t hurt--I just felt. I felt good. I felt full. I felt very sexy.

Which was followed by a wave of euphoria, as he fell forward, inches from my face, his hands on either side of my body.

He started rocking his hips. Slowly. Each time he hit my spot with that huge dick, I couldn’t help but moan. I just felt so full. I just felt every one of his inches, the thickness, everything. It was the second time Kevin Malley was inside me, and it was perfect.

He started speeding up, and I didn’t think I could handle it. I was a constant grown by now, and he whispered for me to be quiet, and then, when that didn’t work, locked his lips against mine.

Leaning forward did it. He started fucking me harder, faster, and I grabbed the back of his head, and kept his face against mine so I wouldn’t scream out. All I could think about was screaming, as if I needed some kind of pressure release.

Came out of another orifice. I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I started jacking off, and it took about ten seconds before I exploded over both of our stomachs.

And then Kevin’s head shot up, and he let out a deep exhale, and I felt him slowing, felt him suddenly going limp.

“Did you cum?” I asked.

He let out a few shallow breaths, and wiped his forehead, which was dripping with sweat. I felt what was left of his dick crawl out of my ass, and he took off the condom, which was packed with more cum than I’d ever seen in my life.

“Fuck yeah,” he whispered. “That was excellent.”

My ass felt empty without him inside me. Like he’d said it would be. All I could think about was him being back in there.

He lied down next to me, on half of the little twin bed, and I lied down next to him. He put his arm around my shoulders. We were both glossy from my cum, which had ricocheted off both of our stomachs in a weird sort of inkblot pattern.

“Well,” he said, “that was good.”

I nodded in agreement, and we lied there, staring up at the dark ceiling in the windowless room. I remembered the talk I was going to have with him, the talk I had rehearsed so many times in my head, that I had attempted on the beach, that seemed utterly empty at the momentum.

“I missed you,” I told him, instead. “I like you.” Because what else was there: I miss you. I like you. I want to be with you. I did not say that last bit, because I didn’t know how to say it, how to phrase it into the nuanced words that I needed, so I didn’t say it. But I said the rest, and those syllables hung stranded in the stillness of the sex-soaked air.

“I know,” he said, kissing my cheek. “I like you too.” He paused for a long moment. “But I don’t know what you can give.” He paused ago. “And you’re right, that I don’t know what I can give either.”

“We don’t have to give anything,” I told him. “I like you, and you like me. So let’s leave it there.”

“Becker, come on.”

“No,” I told him. “I like you. You like me. Does it have to be any more complicated than that?”

He was quiet, pondering my naïveté, and I knew that. Of course it was more complicated, but it didn’t have to be right now. It didn’t have to be anything more or less than us, in this tiny room, in this tiny bed, and me snuggled in the crook of his arm, my cheek up against his skin.

“It’s way more complicated,” he told me. “Because you’re my friend. We know we get along, we know we like each other—and that’s going to invite things. That we don’t want. Or that we do want, and that we can’t have.” He shook his head. “No, it’s complicated as fuck. Trust me on that one.”

I didn’t know exactly what to say, because of course there were complications—of course it would not be as easy as I like you, you like me, as easy as let’s see where this goes, but as I nested myself into the crook of his armpit, I knew that there was no place I’d rather be at this exact moment.

“You said you don’t want to lose me,” I told him. “So don’t.”

He was quiet for what felt like a lifetime. “I won’t.”

“We can figure it out,” I told him. “When it gets complicated, we figure it out, but for now: I like you. You like me.”

“Yeah,” he replied. There was another long pause, as if he might say something else, but instead he just said, “Okay.”

 

I did not remember falling asleep—I did not remember very much after, “Okay,” but Kevin had left at some point in the evening; when I woke up, he was gone and Tripp was facedown on the air mattress.

For the slightest, groggiest second, I almost wondered if it was a dream, if the sex, the conversation had been a figment of my subconscious as I slept in a twin bed in a laundry room with Tripp next to me.

But of course it wasn’t; I could remember everything vividly, despite how drunk I was; the warmth of Kevin’s body, the way his shoulder felt against my face, the way he felt inside me. And, of course, the glaze of evidence left on my bare stomach, matting the hairs beneath my navel.

My shirt from the night before was rolled up between my bed and Tripp’s, and so I grabbed it and pulled it on before I even unearthed myself from the covers—couldn’t be too careful, couldn’t be seen like that. I grabbed some basketball shorts from my suitcase, put those on, and then went out to greet the smell of bacon and eggs again.

Kevin was cooking, for an enhanced audience this morning; it was ten-thirty. Baker, his hair a shock of angry Einstein; Dana and Maddie, both in different Tri-Gamma t-shirts and pajama bottoms, and Tommy Pereira, who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room carpet, playing on his PSP.

“Would you like to try my sausage, Becker?” Kevin asked me, flashing me just the ghost of a smirk, before he turned back around to the stove.

Baker giggled at the weak double-entendre, but I didn’t. I was embarrassed by that sort of things, as if Kevin was hanging the dirty laundry a little too close to the fire.

“No,” I said. “Bacon and toast.”

“Boring,” Kevin replied, but he chiseled some bacon out of the frying pan, and put it on a dish for me. He didn’t hold it out; he made me get close to him, and refused to remove his hand, even after I grabbed the rim of the dish.

“Toast is over there,” he said, his voice low. “But I think we’re running out of breakfast stuff anyway, because you guys are all fast asses, so I’m going to have to go to the store before drinking.”

“Get that orange-pineapple-banana shit,” Baker said, “if they have it.”

“Dollar General is known for their exotic juice selection,” Kevin deadpanned. “Anything else? Just the staples? More beer?”

Everyone, including Tommy Pereira who was otherwise removed from the conversation, nodded in agreement.

“So much stuff,” Kevin said, looking directly at me, his broken half-smile appearing on his face—how happy I was to see him smiling at me, his real smile, not a sarcastic one or a malicious one. “I guess I’ll have to take a pledge.”

 

We were not driving in the direction of the Dollar General, and I didn’t ask why; Kevin had programmed the GPS to somewhere else.

A deserted parking lot, near the onramp to the highway; an abandoned Travelodge, falling apart in the bleaching sun and the sea air.

Kevin pulled into a parking space around the side of the hotel, where it wouldn’t be visible from the road, and pushed the Tercel into park.

“Here,” he said. “Okay.”

I was not entirely sure what he was contemplating, although the secludedness very blatantly suggested what he was interested in. A proposition that I was not necessarily opposed to at this point of the day.

He put his hand on my knee, and then leaned over and kissed me.

“I wanted to do that all morning,” he said. He leaned in for one more kiss. “You have no idea.”

“We’ve only been up for a half-hour,” I reminded him.

“You’ve only been up for a half-hour,” he replied, and he kissed me again. His hand was traveling up my thigh, until he finally reached my bulge, which had already hardened to half-mast under his touch. “Good morning.”

I was wearing swim trunks already; his hand disappeared beneath the elastic waistband, and grabbed my dick. I let out an involuntary groan as he slowly began to jerk it, as his lips traveled to my neck.

And then, out of nowhere, there was a flash of sirens and a police car pulling up behind us.

The presence of law enforcement caused the latent libertarian inside of me to fill with anxiety, but Kevin remained calm, as he withdrew his hand from my shorts and casually . “Put that map on your lap,” he said, motioning to the passenger side pocket. “Hurry.”

I took out the book, flipped it to the page that showed Destin. Kevin leaned back over me, pointing haphazardly at the free—the stage set just the officer knocked on the window.

Kevin rolled down the window. “I’m sorry, officer, do you know the way back to the Dollar General? I think we pulled off the highway at the wrong exit, but we can’t find it on the map.”

The police officer had not anticipated Kevin speaking first, but it seemed to defuse the situation a bit more than it otherwise would.

The officer was a middle-aged black guy in short sleeves and sunglasses. He wore no emotion.

“This is private property,” he said, without answering Kevin’s question. “You need to move.”

“Sorry,” Kevin said. “My mistake.” He repeated: “I just pulled off the highway.” But the officer quietly walked back to his car, sat in the driver’s seat.

“Do we go?” I asked, but Kevin was already throwing the car into drive, and we tore out of the Travelodge parking lot and back on the main street towards the Dollar General.

We said nothing for the next few minutes, because what was there to say? We had very nearly been caught, and thankfully we hadn’t actually done anything.

“We got lucky,” he said, finally. “Panhandle cop? Gay sex? If he had come by five minutes later, we would’ve been fucked.” Lightly, he added, “And not in the way I was hoping for.”

I didn’t want to think of any of that. I didn’t want to think of having to call my parents from the Destin city jail, explain to them the compromising situation I had put myself in. I didn’t want that to be the way any of it happened.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “Everyone would’ve wondered where we went off to anyway.”

 

On the beach, it seemed like nothing had ever gone awry between the two of us; Kevin was smiling again, he was cracking his usual jokes, he was eye-fucking the shit out of me, every chance he got. The same way he’d been first semester, before either of us had been identified conclusively by the other as shy, the same way he had managed to keep up the casual, joking front up until two weeks ago.

It was strange, really, to think about how much had quickly pivoted in the course of eighteen hours. Kevin’s beach towel was still splayed out two people away from me, but he sat up, glanced at me over Veronica and Dana’s sleeping bodies.

“You know what I want to do,” he said, loudly, and I hoped he wasn’t going to go in the obvious direction. Instead, he went in an even more obvious direction: “I’d love to get really high right now.”

“No smoking on the beach, Malley,” Veronica said, without opening her eyes or looking up. “You’re going to get us all arrested.”

Kevin used that as an opportunity to smile knowingly at me, a sentiment I did not return. It was too soon.

 

We were back to the bonfire house at night; I cornered Patrick inside, down the hallway to their own laundry room (which was, unlike ours, devoid of beds.)

Patrick and my friendship, as it were, had reached past detente and into solid pleasantries—I was dying to tell someone and he was the only one who could fit the bill, about what had happened with me and Kevin. And I figured my window of opportunity would be best served if I caught him before Annie Rue arrived and planted her flag in his lap. Not just because he would be then unavailable for private conversation, but because his guard went up tremendously whenever Annie Rue in the picture. Maybe because he knew I didn’t especially approve of this relationship; maybe because I knew too much, and he didn’t really know what kind of passive aggressive drunk might accidentally pass the censor.

I understood. Even if I didn’t quite agree that any of that was going to happen. Annie and Patrick moved together in unison, with a sort of ease that I didn’t think could be readily faked. And while I didn’t entirely know what to make of the relationship—I still didn’t know where I landed on the idea of Patrick’s affinity for the female genre—but it seemed increasingly likely that what he had actually said was what he actually meant: that it was an experiment, that I was the only reminder floating around a gambit that he would rather not attempt again.

And I could live with that, couldn’t I? Wasn’t there a flexibility with sexuality, an elasticity? That someone could crave something new and strange and exciting, only to find out they didn’t like the flavor?

I didn’t know. i didn’t want to put that much thought into Patrick Sullivan and whether or not he actually enjoyed doing things to Annie Rue, but from the chatter both in Tri-Gamma and Iota Chi, it seemed that he was certainly doing them at a high frequency.

At any rate, he was the one to dive into the private conversation: “I see Kevin’s in a pleasant mood tonight,” he observed.

I gave him a goofy smile, and a theatrical shrug. He smiled back, slapped my shoulder. “Good job, man.” With a big smile, he added, “I don’t want to hear any details.”

And that was all the conversation we had, before he wandered over to the refrigerator, pulled out an Abita Amber, and then went back into the backyard by himself.

Okay, so it was not the most sterling conversation on the planet, but it was an escape hatch, a pressure valve, and I felt so much better, like a fog had lifted, that someone finally knew about what had happened. Even if I hadn’t actually said any actual words to that effect.

The rest of the night tore on, vaguely like it had the other night. Kevin, maybe conscious of how the sudden thaw in our relationship might be perceived or maybe because he was confident enough in where we had left things, was not sticking to my side; he was floating from conversation, pipe in hand, like he normally did. And Baker and I eventually found ourselves watching everyone in panorama.

“If your sister doesn’t have anyone,” he said, “I mean. You know?”

I knew. I nodded. “Let’s play it by ear. I’m sure you’ll find someone else to take.”

Veronica’s bawdy laughter seemed to rise above the rest of the din suddenly, as if on a celestial cue. Neither Baker nor I addressed the timing.

“Yeah, I’m sure I can,” he replied, even though we both knew that wasn’t true.

It wasn’t until I was pretty drunk and, based on the diseased look in Kevin’s eyes, he was exceptionally high, that Kevin came over to me.

“Let’s go get the rest of my weed,” he told me, loudly, almost too intentionally, and he took off down the beach.

And of course I followed—partially because I was drunk enough to respond to orders without insubordination, and partially because I knew what would inevitably follow.

We did not make it all the way to our house; we were out of eyeshot from the bonfire house, and Kevin instead grabbed my waist and pulled me in for a kiss.

“Let’s get inside,” I told him. “We’re almost home. No one’s there.”

“No,” he said, as he started unfastening his belt. “Let’s go.”

I was legitimately startled by the fact that he was already undoing the button on his shorts, in the middle of the pitch dark beach. “What?”

“I’m cashing in my free one,” he said, biting his lip as he smiled. “From St. Louis. The one you said you owe me.”

“What, right now?”

“Yeah,” he said, throwing his belt down on the sand. “All of these houses are dark—no one’s home. So let’s do it right here. On your knees, pledge.”

“You can’t call me ‘pledge,’” I told him. “And we’re in the middle of a beach. We can’t. We almost got caught in a parking lot.”

“I want to do it outside,” he said. “Now. After that. I’ve never had sex outside, and I just decided I wanted to do it. Right now.”

“You’re too impulsive,” I replied. “We can’t have sex on a public beach. We can see our house.”

“Who’s going to see us?”

“Like, police,” I said. “Or neighbors. Or, like, someone from the freaking house full of our friends that we just left behind.”

“Maybe I want to get caught,” he smirked, his scarlet eyes lighting up with excited malice.

“No, you don’t,” I told him, because at least I was somewhat sensible about the whole thing, no matter how many beers I’d consumed. “You’re not that big of an idiot.”

“Fine,” he said, fastened the button the top of his shorts. He bent down to pick up his belt, but did not put it back on.“Backyard?”

That seemed like an appropriate compromise, for some reason. I probably should’ve held firm on being behind a locked door, but there was something exceptionally sexy about the back yard, behind the low retaining wall, minimally dangerous as it was. We angled so that Kevin was looking out to the beach, so he could see anyone, and I was behind the wall, so they couldn’t see me anyway. That helped. I think Kevin knew I was nervous. That I didn’t want to be outside nearly as much as he did. I think he was a little nervous too, once it sank in. He was better at big talk than big action.

“Shit, we’re doing this outside,” he whispered, gleefully.

I took his hard dick in my hand, stroked it a few times. “How are you always hard by the time I start?”

“Power of imagination,” he replied. “Photographic memory helps.”

“You don’t have a photographic memory.”

“For this kind of stuff,” he grinned. “Maybe I do. Stop talking. Start sucking.”

I stroked his dick a few more times, then plunged in.

I still couldn’t take very much of it, but I was pleasantly surprised with my progress. I’d never really thought of blowjobs as one of those skill sets that got better with practice, but I guess it was.

At least Kevin always gave the appropriate moan, the appropriate running his fingers through my hair, the appropriate grabbing the back of my head and forcing me down. Made me feel like I was doing something right. I had no idea how many guys Kevin Malley had been with but I assumed it was more than my two.

I stopped sucking, licked my way down the shaft, and took one of his balls in his mouth. I knew he liked that. He grunted in approval. I switched to the other one. Another grunt.

Then I licked my way back up, took as much of it as I could in my mouth.

He had his hand on the back of my head, started pushing me faster and faster, and I thought he was going to choke me on it. Really, choke me.

And then he launched a torrent of hot semen down the back of my throat, and I actually did start choking.

He jumped back in horror, as I crouched on all fours on the concrete, coughing and dry-heaving.

“So you don’t swallow,” he noted. “Interesting.”

I glared at him, between coughs. “You didn’t tell me you were going to do that.”

“Relax,” he said, pulling up his shorts. “It was spontaneous. I was enjoying it, and I was so busy keeping a lookout, and it just happened.”

I coughed again, sat back on my feet, and stared up at him. “Well?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to do me?”

“Of course not,” he replied, a devilish grin on his face. “You owed me. This was a penalty blowjob for St. Louis. If I suck you off too, where’s the lesson? I have to get my weed.”

I could tell if he was kidding or not, but he was fastening his belt, which didn’t bode well, and then opened the French door back to the house.

“Really, dude?” I called, as he disappeared back inside. “Come on. Please.”

“Tonight,” he called back. “If we can shake our roommates again when we get back.” He paused, turned around. “But it’s nice to hear you beg for it.”

 

It turned out we could not, in fact, shake our roommates that evening. Tripp and Morton were suddenly omnipresent in each of our respective rooms, lingering unwanted like a musty smell.

Kevin and I debated, for a second, the backseat of the Tercel, but we were too drunk and high to go anywhere and the car was parked on the public street anyway, and that seemed a little too risky even considering the day’s events.

The next morning was Saturday, and we could’ve faked another errand but we were too skittish to attempt another secluded parking lot. Or at least I was; I figured the occasional exhibitionist in Kevin could have been convinced, but like everything in my life, I saw every transgression in big font on the front page of the Huffington Post.

“Like they care that much,” Kevin scoffed, as we sat in his car, debating whether to drive, but he didn’t bring up the topic again.

From there, it was more of the same: beach, then drinking, with an increasingly annoying lack privacy in the interim.

And then it was Sunday morning, which meant driving back to New Orleans. Baker insisted we leave first thing.

“Don’t worry,” Kevin told me quietly, when we went into the minimart to get candy as his car filled up with gas. “I don’t have a roommate at school.”

But, of course, that was easier said than done; we hooked up again on Sunday night, after we got home, but the rest of the week was a series of missed connections: Kevin had work on Monday and Wednesday night, and I had pledge stuff on Tuesday and Thursday.

"It's so slow tonight," he texted from the restaurant, on Wednesday night, shortly after I had settled into a cubicle on the fourth floor of Howard-Tilton Library with my French 203 workbook. "Come down, and I'll fuck you in the walk-in freezer."

"I think it's too early for me to see you naked when it's that cold," I replied. "Besides, I have a test tomorrow. I have to study."

"You're too smart to study," he said. "B's get degrees."

"It's French," I told him. "I'm going to have to work my ass off for that B."

He texted me a series of frustrated capital letters, followed by "unggghh."

And he didn't wait for a response to that one: "No, but," he continued, "I want to fuck you. You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you. I literally cannot think of anything else. Friday? Boot Happy Hour and fucking?"

"Justine," I texted back.

Justine's touchdown was at 3:30 in the afternoon on Friday. She was flying nonstop from Baltimore, which was a slightly farther airport from Hamlet than DCA, but my mother didn't want her to change planes "by herself," as if Justine was a toddler.

Or so Justine had irritatedly recapped for me, when she called me on Tuesday night to discuss logistics. Justine was a planner; she didn't entirely trust me to be responsible.

I had enlisted Michaela Birdrock as a chauffeur; Kevin had volunteered, but I didn't want him to be the first breath of New Orleans she got. I did want her to meet Kevin--and, knowing the Iota Chi-centric social circle that we'd be traveling in, it would've been impossible for her not to meet him--but it would have to be artfully done, small doses; a friend, certainly, but not a close friend.

“I’ll play it cool,” Kevin promised me, via text, as I sat in the passenger seat of Michaela's Suburban, waiting outside of New Orleans Airport on Friday, at 3:25. "You know how I roll."

“I know," I texted back. "You'll get to meet her."

Michaela was touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror, since the driver’s visor seemed to be missing. “I think I might grow out my hair again,” she said. “You know?”

Her hair had been roughly the same length for the entire time I knew her; it fell down past her shoulders, so I wasn’t exactly sure how much more length she had to work with.

“Or go shorter,” she said, winding some of it around her fingers, and holding it just above her shoulders. “You know? Not before formal though. Don’t worry.”

Michaela bald would still be the hottest girl at formal. It was my good fortune that, comfortable around us enough to make her own demands, she had asked me if she could be my formal date on Monday. It was a boon because she was hotter than my other alternative, Jordan, and also because it removed her as a secure backup choice for Chris Baker, who—upon finding out that Maddie and Dana had both been already asked to the Kappa Nu formal that same night, and Veronica had been snapped up by Tommy Pereira—texted me to tell me that he was willing to “do me a solid.”

“I hope Justine remembered to bring a dress,” I said, glancing out at the airport loading zone, which was suspiciously empty of people between flights.

“She’ll remember,” Michaela said, “and if not, she’ll wear one of mine.”

Of course Michaela was the kind of girl who would bring multiple formal gowns to college with her. She had told me excitedly that she had selected the navy blue silk from junior prom, as if I had an encyclopedic knowledge of Michaela’s formal wardrobe.

“I’m just glad Tate’s formal was before spring break,” she said. “He doesn’t care that I’m going with you, though,” as if that had all factored into my decision to take her.

Our feelings on Tate McClendon remained decidedly mixed. Michaela had largely walled him off from the rest of her life; he was instead like a math class, something on her schedule to attend, but not something that impacted the rest of us at all.

“Their formal was at the Royal Sonesta,” she said, “on Bourbon Street. It was awesome, but they started carding at the bar, so Tate’s big had to keep getting us drinks all night. Which sucked.”

I was not especially intrigued by this conversation, so I made a pivot. “Yeah. Hey, thanks for bringing me to get Justine, by the way.”

“Car duty,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Plus, I’m so excited to meet her. We’re going to sell her on Tulane. I know it.”

I had not mentioned my opinion one way or the other about Justine’s possible matriculation at my university, but Michaela hadn’t heard the neutrality; she would have been excited, so she figured I was excited.

Michaela was a wonderful person. She was not brimming with empathy.

“I think we should go to the Palace Cafe on Canal before formal,” she said, “for dinner.”

“I think Baker already made reservations,” I told her. Baker had, in fact, made reservations, which was good because I wasn’t confident the Palace Cafe was securely in our price range. “Byblos on Magazine Street.”

She did not seem especially enthusiastic at that option. “Wherever you want,” she said, pluckily. “I’m just the date.”

The sidewalk began to crowd with people, and I felt my phone buzz: text from Justine.

“I’m at door twelve,” she said.

“We’re in the hulking gray tank at door ten,” I texted back. “We’ll meet you at twelve.” To Michaela, I said, “She’ll be here in a second. Door twelve.”

Michaela excitedly clapped her hands, and then pushed the car back into drive to move forward two doors. “Meeting the little Becker.”

I had flashbacks to how I was described when i visited Yale last year with Philip. Little Becker. So maybe it was a universal thing, which made me feel somehow a little better about the whole thing. I thought suddenly about Charlie Baker.

Justine was wearing a yellow patterned scarf around tied-back, messy hair, and the Tulane sweatshirt I had given her and the rest of my family members for Christmas, which didn’t bode well for the course of action: show her a good time, but not a good enough time that she decided to actually come to Tulane in the fall.

I hopped out of the car, and she picked up the pace, threw her arms around me. “Peter!” she squealed. “I missed you.”

Peter. That also had somehow not entered my calculus for the weekend until this exact moment. Was there any way I could ask her not to call me that? Of course not.

“I missed you too,” I said, instead. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

I was filled suddenly with the dull sting of dread. New Orleans—my city—had suddenly become claustrophobic, had suddenly become inundated with unwanted flotsam and jetsam, washed in from the life of Peter Becker.

“This is Michaela,” I said, as Justine piled in the backseat. “Friend of mine.”

“I’m so happy to meet you!” Michaela gushed. “Becker talks about you all the time.”

I was thankful, at the very least, that Michaela had called me Becker; it was too early in the trip, too early in the day to bother with explaining Adam away.

“He talks about you guys too,” Justine said. “Great to put a name with a face.”

Michaela took the car out of park, and sped out of the airport to Airline Drive, to Dickory Avenue, onto Earhart Expressway, back across the parish line towards Uptown. The whole car was rattling by this point, as soon as Michaela accelerated faster than 55 miles per hour.

“She’s a good car,” Michaela justified, apropos of nothing.

“Can’t make right turns or go faster than 60,” I replied, “but a great car.”

Michaela rolled her eyes at me, then to Justine: “They can’t be picky when I’m the only car.”

I thought about mentioning that Kevin Malley had a car and, had I not been sleeping with him, he would’ve been a strong contender to pick up Justine in the Tercel. But I did not want to open that can of worms either.

“Why can’t it make right turns?” Justine asked.

“Oh!” Michaela gasped, glancing over at me. “You didn’t tell her about the accident?”

I did not tell Justine about the accident. I pointedly did not tell any family members about the accident, knowing that there was no way to plug up the eventual leak to my mother. Who would grow especially concerned, considering she thought the whole idea of going down to New Orleans a year after Katrina was concerning in itself.

“It was a fender-bender,” I said, but that didn’t stop Michaela from launching into an especially dramatic retelling of what actually happened.

“My poor thumb,” she was saying. “It still cramps up a little, you know? Sometimes.”

The Suburban was whipping past Metairie Cemetery; Justine was staring out at it curiously, watching the skyline of above-ground tombs bob past the window, and up the hillside.

“Graves are above ground here,” I said. “Water table. Otherwise we’d have bodies floating down the street.”

“I know,” Justine replied, still staring out the window. “I read about them.”

Kevin texted me: “So did you pick up the contraband?” He then clarified, in case I thought he was talking about something completely different and not outside the realm of possibility considering his moonlighting: “Justine, I mean.”

“We’re driving home now,” I said. “We might go to the Boot later for happy hour. If you’re around.”

“I’m working lunch tomorrow,” he replied, “so I can’t go too hard. But I’ll meet you guys for a couple drinks.”

I didn’t know how exactly to respond to that—whether I was supposed to be perfunctory in my scheduling, or cutesy that the guy I was seeing—seeing? fucking?—was coming to meet Justine, even if she wouldn’t know him as that.

So I just replied: “Awesome. See you then,” and figured that was simple enough to satisfy any sort of requirement.

“Well, we’re both pledges still,” Michaela was saying, in response to something Justine had asked that I hadn’t bothered to hear when I was texting Kevin. “He’s Iota Chi, obviously, and I’m Gamma Gamma Gamma. Which is really the best sorority—it’s cute girls, but not bitchy girls, you know?”

Justine nodded. She had a big smile etched on her face, unfailingly—and of course, this whole lifestyle had a certain kind of renegade glamour to a high schooler: the effortlessly beautiful woman in the front seat, barreling down Earhart in a car that couldn’t turn right at a speed the car wasn’t ever designed for.

“That sounds like a good mix,” Justine said. She returned to her frozen smile; she didn’t quite have the words she needed to carry on this kind of conversation; she was still taking it all in, like an anthropologist. And it dawned on me—with some kind of smug satisfaction—that, somehow, Adam Becker was cooler than Justine Becker.

And I knew the whole concept of “cool” was painfully jejune, one that didn’t deserve to exist out of high school, but here was Justine—beautiful Justine, popular Justine, athletic Justine—and she was, somehow, some way, in some kind of awe at the kind of life I was leading.

An ego boost, at the very least.

“It’s why we get all the good mixers,” Michaela said. “So you have an in, at least, if you come this way in the fall.”

Michaela flashed me a smile, as if she was helping, which she decidedly was not.

Justine didn’t quite know how to respond to that; she nodded politely. “Maybe I’ll go here,” she said, judiciously. “Here or Boston College.”

Michaela said nothing; Justine said nothing more, so it was my turn. “I’m sure she’ll make the right choice,” I said, finally, which I knew really meant nothing.