The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 23. Sophomore Year - Chapter 1

“I think this is going to be a good year,” Erik decided, as he filled cups of vat for a group of big-boobed freshman. “I have faith. I’m digging this new class.”

I wasn’t sure if that comment was directed to me or the freshmen but, regardless, I did not respond. We were working the front bar together. Erik had custody of the garbage can of vat; I, the keg--engineered by Erik so he would get to talk to the girls, a maneuver I made sure to protest the expected amount.

 

“So how’s Hannah?” I asked him.

 

“Channah,” he corrected, glottal in the back of his throat. “She’s fine.” Maybe sensing judgment, which I swear I only partially intended, he added: “We’re not official or anything.”

The party had begun exactly thirteen minutes ago; the crowd was still sparse. I was still waiting for the rapture of Justine walking through that door, dressed in some tarted-up obscenity and trailed by a crowd of thirsty freshmen girls from her floor in Monroe Hall.

 

I had recently come to a tepid sort of acceptance with regards to the fact that Justine was going to be haunting Tulane’s campus. That I was going to see her in the cafeteria and in the quad, that she would have casual conversations with Tripp or Erik or Jordan or Michaela or Kevin when she ran into them, when I wasn’t around. Swapping stories about Becker, about Adam, about Peter--any avatar of myself--and figuring out where the gaps in their individual knowledge lied.

 

Okay, well, it wasn’t total acceptance. But I was silently resigned to my fate, and that was critical. Silent resignation was the same thing as acceptance, for all intents and purposes.

 

There was one thing I put too little thought into, until she mentioned it, while we were having dinner with our dad at Arnaud’s: the general shadow she would cast across my social life.

 

“I hear Iota Chi’s having a party tonight,” she informed me, as she casually hacked a leg off her chicken.

 

A waiter, somewhere beyond the door to the kitchen, chose this precise moment to drop an entire service of plates--the sound of porcelain apocalypse filled and then silenced the restaurant, as everyone craned their neck to get a good view of the carnage.

 

It was all very apropos.

 

I wasn’t immediately sure if I was still expected to respond to Justine, if the waiter had successfully derailed the conversation--I was just about to open my mouth with something, anything, that would pivot the conversation away from Iota Chi and towards generic talk about clumsy wait staff, but Justine got there first.

 

“Nine o’clock, right?” she asked. “Bethany got an invite on Facebook.”

 

We had been told to invite any freshmen we knew. I only knew Justine, and I consciously did not invite her. I hadn’t considered about her having access through other channels of information.

 

Bethany Weinstock was Justine’s new roommate--a pretty, fast-talking blonde from Saddle River, New Jersey, who had somehow freighted in even more provisions for a school year than my sister did. As I spent most of my day lurking silently in the corner like a pedophile at a playground, I watched them engage in the measured tango of new roommates; the one Tripp and I had gone through exactly one year ago. Uncomfortable silence to start with, falling into tentative small talk, giving way to mutual embarrassment over the commentary from their respective parents, and finally, the recognition that the other person likely wasn’t a serial killer and could, in fact, be the best friend you didn’t know you were missing.

 

Bethany was, at least on paper, a perfect fit for Justine. She was pleasantly phony, clearly impressed by our paternal stature: my dad, who did not look especially regal in a faded “Yale Dad” t-shirt and a thirty-year-old San Diego Padres hat, had introduced himself simply as David. She called him “Senator Becker.” Which, of course, meant that not only had Justine been busy namedropping over the summer but that Bethany had been the type of person to file away that nugget of information and deploy it, fawningly, when she met my dad in person.

 

Mr. Weinstock was a C-suite executive at Lehman Brothers. So Justine told me over the summer.

 

Two peas in a nepotistic little pod.

 

Bethany was less impressed with me, greeting me with the same polite froideur that seemed to infect all of my interactions with Justine’s friends at Harrington.

 

I wondered exactly how many people Justine had namedropped Dad to at Tulane before she even arrived on campus. I was guessing it was more than a few. Michaela had told me that Justine was already being mentioned organically on the Tri-Gamma list-serve as a “gold prospect.” Michaela being Michaela, she couldn’t help but turn the conversation back to herself, telling me that she had also been deemed a gold prospect, though she of course didn’t find that out until after she had been initiated.

 

Multiple peas in a gold-plated pod.

 

Fraternities didn’t function that way.

 

Or, at the very least, I didn’t function that way. Who knows if I could’ve been fending off errant bids from A-level fraternities had I played the almighty father card, but the last thing I wanted to be in New Orleans was an appendage of Senator David Becker.

 

“Yeah,” I told her, hoping there would be another service-related disaster to dislodge this conversation once and for all, “but we’re towards the end of the block--you’ll probably wind up hitting the parties in order. Zeta always throws the craziest parties.”

 

My dad gave me a disapproving look. “Maybe you keep an eye on her tonight, Pete,” he told me.

 

“Dad!” Justine hissed, her voice hushed and humiliated, as if there were anyone who could torpedo her nascent collegiate reputation simmering in the shadows during a 5pm dinner at Arnaud’s.

 

“I don’t leave until tomorrow morning,” he reminded, pointedly, before going back to his Shrimp Creole. “I don’t want to be bailing any of my children out of New Orleans City Jail tonight. Don’t make me tell you about Ashley Biden again.”

 

Justine tossed me a pleading look to change the topic, so I said, “There’s not a lot of trouble you can get into on move-in day. Tulane keeps a close eye.”

 

That seemed to defuse the situation--either because of that or just because of his generally short attention span, my dad mentally departed dinner, began scrolling absently through his BlackBerry. “Prohibits Senators from lobbying for two years after leaving the Senate,” he muttered to himself, wrinkling his nose.

 

“So,” Justine said, turning to me, “nine o’clock at Iota Chi?”

 

We left my dad outside Arnaud’s; he put us in a cab going back uptown, paid the driver, and then walked back on his own to the Windsor Court.

 

Once the last shackles of parental controls had been thrown off, now that it was just the two of us, Justine finally seemed to loosen back up.

 

I had rarely seen her as agitated as she had been today, the stiff cocktail of anxiety and excitement, and I couldn’t help but smile at that: freshman move-in day. I remembered mine, getting drunk with Tripp and Erik and Charlie Baker. And Patrick--a chill went up my spine when I remembered that, remembered him before he was an Iota Chi brother, before he was dating Annie, before he was my roommate, of all things.

 

No, it was a day out on the frontier. I felt jealous that she got to live all of that for the first time.

 

“We’re definitely going out to the fraternities tonight,” she told me, shifting in her seat. “Where else should we go? I want to make sure I hit everything.”

 

She had a nervous smile, a tentatively excited energy that endeared her to me. Because, sure, she was a little less of an ingenue than I had been on day one of freshman year, but it was still uncharted waters for her. I was falling back into the role I had played when she visited me last spring: the effortlessly cool older brother, in a fraternity, who knew exactly where to go on a Saturday night.

 

It was bittersweet: a role I knew I wouldn’t be able to fake all that much longer, once she figured out things for herself, but it made me happy, proud, at least for now.

 

“So,” I told her, “Zeta always has a party, and it’s the first house on Broadway near campus--so you’ll probably wind up there. Stick to beer--the guy vat is horrible and the girl vat is probably roofied.”

 

She nodded with gingerly understanding, like she was taking notes on information that would undoubtedly pop up on the final exam.

 

“From there, Lambda Nu’s a couple doors down--their parties usually aren’t that great, so you can skip it. Unless it looks really packed, because then it’ll be alright. Sigma Alpha’s next--their parties are pretty decent. See who’s there. Kappa Phi is the Southern fraternity, so they’re all kind of douchey, but I don’t think they’re doing anything tonight. And then Gamma Beta’s still on probation so they’re definitely not doing anything. And then you’re at Iota Chi!”

 

“Which is the best,” she said, with a smile. I couldn’t tell if it was a question or an opinion.

 

“Which is the best,” I echoed. “Obviously.”

 

Thus far, Justine had not yet shown up, but it was only 9:16. Assuming her freshman year floor on move-in day was a lot like my freshman year floor on move-in day, she and Bethany would’ve started to move out at exactly nine o’clock. By now, they would have already rolled down their hallway, picking up strays, and would be approximately somewhere in the middle of Newcomb Quad, heading towards Broadway. Depending on the type of girls they were, they’d spend thirty minutes at Zeta and then an hour and a half at Kappa Phi, or the opposite. Which would put them at Iota Chi at roughly 11:15 or 11:30.

 

I looked at my watch. The second hand crossed the twelve; it was now 9:17.

 

“Fuck,” Erik said, as another freshman girl walked away. He was quickly finding that his game was severely hampered by the fact that he was standing behind a folding table, only got about fifteen seconds with each girl that came his way in their search for the next cup of booze. “How long are we stuck on bar detail?”

 

“Forty-three more minutes,” I told him.

 

He closed his eyes in silent agony, as if he had just found out about the death of a loved one. “I didn’t think this through. I get to meet all of the hot girls when they need a drink, but then they go and get sucked into Matt Rowen’s gravitational field. Basic science.”

 

“Night’s young,” I told him, as he disinterestedly and wordlessly gave a freshman guy a glass of vat. “Do you really want to go through the trouble of hooking up when you’re both sober?”
“I could use a challenge one of these days,” he replied. He took a sip of his own glass of vat. “Whatever, it’s, like, six hundred girls’ away from home for the first night ever. It’s going to be a fucking harem in here by midnight.”

 

I wanted to, casually, point out that out of the two of us, I was the one who hooked up with someone on the first night of college and Erik was the one who passed with his shoes on, alone, but that involved divulging some highly confidential information.

 

I looked back at my watch. 9:18.

 

Erik had also craned over to look at my watch. “Nice watch,” he said. “New?”

 

It was a gift from my parents for my sixteenth birthday, and I had worn it every single day since--including every day Erik knew me. I shrugged. “Fairly new.”

 

Patrick Sullivan and Annie Rue sidled up to the bar, looking as mismatched as they usually did: Annie was in a slinky black dress with silver heels and a strand of pearls, and Patrick was wearing the same t-shirt he had worn all day--block letters “VI LA PAPA” over a cartoon potato wearing a mitre--but had added jeans, an open flannel shirt, and a backwards Iota Chi baseball cap, to take it from day dress to evening.

 

“Hiya, roomie,” he told me.

 

It was evidently not his first drink.

 

“Beer?” I asked, picking up an empty cup. He nodded gingerly, as Annie waited for Erik to fill her a cup of vat. “I see you did a lot of unpacking today,” I told him, because he hadn’t. I had arrived at our room in Mayer at around two o’clock in the afternoon, after we had gotten Justine’s entire trousseau up to the fourth floor of Monroe Hall. Our room was empty, except for two unpacked suitcases sitting atop one of the beds--Patrick claiming his dominion with the subtly of Hernan Cortez.

 

“I’ve been with Annie,” he had explained, when he finally came back to our room, four hours later, just as I was dressing for Arnaud’s. “I’m going to start now. Don’t worry.”

 

When I had returned from dinner, he was gone again, but the suitcases were unmoved. One of them had been unzipped, presumably so he could fish out the afforementioned jeans and flannel.

 

“Oh, whatever,” he told me, accepting his filled solo cup, his eyes smoky with intoxication. “I was helping Annie move in all day. By ‘move in’ I mean fucking, of course.” Annie shot him lethal eyes, which Patrick seemed to have anticipated, offering back a thin smile. “Our room isn’t going anywhere for the next year.” He looked over to Erik. “Was he this anal last year?”

 

“He was Tripp’s problem last year,” Erik replied, handing Annie her cup. “I lived across the hall.”

 

Patrick whipped his hand from side to side. “Where is Tripp?”

 

“Not coming in until tomorrow,” Erik replied. “Got stuck with some--” He looked at me. “--I don’t know, a funeral? In, like, po-dunk Alabama, I think?”

 

“He’s at his cousin’s wedding in Key West,” I replied. “Try listening, Fontenot. You might enjoy it.”

 

Erik seemed unconcerned with the facts. “Hey, Sullivan, want to cover the bar for me real quick?”

 

“Nope,” Patrick told him, breezily. “Winslow stuck me at the door from ten to eleven, and I’m not working a second longer than I have to.” He put his hand on the small of Annie Rue’s back, and nuzzled it downwards. “I thought being brothers meant never having to do bitch work.”

 

“I think it’s ‘never having to say you’re sorry,’” I said.

 

Erik shook his head. “Not until January when we get pledges. We’re still the lowest men on the totem pole until then.”

 

“Countdown begins,” Patrick said.

 

He continued talking, but I was back to watching the door--not for Justine, but because Kevin Malley had just walked in, looking deliriously handsome. Shed of all of his New York gloss, he was back the way I knew him: cargo shorts, a gray v-neck t-shirt. He’d cut his hair since the last time I’d seen him, too--the precise, investment banker part given way to a short crewcut.

 

He smiled when he saw me. I tried to look as nonchalant as possible, averted my eyes back to Patrick--who, at this point had noticed Kevin and had tossed me a knowing smile.

 

“Beer me up, Becker,” Kevin greeted.

 

“Nice to see you too, Malley,” I told him, as I filled a cup from the keg.

 

“Hanging out with Carver,” he said, with a smirk, “is bad for the soul.”

 

Patrick held Annie a bit tighter. “Let’s see if Morton’s out in the backyard,” he said; she quietly acquiesced, and they wandered away, Siamese twins.

 

“How was New York, dude?” Erik asked Kevin. “I-banking must’ve been sick.”

 

“It was okay,” Kevin replied, simply, glancing back at me. “It’s a lot of rich kids circle-jerking each other, but it was okay. Becker managed to come up for a weekend. We raged.”

 

“We did,” I agreed.

 

“Yeah, dude, you’ll totally have to get something at Bear Stearns next summer,” said Erik, seemingly ignoring Kevin’s tepid portrait of investment banking. “That’d be awesome, being in New York. Where’d you live?”

 

“Fallujah,” I interjected. “I feared for my life.”

 

“Oh, fuck off,” Kevin told me, with a smile. “Harlem. It’s gentrifying. It’s cheap--by New York standards, anyway. Becker just doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a card-carrying member of the urban poor and not just getting Daddy to rent something in TriBeCa.”

 

I bristled at the insinuation, but I didn’t say anything, and Kevin didn’t seem to care.

 

“Well, I’m the rural poor,” Erik replied. “Arkansas.”

 

“Think crack instead of heroin, and fewer white people, and you’ve got pretty much the same thing,” he replied. “I forget you’re from Arkansas.”

 

Erik smiled, proudly. “Thanks.”

 

I took the opportunity to steal back my boyfriend, and change the conversation. “So how was the drive down?”

 

“Not terrible,” he replied. “Not a lot of traffic. I slept in my car at a rest stop in northern Alabama last night, but I wasn’t knifed to death, so that’s always a good thing.”

 

“Oh, definitely,” I said. “Can’t be too careful with those card-carrying members of the rural poor.”

 

Kevin tossed me back a smile. “Exactly,” he replied. He motioned to his cup of beer, which I had filled up but was inadvertently still holding. “So that beer--are you aging it for any particular reason?”

 

“Oh, sorry,” I said, thrusting the cup to him. “It seems like someone’s feeling particular sassy today.”

 

“Nine hours in the car,” he replied, wrinkling his nose in antipathy, glancing back over at Eric. “You’d be sassy too.”

 

“No, I think I’d be shy,” I told him, and his face erupted into a smile.

 

He took a long sip of beer. “Maybe later,” he replied, and without saying anything, turned around and abruptly walked into the kitchen.

 

Erik turned to me, as if to say something, but amy phone chimed--which was, of course, a text from Kevin. I angled myself away from Erik, who, at this point, had been distracted by a couple of buxom freshmen girls in kabuki makeup, demanding tributes of vat.

 

“Upstairs bathroom, five minutes?” Kevin asked.

 

I smiled to myself at that. I texted back: “I’m stuck manning my post until 10. You know how this works.”

 

I could see him, leaning against the doorjamb outside the kitchen, phone flipped open, big grin on his face. He was texting back.

 

“Tell Fontenot you have to take a shit or something,” came his reply. “It’s been a month since I’ve been inside you--I’ll be done in like two minutes, believe me.”

 

“Oh, that’s attractive,” I texted.

 

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s sneak back to my place when you’re done. It’s a block away. 858 Broadway. 10:03.”

 

I put my phone away in my pocket, but I glanced towards the kitchen--catching Kevin standing in the doorway, phone guiltily in his hand as if I’d caught him shaking gifts on Christmas morning.

 

“Fine,” I told him, and he smiled.

 

I could see Kevin, beer in hand, sitting on the front porch of his new house, on the corner of Broadway and Burthe Street. It was bigger than his place on Lowerline--not a shotgun, but a very skinny three-story.

 

The porch was elevated on the second story; I climbed up the stairs, and he greeted me as conspicuously as we would allow, two blocks from the Iota Chi house:

 

“Hey, you,” he said, putting a very covert hand on my hip. “I missed you.”

 

“I did too,” I told him. I glanced down at my watch. “We don’t have very much time.”

 

Kevin nodded, perfunctorily, and led me inside. Aside from the decaying furniture, the same ugly plaid couch and peeling Ikea tables from his old place, it looked like a place people could actually live. Shiny wood floors, moldings, a big staircase upstairs to the third floor.

 

“Yeah, there’s six of us here,” Kevin said, “so the whole house is a lot bigger. And not a shithole.”

 

“Who’s all here?” I asked. “I know you, Baker, Morton, and Tommy.”

 

“All Iota Chis except me,” he told me. “Baker, Morton, Tommy, Ryan Wyatt, Pagliacci.”

 

I didn’t know Pagliacci--Paul Pryce, officially--too well, but he was from the pledge class above me, loud and dynamic and rotund, named after the operatic sad clown but I didn’t know how he got his nickname or why it so universally stuck even as the rest of ours fell away during pledgeship.

 

I didn’t know Ryan Wyatt, either, because he wasn’t the most active brother, but also because he was the openly gay brother and, I don’t know. I didn’t want him to sniff me out, maybe, by getting too close to him. As terrible as that is to say. Regardless, it was strange they would be living with Morton or Baker or Kevin, especially, because he wasn’t part of their clique.

“Huh,” I said. I motioned back towards the hallway. “Which one’s yours?”

 

“Downstairs,” Kevin told me, instead motioning towards the stairs heading to the first floor. “Morton and I are downstairs. Paul’s on this floor. Ryan, Baker, and Tommy are upstairs. Here--you’re going to love this.”

 

He took off down the flight of stairs, and I went off after him; they were narrower than I expected, leading downstairs to the ground floor.

 

Kevin’s room was the first door past at the foot of the stairs, next to a washer and dryer.

 

He had, very clearly, dragged stuff out of his car and then come straight to Iota Chi without unpacking much of anything. It was the messiest I had ever seen any room he had lived in—a bare mattress, boxes all across the floor, stacks of books next to his bed. There was, of course, a half-full bottle of Purell, an alarm clock, and a completely full bottle of Swiss Navy lube sitting on top of the stack of books. The innate Kevinness of all three did not escape me.

 

“I love what you’ve done to the place,” I told him.

 

“10:04,” he said. “You’re a minute late.”

 

I rolled my eyes, but Kevin didn’t seem to notice; he walked across the room. “You haven’t seen the best part,” he said.

 

Next to his dresser was a white door, which he presented to me like Vanna White. “The Becker Door. I picked the room with the side door out to Burthe Street--for, you know, clandestine visits.”

 

I grinned at that, and I appreciated the prospect of being able to break into Kevin’s house undetected by any of my fraternity brothers. The, otherwise, tremendous lack of privacy wasn’t a thought that I suddenly realized hadn’t even crossed my mind.

 

“What do I do, knock twice for sex?” I sat down on the bare mattress. “Come here--I missed you.”

 

Kevin sat down next to me, put his hand on my thigh, and began rubbing it, slowly. With his crooked half-smile on his face, he asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to give you a tour?”

 

I smirked, leaned in and kissed him. “I think I know enough of the landscape to handle the next bit.”

 

He grabbed my hand, set it down on his bulge, and his smile grew wider, moe expectant.

 

“You don’t waste any time.”

 

His hand had migrated to my own bulge, which had somehow erupted into a noticeable tent in my shorts just in the last two seconds of being in the close proximity of Kevin Malley.

 

“Well, neither do you,” he whispered, kissing me on the cheek. “How’d you get so hard so fast?”

 

“When I haven’t had sex with my boyfriend in a month, I get excited.”

 

“Uh oh, you used the b-word,” he whispered. He kissed down my jawline. “I thought we were ‘exclusive fuck buddies with an unhealthy codependency.’”

 

“‘Romantic component,’” I said, “if I recall my own quote correctly.”

 

“I wasn’t quoting,” he purred, as he continued kissing down my neck.

 

“Shut the fuck up,” I whispered back.

 

“Typical Republican trying to stifle discourse,” he told me, moving his lips onto my chin, and then kissing his way back up the other side of my face. “I won’t be silenced. Dissent is patriotic.”

 

“That sounds like something you should complain to your next boyfriend about.”

 

“Oh, I will,” he replied. He unbuttoned the top button of my jeans, unzipped the zipper, then yanked down my underwear and pants. Grabbing a handful of my ass with his hand, he said, “Do I have time to pound your tight little ass?”

 

“You better make time,” I whispered back. “I’ve been craving that cock.”

 

He gave my dick a few strokes. “Um, so,” he said, continuing to stroke. “Carver dragged me along when he got tested a couple weeks ago, and I figured I would too, just to be safe. And I’m clean. And I know you’ve only ever been with me as a bottom. So. You and I are, both clean. And exclusive.”

 

He said nothing else, clearly waiting for me to offer the final judgment.

 

I leaned in, kissed him swiftly on the lips.

 

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Go for it.”

 

“Fuck,” he said, practically diving over me so he could grab the bottle of lube resting on top of the stack of books. “I’ve never fucked anyone bare.”

 

“You don’t want a blowjob first?”

 

“I won’t last if you suck me off,” he said. “A whole month.” He started undoing his pants, yanked them down. I saw his bare, gigantic cock already standing at attention, fully hard.

 

I got up on my knees on the mattress, turned to face him, and he put his hand on the small of my back and pulled me in closer.

 

“Fuck,” he whispered, and then he kissed me, and our hard dicks came together. He jerked his hips briefly, rubbing his dick against mine. “I want you so bad.”

 

“I want you inside me,” I said, and he began unbuttoning my shirt.

 

“I’m going to fuck you senseless,” he whispered. “You’re going to be waddling back to that party.”

 

He pulled my shirt off completely, threw it across the room, and his hands began exploring my body--my shoulders, and then my chest, and then my back, and Kevin kept leaning in to kiss me, wherever his lips landed--on my mouth, my chin, the skin behind my ears.

 

“Take off your shirt,” I told him. “I want to see that body.”

 

He yanked it off, tossed it in the same direction as mine, and we embraced again, this time naked, this time every inch of our skin touching. Our dicks, our hips, our chests, our faces. “Fuck,” he whispered, and then he let me go, reached over for the bottle of lube.

 

At this point in our relationship--at this point of the evening, with both of us ready to burst after a whole month of geographically-imposed celibacy, with the clock ticking on when we’d be missed at Iota Chi--I knew what I wanted. I lied down on the mattress, spread my legs, so my knees were on my chest.

 

“Fuck,” he said again, as he lubed up his big cock so it glistened in the dim light. “Is that enough?”

 

“It’s been a month,” I said, so he gave another squeeze, jacked his cock gently.

 

Kevin came up behind me, leaned down, and inspected my asshole. “Your hole really wants me,” he told me. “I can tell.”

 

I snickered. “Can you now?”

 

“Oh, yeah,” he said, caressing it with one of his lubed-up fingers. “I’d love to rim you, if that wasn’t so disgusting.”

 

I had a response prepared, some witty retort, but it whooshed out of my head when I felt his finger slip deep into my ass. “Oh my God,” I whispered, as he pulled it back out, then pushed it gently back in.

 

“Tell me when you’re ready for two,” he whispered. I groaned in pleasure, which he took to be an affirmative; I felt his second finger slip inside, widening me up, preparing my hole for the oncoming assault.

 

“I want your cock,” I told him, and Kevin didn’t have to be told twice. His fingers disappeared, and he loomed over me, a tall, masculine figure blocking the light from the ceiling fan.

 

He pushed down on my thighs, stuffing my knees even further into my chest, so my ass was higher up in the air. I felt the head of his slick, big dick knocking against my hole, and then he slowly slid inside me.
There was a moment where it hurt--where it hurt terribly, like it did the first time he was fucking me, because it had been so long since I’d seen him. But I wasn’t going to tell him to stop, to tell him to take it slow, because I wanted him so badly. So I clenched my fists, and clenched my teeth, and waited for the waves of pain to recede into the back of my mind.

 

Which it did, after about ten seconds. And I relaxed, and Kevin could tell I relaxed, because his face crept into a smile.

 

“Oh my God,” he said. “You’re so tight.”

 

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

 

Kevin slowly began rocking his hips, letting out a guttural moan. “Oh shit,” he said, as he picked up the pace. “This is fucking amazing bare. Oh my God.”

 

He moved his lube-covered hands to my shoulders, pushing me harder into the mattress, angling himself so he could pound me harder. I locked my legs around his waist, and he picked up the speed, and we were both grunting, both moaning, as his big, throbbing dick slammed deep into my ass.

 

“You’re such a fucking hot little bottom,” he whispered, jacking my dick. “You fucking take it. You fucking take my cock.”

 

“Don’t jack me,” I told him, but he didn’t stop. “I don’t think I can last.”

 

“Cum for me,” he replied, and he stroked me a couple more times and I fell over the edge--ribbons of cum shooting, rapid-fire, out of my dick, onto my chest.

 

Kevin didn’t stop. His hips picked up the pace, maybe made it a few more laps, and then his face contorted, and he groaned, and he held down my shoulders. I felt his dick swell, pulsate, more than I ever had when he used a condom, and I knew he had unloaded into me.

 

“God, fuck,” he said, as he slowly pulled his deflating dick out of me. He collapsed forward, on top of me, didn’t care that he was lying on my chest in a pool of my own cum, and kissed me on the lips.

 

I exhaled, deeply. I could feel his heart, still pounding, against my own, and I put my hand on the back of his head, rubbed his short hair.

 

“That was incredible,” he told me. “Fuck.” He kissed me again. “Fuck, I could go again.”

 

We both instinctively looked over at the clock. It was 10:11.

 

“God, I’m so efficient, look at that,” he said, with a self-deprecating smirk. He propped himself up on an elbow. “I swear, next time I’ll last longer. It was just, you know. A month. And my first time fucking a guy bare.”

 

We locked eyes. I wondered if he really was serious about going again, but I didn’t think I had the energy. And we didn’t have the time, anyway, even despite our mutual expediency.

 

“We should get back to the party,” I told him. “Before we’re missed.”

 

“It’s only been eleven minutes,” he whispered, rolling over on his back, next to me. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

 

I nestled myself into his chest. I was, of course, showered in my own cum at this point; I could feel my slick ass cheeks against the bare mattress, I could feel Kevin’s cum threatening to leak out of my gaping asshole. But there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do, or anywhere else I wanted to be, other than be in Kevin Malley’s arms.

 

“Thirty seconds,” I told him, compromising between us and Iota Chi, “and then we’ll get up.”

 

And we lied there, together, Kevin on my chest, for maybe thirty seconds or maybe a minute, or two minutes, and then finally he got up, walked naked over to his desk, and tossed me a white hand towel.
I picked it up off the mattress, and started dabbing the cum on my chest.

 

“You’re going to start leaking all over my mattress,” he said, warningly, as he pumped a few squirts of Purell into his hands and ferociously rubbed them together. I lifted my legs back in the air and patted my ass down. There didn’t seem to be any of his cum--just lube, lots of lube.

 

“You look hot like that,” he said, kneeling next to the bed. “And it’s even hotter to know that part of me is still inside you.”

 

I rolled over, handed him the towel, and he stood back up, wiped down his thighs and his slick dick, then went back for more Purell.

 

Behind him, I noticed a white canvas with a smear of red fingerprint in the middle, vaguely menstrual, propped up against one of his boxes. “New art?” he asked.

 

“Oh,” he said, sitting on the bed next to me. “Yeah. What do you think? It’s a Carver Alexander original. He gave it to me as a goodbye gift.”

 

I grimaced, not just at the horrible painting but at Kevin dragging Carver out of the past and into the room where we had just had very hot, very frantic, very efficient sex.

 

“Oh, good, so I don’t have to pretend to like it,” I replied, a little more coldly than I intended, but I decided to just roll with that emotion anyway. “You were right. He is a poseur.”

 

Kevin grinned. “God, I know, right? He calls it, ‘Agony.’”

 

“I’d call it that too,” I replied. I propped myself up on an elbow. “Do you think I’m stage directions?”

 

He looked at me quizzically. “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

 

“Like,” I said, “some simplistic character in a play. Some cliche.” I realized the context was lost on Kevin--that Kevin hadn’t actually been present when Carver Alexander called me stage directions, so I said,

 

“Carver said that. What do you think?”

 

He grinned a bit at the nature of this question--what was he supposed to say? Yes?--but he didn’t take his answer lightly either way.

 

“You’re not stage directions,” he said, “whatever that means. No, if anything you’re too complicated. You’d require a whole mini-series to crack you open, at minimum.”

 

I had to smiled at that. “I guess so,” I said. I glanced back at “Agony.” “Carver wanted to sleep with you. You didn’t, did you?”

 

“Did I want to sleep with him, or did I actually sleep with him?” Kevin asked.

 

I didn’t say anything. I was, maybe, asking a little bit of both, and I realized after I said it that I didn’t really want to know the answer to either.

 

“Did I want to sleep with him? Maybe on one or two drunken occasions, where I thought sticking my dick in his mouth was the only way to shut him up. But did I? No. Of course not. So there you go.” He leaned down, kissed me. “I literally had sex only once in the last three months because of you, and don’t think I didn’t have other opportunities. I know you had plenty of opportunities too.”

 

I didn’t have a single opportunity, not staying at my parents’ house in Hamlet, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Kevin, so I just smiled up at him, and said, saccharinely, “Oh, you’re just a little drug dealer with a heart of gold, aren’t you?”

 

He responded with a perfunctory smile. “I’m also complicated enough for a miniseries, thank you very much.” He glanced over at his alarm clock. “Okay, now we really should get going. It’s 10:14.”

 

“We shouldn’t go back together,” I told him. “I don’t want to invite questions.”

 

Kevin folded his arms, kept a smile on his face but it turned more wry.

 

“Okay, so you repel up the side of the house and come in through the bathroom window,” he told me. “And I’ll sneak in from the basement. Does that work? Or would you rather have the basement? I know you prefer being on the bottom.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want to invite questions. It’s my fraternity.”

 

“No one’s going to notice,” he said. “Please. We’ve been gone literally fourteen minutes. And everyone in Iota Chi is so drunk and wrapped up in their own First World melodrama anyway. We could literally run up to the house waving the rainbow flag, my cock still in your ass, and freaking Baker would still be like, ‘So, you guys, do you think I have a chance with Veronica tonight?’”

 

I sat up. “I’m going to go. I’ve got to get back. You go shower, which I know you want to do anyway because you’ve used about a gallon of Purell already, and then head back.”

 

“You’re not showering?” he asked, as I stepped off the side of the bed and began hunting around for my clothes. “A load of cum on your stomach, a load of cum in your ass?”

 

His eyes betrayed his excitement, how titillated he was about me walking into a fraternity house with my ass filled to the brim with his hot cum.

 

“You love it,” I told him, as I pulled up my underwear.

 

It was 11:07 when Justine walked into the Iota Chi house. She was not wearing the clothes she had worn with dinner--she was wearing about half the clothes she had worn to dinner. She moved through the room like a golden disco ball, reflecting everything in sight.

 

“Don’t look,” I whispered to Baker, from the safety of our corner back by the sectional, “but it’s Justine.” And he did look, almost as if he was trying to be conspicuous but of course he wasn’t; he was just being Chris Baker.

 

“Damn,” he said, approvingly. “I think she’s going to get a bid from Tri-Gamma. Veronica said--”

 

“I know, I know,” I said. “She’s their ‘orange terror alert’ prospect, or whatever. So I’ve heard.”

 

“Oh shit, a gold prospect?” Baker said. “Veronica didn’t tell me that. That’s actually a huge deal. That’s only a handful of girls each year.”

 

“I don’t even know what that means.”

 

“Well, don’t tell her any of this,” Baker said, “but it means they’re going after her hard. Most girls are fighting to get noticed by sororities, but they’ll be the ones kissing her ass. Because they know she’ll get a bid to basically every sorority, and they want her to pick them.”

 

“I don’t think she’ll get a bid to every sorority,” I replied.

 

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Hot, smart, rich girls with powerful fathers never get special treatment.”

 

“I didn’t get any special treatment.”

 

“We’re less, you know,” he said. “We don’t care as much about shit like that. And I don’t think anyone knew who your dad was until way after you started coming around here.”

 

That was somehow comforting to know. Because I didn’t think I would have enjoyed being a gold level prospect--wanted for every reason except who I was. In a way, I felt bad for Justine--that, if she got Tri-Gamma or Beta Phi or Delta Delta Rho, she would never know if they were selecting Justine or if they were selecting the daughter of Senator David Becker. At least I knew where I stood.

 

Veronica Tandy beelined swiftly over to our corner.

 

“I knew I’d find you two hiding away in the corner,” she said, yanking up her dress from under her armpits. “My fucking tits keep falling out every time I move. I should’ve taped myself into this thing.”

 

“I think your tits look phenomenal,” I told her. “10 out of 10, would motorboat.”

 

“You flatter me, Becker,” she said, smoothing out the fabric on her stomach. “Okay. So here’s the plan. You’re going to bring me over to Justine, and you’re going to make it look completely spontaneous.”

 

This was going to be a torturous three years.

 

“Why don’t we just wait for her to come over before you recruit her?” I said. “Wouldn’t that look more organic?”

 

Veronica looked disdainfully at Chris Baker, as if I was somehow missing the entire point.

 

“She’s on everyone’s radar,” Veronica said, “and I don’t want to risk her hitting it off with someone from DDR before I get a chance to plant a couple Tri-Gamma seeds.” Her mouth perked up into a broad smile.

 

“So you’re going to bring me over there, and talk me and Tri-Gamma up. But not too much. We’re playing hard to get.”

 

“Obviously,” I replied. “I don’t know, Veronica. I recall someone being spectacularly unhelpful when I was trying to steal pins from Tri-Gamma last year.”

 

“Oh, that is just not true!” she said. She began adjusting her dress again. “I’m a good sport. I let you in the door, and played along. And, don’t forget that’s the day I went out of my way to hook you up with Jackie Hughes.”

 

“She stole my pin, and I had to drive to St. Louis in the middle of the night as punishment,” I said.

 

“Well, she’s way out of your league otherwise,” Veronica said. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

 

“Gee,” I said, “you sure know how to ask for a favor.”

 

“Oh, Becker,” she said, with a smile, putting her arm around me. “I heart you. I’m just trying to look out for Iota Chi. Iota Chi is in a privileged position with Tri-Gamma, because you’re the only fraternity that no one hates.”

 

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s almost a compliment.”

 

“No, it’s a good thing,” she clarified. “It means, when we select who to share a tent with at homecoming, or who to mix with, someone always has a huge problem with Lambda being too geeky, or Zeta being too rapey, or, you know, whatever. So Iota Chi is inevitably the compromise pick. So you can see how it’s in your fraternity’s personal best interest to continue to improve the quotient of women in Tri-Gamma who are a) pro-Iota Chi and hot. Ergo, Justine.”

 

“Ergo,” I repeated. “You’re also the Tri-Gamma rush chair, if I’m not mistaken.”

 

“Well, as recruitment chair, I’m not too proud to tell my sisters about how Adam Becker facilitated a gold prospect into choosing Tri-Gamma,” she said. “Tell me you don’t want a lot of hot sorority girls owing you a favor.”

 

I absolutely did not want a lot of hot sorority girls owing me a favor, but I wasn’t going to say something like that, so I just broke into a smile, which Veronica excitedly reciprocated.

 

“Fine,” I told her. “Didn’t you already meet her at formal last year?”

 

“Oh, drunk and five months ago, when she was just your sister,” she said, swatting the air dismissively. “That doesn’t count. I need to meet her with my recruitment pants on.” Veronica gingerly clapped her hands together. “Yay. I love you, Becker. You are my star.”

 

“I’ve never seen Veronica this excited,” Baker said.

 

“Really?” I said. “I’ve heard about 40% of the fraternity has, at this point. Give or take.”

 

“Take,” she replied, though her smile didn’t waver. “I’m very much in the single digits still, thank you very much. And if you’d seen most of your fraternity brothers in bed, you’d know they rarely inspire this level of excitement in anyone.”

 

We crossed the room like black ops, over to the whirlpool of the girls from the fourth floor of Monroe.

 

“Couldn’t let you come to your first Iota Chi party without saying hello,” I said to Justine, putting my arm around her.

 

Justine spun around, a too-eager smile on her face, and enveloped me in a hug. “I was looking for you!” she said. She turned back to her floormates. “This is my brother, Peter. He’s a sophomore in Iota Chi.”

 

“You can just call him Becker,” Baker rescued. He passed a smirk over to Veronica, then looked back to the Monroe girls. “Everyone else does.”

 

The girls were beaming at me, as if I was some sort of curious religious talisman. And I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, being fawned over by a group of freshmen girls.

 

“Yeah, I’m a sophomore here,” I said, probably lamely, because I had no idea where to go from here, no idea how to be as interesting as they were clearly hoping I was.
Veronica cleared her throat, theatrically.

 

“This is Veronica Tandy,” I said, motioning to her. “She’s in Tri-Gamma. And this is Chris Baker, who’s also an Iota Chi brother.”

 

Veronica offered me a thin, irritated smile, but did not say anything, seemingly unsatisfied with the introduction. “Gamma Gamma Gamma is, like, the best sorority on campus,” I added. “Very hot, very cool, very fun. We do a lot of stuff with them.”

 

Veronica seemed to have realized that was all she was getting; she didn’t actually smile, but feigned some coquettish laughter. “All of the Iota Chi guys love the Gamma Gamma Gamma girls.” Then she smiled at me. “I mean, who wouldn’t.” She leaned forward towards Justine. “I’m sorry, you look super familiar. Did you visit last year?”

 

“We met at the Iota Chi formal last year,” she said. “I think. I’m Justine.”

 

“Oh my God, did we?” Veronica said, her face twisting into pleasant surprise. I rolled my eyes. “The Iota Chi formal was the one at that in the Magnolia Mansion, right? They all blend together after a while.”

 

Veronica had gone to two fraternity formals last year, neither of which had happened at the Magnolia Mansion. Ours was in the French Quarter, and Lambda Nu’s at the InterContinental.

 

Still, I couldn’t help but admire her unwavering commitment to the fiction.

 

Transparent as I could tell she was being, Veronica was selling the hell out of this: Justine, Bethany, and a whole host of other Monroe girls seemed to be hanging on her words, as if they would somehow be able to soak up the wisdom and glamour of a sorority girl.

 

Except Veronica had boxed both me and Chris Baker out of the conversation by this point. Baker, without saying anything, awkwardly turned around and glommed onto a theatrical conversation hosted by Pagliacci, who was talking to a throng of freshmen guys.

 

I, on the other side of Veronica, was trapped deep in the thicket of Monroe girls.

 

“This is a great party,” one of them, a brunette, said to me. “I’m Sasha.”

 

She was wearing a very minimal dress of silver sequins, and too much makeup. I could never tell if someone dressed like that out of confidence or out of insecurity.
Sasha was passably attractive. The class of girl I would be likely relegated to if I were straight; the kind of girl who was nice enough and cute enough and got picked up by one of the middle-tier sororities, not Tri-Gamma or Delta Delta Rho.

 

“I’m Justine’s brother,” I replied, which I realized after I said it that she already knew, but I didn’t have a name I could give her in this particular context.

 

I was trying to discreetly make eye contact with either Baker, who by this point had turned his back to me as he witnessed Pagliacci selling Iota Chi to the freshmen boys--he didn’t seem to be actively participating in the conversation--or Veronica, who was now in the middle of a sales pitch about Tri-Gamma’s commitment to philanthropy, disguised as small talk.

 

“This is a great party,” said Sasha, touching me on the elbow. “How long have you lived here?”

 

Her fingers lingering on my skin were making me deeply uncomfortable, but I couldn’t think of a graceful way to peel them off without seeming uninterested. “In the house?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Oh, I don’t live in the house,” I said. “I live on campus.” I took this opportunity to move my arm away from her, so I could usher in the general direction of Tulane. “In Mayer. It’s that modern-looking dorm across from Bruff.”

 

“Oh,” she said. “That’s nice, though. I’m in Monroe. Obviously. Monroe Four.”

 

“Yeah,” I said, sliding my hands in my pockets. “I was in Sharp last year. Monroe’s definitely nicer.”

 

“Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s what they were saying on the Admitted Students Facebook group.”

 

Sasha daintily sipped from her vat. I glanced back over to Pagliacci’s conversation, but they had all relocated to the bar; Baker had wandered off in the other direction, huddling natively along the back wall by the sectional, with a desperate, cornered-looking Tommy Pereira.

 

Kevin, freshly showered with hair that was still more than a little bit wet, came in through the front door, and caught my eye. “Becker,” he said, with a smile. “I need some help with the keg real quick.”
I glanced back at Sasha, who did not seem to have any emotions to share for my imminent departure, so I just excused myself and followed Kevin back towards Baker.

 

“Thanks,” I muttered to him.

 

“Terrorists have faced Dick Cheney with less anxiety than you have talking to a pretty, female stranger,” Kevin told me. “Happy to help.”