The Freshmen - 2. Chapter 2

August 5, 2004

Tribeca, NYC, NY

JJ

I stood in front of the mirror, admiring my outfit for tonight. Susannah and I were going to a fashion exhibit at an art gallery in Soho. It seemed like that was the ‘in’ place to have those things these days. I had on blue slacks and a blue jacket, both different shades, and underneath that I had a light-green and peach colored shirt. It was daring, as those color combinations sometimes didn’t work, but in this case they did. I was so proud of myself for putting together something unconventional that ended up working so well.

I looked at the Breguet watch on my arm and frowned. I wasn’t frowning at the watch, which was a work of art. No one seemed to be able to make watch faces as incredibly detailed and interesting as Breguet. I was mad because this was the gift I’d gotten from Stef and Grand to try to make up for missing my graduation. My ceremony had been on the same day that Will and Marie graduated from Menlo. Of course, those two were so much more important to everyone than me, so they’d all blown me off. I was lucky to get phone calls from them. Just because Will was the valedictorian and was going to make some speech that was probably lame as fuck, and Marie was salutatorian, they decided that me just simply graduating wasn’t worthy of delegating at least one person to show up here. It’s not like I hadn’t had a bunch of other pressures on me when I was in school. I almost stomped my foot in outrage when I realized that even if I’d been the valedictorian here, they still wouldn’t have shown up. I’d walked across the stage with no one to cheer me on, well, except for Matt, Wade, and Tiffany. Wade was probably just there because it was some obligation he had to live up to, while Tiffany was there because she felt guilty for destroying my skating career. Grandmaman and Frank were there too, which was nice. Darius had shown up, but he’d probably only made the trip because Will guilted him into doing it, and so he could hook up with Bellona. So other than them, I’d been completely alone. It just showed me where I stood with my family. I was an unwanted appendage, someone they remembered from time to time and deigned to actually talk to. I fully indulged myself in my pity party, something I was an expert at, until I was in a pretty bad mood.

“Jays, are you ready? We need to leave in five minutes,” Susannah said. I gave her an annoyed look, which she ignored. When she’d first moved here, we’d had a great time together. When we became a couple, it seemed like the perfect match. Her English accent made her classy enough that she was good arm candy at social events, and when we were alone, we got along great. And the sex was really good, which was pretty surprising considering I was bisexual and she was mostly a lesbian. But over the summer things had started to change. That was when she'd decided "Zanie" was too childish a nickname and asked us to call her Susannah instead. She’d also gotten more comfortable in the fashion scene here in New York, courtesy of my entrées, and for some reason that had made her decide to run my life. It was irritating in the extreme that she seemed to think she could tell me what to do and when to do it, but she was really the only intimate friend I had, at least in this city, so I put up with it. Even as I thought about those words, though, I knew that my patience was limited and was fading fast. I suddenly felt trapped, like I was in a pressure cooker and if I didn’t find a release valve soon I’d blow.

“I’m ready now,” I said.

She paused and studied my outfit, her eyes scanning my body like she was some sort of robot. “I’m not sure that matches.” That infuriated me, because I had a reputation in this town for being a sage about colors. She, on the other hand, dressed nicely, but in a very conventional way.

“I’m sure that it does,” I said, clenching my teeth as I did. She realized she’d pissed me off, but instead of saying anything, she rolled her eyes.

“Let’s go,” she said, giving me orders yet again. I followed her out of my condo and to the elevator that took us to the ground floor where my Maybach limo was waiting to drive us to this event. “I made plans for us to visit Prada tomorrow at noon.”

“I have plans tomorrow at noon,” I said.

“With whom?” she asked, her British accent making her sound even more pompous when she used the word ‘whom’.

“John Carullo is going to be in town for a bit and told me he wanted to talk to me,” I said flatly. John Carullo was a guy I hooked up with once in a while. If I were being honest with myself, I’d acknowledge that I loved him, but I wasn’t about to let myself be that vulnerable. I was hoping his ‘talk’ was an excuse for him to pick me up and fuck me like an old rag.

“Well then, I guess I will go alone,” she said, being bitchy.

“I guess you will,” I responded, with just as much attitude. We pulled up to the gallery and waited for the driver to let us out. It was important in these situations to make an entrance, and exiting a chauffeured Maybach usually did the trick. There were a few photographers taking pictures, so I smiled at them, pasting on the same expression I’d used for years when I was a professional figure skater. We walked into the reception area, grabbed glasses of champagne, then went looking for my mentor, Bellona Carter. I found her talking to a couple of designers, but it was a sign of my status with her that she turned away to greet me. I ignored the fact that her reaction had more to do with Stef’s owning Mode Magazine, of which she was the president, than any special liking for me.

“Jeremy, how wonderful to see you,” she said, her English accent making her seem even classier. “And you brought Susannah with you.”

“It’s good to see you,” I said, adopting a subordinate posture since I was basically her serf. We exchanged air kisses then Susannah did the same.

“You look lovely, Bellona,” Susannah said. She seemed less refined than Bellona, probably because of her Derbyshire accent, and a brief look of annoyance crept across Bellona’s face.

“I love the fleur-de-lys on your bag,” I said. Bellona claimed to be descended from the French royal family, the Bourbons, and always had a fleur-de-lys on her clothing. The challenge was to find it quickly.

“Why, thank you,” she said. “And you look quite nice tonight as well.”

“It didn’t seem to me that the colors quite matched,” Susannah said, with an air of superiority that just about set me free. Before I could lose it and blast her out of the room, Bellona intervened.

“It would be very dangerous to question Jeremy’s gift with color,” Bellona said in a scolding way. “He is one of the best I’ve met.”

“Thank you,” I said sincerely, even as I internally gloated over Susannah’s being slapped down. “I am still not nearly as good as you.”

She smiled in a slightly patronizing way. “I think it is quite adventurous of you to pick colors that may not normally blend together, yet you do so with an elan few others could manage.”

“That’s quite the compliment,” Susannah said, almost through clenched teeth. Bellona winked at me, which almost made me laugh out loud.

“It is, and I truly appreciate it,” I said. While this exchange had been fun, I felt the need to escape. “Excuse me.”

“Certainly,” Bellona said, then turned her back on Susannah and resumed speaking to the designers she’d been talking to before. It was hard to imagine her giving Susannah a bigger snub. I turned on my heel, headed for the bathroom, and found an empty stall to hide in.

I was sitting there, trying to grapple with Susannah and her attitude, when I heard two people come in. “Did you see Jeremy Schluter? Came in with his British bitch.” I didn’t recognize that guy’s voice.

“I think he looked quite good tonight,” the other man said. I knew that voice; it belonged to Jarvis, Bellona’s right-hand man, inasmuch as she would give someone that much power. I smiled because I considered him a friend.

“He did,” the other guy said. “But that chick just rides all over him. It’s embarrassing.”

“I think that things may not be the way you think they are,” Jarvis said, sticking up for me. I would have felt really good about that if I hadn’t heard the skepticism in his voice.

“The way Bellona snubbed her was classic,” the other guy said.

“She tolerates fools badly,” Jarvis said. I heard the sound of water as he washed his hands, then they both apparently left. I sat there fuming. I was annoyed with Susannah at home because she did try to run my life, but I never imagined it was visible to people in this group. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I’ve worked hard on my image, something I’d learned when I was ice skating. In that milieu, I always had to be prim and proper, pure as the driven snow. This world, the fashion world, was different. Here I had to stake out turf where I was an expert, which I’d done, tapping into my natural skill with color. But I also had to seem like an island, a man in control of himself and his destiny. I’d worked to do that, but Susannah, with her control-freak antics, was destroying my reputation. I was horrified. I got even more upset when I thought about how she was acting like my father. I found him annoying at most times and rebelled mightily when he tried to power trip on me. Had I picked someone just like him to date?

I stopped myself from cascading down a waterfall and letting this whole thing take over my emotions. If I did that, I’d end up enraged, and I might even make a scene. That would ruin my reputation even more than it already was. I stood up, held my head high, and walked out to the sink, where I washed my hands and made sure my hair and clothes were perfect. I was tempted to leave, but then I changed my mind. This was my world, not hers, and Bellona, in her own way, had reminded me of that. I walked out of the bathroom, spotted Susannah talking to some lower-level peons, and went in the other direction. I grabbed a new glass of champagne and walked over to gaze at one of the paintings. The art here was a little too traditional for me, but this one was rather nice.

“Excuse me, are you Jeremy Schluter?” a voice said. I turned around and found myself face to face with a blond god. This guy was incredibly handsome, with nice blue eyes and a face that was more German than anything.

“I am,” I said, and shook his hand. He had a strong, masculine grip, one that sent shivers up my arm. I moved my eyes up and down, noting that he was wearing clothes that were nice, but not great. It was like they weren’t quite up to the standards for this crowd, which made him seem like a bit of an interloper. He probably overcame that with his looks and the fit body that obviously resided under his garments. I did notice that he had a Rolex, and a second glance convinced me that it was real, which confused me a little bit because it didn’t go with the rest of his clothes.

“I’m Kris Schulenberg,” he said. “Kris with a K. I know your brother, Will.”

I rolled my eyes at that before I could stop myself. “And how did you and Will meet?”

“We met at a bar,” he said, then chuckled. I just stared at him. “He was rude to me, and normally guys at bars are not rude to me.” His arrogance was cute.

“Will usually isn’t rude to people,” I said, trying to figure out if this dude was a psycho.

“He had just had a really bad experience,” he said. I looked at him, demanding to know what it was. “He fucked this douchebag named Dustin, and afterwards found out that he was a racist piece of shit.”

“Is Dustin a short blond twink?” I asked.

“That’s him,” I said. “You know him?”

“He came home with John Carullo, who was living with me at the time. I found him in the kitchen, stark naked,” I said. “I thought it was pretty rude to go prancing around without any clothes on in a house that wasn’t his.”

“That is pretty bold,” he said.

“I can see how what Dustin said would have fired Will up,” I said, referring back to Will’s tawdry bar encounter. “He has no tolerance for racism of any kind. I mean, not that I do either,” I added quickly.

“I couldn’t even imagine that you would,” he said, smiling at me and throwing out some serious charm. “I tried to talk to him after that, but he was so pissed off. I grabbed his wrist, asked him to stay, then he looked down at my Rolex and said it was fake. Fucking embarrassed the crap out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I reached down and grabbed his wrist then pulled it up so I could look at his watch. He grinned at me as I did that, embarrassing the fuck out of me. “I don’t know why he said that. This one is genuine.”

“He took me out to dinner, apologized, and gave me this one, which is real,” he said. Will gave this dude he’d just met a Rolex? I thought about it for a second and it made sense. He would spend a fortune to avoid feeling guilty.

“That was nice of him,” I said. “Did you sleep with him?”

“Well yeah,” he said, using the same tone he would have used to say ‘of course’. “He was a lot of fun.” This guy was cute, but there was no way I was going to take Will’s sloppy seconds.

“I’m sure he was,” I said stiffly. He seemed to realize that he’d upset me, and looked alarmed about that.

“He was fun, but he’s not my type,” he said.

“Why isn’t he your type?” I asked.

“He’s too tall, and he’s not blond,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. I couldn’t help but smile at him, since I was pretty short, and very blond.

“Good news for me,” I said, trying to flirt, but doing it badly.

“Um, would you like to go out sometime? I mean, get dinner or something?” he asked. This guy seemed like a total player, so it was very flattering that he was nervous.

“I would,” I said. He pulled out his phone and I gave him my number.

“You want mine?” he asked.

“Why, I’m not going to call you,” I said, getting some game. “It was nice to meet you.” I smiled at him then walked away to enjoy the show.

August 6, 2004

Tribeca, NYC, NY

JJ

“I’ll see you later today,” Susannah said stiffly, to show me she was angry at me. She hadn’t come to my room last night like she usually did, and I had been just fine with that. At this point, I was trying to figure out how to get her to go back to England. “We have that dinner party tonight, then the charity banquet tomorrow.”

I glared at her for once again dictating my schedule. “I had planned on the dinner party, but I already have a partner going with me to the charity banquet tomorrow.”

She gave me a fearsome stare, and I stood there, waiting for a temper tantrum. “I hope you have a wonderful time,” she said acidly, then turned on her heel and all but stomped out of the condo. I was smiling at this small victory when I suddenly realized that I would now have to score an actual date to that banquet. I cursed myself for my short-sightedness.

I looked at the clock, waiting for Carullo to show up, my whole body on fire at the thought of being with him. It was Friday, and he didn’t have to be back in Connecticut until Sunday night. I decided that he would be my date and felt happy that I’d solved that problem as soon as it came up. The doorbell rang and I hurried over to open it. When I did, I saw Carullo standing there, smiling at me nervously. God he was gorgeous. He had classic Italian looks, and had played football in college, so his body was built like a rock. “John,” I said excitedly, and gripped him in a big hug. My euphoric mood faded when he didn’t hug me back even stronger, like he usually did.

“It’s really good to see you, Jay,” he said, and gave me a friendly kiss. That was incredibly weird. Normally he would plant a major lip-lock on me and we’d be heading to my bedroom. I just stared at him, confused.

“What brings you to town?” I asked cautiously.

“I came down to talk to you,” he said.

“Just talk?” I asked, raising my eyebrows seductively.

“Just to talk,” he said. I started to freak out, wondering what was wrong with me. I took this medication for my psychological issues, and in the past that had made me fat. I instinctively looked down to see if I had a huge belly, but I’d weighed yesterday and I had maintained myself perfectly. No gain, no loss.

“Okay,” I said nervously, and led him into the Great Room.

“I met someone,” he said. He was so nervous that it looked like he wanted to run out of here like the place was on fire. “We’re together now.” And then I got it. He was dumping me.

“Oh,” I said. Now I was in more agony than he was. “Are you happy?”

“I am, but I feel really bad that I’m hurting you,” he said. He meant it, I knew he meant it, but I wasn’t nice enough to give him credit for that.

“Yeah, not my best day,” I said, shaking my head.

“Jay…,” he began, but I cut him off.

“Look, I’m really happy for you, but right now I’m pretty upset,” I said, standing up. “Give me some time to deal with this, then maybe I’ll come up to Bristol and meet this dude.” Like that would happen.

“I am so sorry,” he said, pleading with me.

“So am I,” I said. I fled from the room, went into my bedroom and locked the door. He knocked for about five minutes, calling my name, then gave up and left. I lay there on my bed, face down, and cried until I was almost dehydrated.

Deep inside, I knew that it was totally reasonable that he would meet someone. We’d had a rough start as a couple, and I never realized how much he meant to me until he’d moved to Connecticut. By the time I did, he was too entrenched there to move back to New York, and there was no fucking way I was moving to Bristol, Connecticut. Then I got pissed, remembering the amazing house I’d built for him and his friends, then almost went postal when it dawned on me that he’d be living there with this new dude. I felt totally rejected and betrayed. I lay in bed for most of the afternoon, one moment crying my eyes out, the next pounding my fists on the bed in anger.

There was another knock on my door, and I sat up, hoping that it was Carullo and he’d realized that he loved me more, and was here to beg me to take him back. “Jays,” I heard Susannah say. I sighed in annoyance. “We have to leave for that dinner party in half an hour.”

I took a drink of water and did my best to make sure I sounded normal. “I am not going.”

“We said we would go; we RSVPed and everything,” she whined.

“I am not going,” I reiterated.

“Fine,” she said angrily. “I don’t know why you have to be such a twat.” For some reason, I found that hilarious, and I could not stop myself from laughing. I heard her stomping down the hall in frustration. When I was done laughing, I grabbed my phone and went into my bathroom, closed the door, and started running a bath. I had some really swanky bubble bath that I poured in, and after about ten minutes, I managed to get it to the perfect temperature. I let myself sink into the water and smiled, then remembered that I’d just been dumped.

I sighed, reached for my phone, and called Will. Even as I did, I decided it was probably a major mistake, but he usually had good insights about shit like this, and besides, I wanted to get the scoop on Kris from him. “Hey JJ,” he answered cheerfully.

“Hey,” I said sadly, making sure he could hear how upset I was.

“What’s wrong?” he asked me, pretending to be concerned. He never called me, or at least he didn’t call me more than once a week, so I knew that was pretty fake.

“Carullo came to see me and dumped me,” I said, and couldn’t stop the tears.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “Did he say why?”

“He said he met someone, and they were exclusive,” I said, then braced myself for a lecture on how that was totally normal, and how I should be happy for him.

“That’s tough, man,” he said. “I mean, it makes sense that he’d meet someone eventually, but it’s still hard to deal with that kind of rejection.”

I was annoyed that he was saying all the right things and was giving me no opportunity to work off my anger on him. “How do I get over this?” I asked, all but sobbing.

“You went through this with Alex too,” he said. “It’s going to suck for a while, then over time you’ll get over it.” He was really pissing me off. Didn’t he know he was supposed to say something to make me mad? What the fuck?

“It’s just really tough,” I whined.

“What about Zanie?” he asked.

“She doesn’t go by Zanie anymore,” I said crisply, then changed my tone to one that was dripping with sarcasm. “She’s much too sophisticated for that. Now she goes by Susannah.”

“Okay,” Will said very slowly, because he thought that was weird.

“We’re through, but she doesn’t know it yet,” I said.

“What went wrong?”

“She controls my life, schedules my time, and tells me what to do every second of the day,” I snapped. “I hate that.”

“I’d be pissed too,” he said, and that made me chuckle, because he would definitely lose it if someone tried to control him. “Have you tried talking to her about it?”

“She doesn’t listen,” I said, even though I hadn’t really tried to talk to her about it. “People are talking about how whipped I am. It’s destroying my reputation.”

He paused to think about that. “I can see how that would be tough to deal with. You spend so much time on your image; having a partner who destroyed it would be pretty unbearable.” I rolled my eyes at how annoying he was, because he’d read me perfectly.

“It is what it is,” I said. “I met one of your hookups last night and he invited me out.”

“Oh yeah? Which one?” he asked, being the cocky slut that he was.

“Kris Schulenberg,” I said.

“K-Kris,” he said, and chuckled. “That’s how I listed his number in my phone.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically. “So is this dude some major psycho I should be running from?”

“No,” Will said. “He’s cocky as fuck, and that’s annoying, but once you get beyond that, he’s a pretty nice guy.”

“He said you slept with him, though, and I don’t want to walk on your turf,” I said, more to see what his reaction would be.

“JJ, it was just a hook-up. He’s a nice guy, but there’s nothing between us,” he said.

“Besides, you have Travis,” I said in a slightly smarmy way, to try to bait him to argue with me.

“I have Travis,” he said in a loving way that made me want to puke. “I think you’d actually get along well with Kris.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

“He’s from an old Prussian family. His grandfather was a prince. So he’s got this really impressive heritage, but he doesn’t have extra cash rolling around,” Will said.

“So I’d be his gravy train,” I grumbled.

“Dude, he’s not poor. He works at Goldman. He’s an investment banker. It just takes a lot of work and effort to climb the ladder there until you make real money. Plus he’s still paying off massive student loans,” Will said. “You could probably buy him some clothes or shit like that and make his life better, but you don’t have to.”

“You already bought him a Rolex,” I said in a snippy way.

“I did, because I’d treated him badly. I was a total asshole,” Will admitted.

“I heard about that. He said you were fun but not his type,” I said, throwing that bomb at him to get a reaction.

“Not his type?” he asked, annoyed. I smiled at finally getting him off his happy pony.

“He said you weren’t short enough and blond enough for him,” I said smugly.

Will laughed. “That is an awesome pick-up line.”

“Maybe he meant it,” I said.

“He’s a total top, and you’re a total twink, so I can see why he’d go after you,” he said, pissing me off by calling me a twink.

“Right,” I said skeptically.

“He’s a real player,” Will said. “He spends a lot of time at gay bars, and he’s pretty picky about who he fucks.”

“So he’s a total slut,” I said with disdain.

“Total slut,” Will confirmed. “And when you’re done looking down your nose at him, and if you sleep with him, you’ll be happy that he was.”

“Right,” I said, even though the thought of being with Kris was causing a very strong reaction in my body. “Thanks for the insight.”

“No problem,” Will said. “You want his number?”

I wanted to say no, but I needed Kris to go to the banquet the next day, so I swallowed my pride. “Yeah.”

“I’ll text it to you,” he said, and we ended our call.