The Freshmen - 45. Chapter 45

October 11, 2004

Harvard Yard

Cambridge, MA

Will

“How are you doing?” I asked Travis. I’d been worried about him all day, but I knew he was shooting this morning, and I’d been in class.

“Good,” he said, and sounded happy. “I haven’t seen Chuck yet.”

“Well that’s good news,” I said. “How’s Ninja working out?”

“The dude told me that I probably wouldn’t see him, and he was right,” Travis said. “I’m almost wondering if he just goes off and eats donuts and tells me he’s following me.”

I laughed. “What are you doing right now?”

“I’m in the car on my way back to the condo.” I noticed that he’d referred to it as ‘the condo’ instead of ‘Jeremy’s condo’ to make me feel better.

“He’s not with you?” I asked.

“Nope,” Travis responded. “I guess he’s tailing me in a cab or something, or he’s going to take the subway and beat me back to Tribeca.”

“That’s pretty trippy,” I said.

“I was really worried that he’d be all in my face, but I can live with this,” he said.

“How are things at the condo?” I asked. It was one of those things that I probably shouldn’t have asked, but there was no way I couldn’t.

“You said they would treat me really well, and you were right,” he said. “Last night Kris had to work, so Jeremy helped me with my lines.” I was doing so well, but that one sentence totally wrecked my mood.

“Wonderful,” I said, through gritted teeth. So now Jeremy was going to be Travis’s BFF, helping him with his lines? This was getting fucking ridiculous. His living with Jeremy was driving me crazy, and I didn’t see it getting any better. “I was thinking about things, and I wouldn’t mind having a place in New York, you know, like a condo. I was thinking that maybe I could come down there next weekend and we could look around.”

“You want us to get our own place in New York?” he asked. “I’m only here for a couple of months, and you don’t live here. What the fuck would we do with it?”

“We’ll probably end up in New York pretty often and it would be nice to have our own condo, plus the rest of my family goes there once in a while, so they could stay there too,” I said, trying to sell him and myself on the idea at the same time.

“It bothers you that much that I’m living with them?” he asked, cutting to the core issue.

I sighed. “It’s kind of like you are with Taylor. You keep her totally out of your life and you get pissed off if I have any contact with her because then she can get to you.”

“If you don’t want me to be here, I’ll work on moving,” he said, but I could hear the reluctance in his voice. “Right now, I feel safe and comfortable, and I’d like to have at least a week of this before I have to relocate.”

“You’re happy there, aren’t you?” I asked with dread, not wanting to hear the answer.

“I am,” he admitted. “I want to talk to you about Jeremy, but I don’t want you to get pissed off at me.”

“No promises,” I said, because I had a shitload of work to do and I did not want to deal with Jeremy’s bullshit.

“He seems different,” Travis said.

“How?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

“He’s calmer and more, I don’t know, rational,” he said. “Jake got here and was treating him in a pretty shitty way…”

“Jake is my new hero,” I said in a snarky way.

“Do you want to hear this or not?” he asked, getting irritated with me.

“Fine,” I said, and told myself to shut up.

“Jake came in and barely gave Jeremy a hug while at the same time he gave Kris a super-warm greeting. Then he basically took over and started to tell us how things were going to be. Jeremy went up to Jake and was calm but confident and called Jake on it. He told Jake that he didn’t deserve to be treated so disrespectfully,” Travis said. That was pretty stunning, and so unlike Jeremy.

“There was no shouting or foot stomping?” I asked, because I couldn’t help myself.

“No,” Travis said. He was annoyed with me, but I could also tell he thought it was kind of funny. “He showed me to my room and when we went back into the great room, Jake apologized and gave him a big hug. Jeremy didn’t gloat like he used to do when someone apologized; he just told Jake it was fine because he’d probably had a stressful day.”

“He usually gets pretty happy when someone admits they’re wrong,” I said, remembering what an absolute dick Jeremy was about that. “Maybe that was it.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Travis said. “When he was helping me with my lines, he got really into it, and he is really good. I mean, the only person who is better than him is you.” He was probably just saying that to make me happy, when what he really wanted to say was that Jeremy was better at it than I was. It was like I was losing my boyfriend to the dude who used to be my brother.

“He’s always been a performer,” I said. “Maybe he should get a part in a soap opera too.”

“If he wanted to, I’ll bet he could do it,” Travis said. That was a little shocking, that he thought Jeremy was that talented. Then my mind warped back to what a total little bitch Jeremy had been for damn near my entire life, and the anger came flooding back.

“So you’re telling me this because you think he’s really changed and you want me to cut him some slack?” I demanded. “How pissed off were you when I told you that you needed to work things out with Taylor?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he snapped.

“It’s exactly the same thing,” I replied in the same tone. “I think the deal should be that you can stay there and be best buddies with him as long as you make an effort to work things out with Taylor.”

“You don’t have to be a dick!” he said loudly.

“I have to go work on a paper,” I said, desperate to end this call. “Let me know how your talk with Taylor goes.” I ended the call after that and felt like shit. I didn’t want to fight with him, but he had now become Jeremy’s advocate, and that was just searing into my psyche. I knew Travis’s moving in with them was a bad idea, and I was right. He might be safe and happy, but this was going to tear us apart.

I was about to bury myself in my work to avoid thinking about this for a while when I got a message from Marie. “Late lunch?” She probably wanted to hear all about the drama this past weekend.

“I can do that,” I replied. “Meet me outside of Weld.” My plan to go to the library was now on hold, but I sighed and walked back to the dorms. I found Marie waiting for me.

“It’s a nice enough day,” she said. “Let’s go get something off campus.”

“Good idea,” I said. We went to the same café I’d gone to when I’d had breakfast with my father and Jake. We just bullshitted about nothing until we got there, grabbed a table, and ordered paninis.

“I heard you lost your shit this weekend,” she said, smiling at me.

“It’s the same old crap,” I said bitterly. “Whenever I have an argument with Jeremy, Grandmaman and your mother seem to get a thrill by jumping in on his side and eviscerating me.”

“Eviscerating,” she challenged.

“Fuck you,” I said playfully. “Those big words got me an A on my philosophy paper.”

“I did it without the big words,” she said in a smarmy way, but smiled to show she was teasing me. “I talked to my mother and she was very upset.”

“I was very upset too,” I said, then got a little riled up. “You know, I have tried so hard to help her out ever since I found out about her problems with your dad. Shit, I even set her up with Luke. And the first thing she does is sell me down the river. What the fuck has Jeremy done for her?”

“Her argument is that you were rude to her,” Marie said, digging at me to get a response.

“And as I explained to her, everything is not always about appearances and good manners,” I said.

“I understand how you feel, and I think that she’ll figure it out pretty soon too,” she said in a very loving way, one that suddenly made me so emotional a tear slipped out of my eye.

“This has just been such a shit week,” I said despondently. “I go to New York to visit Travis only to find out that he has a stalker who destroyed his apartment. I whisk him to safety at Escorial where I get pilloried by Grandmaman and your mother…”

“Pilloried?” she taunted.

“That one got me an A on my English homework,” I said, making us both chuckle. “We spend the weekend trying to figure out what the fuck to do about this, only to find that Jake had hired this total douche to guard Travis.”

“I heard your father is still grumbling that you compared him to that Mr. Martin dude they hired to guard you,” she said, making me laugh.

“Sometimes he needs a reminder about his past douchiness,” I joked. “Then they all put a bunch of pressure on me to be OK with Travis staying with Jeremy and Kris.”

“I thought you were okay with that?” she asked.

“I wasn’t okay with it then and I’m not okay with it now, but I went along with it because it was the best thing for Travis,” I said. “And while I know it probably is, it drives me fucking crazy that he’s all happy and enjoying himself while living in the enemy camp.”

“I mean, do you really think that’s how it is?” she asked delicately.

“Travis damn near loses his mind whenever I communicate with Zach or Taylor because he has totally pushed them out of his life,” I spat. “But when it comes to Jeremy, he thinks it’s totally fine for them to be BFFs.”

“Rumor has it Jeremy has changed a lot,” she said.

“I don’t think any of you understand how badly he hurt me when he disowned me,” I said. “He completely blew up my world order, pulling away one of my biggest foundation stones.”

“And now with his re-emergence into your life, it just puts more pressure on you and makes you even angrier at him?” she asked.

I frowned at her because she made me seem so petty, and maybe I was, but this was a big deal to me. “So what if that’s the case? Why don’t my feelings matter? Why am I always supposed to swallow my pain to alleviate his?”

“You make a very good point,” she said.

“All he’s done so far is send me a nice email, but that could be him just blowing smoke up my ass,” I said. “He has done nothing to prove to me that he’s actually sorry for how badly he hurt me.”

“Maybe he will,” she said. “I’m sorry all of this happened to you. You try so hard to help everyone else out, and then when you need support, the people you rely on, like my mother, shit on you.”

I smiled at her. “Yeah, but I have you, and that’s so much better.” She smiled back at me. “I heard you hooked up with that dude from your biology class this weekend.”

She gave me a really annoyed look for changing the subject. “Brent Audubon, the rower from Rhode Island. He was fun. It’s going nowhere.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He’s got that elitist attitude going on,” she said, shaking her head. “He’ll end up joining the Porc.”

“So you just enjoyed his hot body and good sex instead?” I teased.

“His body is hot, the sex not so much,” she joked. “Heard your boy, Thor, hooked up with a chick who could be Brent’s twin.”

“She’s a shitty piece of ass?” I joked. She rolled her eyes. “I think he’s going to have a really rough time dealing with things.”

“I feel so sorry for him,” she said. “With the culture of the baseball team, even admitting he was bisexual would probably cause him some serious problems.”

“I wonder why being on that team is so important to him,” I mused. “I mean, he’s not like Zach, who’s on a fast track to the NFL. If he quit the team, it’s not like he’d be tossed out of Harvard. He’s got plenty of money to pay for it.”

“I think it has nothing to do with that,” she said. “I think it’s all about denying his own desires.”

“I love it when you talk lustfully,” I joked, annoying her. “Say ‘desires’ again.”

“Asshole,” she responded.

“You’re probably right about Thor,” I agreed. “Maybe I should seduce him.”

“That could either go really well, or really badly,” she said. “I don’t see a middle ground.”

“Why?”

“Because if you drag him out of his closet, and it’s liberating, he will thank you forever,” she said. “But if you do that and it fucks up his whole world, he’ll blame you.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “We should get back.”

“I am buried in work,” she moaned.

“Me too,” I agreed. “Thanks for talking to me about all of this stuff.”

“This is just one of the many reasons I’m glad that we are doing this together,” she said. We walked back to the Yard holding hands, looking like dorky freshmen who had just started dating.

October 12, 2004

Tribeca

New York, NY

Jeremy

I was sitting at the kitchen table going over my list of things I needed to do. I had an event to go to tomorrow night and Kris had been adamant that he could not go with me. I was trying not to be mad at him for that. We’d missed the last big dinner the night I’d gone to Fuego, and I had yet to make my re-emergence into the fashion scene. I was worried that the longer I was gone, the more people would ask what had happened to me. I was even more worried that if I was gone too long, I’d become irrelevant. I had tried to explain that to him, but he’d gotten all pissed off at me, reminding me that he’d told me in the beginning how important his job was and how he’d have to put in long hours. Evidently, they were working on some big international deal and it was at a crisis point. It made absolutely no sense to me at all that he couldn’t take a break for a couple of hours and support me when I needed him the most, but arguing about it was pointless. Regardless, I could not go alone. That would make me look pathetic.

“Hey Jeremy,” Travis said as he walked in. He looked at Jacinta, who smiled at him and started making food. “Thanks,” he said to her.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Pretty good,” he said in an upbeat way. I could tell that his attitude was at least partially faked because I could sense how uptight he was. “I make my debut Monday.”

“Debut?” I asked.

“That’s when my first episode of Sunset Valley airs,” he said proudly.

“That is so exciting,” I said enthusiastically. I had really enjoyed reading his scripts with him, and the past few days I’d taken a break during the day to watch the show with Jacinta. “Are you going to be home when it’s on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll have a watch party for a new actor, but no one seems to give much of a shit about me there, so I’ll probably be here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically. “Come back here and we’ll make it a fun time. You can watch it with me and Jacinta.”

“I am so excited to see you on the television,” Jacinta said as she put food down in front of Travis.

“Thanks,” Travis said, and shot his million-dollar smile at her. My mind began to whirl as I came up with an idea to solve my problem.

“I have to go to a fashion show tomorrow night but Kris can’t go with me,” I said. “Can you go instead?”

I watched as he totally freaked out in front of me. I mean, I didn’t think that question was a big deal, but he was sitting there, his eyes wide open, his mouth agape, with an expression of sheer panic on his face. He looked like a dude who was in a cage and cornered by a lion. I looked behind me to make sure there wasn’t some criminal there with a gun about to shoot him, but there wasn’t, so I turned back to face him. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine,” I said dismissively, even though I began to wonder why no one wanted to be seen with me in public. Was there something wrong with me? “Why?” I asked. Based on my psyche and my overwhelming insecurities, getting an answer to that question was essential.

“Will is really not dealing well with me being here,” he admitted. “He even offered to come here to shop for our own place.”

“Seriously?” I asked, both stunned and annoyed at what an idiot Will was being. Why couldn’t he just relax and let things go for a bit? Why couldn’t he chill until all the anger faded so we could work things out?

Travis nodded. “Seriously.”

“Does he hate me?” I asked, horrified. I had pondered that before, but I figured there was no way he was that mad at me.

“I don’t know,” Travis said. “It really bothers him that I’m here. I think that if I stay here, it’s going to slowly rip us apart, and I cannot handle that. If I went out with you on Wednesday night, that may just end us.”

“I am so sorry,” I said to him. “I am really enjoying having you here, and I love helping you with your lines.”

“I like it here too, and I really appreciate your help,” Travis said. “This is not something I want to do, but like I said, if I have to choose, I have to choose Will.”

“He is so lucky to have you in his life,” I said, marveling at the depth of their feelings. “So are you going to move out?”

“Like I said, Will suggested that it would be cool to have our own place in New York, so he’s going to come down next weekend and we’re going to go look around,” Travis said.

“Who will help you practice?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that Will would make him move out of a place where he was happy and safe just to get him away from me. Then it dawned on me that for him to do that, he must really detest me.

“Ninja,” he joked, referring to his guard. “I’ll probably try to find another cast member to run through my lines with me.”

“I knew he was mad at me, and that he was hurt, but I did not realize how much animosity he has for me,” I said.

“My sister, Taylor, and Zach Hayes did some truly evil shit to me,” he said.

“Zach is an asshole,” I said bitterly.

“Totally agree,” Travis said. “I have completely blocked them; they are out of my life. The only way they can really get to me is to go through Will. Taylor sent me an email when we were in Greece and Zach called Will to get him to bug me to try and bury the hatchet with Taylor.”

“And you weren’t cool with that?” I asked.

“I was not,” he said firmly. “I told Will that I wanted nothing to do with either of them, ever, and when he talked to them, he let them get past my walls. We had a very unpleasant argument about that.”

“I can imagine,” I said, acknowledging what a hothead Will could be.

“So he has basically blocked you out just like I’ve blocked out Taylor, and I’m doing the same thing to him that he did to me,” he said. “I have no moral high ground to argue about this.”

“He has basically built a fortress around himself to keep me out?” I asked. It seemed like this conversation was dumping one shock after another on me.

“He has,” Travis confirmed.

“I didn’t think things were that bad,” I said, more to myself.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you,” Travis said, his tone showing the frustration he was feeling. “You hurt him really badly.”

“I thought he’d realize that I didn’t really mean the things I said in the heat of my meltdown,” I said softly.

“Imagine this. Pretend that you had a really good friend who you did everything for. You would drop everything to help them out, and when you did, that friend would show no appreciation, and instead would just bitch at you and work out their bad mood on you,” Travis said. His tone was very direct, probably hiding some of his own anger at me. “Time after time you would back them up and bail them out.”

“I’m too selfish to put up with that,” I said, trying to joke. I got a frown instead.

“That’s why I said ‘imagine’,” he said. “So you do this, and you do it because you love this person and you think you’re helping them out. Then one day, after all that time, after the friend has basically abused you for all those years, the friend looks at you and tells you that you’re not even their friend, and in fact you mean nothing to them. How would you feel?”

“Shitty,” I said softly.

“That’s how Will feels, only because he thought of you as his brother, it’s magnified way beyond that,” he said to me.

“Fuck,” I said.

“He told me that he hadn’t felt that kind of pain since 9-11,” Travis said, as if to stab the knife even deeper. “So I don’t know if you’d call that hate, but that’s where he’s at.”

“How did he react to my email?” I asked.

“He was skeptical. He reached out to Darius and Darius said it was a start,” Travis said. “Will says that you’ve said stuff like this before and you haven’t meant it, so there’s no reason for him to believe that you mean it now.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes. “Thanks for explaining things to me,” I said to Travis, then I walked back to my room and collapsed on my bed. I didn’t throw a temper tantrum like I would have done in the past, but I did cry for so long that I had to drink a liter of water to rehydrate myself.