The Freshmen - 46. Chapter 46

October 13, 2004

Escorial

Palo Alto, CA

Brad

I was sitting on the patio, drinking a gin and tonic while enjoying the solitude. I’d gotten home early and no one was around, so the only noise was the gurgling of the fountains. The weather was unseasonably warm, and it was supposed to hit 90 degrees tomorrow, but it was evening now so the heat had largely abated. Jake was up in the City tonight, so even he wasn’t here to keep me company.

Jake had come back from New York and raved about how different Jeremy was, and how much stronger and more confident he seemed. It was like he was pushing me to go see him and find out for myself, but my instincts told me to be cautious. I didn’t know if that was because I’d been hurt so badly that I couldn’t risk exposing myself to more of the same, or because my gut was telling me it wasn’t time to deal with him yet. The only thing Jake had accomplished was to make me feel guilty and to put a target on my back so that Mother and Claire could give me smarmy looks. The thought of that so annoyed me that I was tempted to go out to eat and avoid them all.

My usual instinct when I had a dilemma like this was to talk to Stef, or maybe my father, but I was reluctant to do that. I sensed that the only outrage they felt about this thing with Jeremy was due to how it had impacted me and Will, so by raising it as an issue, I would just be annoying them with a problem that wasn’t theirs. That probably wasn’t true, but I felt that way. There really was only one person who could relate to me on this issue, so I called him.

“Hey Dad!” Will said enthusiastically as he answered his phone.

“I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?” I asked.

“No, this is actually good,” he said. “I just finished doing my homework at the library, all except for some reading, and I was going to do that back at my room.”

“How are things going?” I asked.

“They’re okay,” he said, his mood audibly deflating. I waited for him to explain why, and he did. “I agreed to let Travis live with Jeremy and Kris, but it’s bugging the shit out of me. I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle this.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically. “I mean, isn’t he just living there?”

“No,” he snapped. “Jeremy is helping him with his lines, and he even tried to get Travis to go to some fashion event with him. It’s like my boyfriend has suddenly become best friends with a guy I can’t stand.”

“I can understand why that would bother you,” I said.

“You can?” he asked.

“I watched it happen to Robbie,” I explained. “Before Scott Slater got his face changed, and he was going by Lark, he was really a dick. He would try to antagonize Robbie by flirting with me, touching me any chance that he got, and pointedly excluding Robbie from our conversations. Whenever he was around, he would try to drag me off to do something with just him.”

“I’ll bet Robbie didn’t appreciate that,” Will said. I smiled ruefully at how jealous Robbie had been.

“He did not,” I answered. “He finally told me that he was done with that shit, and that Lark was driving him crazy. He told me that I should be pissed at how Lark treated him, and that I should open my eyes and see what Lark’s game was.”

“So what did you do?” he asked.

“I ended my friendship with Lark,” I told him. “Everything Robbie had said was true, and it was bullshit for me to expect him to put up with it. So while what’s happening to you didn’t happen to me, I watched it happen to Robbie, and I could see how painful it was to him.”

“I’m going down to New York this weekend to look at condos,” he told me. “I decided that it might be a good thing to have a place in Manhattan since we all seem to end up there a lot.”

“Especially me,” I said, since I had to go to Connecticut at least once a month to visit Triton. My initial instincts were to rush to New York to go condo shopping with them, but then I relaxed. Will would make a good decision, especially with Travis there to give him input. “Let me know what you find.”

“I’ll keep you posted.” He sounded happy, probably because I’d shown confidence in his judgment. He seemed to think that was the prelude to ending our call, so I quickly broached the next topic.

“The main reason I called you was to get your advice,” I said. There was silence for about thirty seconds while he digested that statement, which wasn’t shocking since I rarely asked him for input on things.

“Sure,” he said, the surprise obvious in his voice.

“Jake came back from his visit to New York raving about how different Jeremy is,” I told him.

“Travis is spouting the same line,” he grumbled.

“He said that at dinner and talked about how much more logically Jeremy’s mind seemed to be functioning,” I told him. “So now Claire and Mother are giving me these snarky looks as if to say ‘I told you so’.”

“They’re not my favorite people right now,” he said with real animosity. “Figures they’d be that petty.”

“Yeah, I’m not real happy about their attitudes either,” I told him. “So you got that email, and now Travis and Jake are both telling me that he’s changed, but I don’t know if I buy that.”

“I know just how you feel,” he said. “To me, those things are largely irrelevant.”

“Why?” I asked curiously.

“First of all, the email he sent me could have been contrived,” I said. “He’s done that shit before, where he’ll say whatever he has to say to get me to not be pissed at him. Usually he uses his cyclothymia problem as an excuse.”

“He didn’t do that this time,” I observed.

“At this point, it’s almost subliminal,” he said. “It’s like that’s always in the background, a ready-made get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“I can see that,” I said. “At the same time, he did apologize in that email and admit to his mistakes.”

“When Taylor sent Travis an email, it was a ‘woe is me’ letter, and was all about the traumas she went through,” he explained. “I told him that there was no ‘woe is Travis’ part.”

I chuckled. “I guess that didn’t really work for Travis.”

“It didn’t,” he said. “With that email, Jeremy basically said the same thing to me. He apologized, so props to him, but he didn’t seem to even comprehend how badly he’d hurt me and you. It was almost like he thought I’d just stubbed my toe and he felt bad for me.”

“I understand,” I said, because I did. Will wanted Jeremy to internalize why Will was so upset with him, not just spout out a largely meaningless apology to put a Band-Aid on the problem.

“The other part of this is that neither Jake nor Travis knows Jeremy all that well,” he said. “They haven’t spent years putting up with his shit, or seeing how he treated people.”

“They don’t have the expertise to be able to tell whether he’s sincere or not,” I concluded.

“They don’t,” he confirmed. “And the final thing is that all he’s done so far is written an email. He has done nothing to show me that he really is different. I’m sorry, but after all the shit I’ve put up with from him, I need something more concrete.” I was nodding, even though he couldn’t see me.

“Thanks for explaining things to me,” I said.

“So how are you going to handle this?” he asked me.

“I’m going to ignore the assholes in our family who are trying to make me feel like shit, and I’m going to wait to see how this develops,” I said.

“Funny,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Only I can’t do that if Travis is living with him.”

“And now your position makes complete sense to me,” I said. We ended our call and I felt happy, probably because I wasn’t alone in feeling the way I did, and because I’d made a firm decision on my plan to handle things.

I enjoyed my peace until I heard the clock start to chime, so I got up and went into the dining room. In addition to Frank and mother, and Dad and Stef, Claire was here with Jack. “Hey there,” I said, greeting Jack warmly. It saddened me that, up until recently, when I’d seen him I’d always meant that, while lately it was mostly just pabulum.

“Good to see you,” he responded in a way that made me think he felt the same way about me.

“And how are your plans coming along for Marie’s dorm room?” Stef asked her.

“They are quite advanced,” Claire said. “It will be completed by the end of next week.”

“Will’s rooms will be done by the end of next week as well,” Stef said to me. “The contractors are ready to assemble the main room tomorrow. The bedrooms will have to wait until next Tuesday.”

“I just talked to Will and he didn’t mention anything about this,” I said.

“I will alert him after dinner,” Stef said.

“You’re not giving him much notice,” I said.

“I am confident this won’t disrupt their lives too much,” he said, but he looked guilty at having forgotten this crucial detail.

“I suspect that means that we will have to go out and vote on which room won the weekend after next,” I said, hoping to stir up some problems with Stef and Claire.

“That will not be necessary,” Claire said. “All the drama from the weekend has thrown me off, so I asked Stef to let me bow out of this contest.”

“And you agreed?” I asked Stef.

“I did,” he said.

“It is a shame that Will’s rudeness so upset me that it will impact Marie and her roommates,” Claire said. I felt my temper go from zero to 100, but before I could say anything, Dad intervened.

“That is not an accurate depiction of what happened,” he said to Claire firmly. “Will and Travis had come out here to escape from the truly horrific experiences of Travis’s having a stalker and having that person completely vandalize Travis’s apartment. Instead of welcoming them home, you and Isidore opted to start a fight with Will.”

“My intention was not to start a fight with him; my intention was to encourage him to make the best decision,” Claire said.

“That’s a bunch of shit,” I said, almost exceeding the volume limit. “When I talked to Will, he explained to me that whenever an issue comes up with Jeremy, he knows that Mother will automatically take his side, so he rules out any chance of having her make a fair comment.”

“That is not true,” Mother said.

“In fact, it is,” Stef countered. She gave Stef a dirty look, but everyone seemed to silently acknowledge that his statement was true.

I ignored her and continued to focus on Claire. “He said that you were the one who upset him the most, because while you used to do that as well, he thought you had moved beyond that,” I said to her coldly.

“I was not taking sides,” Claire insisted.

“In fact, you were,” Stef said. This time he got a dirty look from Claire. His expression showed he couldn't care less.

“He said he felt especially betrayed by you after he had tried hard to help you recover when your marriage fell completely apart and you were dealing with Jack cheating on you,” I said, and could not help but glare daggers at Jack, which infuriated him. “He said that he felt he had been there for you when you went through your various relationships with other men, and had even been instrumental in setting you up with Luke.” It was hilarious to see how pissed off Jack was, not only because of my slam, but because of his jealousy.

“I appreciated his counsel,” Claire said through gritted teeth.

“You have a strange way of showing it,” I said.

“Do not sit there in judgement over the rest of us,” Jack all but shouted at me.

“Perhaps he should. Rumor has it you have also been linked with one of the nurses at the hospital,” Stef said to Jack, dropping a major bomb on us. “A young woman who is a week shy of turning 22.” It was amazing how wide his net was such that he gathered these interesting pieces of gossip. Everyone else was shocked by that except for Claire (who looked furious), Jack (who looked embarrassed), and me (I was enraged).

“Did you knock her up too?” I asked snidely. I was so ready to jump across the table and beat the living shit out of him. “You might want to get tested for STDs,” I said to Claire.

“And the rudeness continues,” Claire said. She stood up and tossed her napkin down, then looked boldly at Jack. “You certainly are enjoying your freedom, and each one is a bit younger.” He said nothing, so she just walked out of the dining room.

“That’s the last time I’m going to put up with shit like that from you,” Jack shouted at me as he stood up.

“Fuck off, Jack,” I shouted back at him while standing up myself. “You are nothing but a cheating scumbag. I can’t imagine how John and Marie will handle this one.”

Jack made to lunge at me across the table and I moved forward to kick his ass, when an authoritarian voice interrupted. “That is quite enough from both of you,” JP said, his voice going just beyond his normal volume limit. Since that was incredibly unusual for him, it acted like a brake on both of us. I backed up from the table and stood there fuming while Jack stormed out of the dining room.

“Whose side are you going to pick in this one?” I asked my mother acidly, then I calmly walked out of the dining room, got in my Porsche, and drove up to the City to spend the night with Jake.

October 13, 2004

Harvard Yard

Cambridge, MA

Will

I’d just gotten off the phone with Stef and heard about the latest fight at Escorial. After he was done sharing all the juicy tidbits, he’d told me that the construction SWAT team was going to hit us early tomorrow morning. As soon as I hung up I texted my roommates about it, figuring that would be the fastest way to let them know the plan. I walked up the stairs of Weld, wondering if anyone would even be awake this late. I went into the suite and saw that there was light leaking out from Thor’s room, so I tossed my backpack on a chair and walked over to his door. I was trying to decide if he was fucking someone or not, and finally gave up on that.

I knocked on his door then entered, only to see him lying on his back jacking off. It was impossible not to notice how sexy he looked. He sat up abruptly and pulled up his sheet while simultaneously knocking his laptop on the ground. He was watching porn, and it was gay porn. “What the fuck?” he demanded.

I locked the door, then turned back to talk to him. “The rule here is that you knock then enter,” I said. “You didn’t lock your door.”

“Just get the fuck out of here!” he demanded. I walked over to his bed and sat down next to him. “Leave!”

“I’d rather not,” I said, then pulled the sheet down to reveal his hard cock. It was pretty big, about seven inches, but not too thick. “How about tonight, instead of watching gay porn, you star in it,” I said in a sexy way. I reached down and stroked his dick, getting a moan for my efforts.

“I, uh…,” he started to object, but that lasted until I replaced my hand with my mouth. Slowly I went up and down on his pole, flicking my tongue around the head when I pulled up, then jamming my nose into his pubes when I went down, inhaling his sexy aroma. “That is really good.”

I stopped blowing him and looked up to see him smiling down at me. I stripped off my clothes in a quick but sexy way then climbed into bed, lying on top of him. I lowered my mouth and our lips met. In the past when we’d kissed it had been gentle and friendly, but not this time. He put his hand on the back of my head to jam my mouth into his and hit me with a full-blown oral assault. It was like now that he was fired up, he was frantic to get off.

He broke off the kiss, reached over and grabbed a condom and lube and handed them to me, then stood up so his hard dick was in front of me. I sucked on it a bit then slid the condom on. I lubed him up well, then he pushed me back onto the bed and landed on top of me. He pulled off of me long enough to push my legs back, then just drove his dick into me. He’d done nothing to help prepare me, and he started pounding me so hard that I could barely reach down and squirt some more lube on his dick as he plunged in and out of me. I finally got over the pain and was just starting to enjoy it when he came. He was like a wild man, becoming almost violent as he jammed his cock in my ass as he blew his load. I smiled up at him and he smiled back, then his smile changed to a frown. He pulled out of me, pulled off the condom, then wiped himself off with a towel. I could tell that he wanted nothing more than for me to leave, but I didn’t.

“I have a rule,” I said.

“You have a rule?” he asked, even as he lay cautiously next to me, trying not to touch me.

“I actually have two of them,” I said. I rolled over and lay on his chest, damn near giving him a panic attack. I didn’t move or say anything until I felt the tension slowly ebb from his body.

“Alright, tell me about these rules,” he said, getting a little playful.

“The first rule is that what happens between us stays between us,” I said. I raised my head off his chest so I could look into his eyes when I said it. I saw a bunch of emotions on his face as he let his guard down, and the two most prominent were fear and relief.

“Thanks,” he said, and pulled me down gently so he could kiss me. “What’s the second rule?”

“After I fuck around with a dude, he has to lie here like this with me for at least half an hour so he doesn’t fuck up the afterglow,” I said.

He sighed. “Sorry.”

“That can take a while,” I said, and leaned up to nibble on his ear.

He giggled and pushed me away. “You said it was thirty minutes.”

“Yeah, but between now and when thirty minutes are up, you’re going to fuck me again,” I said.

“You think so, eh?” he asked, teasing me.

“I know you will,” I said. “You are too nice of a guy to leave me high and dry.”

He really tensed up. “I’m not always that nice,” he said, the guilt oozing out of his words. It was like with each conversational exchange I got a much clearer picture of him.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You like to fuck guys, but after you blow your load, you feel guilty, so you run away as fast as you can and leave the other guy to jack himself off.”

He looked away from me, and now in addition to the guilt he was embarrassed. “Maybe.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did,” he said, trying to joke it off. He finally got that it wasn’t going to work. “Go ahead,” he said with dread.

“Why didn’t you try to fuck me when we were sharing a room?” He really tensed up. “Relax. I’m just curious. I’m not going to give you a bunch of shit.”

“Because of what you just said,” he said. “Because I usually have encounters where it’s fast and furious and then I want nothing to do with the other dude.”

“And you didn’t want that to happen to us?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Is that going to happen this time?” I responded, because I was thinking of Marie’s words and how I might have just really fucked things up between us.

“No,” he said. Before I could ask him why he explained it to me. “It’s because of how you just handled things. You told me you wouldn’t say anything, and you forced me to just be with you. If we’d hooked up somewhere else, like in a bathroom or somewhere outside, I’d have been gone before you could get me to calm down enough to hang out with you.”

“Your relationship with Schaef wasn’t like that,” I said. “How did that happen?”

“He was spending the night,” Thor said, smiling as he remembered their first time together. “I told him that he could crash on the floor, or in a guest room, but if he wanted to, he could just share with me since I had a king-size bed.”

“That’s a great pickup line,” I said, laughing. “You probably learned that from watching porn.”

“Probably,” he said smiling at me, making him look so fucking cute. “We were lying there like we were cast in stone, with neither one of us moving. Then I felt the slightest pressure from his toe on my foot. I responded carefully, running my foot back into his. He pushed back a bit more aggressively, and before I knew it, he was sucking my dick.”

I laughed at that. “That is sweet and funny all at the same time.”

“When it was over, I couldn’t run away, so I stayed there and we messed around a bunch more times,” he said. “Got zero sleep.”

“Awesome,” I said.

“Then when it was morning, we’d done too much for me to blow it off, and he was like my best friend anyway, so it was what we did,” he said.

“Did he ever fuck you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We tried a few times, but it was too painful. I just couldn’t relax enough. He had no problem with that.”

“When you fucked him, did he usually get off?” I asked. He looked away from me and I felt the panic return.

“No,” he said softly, so it was almost a whisper.

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said in a brisk, businesslike way. “I’m going to train you to be an amazing lover.”

“How are you going to do that?” he asked. Then I looked into his eyes and saw an entirely different emotion: hope.

“We’re going to fuck,” I said. “A lot.”

He laughed at that. “Cool.”

“It is,” I agreed. “The first thing we’re going to do is deal with this guilt shit.”

“How are we going to do that?” he asked.

“By getting you to pull your head out of your ass,” I said, and not all that nicely. “Here’s how this works. Once you make the decision to fuck around with someone, the die is cast, and you are obligated to put your negative feelings aside and try to make it good.”

“It’s not that easy,” he said.

“It is,” I disagreed. “The time for you to have that massive guilt episode is before you make the fuck/don’t fuck decision. You can really pile it on there.”

He laughed at my terminology. “I’ll have to work on that.”

“Are you gay or bisexual?” I asked him. He looked away from me, and I could feel how agonizing this was for him.

“I’m bisexual, leaning more towards gay,” he admitted.

“Then that’s who you are,” I said. “You need to embrace that.”

“If I am outed, I will be in a living hell playing baseball,” he said.

“So don’t tell them,” I said. “You can be discreet.”

“Do you think that will work?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I think that ultimately you’ll have to be who you are, but this is an intermediate step until you get to that point.”

“That’s why I don’t want to do this,” he said, and was almost angry.

“Dude, you have no choice,” I said. “This is who you are. The only way you can try to hide it is to have skeezy encounters with nasty guys. Those will only make you feel worse about yourself. And in the end, it probably won’t matter.”

“This terrifies me,” he admitted.

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, do you really have to play baseball? If they find out you like to suck dick and they haze you, can’t you tell them to fuck off?”

“If that happens, then I have to explain things to my parents,” he said with dread.

“You think they would hate you if you told them you were gay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Would they cut you off?” I asked. “I mean, if that happens, I can back you up and cover you.”

“You’d do that for me?” he asked me, and his eyes got watery.

“I would do that for you, but only after I trained you to be a good piece of ass,” I teased, making him laugh.

“Thanks, that means a lot, but it’s not about the money,” he said. “I’m really tight with my family. I have a younger brother and an older sister, and we’re like this happy Norman Rockwell family.”

“And if you’re gay, you ruin the picture?” I asked.

“Yes, and I don’t think they’d handle it very well, and they mean the world to me,” he said.

“I’ll bet you mean the world to them too,” I said. “I knew this guy who played football at Stanford. After he graduated, he went back home and hooked up with his old boyfriend. They moved in together and he told his parents he was gay. They were upset about it for a day or two, then they accepted it and invited his boyfriend over for dinner. His boyfriend’s parents were assholes, and he could never tell them he was gay. They didn’t find out he was queer until his funeral. Which situation do you think is more like your parents?”

“I’m worried it’s the second one, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first one,” he said, and seemed kind of happy.

“Alright, that’s enough psychology for now,” I said, then gently stroked his dick. “Time to fuck again.”