Shades of Adrian Gray - 2. Chapter 2

I first met Adrian Gray on December 8th of our sophomore year. And no, its not like I fucking memorized the date or anything, I just….happen to remember. Technically, I’d known him for years before that. We were in different school districts for grade school but played sports in the same YMCA league, had mutual acquaintances and even a couple classes together once my family moved the summer before ninth grade and we entered the same high school. We weren’t friends though, and outside of class never shared more than a casual head nod or a mumbled ‘hey’ when we passed each other in the halls. If it weren’t for that day, the day I met who he really was, none of that would have probably ever changed. I don’t believe in fate and destiny and higher powers or any of that crap, but some times, I dunno. You just wonder, you know?

It was a week before Christmas break. The way our school was set up we plunged straight into finals the week we came back, so our teachers were cramming every last test, paper and pain in the ass project worth half our final grade they could fit into the seven days until December 15th. My basketball coach was hitting us with an extra hour of practice every day in preparation for the holiday tournaments and most of that time was dedicated to suicide sprints and all other manner of equally inventively named torture - I mean, conditioning. Add to that the nonstop rain the clouds had been pumping out all week, and the fact that I’d stupidly left the windows of my car down last night and now my seats were all drenched and I was walking around school all day with my jeans sporting a giant fucking wet spot plastered to my ass - yeah. I was not a happy Evan. Course, it being school and me being the less than studious type, I was never a happy Evan at one in the afternoon on a weekday, so I forgave my IQ-challenged friend Neil for not picking up on the mood. Mostly.

“Lisa Reynolds,” Neil said suddenly.

“Seven,” I muttered without looking up from my algebra book. We were in the library during our free period, supposedly getting some homework done. In reality, Neil was playing ’rate the hot chicks’ and I was staring at the same quadratic equation I’d been looking at for the past twenty minutes and wondering why it was being such a little bitch to balance. It probably had something to do with me not knowing what the hell a quadratic equation even was, really.

He nodded and looked around some more. “Lexie Pierce.”

“Five,” I grunted and flipped to the back of the book to check my answer for the fifth time. The answer still hadn’t changed from the last time I checked and I was still obviously in the wrong math level. Not that I ever went to class anyways. That also might have been part of the problem.

“Five?” Neil rocked back in his chair incredulously. You’d think I’d personally offended him. He leaned across the table to me and dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “Dude, she totally puts out. That’s worth at least two extra points.”

“Only if she’s got something worth putting out.”

“Dude,” he socked me on the arm and shook his head in disapproval. Amazing. He was the one who insisted on playing the damn game and yet saying what everyone else really thought anyways somehow made me the douche bag here.

“Why are we even playing this game anyways?” I asked idly. I started chewing on the tip of my pencil again and Neil shot me a stern look. His mom saw some 20/20 thing a couple of weeks ago on kids getting lead poisoning from doing that and passed her hysteria on to Neil. It was surreal which subjects he actually chose to pay attention to her on. “Seriously. I would hate to think you were disrespecting your new girlfriend, given that she is the love of your life and all.”

Neil ignored the mockery and cocked his head to one side, eyes glazing over above the sappiest grin I’d ever seen on a male face. I snorted. He ignored me. “Yeah,” he sighed blissfully, before shaking himself like a dog who’d wandered too close to the sprinklers. Indignation replaced perfect serenity and he glared. “I‘m not disrespecting Vanessa. Vanessa is a perfect ten, and all I’m doing is reaffirming that no one else in our class comes even close to her perfection. Almost like…an homage.”

“Homage? Really?” I stared at him until he blushed bright as his fire-engine red hair. I smirked. “Still using that word of the day toilet paper, huh?”

“Shut up,” he mumbled, and I laughed.

“Yeah, you’re a regular Don Juan. Reaffirming her perfection my ass.”

“You’re an ass is right,” he shot back, meeting me smirk for smirk. “Besides, this is really for your benefit anyways.”

“Right,” I stretched the syllables and shoved my math book away, because clearly that wasn’t going anywhere. “Can’t wait to hear this. Wait - hang on. Let me check my bullshit-o-meter….okay. Go.”

“Its simple,” Neil proclaimed loftily. “Now that I’m with a celestial goddess, your ugly ass hanging around me all the time is likely to stick out like the wart on Ms. Weinstein’s nose. The only way I can see to protect your fragile self-esteem and allow you to continue to bask in the presence of my glory is to find you the next closest thing to perfection. I mean, we can’t make you any prettier, but we can at least distract people.”

“Don’t worry,” he leaned over again and patted my arm. “Vanessa’s the only perfect ten in our class, but I think with my help we can at least score you an eight or so.”

I stared at him. He stared at me. We both cracked up.

With a pug nose that looked like it’d been broken at least twice, pale skin speckled with freckles and a shock of flaming red hair that a hundred stylists with a thousand crates of gel couldn’t do anything to tame, Neil would never grace magazine covers. But he‘d never had any problem convincing everyone otherwise. Vanessa really was the hottest girl in class, and anyone who didn’t know Neil would probably think it a pity pairing. But truth was, most girls in school would have jumped at the chance to date him. Somehow, he just made them not care. We’d all heard more than one teacher at our image-obsessed high school quip it gave them hope for the human race, but I don’t think it was something anyone else could ever replicate. Neil was just Neil.

Me, I’d never exactly had a problem attracting female attention, or redirecting said attention to Neil who was more than happy to receive it. I just lacked the social graces to really make the most of girls’ interest in me. A lot of guys had that problem. It’s not like there was an instruction manual for dating or anything. Other than all the self-help relationship shit in bookstores, but everyone knew they didn’t know what they were talking about it. It was normal to be uncomfortable around girls. How to deal with them was just something you had to grow into, and I was more than happy to leave them alone until I did.

Course, try explaining that to your precocious horndog Casanova best friend.

“Come on, dude,” Neil pressed, waving his arm around the library. “Look around. Top pick. You walk up to them, say ‘hey baby, wanna take a dip on my dong,’ and we can all go on a double date. It’s not rocket science, man.”

I fidgeted with my math book, and he exhaled, frustrated. “Look, its not a big deal. You’re just over thinking shit and making things more complicated than they have to be. You always do that shit. I mean, its not like they’re going to say no. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I didn’t answer and finally twisted in my seat, looking around to appease him. I didn’t really trust myself to answer. What was the worst that could happen? Yeah, rationally he was right, and I didn’t even really know what the fuck I was so worried about, it was just like….every time I really thought about it, there was just this nagging…thing in the back of my head that warned don’t go there. Here there be dragons.

At a high school of a couple thousand students, most of them pretty well off despite it being a public school, we had a large campus with more than a few luxuries. Our state of the art library being one of them. Easily as big as most schools’ gymnasiums, with tiered levels and lush blue carpeting, light spilled in from the giant bay windows framing the west wall. It’d stopped raining outside for the first time all week, and the clouds were giving the sun a couple hours reprieve before the big thunderstorm that was supposed to hit tonight. Dust from the literally thousands of books lining the various shelving units drifted lazily in the lances of sunlight and gave the room a soft, smoky haze.

A good couple dozen tables were scattered throughout the main floor, almost all of them packed to capacity. We weren’t exactly a high school known for our academics, but with the weather outside most kids with this period free had chosen to congregate in here, and the room buzzed with the low hum of dozens of whispered conversations. It was way louder than the librarians normally allowed, and I could see a couple of them standing here and there with pinched, disapproving expressions, but with the library fuller than it ever was normally there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot they could do about it. As I swept my gaze back and forth across the other tables I had to disagree with Neil somewhat. Vanessa may have been the only perfect ten in his eyes, but there were quite a few others who came pretty close.

Then again, we lived in San Diego, and not just San Diego, but coastal San Diego, right along one of the beaches. Our high school demographic was the blond, tanned and unnaturally fit beach bunny stereotype perpetuated by several generations of Hollywood and MTV. Half the girls in our class looked like they could guest star on The Hills. Hell, most of the guys looked like they’d be asked along as well.

My eyes lingered on Keith Adams, one of our class’s star water polo players. In coastal San Diego, water polo had the kind of celebrity high school football held in places like Texas, and our school was no exception. Keith was tall and lean, like most guys on his team, with sun bleached hair and a tan even in the middle of one our worst rainy seasons in years. He was wearing a pale blue polo and a puka shell necklace showed under his collar when he leaned forward to whisper something to his girlfriend. There was a guy who had never had any problem talking to girls, going through the ranks of our female classmates with an ease regarded as legendary by most of the guys. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him without a girlfriend, and as the muscles bunched in his arms when he moved a stack of books around on the table, it was easy to see why. I had to admit, it wasn’t the first time I’d found myself staring at Keith. I just didn’t get it. I was blond, blue-eyed, and good looking according to all my female friends. I probably spent even more time in the weight room than he did. Basketball wasn’t as highly regarded at the school as water polo but I was damn good at it, and overall I was right up there with Keith in popularity. So why was it so much easier for him? Why couldn’t I mimic that same ease with which he leaned back in his chair, stretching his broad shoulders and grinning widely….fuck.

I shifted uneasily in my seat, subtly adjusting my pants. Christ, Neil was right. I really did need to get my shit together. I mean, fuck, I was so horny these days that even just thinking about shit like talking to chicks was getting me hard. I looked at Keith a little longer, trying to memorize his smile to practice in the mirror later, when I finally realized I might have been looking a little too long and people might get the wrong idea. I licked my lips and swallowed thickly, glancing over at his girlfriend next to him. Yeah, Keith was definitely doing something right. She was easily as hot as Vanessa, no matter what Neil said. Small, petite, had a hell of a rack though - I studied her carefully and tried to ignore the fact that my erection was definitely going down. It didn’t mean anything though. It was only because I’d noticed it and was paying attention to it that, I mean, Keith’s girlfriend was obviously hot - fuck. I suppressed a groan and a sudden vicious urge to kick Neil’s ass for getting me on this train of thought again. This was why I didn’t like playing stupid ass rate the hot chicks games and thinking about shit like this. I just got all caught up in my head and started over thinking things just like he said I always did, and confusing myself. I just needed to relax and let things happen when they happened. Fuck Neil and his ’get Evan laid’ agenda. Yeah, I was obviously horny, but it’d happen when it was good and ready to happen.

“Yo, Evs,” a voice called out and I could have kissed Adrian Gray for distracting me just then. Or, you know, not, I flushed as I realized what I’d just thought. Seriously. This was why jocks weren’t supposed to think. Leave that for Neil and his fucking word a day toilet paper. I turned to see Adrian jogging across the library towards us, one of the librarians shaking her head at his outburst when he passed her. He just smirked unapologetically and I laughed when she didn’t bother trying to lecture him. Rules and Adrian just didn’t mix. Everyone knew that.

He pulled out a chair at our table and dropped into it backwards, reaching out to bump fists with Neil. “Hey, man.”

“’Sup, Ade?” Neil nodded at him, a little bemused at his presence. Neither of us had ever really hung out with him out of class before. It was a big school, with a lot of different circles.

“Nada mucho,” Adrian shrugged with a smile. He jerked a thumb towards me. “Just needed to talk to Evski here for a sec.”

I frowned in confusion. “About what?”

He turned to me and rolled his eyes. “About our history project?”

I racked my brain.

He stared at me and laughed. “Seriously? Dr. Newman paired us up for it two weeks ago? It’s due tomorrow?”

“Shit,” my jaw dropped. I forgot all about it. “Wait, its due tomorrow? But we haven’t even started!”

“No shit, Einstein,” Adrian snickered. He turned to Neil. “You basketball jocks do know you’re supposed to throw the ball at the basket and not his head, right?”

Neil smirked and shrugged. “We miss sometimes.”

“Hey,” I complained. They just laughed some more.

“So, can we go over to your house after school to work on it?” Adrian asked. I started to nod, when I remembered my mom was hosting some dinner for a couple of her firm’s clients at our place.

“Shit, that won’t work. My mom’s got people from work coming over tonight and she’s gonna be a fucking basket case til they’re gone. We’ll never get anything done.”

“Oh,” he contemplated. “Well, we’ll just have to do it at my place. My address’s in the school directory.”

I nodded. “Cool. It’s gonna have to be after six though. I’ve got practice after school and coach’ll hang my balls in the trophy case if I miss it.”

“No worries. I’ve got detention after school anyways,” he said cheerfully.

“Oh god, what’d you do now?” Neil moaned.

“Nothing!” Adrian protested. He didn’t do wide-eyed innocence well though and it soon dissolved into his usual smirk. Raising a hand to his chest, he launched into his lament. “However, it appears that typing in the URL to the school’s website now leads one to a gateway porn site instead, and rather than seeing it as the act of God that is so clearly is, certain school authorities have labeled it an act of mischief and singled me out as their scapegoat.”

“It’s an unjust world we live in,” I commiserated.

“Brother, you have no idea,” he sighed loud and long. “Anyways, gotta go. I’m supposed to be in the bathroom right now, according to my hall pass. I don’t think the librarians would like it if I used it here though.”

“Probably not.”

“Fascists,” he proclaimed, getting up.

“Hey Ade,” Neil called after him. “Lexie Pierce.”

“Seven,” Adrian said without missing a beat. He winked at us and turned to the door. “She totally puts out.”

Neil howled.

****************************

No wonder Adrian had wanted to go to my house instead of his. I didn’t think we were ever going to finish this damn project if I didn’t quit stopping to look around the place with my mouth hanging open.

“What now?” Adrian sighed when I stopped typing on the computer. He was smiling though, and clearly I wasn’t the only guest he’d ever had over who reacted this way. I couldn’t help it though. I mean, I’d known his family was loaded, but the place was freaking huge.

“Nothing,” I hedged, and looked back through the doorway of his room into the kind of lounge area they had further down the hall. Shit, they had rooms in this place they didn’t even have names for.

“You saw the wet bar,” he said knowingly.

“Well, yeah. Is it stocked?”

“Yup,” he nodded, and laughed when my eyes lit up like a toddler on Christmas morning. Apparently, I was not so good at the subtle. “Unfortunately, its also locked. My parents are the absentee kind, but not the absentee and enabling kind.”

“Oh.” I pushed back in the desk chair and considered this. “Is it really that bad?”

Adrian flopped back on his bed where he’d been sitting and dictating while I typed. It bounced and rolled underneath him. Waterbed. Nice. “It is what it is. I mean, I’m not all woe is me, I wanna slit my wrists because mommy and daddy are in the Alps and only got me this new BMW for my birthday, but I dunno, I wouldn’t hate it if they actually showed up to one of my soccer games.”

“You play soccer?”

“Only for like, the past ten years. Not that I’d expect Mr. Basketball Star to notice any other sport.”

“Please, soccer’s not a sport,” my lip curled in derision. “It’s kickball for grownups.”

His pillow knocked the sneer off my face and he laughed when I almost fell out of the chair. I blushed at my severe lack of coordination. “Fuck you.”

“Buy me dinner and a movie first,” he shot back and I blushed harder.

“So,” I hesitated. We’d been at it for almost five hours now and it was close to midnight, but we were pretty much done. I wasn’t really in any hurry to go though. I had two free periods in the morning the next day and always slept in a couple hours on Fridays anyways. And hell, just looking around his room, he had more electronics and shit than I could even recognize. I saw at least one of each type of game system known to man, a plasma TV and a sound system and DVD collection that wouldn’t quit. Not to mention we’d passed a pool table in another room and well, it was raining again so the pool was probably out but still. His parents were off on business and his sister was at a friend’s, so there had to be something two less than morally sound teenagers could find for entertainment. Shit, even Adrian’s teachers had started calling him Puck in grade school when his penchant for pranks had left one of his coaches with pink hair. The dude knew how to have fun by all accounts.

“So,” Adrian drawled, before finally taking pity on me. He sighed. “We can’t get into the wet bar, but let me go grab a couple Cokes from the kitchen.”

“There’s a bottle of Jack in my top left desk drawer,” he called over his shoulder as he headed off to one of the myriad other rooms of Casa de Gray.

“Sweet,” I cheered. Now we were talking. It’s not like I was fucking alcoholic or anything, but come on. We were sixteen. Forbidden fucking fruit and all that. I pushed off the wall with my legs and rolled the chair back over to his desk, practically attacking the designated drawer in my haste. I rummaged through the various papers and random ass shit any teenager has in his desk, and frowned when I came up empty. No Jack. Jack shit. What is it about even the mere promise of alcohol being enough to get you started on a buzz? I shrugged and figured Adrian’d probably just forgot where he put it. I headed over to his DVD collection and started flipping through the titles while I waited for him to come back. Six Jerry Bruckheimer movies later, I noticed a shadow on the wall in front of me and turned to see him just standing in the doorway, two Cokes in hand and face white as a ghost.

“Dude, you okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” he stuttered, just staring at me. “Umm, you find the Jack?”

“Nah,” I shrugged. “Wasn’t in there. You sure that’s where you left it?”

He nodded, still just staring at me. He was starting to freak me out. “So…can I have one of those?” I gestured to the Cokes in his hand tentatively. “We could just watch a movie or something.”

Adrian jerked and stared down at the cokes in his hand, almost like he’d forgotten they were even there. He swallowed and tossed one over. “Yeah, sure.”

I popped the tab and went back to looking through his titles. He had all the usual blockbuster shit and slasher gore fests, plus a lot of obscure stuff I’d never heard of but looked kinda interesting.

“Maybe the maid found it,” he said from behind me, and caught up in the back cover description of some Swedish vampire flick, it took me a second to realize he was talking about the Jack. I shrugged. To be honest, as much as I was always up for a stiff drink, I’d forgotten about it the second he came back acting like he’d been replaced by a pod person out in the hall.

“There’s some vodka in the back of my dad’s wine cabinet, if you wanna go grab it,” Adrian continued, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him staring at the desk.

“Nah, I don‘t need to get drunk that bad.” I waved him off and went back to reading. “I doubt I could find the front door from here. Sides, the way you’re acting, I’d be afraid of getting abducted by aliens and anally probed in one of those hallways.”

“What do you mean the way I‘m acting?”

“Jesus man, relax,” I stared at him. His voice had gone up two octaves and he was shaking like I’d hit him. “It was a fucking joke. I just meant you were fine when you left but you’ve been acting all weird since then. You alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“And I’m the queen of fucking Sheba,” I retorted. He flinched.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Dude. Chill.” I was seriously freaked out now. “Do you want me to go?”

“Do you want to go?”

“Umm, kinda, considering I’m afraid I’m gonna end up chopped up into little pieces and buried in the walls of your house at this point.”

“Fuck you. Maybe you should go.”

“Maybe I should.”

I started towards the door and barely even heard him when he called out behind me, his voice was so soft. “Are you going to tell anyone?”

“Tell anyone what?” I blew out in frustration. “That you’re a freaking psycho? No, I wasn’t planning on it.”

“You know what,” he yelled at me, suddenly furious. “Stop fucking messing with me!”

“Dude, what the fuck are you on?” I yelled back, finally pissed.

“You fuck,” he raged, crossing the space between us and shoving me back into the wall. I was so shocked, I just stood there. “I bet you’re getting a big kick out of messing with the fag, huh? Probably going to go home and tell Neil all about how you found out I’m gay and got me to throw a hissy fit and -”

“You’re gay?”

Adrian’s face twisted in confusion and he halted in mid-tirade. “Of course I’m gay. Why the fuck else would I have that magazine?”

At least he wasn’t yelling anymore, but he was still pissed, and I was still clueless. “What magazine?”

“The magazine in my desk,” he scowled, exasperated. “I forgot it was in the drawer with the Jack until I got upstairs.” His anger faltered finally and he just stared at me, slowly realizing that I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. He stormed back across the room and jerked open his top drawer, yanking out a magazine and throwing it at me. I caught it reflexively, and stared down at the naked, chiseled man on the cover before looking back up at him and the open drawer. The open, top right drawer.

“You told me top left drawer,” I told him slowly and the blood drained from his face.

“Oh god,” he whispered and sat down heavily in his desk chair.

“Dude. It’s alright,” I told him hesitantly. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure it was. There was a steady refrain of ’he’s gay’ chorusing in the back of my mind and it occurred to me that under other situations it probably most definitely would not have been alright. I’m not really that great a person some times. But after his freak out and the way he was just sitting there like he expected me to hit him at any moment - I just didn’t have the heart to make a joke about fags.

Plus - my gaze drifted back down to the man on the magazine cover in my hands and I very quickly cut the brakes on that thought, and with a quick shudder threw the magazine over on his bed. Adrian just sat there, head in his hands while I stood there like an idiot. Seconds turned to minutes and I sat on the bed and stared at him. He stared at the floor. Rain spattered against the window in an offbeat symphony. Wind howled through the trees, branches rattled against the roof, and somewhere a dog was barking.

“You don’t look gay,” I said finally. And cursed myself for opening my damn mouth when his head shot up and pinned me with a glare. Fuck. Well at least he wasn’t staring at the damn floor anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he snitted. “I didn’t realize. What are fags supposed to look like? Please, tell me, so I can change and conform to the appropriate dress code.”

I couldn’t help myself and let out a sharp laugh at the idea of Adrian ever conforming to anything, gay or not. His shoulders slumped and he relaxed slightly.

“Sorry,” I said, sobering up. “But you know what I mean. Like…you’re not all….fuck. You know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he relented. He studied me. “That’s just a stereotype, you know. Some gay people are like that, and I guess like, its easier for people to think that you can just like…recognize people who are gay instead of thinking that anyone could be gay, and they just don’t know.”

I swallowed at that. “So uh, how do you know you’re gay?”

“Seriously? Because looking at that magazine makes me hard,” Adrian laughed. I glanced over at the magazine and flushed again. And I didn’t squeeze my legs tighter together. “I mean, fuck, yeah I didn’t want to be gay, and I tried to pretend I wasn’t for awhile, but by the time you’re seriously asking yourself that question you kinda already know, you know? Like, I don’t think straight guys spend a lot of time worrying about it.”

I wanted to protest at that, but didn’t quite know how, so settled for keeping my mouth shut. He wasn’t done anyways. “Sides, I think its pretty obvious for guys. I mean, dicks aren’t exactly subtle. If naked chicks get you hard, you’re straight. If naked guys get you hard, you’re gay. If naked chicks and naked guys get you hard, you’re bi. Not a whole lot of margin for error, you know?”

“And you’re not bi?”

He flashed me a lop sided smile. “Couldn’t be queerer. I like girls, and I know what girls I think are hot and stuff, but picturing them naked just doesn’t do anything for me.”

His smile faded and he chewed his lip anxiously. It made him look….fuck. I shook my head sharply and he dropped his eyes. “Are you really - I mean, are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Hell no, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. That would involve too much examination of why. So when in doubt, shrug and go for good old teenage apathy. “I guess. I mean, its weird and stuff, but I never really thought about it before.”

He nodded. “You’re not going to tell anyone are you?”

“None of my business. Sides, I don’t think I’m the one you have to worry about telling anyone,” I smirked before the ridiculousness of the situation finally sunk in and I busted out laughing. “I can’t believe you forgot which drawer it was in.”

“Shut up,” he protested but I could barely hear, I was laughing so hard. Tears coursed down my cheeks. I rolled back on the bed and heard his laughter join mine. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, just laughing, but when I looked up at his clock again the red LED display blinked 1:30 at me.

“Shit,” I cursed and jumped up. “I gotta get going. My dad’s going to be pissed if I wake them up.”

“Oh,” he bit his lip and watched me gather up my shit and head for the door. “Hey Evan? Thanks. For you know, not…freaking out.”

“Hey,” I waved him off. “You did enough of that for both of us. Seriously dude, you gotta work on not being such a stereotype. You were a total drama queen there.”

“Fuck you,” he blushed.

“Buy me dinner and a movie first,” I shot back at him. He blushed harder and I turned and raced through the house before he could notice I was every bit as flushed as him. I tried not to focus on how much that made me smile.