The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 25. Sophomore Year - Chapter 3

Kevin Malley grabbed me in a drunken necklock from behind, about fifteen seconds after we got to the Iota Chi house.

“There he is,” he exclaimed. He was slurring a little bit, his voice too loud; he had this big, excited grin on his face. His eyes were bloodshot, but this wasn’t Kevin when he smoked; when he smoked and drank together, it had a calming effect. And Kevin was so composed so much of the time, even when he was drunk, in a way that so many of us were not. Which, naturally, made me suspect what he was on. Maybe coke? Maybe vodka-Red Bulls? Maybe something else?

I supposed it was our fault for showing up ninety minutes late to an Iota Chi party. We had been waiting for Tripp to get out of studio; at 10:15, he texted us an told us just to go ahead without him. Kevin, meanwhile, had started at The Boot for happy hour with marching band people, which explained why he was so burnt out by 10:30pm.

Michaela had left her door to her and Jordam’s shared bathroom open when she went to meet he boyfriend, so Erik and I snuck in and commandeered her vodka, which we proceeded to drink in Jordan’s room. But we weren’t drunk by any means, especially not compared to Kevin Malley.

“Down, Malley,” I told him, unsuccessfully struggling to get free.

“This kid,” he said to no one in particular, squeezing me tighter, rocking me violently from side to side, “is the bomb-dot-com.”

“Your sayings are stuck in the 90s,” I told him.

Then he suddenly let go of my neck, and spun me around. He stuck out his tongue. "Well, maybe I'm rubber and you're glue."

“You’re a moron,” I replied, and maybe it was the fact that I was sober and he was drunk, but this sort of behavior was not going to fly in front of my friends. My eyes trailed to Jordan, who was watching this display of drunkeness unfold without expression, and Erik, who found it all incredibly amusing.

“Yeah, well,” he replied, with a smirk, “I’m your moron.”

I gave him a glare meant to convey warning, but Kevin did not seem to notice. I did know, of course, that I would have to get Jordan away from him--that I would have to keep away from him myself--for the remainder of the party. Lest he get a little too comfortable, and say things that were meant to be kept behind closed doors.

It was at this moment that Kevin seemed to even notice that someone else was there. He turned to Jordan, his big smile unwavering, “So how are you, Jor-Jor Binks?”

“Sober,” she told him, icily.

“Shame,” he slurred. He held up his beer. “Want a cerveza?”

“No, thanks,” she replied.

He turned back to me, started rocking up and down on his toes, almost jumping in excitement like a kid on Christmas morning, which was a surreal sight coming from my boyfriend. “Becker, Becker,” he said.

“You know what we should do after the party?”

I had a pretty good idea of what he was going to suggest.

I was more concerned that he didn’t really want him to blurt that out in the middle of the Iota Chi living room, in front of Jordan and Erik, and I had about two seconds to respond before I feared he would.

So, “Yes, I do,” I told him, flatly. “Find me later.”

“Cool,” he said, with a perfunctory nod, as if he was somehow pulling all of this off. Then his face grew into a brilliant, lopsided, Joker smile. “Becker, you need to loosen up. Have some fun.”

“I am!” I told him. “We just got here.”

“No, you know what I mean,” he told me, his voice full of frustration that he wasn’t as eloquent in his advanced intoxication as he thought he deserved to be. “Don’t you just want to let it all loose? Just swing from the trees. We could be Tarzan. You should be more like Tarzan!” He paused, thought for a second, and handed me his half-full beer. “Here, here, here. You can take this one. And I’ll go get us some more.”

And he turned around, and scampered away to the the kitchen.

“The Boot,” I told Jordan and Erik, preventatively, as I tossed Kevin’s beer in the garbage can. “He wants to go out to The Boot afterwards.”

“Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Jordan replied. “That was bizarre.”

“Fucking Malley,” Erik agreed, with a laugh. “He’s already done. And it’s only 10:30.”

Across the room, I spotted Justine, her roommate Bethany, and two other girls. She made an effort to trump up our parties among her friends--I suppose having a brother in a fraternity gave you some floor cred, at least in a freshman dorm, much like what Charlie Baker did with us last year.

Then, I noticed they were talking to Brett Morton, Paul Pryce, and Matt Rowan, the three of whom seemed like they were being a little bit too charming for my taste.

This whole situation--my fraternity brothers wanting to fuck my actual sister--would be substantially easier if Justine was ugly. I’d have to deal with the occasional fat sister joke, like Brett Morton did, but I wouldn’t have to worry about a situation like this, while my predatory friends were lying in wait for her.

But unfortunately, Justine was attractive, outgoing, fun. A lethal mix when it came to Iota Chi psychosexual politics.

“If Justine hooks up with a brother,” I told Jordan. “I will murder both of them.”

Erik was also staring at Justine. “I mean, I’d hit it, if she wasn’t your sister. I, of course, wouldn’t do that to you.” Yet, there he was, still looking at her from across the crowded party. “You know what it is? She comes off as very high society, like some girl that just knows she’s way too good for you. But she has that smirk, like you know part of her wants to be caught.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You did not just say any of those words to me.”

Erik looked a bit sheepish at that. “Sorry. Rowen was talking about her earlier when we were picking up the kegs from Elio’s.”

“Lovely,” I said. “So those are thoughts of a guy who is both better looking than you, and not bound by some bro-code to not go after my sister.”

“Rowen is not better looking than I am,” Erik scoffed, folding his arms. “No homo, he’s a good looking dude, but I think we’re evenly matched.”

“Just because he wants it doesn’t mean she’ll want it,” Jordan offered to me.

Erik grinned at her. “Yeah, like persistence never got a freshman girl into bed.”

So I pushed my way through the crowd, over to Justine and company, making sure to interject myself between her and Matt Rowen, who was telling her some theatrical story that had them both laughing.

“Oh, Peter!” Justine exclaimed, shuffling her drink into the other hand and giving me a one-armed hug. “I was looking for you.” She motioned to Matt Rowen. “Mark said you weren’t here yet.”

I smiled at the misnaming, largely because Rowen looked so irritated by it. Sucks to suck, Matt Rowen.

“We were waiting for Tripp,” I told her. “He’s stuck in studio, so he just told us to go ahead.” I looked to Matt Rowen, as sunnily as I could. “Good party so far? No problems?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Good party.” He glanced back at Justine, and his face transformed some sort of suave smile, which I could immediately tell was his visual equivalent of Joey Tribbiani’s “How You Doin’,” the eyes he would make at all of his prospects.

And Matt, of course, was sexy as shit, even when he wasn’t turning on the charm. I could have gotten lost in those eyes. And I suddenly thought what would have happened if, say, Justine had found herself attracted to Kevin Malley--if, say, she was looking at my boyfriend and didn’t know he was gay and didn’t know that I had been face down in his clean white sheets about eight hours ago--and we went after the same man.

That would be somehow poetic.

But, of course, we weren’t going after the same man. I had a man. And I would do everything in my power to make sure she did not get one within a block radius of the Iota Chi house.

“I was just telling Justine about going to Australia,” Rowen said. Which, as far as I could tell, had been four years ago, but apparently it was a story that still garnered results for him.

“I’ve always wanted to go!” Justine said, her eyes flitting between both me and Rowen, as if she didn’t quite know who she was talking to in this weird little threesome.

And then drunk Kevin Malley came steamrolling over, holding two fresh beers.

“Becker!” he yelled, too loudly, waving the beers over his head like a cheerleader. “I got you a beer!”

For all the men I did not want Justine to be around at the moment, Kevin was at the top of the list. He was not keeping nearly as firm a lid on our shared secret as he should in this element, and if I had narrowly dodged a bullet with Erik and Jordan, I didn’t want to take my chances with Justine, who would be arguably even more on my trail.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Justine and Matt, begrudgingly, and as I peeled away, I heard Matt go effortlessly back into an anecdote about diving at the Great Barrier Reef and I wanted to vomit in my mouth.

“Upstairs, Malley,” I ordered, and he followed me, without argument, through the foyer and up to the second floor of the fraternity house.

I really didn’t want to have this conversation in the upstairs hallway, with the potential for people to pass through, but the door was open to Rob Winslow’s bedroom, so I pushed him inside and closed the door behind us.

“Oh,” Kevin said, with a knowing smirk, putting his hand suggestively on my bicep. “I see what this is.”

“That is not even almost what this is,” I spat. “You need to go home. You’re being a mess, and you’re seriously about one word away from outing both of us.”

Kevin’s jaw dropped, and he had this puppy dog look of terror on his face, almost like he was about to cry, and I felt bad, even if he was being a drunk moron and what I said didn’t at all warrant that kind of reaction. “What? Why?”

“Just,” I said, folding my arms, “you need to be chill. You need to not say anything about us. And don’t touch me. Not until we’re back at your place.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, his index finger wagging at me. “But then, then, we go to my place and I fuck you in the butt.”

“Yes,” I said, diplomatically, like an elementary school teacher reasoning with an irrational kindergartener, which was basically Kevin’s level of coherence at the moment. “But only if you’re good, and do everything I say for the rest of the night.”

“But you’d better be good too,” he said, mockingly, brattily. “And do everything I say too.”

“Fine,” I told him. “Deal.”

He was no longer paying attention, but instead rummaging around in his pocket until he unearthed a small plastic Ziploc baggie of cocaine. “Do you want a bump?”

The door swung open, and it was Rob Winslow, flanked by Ryan Wyatt.

“Hey guys,” Rob said, slowly, suspiciously looking at us. “What are you two doing in here?”

“Coke,” Kevin said, and he tossed me a big smile, as if he was proud that he managed to pull off a convincing one-word lie. He was struggling with opening the baggie. “Want a bump? They make these things so fucking hard to open.”

Winslow’s expression didn’t change, but Ryan Wyatt elbowed his way past. “Let me get that for you, slugger.”

Kevin handed Ryan the baggie, and he started portioning out four little mounds of cocaine on top of a copy of The Sun Also Rises.

“None for me,” I told him. “I’m just a spectator in all of this.”

Kevin swatted the air dismissively. “Becker will have one. He has to listen to everything I say.”

That part he remembered.

Rob Winslow finally came into the room, closed the door behind him, and latched the deadbolt. “Okay, but please don’t let anyone else do this,” he said, glancing out the window at Broadway below. “Tulane

Police have been circling all night, and the last thing this chapter needs is a drug bust, right before Speakeasy and homecoming.”

“Relax,” Ryan told him, rolling up a dollar bill. “It’ll be over in three seconds.” He snorted his bump, and handed the dollar bill to Winslow, and then to Kevin, and then finally to me.

“It’s good,” Kevin said. “It’s easy. Just inhale, and suck it up like a vacuum cleaner.” He grinned at that, but said no further words, which made me think I might have actually gotten through to him, even in his nonsensical state.

And the cocaine went up my nose, and that was that. I felt a little tingle, and I could taste it. And I felt, maybe, just a slight jolt of energy, of enthusiasm.

And then I felt good, like this was good, like I was good. Okay. Okay!

“One more?” Ryan Wyatt asked, glancing hopefully up at Kevin.

Kevin’s smile was lopsided, as he wiped his nose with the edge of his hand. “Lines this time.”

Ryan Wyatt didn’t have to be told twice, as he set back to work.

“I haven’t done coke since Mardi Gras,” he said, dumping a small little hill on the cover. “But you know what? This is exactly what I wanted to do tonight.”

Rob Winslow was still looking out the window, re: police.

“No one’s going to get caught,” Kevin told him. “Do you know how long it would take for the police to make it all the way up here, if they came to break up the party?”

“I’m president of this fraternity,” Rob replied, his eyes not moving away from the window. “There’s a level of decorum I’m held to. Everything ultimately rests on my shoulders, and I’m not going to jail because you brought coke to a house party.”

“I feel like you’d be popular in jail,” Ryan said, as he scraped the coke into four lines. “Just saying. Skinny white boy? They’d probably trade you along with the cigarettes.”

“Fuck off,” Rob replied.

“He’s always so worried about this,” Ryan told me, as he continued to arrange the lines. “Two more months, and then this whole fraternity is someone else’s problem.”

“I want Ryan to run,” Rob said. “I think he’d be good at it.”

“Fuck no,” Ryan replied. “First of all, I’m not going to go for a premature death, by stressing out every time there’s a party or weed in this house. And second of all, if I’m the president, we’re suddenly the gay fraternity. And I don’t want to do that to you guys.”

I glanced at Kevin, who I thought might take this opportunity to say something, but he didn’t; he was trying to put the ziploc baggie back in his pocket.

“Alright,” Rob said, tearing his glance away from the window, “let’s do this.”

“Age before beauty,” Ryan said, handing Rob Winslow the dollar bill.

Rob snorted up his line of cocaine, and then handed the bill to me.

Up close, the line looked substantially larger than the bump. Which it, of course, was, but the bump had seen like such a starter level. I inhaled, and slowly moved the dollar bill down the line.

“Yeah, okay,” Ryan said, as I got to the end, “but don’t blow out of your other nostril, or you scatter the other lines.” He took the dollar bill back from me, and reshaped the line next to where mine had been.

I felt dancey. Was that a word, dancey? Not that I would actually start dancing, not in a room with Kevin Malley and Ryan Wyatt and Rob Winslow, but like I could definitely start dancing.

I felt good. This was good. I realized why people did this sort of thing.

Ryan snorted his line, then he passed the baton to Kevin, who finished it off.

Ryan rubbed his finger along the cover, then rubbed his gums; Kevin did so too, so I followed suit, and suddenly my mouth was tingling too, slightly numb.

This was quite an interesting feeling, and I could feel my face fall into a placid smile.

“Okay, but now we have to get back to the party,” Rob said. To Kevin, he said, “Put the coke away, and for the love of God, don’t take it out downstairs.”

Kevin crossed his heart theatrically with his finger, then looked to me, smiling broadly, which I did not return. We followed Rob out of the room. Rob locked the deadbolt from the hallway, and then quickly motioned us the rest of the way down the stairs.

We scattered once we hit the foyer, and I glanced around again for Justine, but I couldn’t see her. And, maybe it was the two lines of coke, but I didn’t feel like I had to find her. I felt like enjoyment, instead.

Chris Baker was squirreled away in the back corner of the kitchen, so I grabbed a beer and joined him.

“Hey there,” I told him, leaning against the wall next to him. “Enjoyment?”

He looked at me quizzically.

“I mean, enjoying yourself?” I asked.

He was still suspicious, apparently. “Were you doing coke with Kevin?”

I snickered, and Baker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I saw you go upstairs, and you come down looking like you just swallowed a fucking rainbow.” He shook his head. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“But I’m allowed to, right?” I said. I was grinning. I couldn’t stop grinning.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Baker replied. “He offered me some earlier. He came here literally right as the party started, already strung out. He was at some happy hour with his marching band friends, pounding Red Bull and vodka, and snorting coke like it was their job.”

Did I know my boyfriend, or what.

“God,” he said. “You just look so uncharacteristically happy.”

“I’m not usually happy?”

“You’re usually happy,” he said, “but not this happy.”

I glanced out at the crowd, and I suddenly wondered where Erik and Jordan had gone off to.

“We should go mingle,” I told him. “Find people.” And Chris gave me such a hostile look that it actually caught me off guard. But, of course, I was the one person he could trust to stand next to him as we surveyed the party from the back corners, avoiding unwanted crowds and social contact.

“Be careful,” Baker warned me. “Tommy is on rampage.”

And I knew what Baker meant, of course: Tommy Pereira, who was the rush chair, was going around forcing brothers to talk to freshmen, and that was clearly not something Baker or I generally found appealing.

Although, who knew, tonight? I felt social. I felt fun. I felt carefree.

I felt dancey.

“I’m going to see if I can go the whole semester without talking to a freshman,” Baker told me, resolutely. “The plan is we just stay over here until Tommy comes to yell at us.”

Airtight.

“You’re good at talking to freshmen,” I said. “You recruited all of us.”

“Well,” Baker said, with a thin smile, “Charlie introduced you and Tripp and Erik to us, and Morton and Tommy reeled you guys in.”

“No they didn’t,” I said. “I’m here because of you.”

And Baker’s smile grew, slightly, an appreciative smile, like he’d never heard anyone say that before. And of course he wouldn’t, because I realized I probably was the only person in Iota Chi because I had been recruited by Chris Baker, and probably would be the only person ever recruited by Chris Baker.

“Well, we always do well,” he said. “We have a niche. You know, we’re like decent guys who throw decent parties.”

I snorted. “Why do they even want you to talk to freshmen, if that’s your sales pitch?”

“You know what I mean,” he said.

But I really didn’t. Did Iota Chi have a niche? We were, in fact, decent guys who threw decent parties, but weren’t we more than that? Maybe we weren’t more than that. Maybe we just got along because we got along, the inertia of the entire operation barreling forward through four years of time.

Decent. What was the line from Hitchcock’s Marnie? “I’m a liar and a cheat, but I am decent”?

I sighed, and Baker took a sip of his beer. “You know what I want?”

“Veronica?”

I couldn’t help but giggle that her name had even left my mouth. That was the coke speaking, not me. I meant it joshingly, but it was clearly interpreted far less comedically than I intended. At least by Baker. I knew I shouldn’t be laughing; I couldn’t help myself from laughing.

He narrowed his eyes. “Way to take that from zero to sixty, Becker. But no. I mean, I do, but that’s not what I was talking about.” He paused. “What I was going to say is that I wish there was a way to approach people without actually approaching them.”

“Bringing the mountain to Mohammed, sort of situation?”

“Exactly,” he replied. “It’s like, I know I can’t approach a girl if I’m sober, I won’t even try, so that’s fine. And then I’m here, and I’m drunk, and I’m surrounded by women who are also drunk, and I still don’t want to approach them because they just get so sloppy when they’re drunk and I know I’d be taking advantage. And the last thing I want is to wake up with some beautiful girl and have her give me that look, like, ‘Oh God, how drunk was I last night that I slept with that guy?’”

“Maybe you need to get drunk,” I said, “and find a girl who’s still sober.”

Baker took a sip from his beer. “No. I’d make an ass out of myself in that situation. Do you have any idea how annoying drunk people are when you’re sober?”

I smiled. “Or find Kevin and do some coke?”

Baker rolled his eyes, and smiled. “I can’t believe he’s still going strong. I thought he would’ve been passed out long ago. Make sure he gets home tonight.”

I bristled at the insinuation that I would be the one taking Kevin Malley home tonight, which of course I would be, but I bristled at the insinuation. “Why is he my responsibility?”

Baker paused for a second, as if considering his words carefully. Or maybe he didn’t pause at all, but I thought he paused. I couldn’t tell. Cocaine and alcohol were fueling my suspicions, but what could Baker know? Kevin and I were almost preternaturally discreet in public settings, aside from the almost-slip-ups earlier tonight, and virtually every time I was at their house, Baker didn’t even realize I was because I was going through the Becker door.

“We all need to make sure he gets home tonight,” Baker amended. “He’s your friend too.”

The use of the word “friend” helped assuage my concerns. And I realized I was being suspicious, possibly unfairly, because Kevin hadn’t told Baker and Baker was aloof enough where I didn’t think he would figure it out on his own anyway.

Patrick arrived, with his arm wrapped around Annie Rue because of course he did; they were Siamese twins at public gatherings. He was wearing a t-shirt depicting corn and the words, “I’m all ears.”
Annie was, of course, in pearls and a navy blue cocktail dress. She was always dressed to the nines, except on the occasions when I ran into her in Patrick’s sweats, pouring out of our room, her makeup smeared from the night before. But that was rare, because I generally tried to avoid the room if she was there. Not because I didn’t like her, but because I didn’t even know her; Patrick did not take great pains to incorporate Annie into our group of friends, and every solo interaction I’d had with her was awkward, the surface pleasantries of two people who should have known each other better than they did, but now it was probably too late to admit we didn’t.

“Baker and Becker,” Patrick greeted. “Hiding, as usual?”

“Just Baker’s hiding,” I told him. “I feel dancey.”

Patrick seemed to ignore that, but Baker interjected, “Two people are hiding. Three brothers and a girl are a group without freshmen.”

And like that, we had been spotted. Tommy came barrelling over, his arms full of beers.

“I know what you’re doing,” he told us.

Baker feigned doe-eyed innocence, and took a sip from his beer. “What do you think we’re doing?”

“Hiding,” he said. “I know what you do during rush voting, Baker. You’ll vote no on everyone because you say you haven’t met them yet, but then you actually don’t want to meet people.”

Baker gave a slim smile, and I laughed at that, because of course that was the sort of thing Chris Baker would do when it came to determining who would get into Iota Chi.

“Come on,” Tommy said. “I have freshmen for you to meet. I’ll hold your hands through it.”

We followed him on our perp walk out of the kitchen into the backyard. Somehow Patrick and Annie, the traitors, had managed to slide back into the crowd and disappear.

Tommy arrived at a group: Erik, who was surrounded by three freshmen guys, two white guys with brown bears and a light-skinned Indian guy. The three of them all had that JC Penney catalog look--clean-cut, smiling, inoffensively decent.

“Gentlemen,” Tommy said, passing out the beers to the two freshmen. “This is Chris Baker and Adam Becker. Two of our most esteemed brothers.” He turned to me and Baker. “This is Michael Graham, Henry Cowdray, and Sachit Chowdry.”

“Cowdray and Chowdry,” Baker said, visibly uncomfortable but attempting a joke anyway. “I’ll remember that.” He looked awkwardly to the guy introduced to us as Henry Cowdray. “But I’ll remember yours too.”

“Actually, I’m Henry,” said Henry. “That’s Michael.”

“Don’t worry, I’m still Sachit,” said Sachit, with a smirk.

Erik and Tommy exchanged disdainful looks.

“Baker recruited us, actually,” said Erik, slapping Baker on the shoulder. “He’s a good guy, once you get to know him.”

“But not a minute sooner,” I added, and the three freshmen gave a polite laugh. “Where do you guys live?”

“Sharp Three,” Sachit said.

“Oh, we did last year, too,” I said, trying to be energetic about the whole thing. “Small world!”

Tommy did not approve of my visible enthusiasm, so I ratcheted it down a bit. Regardless, Tommy quickly excused himself and went on to, presumably, yell at some other brother for not lifting their share of the load when it came to flirting with freshmen men.

“But yeah,” I added, nonchalantly, turning back to Sachit. “My sister lives on Sharp Two. Justine Becker?” I glanced behind. “She’s inside somewhere.”

The three freshmen all shrugged.

“No, sorry,” Michael, or maybe Henry, replied. As I was watching them, I realized how they both looked so startlingly similar with their brown beards.

“That’s fine,” I said. “Honestly, the fewer guys she knows, the happier I am.”

That got another polite laugh. None of them had a younger sister, I ventured--they would’ve been more understanding to my plight to keep Justine away from members or potential members of Iota Chi, if not all men in general.

Baker was basically chugging his beer at this moment, clearly so he’d be able to leave under the excuse of needing a refill. Unfortunately, my beer was almost full, and I wasn’t able to chug very quickly anyway. I instead gave him warning eyes, as if to tell him that there would be consequences for leaving me alone, but I knew he would anyway.

“Becker’s from DC,” Erik told them. “His dad’s a Senator. David Becker from Nevada.”

Sachit looked a little excited by that, which I figured was a good thing, since that tended to be the most exciting detail I had to share in small talk situations, even though I usually didn’t.

“Oh, I do know your sister,” said Henry, eagerly. “Super hot brunette, right?”

How was I supposed to respond to that; Erik took me off the hook by saying, “That sounds like Justine.”

Sachit, however, seemed more interested in my dad than my sister. “I just saw he endorsed Giuliani yesterday.” He paused. “Are you a Republican?”

“I’ll be right back,” Baker said, holding up his empty bottle, turning as quickly as possible, and disappearing into the crowd. Erik watched him go, disapprovingly.

I turned back to Sachit, who was still awaiting my answer, which was an answer I really didn’t want to give in this type of setting.

“I’m a libertarian,” I said, “but it’s in the family.”

“I’m a libertarian, too,” Sachit said, nodding. “We’re trying to get Dr. Paul to speak on campus.”

I didn’t know who “we” meant, and I really wasn’t all that concerned. I was political. I read the news and had too many opinions, most of them unpopular in the liberal bog of Tulane University, but I was the son of a lobbyist and a Senator, so I never had a West Wing level of heroism for politicians. They were all too human; there was no messiah.

“Nice,” I said, instead. “Barack Obama’s coming in February to Fogelman Arena. And Al Gore came last semester. Not my favorites, but big names.”

“Yeah, I’d probably tough it out for them,” Sachit said. “And I’d see Barack Obama. He’s a little too lefty for me, but he might be President one day.”

“Has to get through Hillary first,” I said. “My dad doesn’t like his odds.”

He shrugged. “True. And no one’s going to elect some black dude with a name like Barack Obama, no matter how much of the hope and change shit he spews. I say this as someone named Sachit Chowdry, of course.”

I nodded politely, and realized almost immediately this was not the kind of subject I was eager to espouse on. It was hard to discuss Barack Obama without sounding racist or cynical, and I was even more aware of that fact talking to a minority. I went generic: “So how’re you liking Iota Chi so far?”

“It’s great,” he said. “Been to a few parties, but I’m just starting to get to know some of the brothers.”

“We hone in,” I agreed.

Erik, who was having his own parallel conversation with Henry and Michael about something that had them all excitedly yammering on, gave me a vicious glance.

“I mean, it’s nice to just meet people,” I told him. “I remember what it’s like to be a freshmen, and there’s so much shit going on. But we’re one of the good houses. We throw a lot of parties.” That had exhausted my sales pitch on Iota Chi, which arguably did need a lot of work. “Where are you from?”

“Philly,” Sachit said. “You?” There was a short pause, and then he smiled. “Sorry, dumb question.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “Officially, Pahrump, Nevada. Unofficially, Hamlet, Maryland. Faceless suburb, a little northwest of DC.”

Erik leaned over, interjecting himself. “I think we’re going to go upstairs to smoke. You guys interested?”

I looked to Sachit, who nodded enthusastically.

“Becker’s friend Kevin always has the best shit,” Erik confirmed, and we followed him upstairs.

Kevin--who, apparently, had gone directly back upstairs after our lines with Rob Winslow and Ryan Wyat--was already in Matt Rowen’s room, sans Matt Rowen, when we got there. He was struggling to pack the bowl in his state of advanced decomposition.

He looked rough, even rougher than when I saw him maybe fifteen minutes ago--his skin was gray and glossy, and he looked like he might ralph all over the floor in a matter of seconds, but he didn’t.

“One sec,” he slurred, until Erik finally removed the weed from him.

“I got this, bud,” Erik said, patronizingly.

Kevin did not like being patronized, but he was so out of it that he didn’t seem to notice. He was in what appeared to be a crash, coming down off all the cocaine and the Red Bulls.

He sat down on the couch, slumped over, and his eyes immediately closed.

“Maybe I should get this guy home,” I said. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Kevin. Kevin.”

Kevin stirred, his eyes flickered open, and he said nothing. But he stood up, leaned on my shoulder, and then whispered into my ear, as if he was on his death bed, “Becker.”

“Yes,” I replied.

His mouth curled into a thin, knowing smile. “You know what we should do?”

“Head back to your place?” I suggested, loudly.

He thought about his word choice for several seconds. “Precisely.”

I half-carried, half-dragged Kevin the two blocks back to his place on Broadway and Burthe. We went in through the Becker door, and as soon as we got inside, he pushed me up against the corner of his desk, without even turning the lights on.

“I was very good,” he told me.

“You were,” I said, as we looked across each other in the dim room. “You were very good.”

He put his hand on my chest, and came in for a quick kiss. “Right here.”

I glanced backwards at the desk, which even in the dark I could tell was nearly organized, because it was Kevin. He leaned in again, mashed his lips against my jawline. I could smell the weed and the alcohol wafting off of him; he was more pungent than usual.

“Bed’s right over there,” I told him.

He started undoing his belt, and leaned in. “I want it right here,” he whispered.

He leaned over me and, in one theatrical motion, Kevin swept his arms across the desk, sending everything to the floor with a clatter. He printer was dangling by its cord, gently smacking against the side of the desk as it swayed.

And I couldn’t help but smile at the debris field. “You’ll regret that in the morning,” I told him.

“I don’t regret anything,” he replied. He yanked down his jeans. “On your knees. Suck me off.”

Drunk and coked out as he was, I was amazed with how quickly Kevin was able to get back into himself the second we got into his bedroom. And it was hot. And he was hot. And I was just drunk and high enough myself to want to take that massive dick in my mouth.

So I did as I was told. I dropped to my knees, I caressed my boyfriend’s package through the thin fabric of his boxer briefs. Even soft, his size was impressive.

I gave it a light kiss, and he threw his head back in pleasure, and then I pulled down the elastic.

Kevin was rarely this soft when I started my blowjobs, but then again, he was rarely this drunk. I took his soft dick in my mouth, and sucked. And got into a little bit of a rhythm. And then it became clear that nothing was happening.

Kevin’s soft dick fell from my mouth, and Kevin looked down at it with disgust, like it was the son who disappointed him most. He gave it a few strokes, but it was limp and feckless.

Clearly wasn’t happening.

“Whiskey,” he muttered, which I assumed was a contraction of “whiskey dick” rather than a request, because the last thing he needed at this point was more booze. “I swear, this has never happened before.”

But I was too horny to care, and this was perhaps one irritation too many for me tonight, with all his whispering out in public. And maybe it was the residue from the cocaine, but I felt fearless tonight. So I stood up, pulled him close to me by the collar, and said, “Well, if you’re not going to get it up, I guess you’ll just have to bend over.”

His eyes widened, he looked panicked. “No, I don’t bottom.” The telltale drunken slur had suddenly been removed from his voice, out of sheer, desperate utility.

“Well, you’re not topping tonight, and I was promised sex one way or the other. I’m not like you--I don’t let you rack up debt. You pay in full.”

My hand slid away from his collar, to his shoulder, and down his bicep, and finally to his ass. And I gave it a squeeze for good measure. Kevin had a nice ass, but I never thought about it like that. There was volume, but it was something for me to grab onto while he was fucking me, not the main attraction itself.

But still, it was nice.

He leaned his lips to my ear. “Be gentle,” he said.

“No,” I replied, and I pushed him over the edge of the desk.

His white ass was illuminated, reflective, just slightly, in the moonlight coming through the window.

I squirted some lube on my hand. I had only topped once before, back when I first started hooking up with guys and the thought of anything anywhere near my ass was intoxicating but too terrifying and too emasculating to actually attempt, and I didn’t exactly know what I was doing.

But I had spent months getting my ass pounded by Kevin’s monster cock, so I just thought back to what I liked, and tried to emulate that.

I lubed up one finger, and slowly slid it inside Kevin’s awaiting pink hole.

He grunted uncomfortably, so I took it even slower, moving it a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter, as slowly as I could, until I could feel his muscles quietly relax.

This was hot. It was hot, playing with Kevin’s ass. He was such a committed top and he usually held his liquor much better than I did, and I didn’t think I’d ever get another chance to see his asshole so willing, even if under slight duress.

So I added another finger, and Kevin winced. “It’s too big,” he said.

“Don’t be a little bitch, Malley,” I told him. “Do you know how much bigger your cock is than two of my fingers?”

He didn’t rebut. And once his ass relaxed again, once I felt him give in to the inevitable, I added a third finger.

And then, after that stopover, I was rock hard and the head of my lubed-up dick was poking at Kevin’s puckering hole.

I slowly pushed my way inside him. I was maybe two inches in, when he tensed up, lifted his head from the desk, and said, “Ah, ah, ah.”

“Do you want me to take it out?” I asked him.

Kevin didn’t say anything for a few seconds, but then: “No. Just leave it for a second.”

I stood there, my dick wedge halfway up my boyfriend’s ass, in perfect silence, in the almost perfect darkness of the bedroom, and then finally he said, “Okay.”

And I pushed it in the rest of the way, and then it was my turn to moan, as I felt the tight, hot, flesh envelop my dick. Fuck, damn, he was tight, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to last very long. But I slowly began to jerk my hips, the way I’d seen Kevin do a million times.

I felt my dick graze Kevin’s prostate, and he let out an involuntary, monosyllabic blip from his vocal cords. And I hit it again, very slowly, and he started grunting.

I began to get myself into a rhythm, still moving slow for both of our sake. I would push in, and he would grunt, and I would push in, and he would grunt, and then we were moving, a little faster, a little faster.

And oh, God, it felt good. I put my hands on his hip bones, and fucked him deeper, and his moans became that much louder, as I bottomed out inside him.

“Yeah, fuck me,” he whispered--words I never thought I’d hear come out of my cocky, total-top boyfriend’s mouth. And I didn’t need any more permission than that; I started bucking my hips even more, fucking him as fast as I could, going as deep as I could.

We were both dripping sweat now; I could see his back, slick in the moonlight, as I continued to pound away at his tight hole.

And the friction was getting too much; I wasn’t used to topping, I wasn’t used to that much constant, wonderful pressure on my dick, and so I reached around and started stroking Kevin’s big dick--which, by now, was rock hard and drilling itself into the desktop. I gave it a few strokes, rhythmic with my hips, and then Kevin let out a guttural moan. And we came together, me deep inside his ass and Kevin, in a ribbon of cum across the top of his desk nearly the entire length of his body.

And the next thing I knew, the sun was searing through the windows, and I heard Kevin let out a long, pained groan, very unlike the sexy stacatto he had mastered the night before. When I was fucking his ass.

When I was fucking my top boyfriend’s tight little ass.

Even the following morning, it filled me with a kind of renegade pride.

I turned over to him, and he still looked like a corpse, just as he had the night before.

“Rough morning?” I asked, sunnily.

He emitted another agonizing moan. “Can you close the blinds?”

I sat up. “They are closed.”

He moaned louder, in despair.

“Ha, look at your desk,” I said.

He rolled over. The only things on the desk was a bottle of lube, and a morse code line of Kevin’s cum. His pens, his papers, a couple textbooks, his printer, and his laptop were in a mangled clump on the floor.

“Oh, God damn,” he groaned. He rolled back over to look at me, so he didn’t have to see it. “I was really hoping me bottoming was a dream.”

“Oh, it was a dream, baby,” I told him, with a smirk, rubbing his bare shoulders.

“You liked topping?” he scoffed. “I can’t believe that.”

That I did not appreciate, because I did enjoy topping him. Variety was the spice of life, didn’t they say that? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I wasn’t impugning your masculinity. I just like you as a little bottom.” Even hungover, he got a little twinkle in his eye. “A little bottom slut. Who craves my dick. And does nothing else all day but fantasize about getting bred by my big dick.”

My hand instinctively wandered down to his crotch, and he was of course already rock hard. I kissed him, but his breath smelled like something had crawled into his mouth and died. But I didn’t move my hand off his dick, because I was also rock hard.

“Are you suggesting we even the score?” I asked, moving my hand up to his shoulder.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” he replied, and he put his hand on the small of my back, pulled me in closer, so our hard dicks were touching. There was nothing hotter than being in Kevin Malley’s arms, feeling his hard dick nestled up against mine. There was something so perfect about it, like two puzzle pieces with the exact fit.

“But,” he said. “I need a bowl first. I don’t think I can sit up without one.”

I really didn’t want to move. But I also really wanted to get fucked. Prisoner’s dilemma.

“Fine,” I said, taking my hands off his shoulders.

“It’s in the dresser,” he said. “Top drawer, next to the weed.”

I dragged myself out of bed--I wasn’t hungover, because I hadn’t been wasted last night, but I still felt like Bambi walking across the room. There were two prescription bottles full of weed in the top drawer, along with another prescription bottle full of some sort of pills, and then a small jar of Advil.

“Get the Advil too,” he commanded, so I did: I took the bounty back to the bed and, like a cat presenting a dead bird, dropped it down next to him.

Kevin reached over to his nightstand and handed me his piece and a cigarette lighter.

“Oh,” I said, taking them both. “I don’t know how to pack one.”

“Useless, Becker,” he scoffed, as he unscrewed the lid off the Advil. “We’ve been together too long for a skill like that to go unlearned.”

He choked down four Advils, without water, and then accepted the piece from me, quickly packing it. And then he inhaled very deeply, and sighed. “Already making me feel better. Though my ass is still on fire.”

“Don’t be a baby,” I told him, as I nestled back into bed next to him. “I have to take your big dick all the time. And I have to take it like a man.”

“Oh, and you do take it like a man,” he whispered. He lit the bowl again, took another deep breath, and then exhaled. “But you’re a bottom. You love it. And you know you want it.”

“I do,” I told him, putting my hand on his thigh. Sensing where this role play was going, and wanting to expedite it as much as possible, I said: “I want you to spread my legs and fuck my brains out.”

He inhaled from the piece again, and then set it down on the nightstand.

“No,” he said, flatly. “No. You want to do all the work?” His voice was cold, but he barely able to contain the smile on his face. “You want to do all the work, you can do all the work, but that doesn’t make you any less of a little bottom bitch.”

“I want your dick,” I told him again.

He snuggled himself further down the sheets, until he was lying down next to me. “Ride it.”

“What?”

His face turned into a frown. “Get the lube. Lube up my dick. And ride it. I’m not doing jack shit. If you want to get off--if you want me to stick my dick in your ass--you’re going to have to work for it.”

I was a little taken aback. But, even more so, I was titillated by this. And I was eager to see where this would go.

I got out of bed, because the lube was on the desk, and carried it over.

Kevin had pushed the sheets off of his body, but his eyes were closed and his arms folded, almost like a sarcophagus. But his dick was standing straight up, ready for whatever was going to happen.

I knelt down between his legs, and let the tip of his dick touch my lips.’

“Suck me off,” he whispered. “Just like that.”

I licked the underside of his dick, and then licked my way back up. And then I popped his head in my mouth. Kevin let out a low moan, and I took the rest of his dick in my mouth. I sucked him, up and down, for a few seconds, but I knew what I wanted, and this wasn’t it.

Kevin fell from my mouth, and instead I reached for the lube, squirting a little bit in the palm of my hand. And then I slowly began to jack his dick.

Kevin moaned again, and once I had lubed him up sufficiently, I rubbed my hole with the remainder of the lube from my hand. The lube was slick and cold, but my ass was more eager than I ever remembered it being before--like I had ventured into tophood, and now my ass was demanding that we give it the attention to which it had become accustomed.

I mounted Kevin, put one hand on his chest, and steered his dick towards my ass with the other. It took a few tries to find my hole, exactly, to line things up, but then I did, and I slowly began to elevator down onto his dick.

And, fuck, if something had ever felt good, it was that. Kevin’s huge dick filling me up, and I never felt like more of a bottom in my entire life.

I slowly moved my body up and down, but even though I had cum (in Kevin’s ass) maybe six or seven hours before, I could feel that it wasn’t going to take me very long to cum again. I started going faster, falling onto his dick. Bouncing up and down on my boyfriend’s big cock, my right hand, still covered in lube, rubbing my chest and playing with my nipple. And I was getting myself back into a rhythm, like I had the night before while I was topping. Except, while topping was fun and different and new, the pleasure of Kevin’s nine-incher deep inside me struck to my very core.

And I didn’t last long. I shot a machine gun of cum onto my boyfriend’s chest, and then I collapsed onto him, his dick still in my ass.

“Damn,” I said. “I can’t believe I came again.”

I lifted my ass slowly off of his cock, until it popped out.

“No,” he said, his voice still cold, even though his face was still barely suppressing a giddy smile at this whole charade. “You’re not done. Jack me off.”

The crest of my horniness had passed. “Are you serious?”

He didn’t respond; he brought his own hand down to his dick, and I lied down next to him, and watched as he stroked several times, faster, until he shot his own wad, on top of my cum.

“There we go,” he said, closing his eyes. “That was good. The universe is back in sync.”

It suddenly dawned on me that Kevin--who did not bottom--might actually Kevin who had never bottomed.

“Wait a second,” I said, suddenly giddy at the prospect. “Did I take your virginity last night?”

“No,” he said, wrinkling his nose but not opening his eyes. “I mean, yes, that was my first time bottoming. And last time bottoming--remember that. But no, virginity goes only one way. You’re either a virgin or you’re not a virgin, and I’m clearly not a virgin.”

“But,” I said, “I took your bottom virginity.”

“That’s not a thing,” he said. “You don’t separate virginities. It’s on or off. Is or isn’t.” He closed his eyes. “Whatever, we all have our preferences. I have mine.”

“I think our first time went something like you telling me to shut up and take it.”

He grinned, still without opening his eyes. “Do as I say, not as I do. But I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m too hungover. I was wasted last night.”

“No shit,” I said. “And you almost outed both of us to Jordan and Erik, thank you very much.”

He opened his eyes, and looked at me, slightly scandalized at the assertion. “I did not.”

“You told me you were my idiot,” I told him. “And something about being more like Tarzan.”

He smirked. “God, what does that even mean? I don’t know, I was just being a drunk moron.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “you flew a little too close to the sun. Are you itching to come out of the closet? Is that it? And you thought that’s the appropriate time to tell me, in front of Jordan and Erik?”

“I think you’re getting worked up over something that no one else noticed,” he replied. “But, at some point, we’re going to have to make a game plan for coming out. Not just as gay, but we have to tell everyone that we’ve been in some torrid, secret, sexual romance for months. I know that terrifies you to your very being, but you’re just going to have to grow up and accept that it is inevitable, I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes. “But not while I’m hungover, okay?”

“Don’t be dismissive.”

“I’m not being dismissive,” he repeated, dismissively. “Wouldn’t dream of it. No siree.”

I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of Kevin’s boxer-briefs that were lying on the floor--I couldn’t readily see any of my clothes, which were somewhere over by the desk. They were big on me; I had to hold the waistband with one hand.

“Don’t go,” he said, propping himself onto his elbow. “Come on.”

“You’re being an asshole,” I said, as I hunted around for the rest of my clothes. “I don’t want to come out. And even if I did, I would do it in a way that isn’t you drunkenly blurting it out to my best friends.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “You’re right. But you know what? Ryan Wyatt was at the same party as we were last night, and he’s in the same fraternity as you are, and he definitely bagged a guy last night. And no one could give less of a shit.”

I had seen that, actually. Ryan Wyatt turning on the flirting pretty heavily with some guy, the two of them leaving together, shortly before I went upstairs to smoke weed in Rowen’s room. And no one said anything. No one ever said anything about that sort of things, because it was 2007 and people had a little more sense than that. Rob Winslow shot him a slightly disapproving look from across the room when they started getting too handsy, maybe, because Rob Winslow was a prude and constantly watching his surroundings for things that reflected badly on the fraternity, but no one said anything about it except in complete jest.

Brothers talked about him being gay constantly, though, but never in a judgmental sense. Not in the sense that they cared, but in the same way they talked about Tommy Pereira being an alleged Mexican, or Rob Winslow being a carrot-top. It was a distinguishing characteristic, like weight or hair color or ethnic background. And, in a fraternity, you were typecasted by those things. I didn’t have a distinguishing characteristic. I was just Becker and, honestly, I preferred it that way. I didn’t know if I could handle the gentle razzing that Ryan Wyatt put up with. Being a token.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I’m moving at the speed I’m going to move at, and you can accept that or not. I don’t need you pushing me to do something I’m not ready to do.”

“Maybe we should both just throw up an ‘In a Relationship With’ with each other, and then go out of town for the weekend,” he said. “Leave our phones off. Just drive to Biloxi or something, and not check Facebook. It’s not going to be the biggest surprise of the century, honestly.”

I couldn’t tell if that was actually a serious suggestion, because I couldn’t imagine enjoying a weekend knowing there was such a torrent of shit awaiting us back home. Let alone the fact that Tripp, and Erik, and Jordan, and Michaela, and Chris Baker, and everyone in Iota Chi would be finding out from Facebook.

“I’m not doing that,” I told him. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

He looked disappointed, as if that had been an actual workable way of coming out to the world in his deranged, impulsive mind.

“I’m just saying,” he said, “it’s so easy to just tell everyone something. And then we come back and just, like, everyone knows. And you can use the front door like everyone else.”

“I’m sure our friends would appreciate that,” I said. “Finding out on a newsfeed.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

“Who said anything about being afraid?” I snapped, as I yanked my jeans up, over Kevin’s boxers. “I just think it’s stupid that you keep bringing it up.”

“Now you’re yelling,” he said, “and now all of my roommates can hear us having a lovers’ spat.”

“I wasn’t yelling,” I said, though I did lower my voice considerably. “I’m just trying to get it through your stubborn head that I’m not comfortable with this. So maybe I should just leave.”

My phone buzzed. Text from Patrick. “This phone was left at the IX house and you were the last person texted. Come get it. Leaving it in the mailbox.”

“Who’s that?” Kevin asked.

“Someone has Patrick’s phone,” I said. “They should really text Annie Rue. I don’t think either of us sleep in our room on weekends.”

I’d forgotten, briefly, that I was angry with Kevin Malley, so I gave him a half-hearted glare, which he detected almost immediately, a smile creeping onto his face.

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “And now you don’t even remember what we were fighting about now. And you see my warm, loving smile, and you just want to get back into bed.”

He knew me too well, and I hated him for that. And it took me a second to remember, but I glared at him again. “You’re trying to out me.”

The grin fell off his face.

“I was drunk,” he said. “I thought I was being funny. No one knows shit.”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever. I’ll see you later.”

He looked a little concerned. “Is that a mad ‘I’ll see you later’ and you’ll dodge my calls for the next two days, or are you coming to Bruno's tonight?”

“It’s a Bruno's tonight see-you-later,” I admitted, bitterly.

I came back to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed him softly.

“See, you can’t stay mad at me,” Kevin said, with a smirk. “You know you love me.”

And we both realized he had crossed a mammoth line, all of the sudden, completely by accident, and the color drained from Kevin’s face as that word, those four letters, L-O-V-E, suddenly consumed every ounce of oxygen in the room.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to respond to that kind of framing, so I just leaned back in for another kiss. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Kevin didn’t say anything--for the first time in our relationship, I had knocked him speechless. And so I went out the Becker door, and down Broadway back towards the Iota Chi house. It was a chilly morning--much colder than last night, so I tightened my jacket, and started walking quickly.

Love. “You know you love me.” He hadn’t said he loved me. He had insinuated that I was the one who was in love with him, not the other way around, but why would he suggest that if he wasn’t also in love with me?

Or, of course, the word had been an accident. A semantical mixup that resulted in him almost saying he loved me, or that I loved him, when he didn’t feel that way.

Did I love Kevin Malley? I didn’t not love him. I felt strongly for him. I cared about him. There was no better moment of my day, of my life, when he wrapped me in his strong arms and held me close and never let me go. But was that love? What was the difference between love and infatuation, of love and caring for someone? I loved Tripp, I loved Jordan, I loved Erik, and Michaela. And I could bandy the word “love” around so easily when thinking about friends, and of course I loved Kevin at least as much as I loved them, but when did romantic love start?

I got to the Iota Chi house, the lawn strewn with solo cups from the night before. I went up on the porch, dug through the mailbox, until I found Patrick’s RAZR, which now had a big crack running through the top of it.

I loaded up his contacts, and selected Annie Rue. I texted her: “This is Becker. Tell Patrick I’ve got his phone.”

She replied back almost immediately, “Thanks!”

And then, suddenly, I was startled by the door opening.

And then I turned to sheer panic when I saw who was standing on the other side of the door: Matt Rowen and Justine. My sister, Justine. Justine, Justine.

“Ha, oh,” Matt Rowen said when he saw me, more amused than ashamed, which was the exact opposite sentiment that I wanted to demand from him. He was wearing boxers and an Iota Chi Homecoming 2006 t-shirt, with a hole in one of the armpits. His hair was stuck up in bedheaded quivers. “Morning, Becker.”

Justine looked at me, biting her lip in immense discomfort. She was in her clothes from the night before, obviously, which made it impossible to ignore what had happened to my baby sister within the walls of our exalted frat castle.

I was fuming. Like, ready to leap onto Matt Rowen and beat him into the ground. But I knew I wouldn’t do that, because of how big and muscular he was; he would crush me into smithereens if we ever got into some sort of altercation, and I knew how bad that would look, and because how many times that image would be replayed to the brotherhood.

So I let my frustrations seethe peacefully.

“Good morning,” I grunted.

He could tell I was angry. He looked at me just slightly nervously, as if mentally questioning what brother-bear instincts could come erupting like Vesuvius at the slightest provocation.

“So, uh,” Matt said to Justine, looking at me the whole time out of the corner of his eye. “Bye, then.” And then, without another word, he slunk back inside and closed the door on the Becker children.

I did not waste time, as she quickly descended the porch steps, with me write behind her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I said, trying not to scream at her while we were still within earshot of the Iota Chi house. “Don’t fucking walk away from me.”

“Whatever,” she said, moving quickly down the sidewalk. She didn’t stop, but she continued to talk to me over her shoulder. “Matt’s a nice guy. You’re friends with him!”

“Not good enough, apparently,” I told her, struggling to keep up with her; she really was quite a fast walker. “Seriously, Justine, what the hell were you thinking? Do you do this a lot? Bang my fraternity brothers at one of our parties?”

“Don’t you even--” she began. And then she figured out she had, perhaps, a stronger line of questioning, so she launched into that: “What the fuck were you even doing at the Iota Chi house? Checking up on me?”

“I was picking up Patrick’s phone,” I replied, pulling it out of my jacket and waving it for her. “I didn’t even know you were at Iota Chi. Because I didn’t think you were some frathouse slut. Doing the walk of shame the night after a party. You know, people notice when you walk down Broadway, early morning, wearing the same shit you wore last night. And people talk.”

She stopped walking, whipped around, and looked as if she was going to punch me. But instead, she hissed, “That’s a nice shirt, you fucking hypocrite.”

I felt my moral high ground evaporate, instantly. I realized how transparent it must have been that I’d also spent the night outside of my dorm room, with my clothes from last night, my messy hair, my bad breath. And I also felt then came the sudden panic that she would ask, or already knew, where I was, who I was with.

I tried to think if Kevin and I had left together. Of course we had. But it wasn’t like that--we didn’t leave together in what any sane person could mistake for romance. We left together because I had to take him home, because he was incoherently drunk. And besides, I’d long lost Justine by that point.

She wouldn’t know. She didn’t know. There was no way for her to know.

Then I remembered I’d left the actual spoken accusation unanswered, so I tossed out a meek, “I picked them off my floor.” Added, after a brief pause, “And put them back on.”

The answer had come maybe five or six seconds too late to be believable, which I knew the second her mouth curved into a smug smile, impressed with herself by how quickly and sufficiently she turned the tables.

“Sure, and you forgot to brush your hair,” she said. “Because you had to race over here as fast as you could to get your roommate’s phone at 9 in the morning, instead of telling him to get it himself.” She gave a slight laugh, and she started walking again. “I know you think you're so much smarter than everyone, but I noticed things too. And you are so full of shit, Peter.”

I was a little too hungover to gnaw myself free, and it didn’t seem likely that I’d even be able to come up with a tangible lie anyway, so I just went with guilt:

“Okay, fine, I’m a hypocrite,” I told her, as I continued to chase her down Broadway. “But it’s different. I’m not your little sister. And I’m not hooking up with a friend of yours. It’s different.”

She grinned at me. “Who was it?”

“Who was what?”

“Who was the person you spent the night with?” she asked.

Person. The word “person” was the cruelest word that had ever been said to me, a knife torn through my ribs and twisted by Justine. Because she would’ve said “girl” if she thought girl, wouldn’t she? Did she even realize she had left the gender open-ended?

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t have time to think about that.

“Oh no,” I said, warningly. “No, no. Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Fine,” she said, huffily. “Yes, I slept with Matt Rowen. Yes, I spent the night. He's hot and he was into me. And you know what else? He's not even the first guy I slept with.”

I put my hands over my ears. “I don't want to hear that.”

“You brought it up,” she said. “Since you’re so curious what I do after dark. But seriously, me and Andrew dated at Harrington for almost two years--you thought we were just reciting sonnets to each other that whole time?”

“Stop,” I said. “Stop.”

“No, you stop,” she said. “Treat me like an adult. Don't ask where I've been and I won't ask where you've been.”

Person. Who was the person you were with?

Was she trying to get leverage? Was she saying that I had better back off, or she would prod at my shaky little lies?

No. She wasn’t saying that. I was being paranoid. Wasn’t I?

I wondered how many people knew about things. If Kevin Malley had told anyone last night when his mouth was running. Maybe he told Matt, and Matt let it slip to Justine. Or who knew--maybe his jumping on me, and whispering to me, and being too flirty and too open, made everyone talk about it.

I didn’t like being the center of gossip, and now I was terrified that I was.

No. I wasn’t. It was all in my head, and I needed it to not be in my head.

The conversation fell away without another word, but we continued to walk together back across campus. We didn’t say anything more about our respective hookups; instead, we filled the conversation with the banalities of Tulane life. We talked about the new waffle machine at Bruff, and how I thought it was better than the old one but she thought the old one was better. And we talked about some pointless phone conversation she had the other day with Philip.

We got to Monroe Hall, and she gave me a hug.

“Just keep it out of Iota Chi,” I told her. “Come on. People talk, and I don’t like being talked about.”

She didn’t say anything. I watched her go inside, until I saw the elevator doors close. My mom was always big on waiting until the other person was inside. Dropping us off at a friend’s house, dropping me off at speech and debate tournament, as if Natalee Holloway-sized misfortune was lurking in the shadows, ready to snatch us from her life forever.

When I got back to my room Mayer, Patrick was sitting on his bed, on his laptop, typing frantically.

“Morning,” he said, without looking up, without stopping his frenetic mashing of keys. “Nursing Drunky Drunkerson all night?”

The door closed behind me. “Shit, are people talking about that?”

He looked at me, suspiciously. “What? No. Why would people be talking about it? I just figured that, if you weren’t here, you were over there. And he was wasted, so I figured you were holding his hair back.” He leaned back lazily. “Do you want to get Bruff for breakfast? I’m starving.”

I shook my head, sat down on the edge of my bed. “I have your phone.”

“Sweet,” he said. I tossed it, he caught it. “I though I’d have to go to the house to look for it.”

“I told Annie,” I replied. “I figured she’d tell you.”

“She did,” he said, running his finger over the crack on top of his phone. “She AIMed me about twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought she’d be here last night.”

“No,” he said. “She went back to her place last night.”

“Where were you?”

He glared at me. “What do you mean? I was here. Where I live.” He shrugged. “I was drunk. Annie was drunk. She wanted to go to sleep, and I wanted to get drunker, so she went home with her roommates.”

That explanation zapped the rest of my enthusiasm for that conversation. I had bigger things to talk about: Kevin and Justine.

Patrick, as the only person who knew about me and Kevin, would be the perfect person to ask what could have been meant by the phrase, “You know you love me.” But, as I geared up to ask him, I felt very uncomfortably--highly uncomfortable. Because, even if he knew I was gay, this was a conversation I didn’t want to have. Not with him, and not with anyone.

So, instead, I went to my second elephant in the room: “So Justine hooked up with Matt Rowen last night.”

Patrick smiled wryly at me. “Yeah,” he said. “See, that I did hear. That people were actually talking about. Not you and Malley, as much as you think people know, notice, or even care about the two of you..”

The latter part of what he said gave me some narrow sliver of optimism back. The earlier part did not. “What do you mean, you heard?”

“Ha,” he said. He typed something on his laptop, turned the screen over to me. “Morton sent an email.”

1:53am.

From: Brett Morton

To: Iota Chi-Tulane, Undergrad ListServ

Subject: Another sister bites the dust

Matt Rowen and Justine Becker just locked the door to his room. Git some.

Sent from my iPhone

Morton and his fucking iPhone.

Patrick started laughing maniacally.

I gave him a death stare.

“Dude, I know how upset you are,” he said. “I have two younger sisters. I’d be pissed if they had sex with Rowen. Or anyone. But I mean, Rowen’s not a bad guy. At least she’s not hooking up with some Zeta rapist, or something.”

I didn’t say anything, and I certainly didn’t want to admit that Justine hooking up with Matt Rowen was at all silver lining. “Do you think anyone knows about me and Kevin?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never heard anyone say anything,” he told me. “That’s the truth. People think he’s gay though. I don’t think people think you are, for some reason.”

I let the “for some reason” part slide.

“People think he’s gay?”

He shrugged again. “Well, not think he’s gay, but I don’t think people would surprised. He’s a good-looking guy who shows zero interest in women. It’s not like he’s a Cher impersonator but yeah, people have openly wondered.”

“I show zero interest in women.”

“No, you have zero interest in women,” he answered. “You flirt all the time.” Which was completely not true. I didn’t flirt. Did I flirt?

Patrick didn’t elaborate; he started typing again. “What’s a better word for ‘cutesy’? Like if some girl’s talking about something annoyingly cutesy.”

“How am I supposed to know?” I replied. “I have zero interest in women.”

He rolled his eyes, went back to his computer.

“Jejune,” I replied.

He thought for a moment, typed some more. “‘She was talking about the most jejune things.’” He rolled his eyes. “That’s such a Becker word. You’d totally use a word like ‘jejune.’” He backspaced loudly.

“What do you mean, a Becker word?”

He didn’t respond.

“Saccharine,” I tried again. “‘She was talking about the most saccharine things.’”

“Saccharine,” he repeated, typing it. “Better.”