Love Lessons (34 page)

“Well, there it is. Now I’ve seen the mighty
Tangled
.” He gave a slightly exaggerated sigh and popped the DVD out of the player.

Kelly gave up all his scenarios. “You didn’t like it.”

Walter seemed to take great care in not meeting his gaze, getting very focused on putting the disc back into its holder. “Not at all. It was a charming movie. I completely understand why it’s your favorite. It’s about as Kelly as a movie gets.” He put the case onto the watched pile and pulled out the last movie of the night. “The thing is, I can almost promise you that you aren’t going to like
Fight Club
.”

“Why?” Kelly panicked. First Walter didn’t like
Tangled
, and now Kelly wouldn’t like Walter’s favorite? Not good. “Why do you think that?”

Walter shrugged. “Just do.” He frowned and shook his head as he put the disc in the player. “I should have said a different movie. I think you’re
really
not going to like it.”

“But it’s your favorite,” Kelly pointed out. “Your
very
favorite.”

“Yeah, well—” Walter cut himself off and sighed. He waved a hand, as if dismissing the argument, and sat back down on the couch next to Kelly. “Okay, let’s just watch. When it’s over and you hate it, I’ll explain why I like it.”

Kelly was determined to like the movie, if only enough for the evening, if only to prove Walter wrong. Unfortunately, Walter called it. Kelly hated
Fight Club
. Like, really, really hated it.

It was depressing. It made him feel sad and confused and hollowed out. It reminded him of how he’d had to fake it in high school, being “one of the guys” and acting like violence was great, when in reality it made him feel sick to his stomach. The bloody scenes made his stomach turn, and Tyler Durden simply upset him in general. He didn’t get the big twist, either. He could think of three or four scenes right off the top of his head that made no sense given the reveal. Still, he was determined to put on a good face.

Walter saw right through it, but at least he laughed.

“I
told
you. You think it’s the worst movie ever made, don’t you?”

Kelly thought about fishing for a lie, but then he gave up. “Yeah. Sorry.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s really not my thing. But tell me why it’s yours.” At this point, Kelly almost
needed
to know.

Walter settled back on the sofa and threaded his fingers behind his head, staring at the still-rolling credits as he spoke. “The first time I watched it, I got so caught up in Tyler it was like I’d found God. I was twelve, and miserable, and angry, and I just wanted to be him. I watched it over and over, parroting lines, posting the rules of Fight Club on my wall, lying in my bed and imagining my Club Mayhem contributions.” He shook his head, smiling ruefully. “Then, on about the fifty-first viewing, I realized that I’d missed about six layers of the movie. All of a sudden I realized the Fight Club guys were just replacing their corporate lives with another version containing fistfights. It bummed me out, because of course I had to look up and see I’d done the same thing. Then a few viewings later I realized I didn’t want a Fight Club, I wanted Sex Club—Gay Sex Club—but that it would probably be just as fucked up as Fight Club. For a while the movie made me very depressed. Except I kept watching it, like maybe I could find my way out if I did. And that’s exactly what happened. When I was eighteen and I watched it again, one day in my dorm room when I hated everyone, especially my roommate, I realized I could be my own Tyler without self-destruction. Yeah, maybe the world is fucked up and there’s no way out, but I could control me, and I could make myself strong. I could ride the tide of our corporate world and make it out okay, so long as I stayed in touch with myself.”

Kelly listened to this, turned sideways facing Walter with his head leaning on the back of the sofa. He listened, tried to digest it, because it was clearly important to Walter. He wanted to understand, too, if not find an appreciation for the movie, find an appreciation for Walter’s viewpoint.

He couldn’t.

“I guess the thing is,” Kelly began, “that was another one of those movies where everyone was depressing. I never liked anyone. Everyone was a jerk or a loser or so downtrodden it made me feel down too. The whole story stands on an assumption that everyone sucks, and in the end they still suck. I don’t get how that’s any fun. I like to be happy.”

“Yeah. You do.” Walter had turned to Kelly, and as Kelly waited for Walter to tell him he was being insensitive and rude, Walter smiled a sad smile and touched Kelly’s cheek. “I think that’s my favorite thing about you. You’re a happy-seeking missile. The damnedest thing is, you almost always find it.” He glanced toward the stairs, where the sounds of Kelly’s family could be heard drifting down. “I used to wonder how you managed it. I don’t anymore.”

That made Kelly feel bad, reminding him of Walter’s reaction to the end of
Tangled
. It reminded him too of how the few times Walter had checked in with his mom since he’d arrived, the conversations had been tense. He recalled the way Walter hunched over his laptop, typing up things for Rose’s Facebook group and sending emails to alumni. He’d heard Walter’s angry phone call with Cara too, because she hadn’t wanted to get involved in the letter-writing campaign.

Kelly’s one complaint in life was that they still didn’t know about his mom’s job, but even that was minor. The Davidsons all had cheery smiles, and they would, always, because no matter what happened, they’d simply find a way to carry on. He had Walter, he had his family, he had Rose—Kelly led a charmed life. He just didn’t understand exactly how it had happened.

He also didn’t know what to say.

With a heavy sigh, Walter snapped the TV off with the remote and pulled Kelly closer to him. “Sorry. I put a bummer on the end of our movie marathon.”

“Shut up. We were equal-opportunity bummers.” He snuggled back against Walter. He spied a clock on the other side of the room and saw that it was one thirty in the morning. He smiled, a little ruefully. “Happy new year.”

Walter lifted Kelly’s chin. Kelly caught a sad smile playing on Walter’s lips before they came down on Kelly’s in a soft, sweet kiss.

They had talked, earlier, about maybe making tonight The Night to have some sexual adventures, even though they weren’t at the hotel in Minneapolis, but Kelly knew the big sex ship had sailed. They made out in bed for a bit, but nobody so much as came. They ended up spooning, Kelly behind Walter.

“We go back in three days,” Walter pointed out as they lay there in the darkness.

Kelly stroked his arm. “What are the plans for Williams? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Walter caught Kelly’s hand with his and squeezed it. “I might have some freshmen you can approach, if you’re game. We gathered a list of longtime families who might have some sway with the board, and some of them are first-years.”

“Anything you need. Just let me know.” Kelly pressed a kiss into the back of Walter’s neck. “You guys are so organized. This has to work.”

“I wish that were the case.” Walter’s thumb stroked Kelly’s fingers. “I wish life
were
like those Disney movies. I wish people weren’t mostly depressing and weird like they felt to you in
Fight Club
. The truth is, usually people disappoint you.”

I’m not going to disappoint you.
Kelly wanted to say that, but he knew better. He simply kissed Walter again and held him until he fell asleep.

Kelly took longer. He ended up finding his iPod and queuing up the
Tangled
soundtrack, listening to it all the way through until he got to “Waiting for the Lights”. He put that on repeat and listened to Alan Menken’s hopeful, happy swells, pressing his class ring into his palm as he let the music carry him off to dreamland and the promise of a better tomorrow.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Walter was glad to be back at Hope, but at the same time he wasn’t.

Being with the Davidsons had been a good break from his usual family chaos and the hell that waited because of Williams’s job debacle, but at the same time seeing such a happy family reminded him how messed up his own was. It was hard to watch them be so connected. And Kelly—Walter didn’t even know where to start thinking about Kelly. Walter loved him, more every day, which was a huge fucking problem. Because Kelly didn’t just want, he
expected
his life to end up like that damn Disney movie. He failed to see how removed from reality that storyline was. Reality was the only thing Walter knew, and he’d learned long ago never to turn his back on it.

Where that left the two of them, he didn’t know. Happily, once they got back to Hope, he was too busy going to war to think about that too much.

Classes had always been something that happened vaguely on the side of Walter’s life, but they were pushed so far to the periphery now they were an annoyance when they had to be dealt with. Skipping was never an option at Hope—even the “large” lecture classes of one hundred students took attendance and cast penalties for too many absences—so Walter had to work them in around writing letters, staging demonstrations and pounding campus pavement as he and Rose and the rest of the communications students did their best to enlist soldiers.

Kelly was one of their recruits, and he proved to be a surprisingly good one. He had better personal-relations instincts than most of the communications majors—give him a few years and he’d be able to help someone run for office. While Rose and Walter huddled over laptops, consulting spreadsheets and arguing over what would be their next move, Kelly visited the student lounges with other volunteers, shaking hands and handing out flyers and sample letters to the editor. When their team held a Google Hangout with interested alumni, Kelly became the spokesperson in their window, passing forward information.

He was a great face for the movement because one, he was still the super-cute good boy from Mayberry, and two, unlike most of the upperclassmen, he wasn’t angry. Well, he was, but not so far down into his core that it came out in cold fury. Best of all, though, Kelly had a great backstory. At the Occupy Hope rallies that popped up on the main lawn, Kelly stood on the speaker’s bench—wearing the super-hot leather jacket, always—and turned the random rage at an overly mothering college back to the matter at hand. Yes, he was prepped for hours by Rose, given key words and sound bites, but it was Kelly’s authenticity and, frankly, downright Disney charm that kept winning the day.

“I came to Hope because it promised to be a community that took care of me. I was just coming out and wanted somewhere safe to practice being publicly authentic to myself. I have allergies, so I wanted somewhere that respected my health needs. I’m from a small town, so I wanted somewhere that felt intimate and not overwhelming. Hope seemed like all of that to me. Sure, it came with a high sticker price. My family and I decided it was worth changing our budget to make it work.

“Yet being here in person has not always been what was promised. I’m in an allergy-friendly room, but it’s a single being used as a double in the one dorm known for being unfriendly to gay men. I’ve had a lot of near-misses in the cafeteria with foods that would send me to the hospital. Now I’m finding out Hope is cutting a whole department, a department I was considering settling my major in. Hope for me looks less and less every day like a family that supports me and more and more like an institution eager to take my money but unwilling to deliver its promises.”

He gave variations on the same speech to the paper and letters to the editor, and every time it was a hit. Everyone knew Kelly now. He was the campus celeb, and if he weren’t already spoken for on the dating front, he’d be skimming the cream of the crop and sampling all the wares.

Occasionally Walter felt bad that he was in the way of that, but if he even
hinted
at that guilt, Kelly either got angry or got them both naked. The latter was more usual, especially as Kelly learned how quickly it shut Walter up.

This became Walter’s life: working to rile up the student body and alumni, strategizing with Rose, skating through on classes, making out with Kelly. Every moment he was out of his dorm room, he was working. Before break, he and Kelly had gone out to movies, gone to Moe’s, but now all they did was rally, plan and come back to the room to crash.

They’d rearranged their room, opening the futon up fully and sharing it as a bed, using the loft space as storage. They were still two sardines wedged into a sliver of space, but they made it work. Walter had wanted to try and find them a bigger space, somewhere away from Porter, because while their heightened profiles might make them the toast of Hope in most places, this was not the case on their floor. Kelly was against the move, though.

“The administration is so angry at us. If we try to get anything out of them right now, they’ll either squash it for spite or use it as leverage against us. We’re fine how we are.”

They were lying on the futon, naked and spooned together, Kelly’s head on Walter’s shoulder. Walter stroked Kelly’s hair and trailed fingers down his back. “Are things okay with our resident meatheads? No one’s giving you any shit?”

Kelly shrugged. “Sure they are. I’m not worried, though. It’s like you said. They’re just teasing me. They can’t do anything. There’s a lot of power in knowing they can only taunt me, not act. I’ve finally figured that out, and it’s changed how I deal with them and let them affect me.”

“If they so much as make you sweat—”