Off Campus (24 page)

“Ignore the asshole,” he muttered under his breath to Reese, who grimaced and nodded.

Tom recognized that voice. He didn't need to turn around to know that the foot kicking his chair belonged to the jerk from Res Life, the one who'd gotten reamed out by the dean. Jack's was a face Tom couldn't seem to avoid on campus, spotting him everywhere he went and always with a poisonous death stare or a whispered aside to his friends that had them turning and staring. Tom had limited his already minimal exposure on campus to avoid this guy.

Now they were sitting in front of him and his friends in a room full of hundreds of other students, because Tom's boyfriend was pissed that Tom didn't come home with him for the holidays.

He settled deeper in his seat and hoped that refusing to engage would limit the damage.

“What do you think? Do we have three fags and a dyke? Or maybe somebody goes both ways.” The foot kicked his chair again. “That you, Worthy?”

Reese's knuckles turned white where he was gripping the arms of his seat.

Cash didn't turn his head, but he never had a hard time making his booming voice heard. “Don't make me come back there and kick your ass, dude. I don't even know you.”

Not so oblivious after all.

A sudden hush spread like concentric rings from a stone dropped in a still pond, their foursome the focus of a new silence and curious listeners.

On the other side of Cash, Steph was shaking her head. In the quieter crowd, she didn't have to raise her voice. “Don't bother. I can tell a little-dicked wonder when I hear one. He'll fall over when you breathe on him.”

Tom dug deep, remembering that he'd once been good at this. Not in a way he was proud of, because he'd made sarcastic comments to get a laugh at someone else's expense, but he could do it now for his boyfriend, couldn't he? Even if what he really wanted to do was pretend he wasn't with them, didn't know Cash and Steph and, cruelly, especially Reese. He didn't have to let his shitty, cowardly side win. He could change the subject, draw everyone's focus, because right now they were wondering, even if they too thought Jack was an asshole, if what he said might be true.

He used to be good at making people like him. At drawing their attention where he wanted it.

“People fall over when Cash breathes on them because, dude? There really
is
such a thing as too much garlic.” He wrestled a scarecrow-like grin to the surface and threw a casual elbow at Cash.

When the two girls in front of them giggled and turned to stare at Cash, Tom knew he'd won. Because Cash never dropped a baton when one was passed to him, not once, he waggled his eyebrows at the girls and asked if they wanted to taste the garlic on him. Steph
thwapped
him on the other side and told him not to be a sexist pig and shortly there was a six-person debate about whether or not making out in public with strangers could be a revolutionary act or was something drunk members of the Greek system did to embarrass their peers. No one paid attention to Reese
or
Tom, who pressed the side of his leg against Reese in lieu of holding his hand, which was not on the These Things Are Possible list at the moment. Reese pressed back but didn't look at him, and Tom knew, like he knew his father was a selfish asshole and he himself was still a chickenshit coward compared to Reese, he knew that Reese was wishing his boyfriend was someone who would hold his hand in public, and regretting that instead, he had Tom.

When Jack made another faggot comment, no one was listening anymore. Even his own friends were getting tired of him.

“Jesus, who crawled up your ass about the gay thing?” Laughter now behind them. “Get it? Up
your
ass? Of all people—”

“Fuck you, Thompson. I'm not going to sit here and listen to elitist assholes talk shit about me.”

“Dude, you started it. And it's
Rashomon
. You can take off. We'll catch up with you later.”

Tom cursed his stupid moment of empathy when Jack didn't answer as his friends blew him off. Why should he care that the guy was being embarrassed? Served him right for being an asshole.

Still, he couldn't help craning his neck and looking behind him.

Jack was standing awkwardly between two seated guys who leaned forward to talk around his knees as if he'd already left, ignoring him as he flushed and looked around. When he caught Tom staring at him, his face burned a darker red, his eyes bright while the lights in the auditorium blinked three times.

“Fuck you, Worthy.” He flung the words at Tom and spun around to leave, shoving past knees to shouts of
Hey!
Tom felt a weird urge to yell an apology but wrestled that fucking insane idea under control and turned back to the screen.

He had an actual apology that needed addressing more than some guilty feeling toward a guy who'd never been anything but a jerk to him.

Darkness fell like a curtain over the entire room, the only lights all the way in the back as the film cued up and the Turner Classic Movies logo appeared on the large screen.

Though he knew it was too little, too late, Tom reached over and took Reese's hand in the dark.

“I'm sorry.” His whisper slid under the classical Japanese music of the opening credits as the rain poured off the eaves and streamed down the steps and streets of the medieval village. “I'm trying.”

Reese's fingers gripped his and Tom tried to fit every apology in the world into his answering squeeze.

“I know.” Reese didn't turn his head. “Me too.”

Afterward, Tom suggested the four of them head over to the campus center, where he and Cash could smuggle beers to a table in the back of the second story balcony. Reese shook his head and claimed to be too tired for a late night. Back in their room, he smiled at Tom wearily and let himself be pulled into a kiss for a long, quiet moment before pushing away and getting ready for bed. He needed to get some sleep for once, Reese claimed, as he traded his jeans for a pair of sleep pants and crawled into bed, laying claim to the middle of the mattress in a way that made it clear he didn't have room for anyone else.

Tom, who couldn't argue that it wasn't uncomfortable to share a skinny twin bed, knew he was still fucking things up with Reese.

He waited three days to ask Reese what he would have done if Tom and Cash and Steph hadn't been there and some dude started harassing him about being gay.

He'd meant to leave it alone. But Tom couldn't get the image out of his head. The way Reese's shoulders had pulled up to his ears as he hunched over, back braced against a blow that never came.

It wasn't his job to push Reese. He knew that. Tom was perfectly cognizant of the level of hypocrisy involved in him questioning
anyone
on why they didn't engage with a bully. You didn't have to own a bullshit meter to smell the stench coming off that one.

But he couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop poking at the picture in his head like a sore tooth. He waited until they were studying one night in the house living room, hoping that might give him some cover.

“You're fucking kidding me, right?” Reese yanked his feet off Tom's lap and pulled them back to his butt, outrage shooting over his knees to the far end of the couch.

Tom flushed. Yeah, this was how he'd thought it was going to go. The location wasn't doing him any favors.

“You wait until they turn off the lights to hold my fucking hand and you're going to give me shit about not confronting that asshole?” Reese flung his pen down on the coffee table and shoved his notebook off his lap.

Theresa was camped out at the round table again and Tom caught her sympathetic grimace before she slipped earbuds in and turned the volume up on her iPod. He doubted the sympathy was directed at him.

“You know I can't be out on campus. And it's got nothing to do with
us
. You know it and you told me it was okay.” This shitty leg to stand on was immediately yanked out from under him.

“Yeah, well that was before I actually experienced you ignoring me in public.” Reese scraped his hair back with both hands, giving it a tight yank. “Which, by the way, sucked.”

“I know.” He couldn't help himself, though. “Although I wasn't
ignoring
you. I talked to you more than I talked to Cash.”

“Now is not the time to argue semantics with me, Tom.” The set of Reese's mouth was uncompromising.

“I know. I'm just fucking saying—” Tom took a deep breath and ratcheted the volume down several notches. Poor Theresa. He hoped she had a loud playlist. “I'm
just
saying, if you were talking to someone professionally, maybe you wouldn't, you know, freeze up in different situations.”

Reese narrowed his eyes and turned without a word, shoving books and notebooks and scattered pens into his messenger bag.

Well, fuck. Guess they were done studying.

Tom packed up and followed Reese in silence. Reese nodded at their hallmate who manned the front desk and stomped up the stairs, the hiss of his voice carrying far enough for Tom to know he was about three seconds from losing his shit.

“If you're talking about what I do in bed, or don't do, then I'm sorry if my inconvenient PTSD keeps you from getting off in whatever way you've decided is important to your down-low sex life.”

Aw, hell no. He was
not
having this conversation in an open staircase. Tom waited until the door to their room shut behind them. Reese flung his book bag on his bed and started ransacking his dresser drawers.

“I'm not talking about sex.” He stood in the middle of the room and made Reese maneuver around him while he searched for whatever article of clothing he absolutely needed in the middle of this argument. “I'm talking about being fucking terrified I'm going to trigger some kind of flashback if I move the wrong way and thinking it might not be a bad idea for you to talk to somebody about that! In the interest of, say, not spending the rest of your life being scared.”

Reese shoved his head through the neckhole of a skintight black microfiber T-shirt. “I talk to you all the time and that doesn't seem to be solving any of my problems.”

“Yeah, well, that's the blind leading the fucking blind and you know it. I'm talking about therapy.” Reese shoved his feet into skinny jeans and ignored Tom while stabbing words into the screen of his cell phone before tossing it on his bed.

“Not being an idiot, I got that.” He shot an expanding blast of mousse into the palm of his hand and then worked it swiftly through his hair, piecing it out until it fell in sexy chunks across his face. Grabbed the eyeliner and smeared a thick rim of black around his lash line. The accumulated effect said
boy on the prowl
, a look Tom hadn't seen in weeks. He yanked the bright green Chucks on his feet and grabbed a tailored jacket that was half blazer, half zip-up, and more stylish than anything Tom owned these days. “I told you before. You start going to practice, I'll start going to therapy. Been for a jog lately, Worthy?”

That was the low blow. Reese knew he hated that nickname and Tom could see by the flush creeping over him that Reese felt he'd been a jerk by his own standards. Tom felt guilt for that too. For being such a crap boyfriend he provoked his lover into losing his temper and saying something spiteful. He knew this wasn't how Reese talked to people who didn't disappoint him.

Tom sat on his bed and dropped his head into his hands. “Where are you going?”

“Out. To a
gay
bar, with Steph.” Reese stood in the middle of their room and flipped his hair back like throwing down a gauntlet. “Wanna come?”

He didn't wait more than a heartbeat before turning for the door. Reese knew the answer to that question.

“Right. Didn't think so. Don't wait up.”

“Reese.” Tom's voice was low. Urgent. Reese paused with his hand on the doorknob, though he didn't look back. Tom knew there were a hundred things he shouldn't say, unless he wanted to drive Reese into doing something they both might not be able to forgive.
Don't do anything stupid. Please.
He settled for the one thing he could say and mean. “Be careful.”

A sharp nod was his only answer before the door clicked shut.

Somewhere in the deep dark of the night, soft noises and the curve of a warm body snuggling up behind him on the bed woke Tom. An arm landed tentatively on his hip and he reached down to grab it and wrap it more securely around him.

“Everything okay?” he asked, voice thick with sleep. He braced himself to hear the worst.

A forehead pressed between his shoulder blades. Words vibrated against his spine. “Nothing happened.”

He hadn't known how tightly every muscle in his body had been held until they all relaxed at once. Reese squeezed his arm. Tom tucked his chin to his chest and spoke to the wall.

“I know.” He hadn't, really. Hadn't been able to figure out how close to the edge Reese was. How much it would take to push him into a night of blowing some strange guy in order to prove that he controlled the situation. Hadn't known if he, Tom, had already crossed that line.

He'd had to trust.

Not his strong suit.

“Are you mad?” Reese's words were muffled against Tom's T-shirt.

“No.” He paused. Funny how so many of these conversations happened in the dark. Maybe if you weren't totally fucked up you could talk about stuff in the daylight. “Are you?”

The answer didn't come right away, so Tom knew what it was before Reese spoke.

“Trying not to be.” Honesty was a good sign. Or, at least, a better one than flat out lying. Reese's breath collected in his T-shirt, a warm spot at the base of his neck. “I know you think all these terrible things are going to happen to you if word gets around on campus that you're gay.”