by Chase Connor
“What now?” I laughed.
“Did you hear about the new student?” Alex wriggled his eyebrows at me.
“Kinda.” I gave a half-shrug this time. “Some new kid from San Diego. I heard dad talking about needing to acquisition some materials that they hadn’t budgeted for because they didn’t think they’d have any late enrollees or transfers and…”
“Very fascinating, Coop.” Alex cut me off. “But do you know anything else about him?”
“Well, I now know it’s a he, so there’s something.”
“Apparently, he’s a very hot ‘he’.” Alex grinned even wider. “Martin saw him leaving my dad’s office with his parents as they were doing final enrollment, and he said he’s obscenely fuckable—he heard the ladies in the office say so.”
“So, Martin lies about the office staff?” I lazily twirled a celebratory finger in the air near my head.
“Smartass.” Alex snorted. “Martin said he seemed a little…fruity.”
“Do you tolerate casual homophobia from your clique of friends?” I frowned.
“You’re in my clique of friends.”
“Yet, no casual homophobia from me.” I replied.
“No.” He waved me off. “’Cause you’re the biggest homo I know.”
Alex grabbed his towel off of the floor and started wiping down his torso, freeing it of any sweat that hadn’t dried yet.
“I’m still not saying those things, am I?”
“Point taken.” Alex relented. “But you’re still a homo.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes.
“He could be fruity, though…couldn’t he?” Alex gave me a look, the hand holding his towel frozen against his chest.
“I mean, ignoring the fact that we’re still using the term ‘fruity’, logically, yes, he could be homosexual.” I shrugged.
I was doing a lot of shrugging today.
“We got to find out!” Alex stood, starting to wipe off his abs and moving to his legs.
“We have to find out.” I frowned. “But, no, we don’t.”
“Oh. Come. On.” Alex dropped the towel on the bench. “It’ll be nice to have another gay kid in the school. Well, one that we know about.”
“Just because Martin says that he seemed to be gay…”
“Fruity.”
“…doesn’t mean that we have to go on a fact-finding mission, Alex.” I shook my head. “Besides, do you really think the new kid is going to admit to two strangers at his new school that he’s gay?”
“But, if he’s hot, and he’s gay, then…” Alex began, then stared off into space.
“Then what?” I laughed loudly.
“Then…maybe…maybe, I’ll ask him out.” Alex shrugged, his cheeks turning a bright shade of pink.
“I see.” I opened my eyes wide in faux-shock. “You want to see if you can slip the sausage to the new kid? Play hide the pepperoni? Audition for the role of the Butt Ranger?”
“Oh, shut up, Coop.” Alex chuckled nervously and ventured over to sit on the couch with me. “Aren’t you tired of being surrounded by straight guys and having no way of releasing your sexual tension??”
“I beg your pardon?”
Alex laughed. “Finally lose your virginity, dude. Get you a big helping of man meat!”
“You’re a pig.”
“No, I’m just a hormonal eighteen-year-old virgin that wants some transfer student cock, Coop!” Alex crowed.
I hushed him and motioned to the floor above us. While my dad and I knew about Alex’s sexual proclivities, his family did not. And I didn’t want this to be the night that his mother and father had a teary scene about their “fag son” and “where they went wrong” in raising him. Something told me that his rich, uptight parents were not as liberal as my high school teacher father. That was a scene that I did not want to play a role in. Ever.
“They can’t hear anything up there—especially with the music going.” Alex waved me off.
“Fine.” I relented. “Find out if the new student likes butt sex, Alex. Just leave me out of it.”
“Fine.” Alex mocked me with a taunting smile.
“Fine.” I mocked him back.
This went back and forth on and on longer than was adorable for a couple of high school seniors. But it passed the time. When you’re a gay high school senior, waiting for a better life to begin, there’s nothing to do but pass time.
Alex was in his bed and I was in the futon late that night, having watched a few scary movies and devoured more than our share of Indian food that his mother had ordered. When someone puts Bhindi Masala, samosas, and Biryani in front of me, I turn into a ravenous animal. I can’t help myself. Alex will eat just about anything—and lots of it—which was why we both laid in our respective places, torpid and gassy, praying for death.
I stared at the unfinished ceiling above me, my eyes seeing well in the dark since we had turned out the lights at least fifteen minutes prior. Alex wasn’t asleep—I knew it. Years of sleeping in the same room as him had taught me his breathing patterns when he actually fell asleep. The fact that he was groaning periodically from how full his belly was gave me another clue. I tried to ignore his groaning and posturing, but sleep was eluding me. The whole discussion about the new kid had given me things to think about.
If I knew that another student was gay—and I was attracted to him…would I out myself to another person? Would I take that risk?
I wasn’t too sure what the answers to those questions were. Like Alex, I was also a hormonal eighteen-year-old male that just wanted to experience first love and sex and…well, all the things that entailed. Maybe I wasn’t as vulgar about it as Alex, but the feelings were the same. How hot was this new student going to be? If he was super-hot and also gay, why wouldn’t I tell him I was also gay—and possibly interested in experiencing sex for the first time?
“Coop.” Alex whispered from across the room. “You awake?”
“If you need to masturbate, Alex, just do it.” I sighed, speaking lowly. “Just try to keep your moaning quiet.”
“Come here.”
“Pass.” I chuckled.
“Come talk to me, assface.”
I rolled my eyes but found myself swinging my legs off of the futon and shuffling over to Alex’s bed. Like he always did, Alex threw the covers back so I could crawl into bed beside him. I snuggled down into the bed and pulled the covers up to my chest, settling in beside my best friend.
“Do you think that maybe Martin is right?” Alex whispered.
Something about the dark of night in bed makes people feel that they have to whisper, as though they will be heard by…someone. No matter how private the room is that a person is in, darkness, compounded by the nighttime hours, makes a person change their behaviors.
“I wouldn’t trust Martin’s opinion about anything.”
“But…what if?” He turned his body so that he was laying facing me.
“Then ask him out, I guess.”
“You’re the only person that I’ve ever come out to, Coop.” Alex whispered.
“Well, what’s one more?” I replied.
Alex didn’t have an answer. He just stared at me.
“Fine.” I sighed. “I’ll see what I can find out for you.”
I could see Alex’s smile out of the corner of my eye. The moonlight coming through the windows near the ceiling illuminated his brilliant white teeth, making him look like the Cheshire Cat.
“Really?”
“Yes.” I replied.
“But you’ll tell me before you Grindr him, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll tell me what you find out before you tell him you have a friend that’s interested, right?” Alex replied like I was an idiot.
“I didn’t volunteer to be your pimp.” I snorted, staring up at the ceiling.
“Please?” Alex pleaded. “Well, not my pimp, but hook me up.”
“If I say ‘yes’, can we go to sleep?” I aske
d.
“Yes.”
“Then…yes. I guess.” I shrugged.
Alex beamed at me in the dark again.
“You’re my best friend.”
“Gross.” I stated blandly as I flipped the covers off of myself once again. “But you’re my best friend, too.”
I went back to my futon as Alex resettled back into bed, and luckily the next sound I heard a few moments later was his even breathing from sleep finally taking over. I rolled onto my side, thinking about what an idiot I had become over the last three years. What a pushover I was for Alex. Why was I volunteering to help him out when this could end very badly? I rolled my eyes at myself and finally found myself drifting off to sleep as well.
In my dreams that night, Thom and I were having another sexual encounter. We were in a classroom again, and Mr. Freeslay was trying to explain another mathematical theory to his dullard students and I was staring at the back of Thom’s head. Suddenly, Thom turned his head and his eyes landed on mine. He smiled. He turned his body and stood from his seat.
I watched as Thom walked towards me down the aisle created by the desks, his athletic body lithe and lean but muscled. I wanted to see what was under all of those clothes. I would do anything to see him naked and looking at me with desire. I swallowed hard as he stopped right in front of my desk, looking down at me.
‘Is this what you want?’ Thom grinned evilly down at me as he grabbed his crotch, which was just above the lip of my desk.
Unfortunately, Alex banging around in his bathroom woke me from the climax of the dream. Poor choice of words, I know. Fucking friends. What good did they do?
Monday morning at Dextrus was like any other beginning day of the school week. My day started in AP American Literature, which was the one class that I had with Alex besides Calculus. Normally, I would have been in Comparative Literature, but I had been forced into AP American Literature my senior year since dad taught the other class. Either was fine with me. I had plenty of English credits to graduate without taking another English credit class…but not taking a class wasn’t an option, apparently.
Alex kept motioning to me throughout class like he was a sniper, indicating that I needed to keep my eyes open for the new kid. For the most part, I ignored him, or when I did look at him, it was to roll my eyes. At the halfway point in class, Alex had settled in on listening to Mr. Hessman’s lecture on The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Apparently, the lecture was coming before the assignment to read the book, which seemed out of order to me. But I didn’t care. Time had to be passed somehow.
When the bell rang and we all exited the room like zombies—no one’s energy picked up until after lunch—Alex tried to corner me in the hall. I knew that he wanted to discuss some devious battle plan to find out the sexual orientation of the new student—whom neither of us had laid eyes on yet—and I wasn’t in the mood quite yet. I waved him off, telling him I had to get to AP Chemistry—my second time taking it—and I would talk to him at lunch. That seemed to be good enough for him since he made a mad dash towards the Business Building for Economics.
The worst part about AP Chemistry is that, since the class had an odd number of students and I had taken it before and aced it, I was the odd man out. Dr. Sanders told me—unfortunately, in front of the entire class of sophomores—that since I did so well in the class before, it would be dually unfair to put me as a third in a group.
‘A group getting a third member to help with the work—and you to boot—is just not fair, Cooper.’
Great. I was essentially called a nerd in front of a bunch of lower classmen on the first day of class. Luckily, the guys in my class all respected me if they didn’t like me. Being called a nerd in front of a bunch of sophomores wouldn’t lower my social rating. Not that it was exceptionally high—but it wasn’t exceptionally low either.
When I entered Mr. Sanders’ lab classroom, I went to my table, the only table that one student used, and sat down, setting my bag underneath. Other students were at their tables with the partners they’d have all semester, chit-chatting about whatever it was that sophomores now found interesting. Mindlessly, I pulled my chemistry book out and set it on the desk, along with my notebook and pen, waiting to take notes that I’d taken before. Just as the bell rang and Dr. Sanders was closing the door, a student placed a hand against the door, keeping it from closing.
I looked up, wondering who had been dumb enough to show up late to one of Dr. Sanders’ classes. All of us knew that Dr. Sanders’ didn’t take shit from any of his students. Late arrival usually meant a reduction in your GPA or at least a guilt trip that made you feel like pond scum. Dr. Sanders’ pulled back from the door as though affronted by a foul-smelling creature, letting it open again. The student that walked through the door was unfamiliar to me—and I knew he hadn’t been in this class for the first month. A quick glance around proved to me that everyone had already arrived.
“I’m sorry,” the student at the doorway looked down at a piece of paper, “Dr. Sanders. I had trouble finding your room.”
Dr. Sanders frowned at the student standing in the doorway before accepting the paper that the student held. Excuse me, wet dream of a student standing in the doorway. This kid was tall like Thom, lithe and muscular like Thom, but he had short, curly beachy-blonde hair and hazel eyes. His skin was aglow with what looked like a recent tan. Suddenly, it dawned on me. This was the infamous transfer student that Alex had creamed himself over. He was hot.
I shrugged to myself and looked down at my book, no longer interested in what was going on at the front of the classroom. If this new kid was taking chemistry, he was a sophomore. No matter how good looking he was, lower classmen were not on the table for sexual fantasies. I couldn’t wait to tell Alex that he had gotten a hardon for a fifteen or sixteen-year-old. That would shut him up about the matter for good.
“Oh.” Dr. Sanders sounded chipper as I flipped through my book to the page we had been on when class ended Friday. “You’re Logan Marshall?”
“Yessir.” The kid, apparently Logan, responded succinctly.
“The office said you’d be here today.” Dr. Sanders responded. “I’m sorry you had trouble finding the lab young, man. But, in the future, since you know where it is, I expect you won’t be late again. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Logan responded simply.
“Good.” I looked up to see Dr. Sanders walking over to his table at the front of the room. He began flipping through his roster. “I’ll mark you down as present. Yes, that’s taken care of. And you’re in luck. We’re one man short this year.”
Saying “one man short” is accurate at Dextrus. It’s an all-boys school, after all, so it’s not sexist.
“And you’re doubly lucky because the student without a partner is Cooper over there.” I stared blankly as Dr. Sanders waved at me and my half-empty table. “If you need any help, he’s practically a genius.”
I cringed. Logan smiled at my expression.
“Thank you, sir.” I grimaced as I responded.
The sophomores snickered.
“So, just join our resident Einstein over there and we’ll get class started.” Dr. Sanders motioned for Logan to take a seat.
“You couldn’t have gone with Mendeleev or Faraday, Dr. Sanders?” I replied through gritted teeth, annoyed that he didn’t bother choosing an actual famous chemist with whom to compare me.
“None of these guys know who the hell you’re talking about, Cooper.” Dr. Sanders waved me off.
All of the younger students snickered again at Dr. Sanders’ language as he turned to the board.
Logan smiled at me as he walked over and perched himself on the stool beside me, placing his bag under the table as well. I politely offered my hand for shaking and introduced myself in a whisper as Dr. Sanders began his lecture. Logan responded with a whispering of his name as well and we turned our attention to Dr. Sanders.
My attention stayed on Dr. Sanders as he gave an extremely brief lecture over Calor
imetry. I lazily took notes over how to measure the calories in food samples, like I’d done my first time in the class, mostly for lack of anything else to do. Logan jotted notes frantically in his notebook next to me. I felt bad for all of the sophomores taking the class for the first time. It was much nicer to not have to worry about whether or not I was understanding and retaining the methods used in Calorimetry.
When Dr. Sanders was done with his lecture, he directed all of us to work with our partner to understand the concepts discussed and to raise our hands if our duo had any problems we couldn’t solve on our own. I put down my pen and turned to Logan, finding him still scribbling notes, glancing up at the board periodically to make sure that he had jotted everything down. I waited patiently, tapping my foot mindlessly against my bag beneath the table. Finally, Logan dropped his pen and turned to me, a worried look on his face.
“First chem class?” I tried to smile warmly.
“I hate chemistry.” Logan mumbled under his breath, his cheeks turning a rosy pink color. “The math’s doable, but my brain doesn’t get chemistry.”
“It’s really easy.” I nodded encouragingly. I could tell Logan didn’t believe me. “Promise, man. I’ll help you out. I was a sophomore once, too.”
“You’re not a sophomore?” Logan looked shocked.
“No.” I shook my head as I pulled my notes and book closer to him. “I’m a senior. This is my second time taking this class. I already had bio, chem, and physics, and environmental science as an elective, so I had to retake one of those since they wouldn’t let me take an easier class. So, I chose chemistry.”
“You chose chemistry?” Logan chuckled.
“Maybe I’ll go premed.” I shrugged. “I haven’t fully decided.”
“Well…I had to take chemistry.” Logan blushed deeper. “It was my last chance.”
He looked around, making sure no one was listening.
“I’m a senior, too.” He confided. “I’ve been avoiding chemistry like the plague.”
