Love Lessons

by Heidi Cullinan

  Kelly shrugged. “I don’t really need to be in church to feel okay with God or my faith. But…”

  “But now you’re starting to realize that a lot of going to church was about community and comforting ritual, not getting up close and personal with God?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Williams held the door for Kelly. “How are you finding Hope?”

  “It’s okay.” Kelly realized that sounded lackluster and tried to amend his reaction. “I mean, it’s fine. It’s a good school.”

  Williams laughed. “I’m not going to report you to Dean Stevens if you tell me it’s not going well.”

  Kelly shrugged. “I know. It is fine. Nothing’s really wrong. It’s a good school. It’s more that school isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “Interesting comment. How is it different than what you expected? What did you expect?”

  “I’m not sure. Certainly not what I got, though.” Kelly felt like he should stop talking, but there was something about Williams that made him want to continue. “Honestly, I feel a bit stupid most of the time. Like everyone gets the joke about life but me.”

  Williams’s smile was knowing. “Ah. Yes, I know that feeling well.”

  Kelly gave him a hard look. “Not like that. I mean, I feel like a bumpkin.” His cheeks heated. “Well, I guess I kind of am.”

  “Mr. Davidson, you’re a young man in his first year of college. You’re a long way from home—Minnesota, I think Walter said—and you’re the eldest in your family, as you said in one of your essays. All your close friends are upperclassmen or bright sophomores. If you didn’t feel lost and confused by the middle of October, you’d be doing it wrong. However, I have great faith that by this time next semester, you’ll be feeling the wind under your sails again, perhaps a bit tentatively, but there all the same.”

  “Why?” Kelly asked.

  “Because in addition to all the aforementioned, you’re also intelligent and good-hearted.” He pushed open yet another door, this one leading to the outside, and winked at Kelly. “I’ll look for you on Sunday.”

  Not sure if he felt bolstered or not, Kelly watched his professor go.

  Kelly thought about what Williams had said for several days, sometimes taking heart in the conversation and sometimes being frustrated by it. He didn’t go to church that Sunday, partly in a kind of protest, though he’d admit it was a rather useless one. Mostly he simply couldn’t bear to be around people and smile and answer questions about himself. He wanted to sleep more, but his thoughts jumbled and turned on themselves, and the only result in the end was that he was too awake to go back to sleep.

  Walter was still unconscious, and after a few minutes’ consideration, Kelly decided to brave the Porterhouse fourth-floor showers on his own.

  As he made his way down the hall, Kelly kept his eyes fixed on the distant point of the shower doors, ignoring sly comments they murmured under their breath about stepping on cockroaches. When he went down with Walter, the jocks still made the comments they were making now, but Walter and Kelly usually ignored them and chatted, Walter pointing out talent sotto voce to make Kelly blush. Alone, Kelly felt slightly vulnerable, but he knew how to run this drill: no eye contact, no comment, no trouble.

  The one redeeming quality of Porter was its shower stalls were just that, stalls, with private dressing areas staged before single units with their own walls and secondary curtain. Apparently in Sandman the male floors had two mass shower units with six heads each aiming out for true communal action. While in theory the setup sounded like a porn film, in reality Kelly was pretty sure he’d have been showering at midnight just to keep from accidentally sporting wood in front of a nice ass or set of pecs. Here in Porter 4, there were seven private stalls, and as fortune happened to favor him that morning, two of them were free.

  He lingered under the spray, stroking himself. As had been his habit since the night at Luna’s, he gave in to the guilty pleasure of fantasizing about sex with Walter, even though he knew it was stupid and possibly dangerous. In the privacy of his shower stall, he allowed his fantasy self to pull out his cock while sitting on Walter’s lap, let Walter do the stroking for him. He switched to pretending Walter was with him in the shower, and he imagined Walter murmuring into his ear, his own hard body pressing Kelly into the wall.

  The trouble was, Kelly couldn’t help remembering the way Walter smiled at him in real life, the way he teased, the way he was always there for Kelly. As a friend, he knew—but when he masturbated to the idea of Walter, friend and lover blended oh so easily. Especially when he remembered what it was like to kiss Walter’s neck and make him lose his cool.

  His dream Walter moved Kelly’s hand to his own cock. I want to fuck you, Kelly.

  Kelly came all over the tiles, wiping up the mess with his washcloth after. His cheeks were still red when he got out of the stall and dried off before stumbling back into his sweats.

  When he tossed his towel over his shoulder and opened the curtain, Walter was standing there, holding his shower tote in hand, glaring.

  “Walter!” It was a good thing he had the excuse of the shower for being flushed, because Kelly was never more embarrassed in his life.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me?” Walter demanded. He looked sleep-bleary, and his hair stuck out at odd angles. Kelly wanted to rub his hands in it.

  Down, boy. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

  Walter grunted, but his eyes lost some of their bleary nature as he ran his gaze up and down Kelly’s toweled form. Kelly braced for teasing, but all Walter did was pinch Kelly’s ass on his way into the cubicle, hard enough that Kelly could still feel the memory of it as he grabbed his backpack and hustled off to breakfast.

  Rose was already seated at their usual table, wearing a blue beret today, and she smiled and waved as he entered. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, and as he saw the puffiness around them and realized that smile wasn’t going all the way to her eyes, he wondered if her relationship with Luna had gone exactly the way Walter had predicted. Kelly waved back as he picked up a tray and headed through the line, determined to hurry so he could wring the story out of her. He made himself ignore the pancakes, delicious as they looked, because he knew damn well they weren’t vegan. He considered the potatoes, but a glance at the spatula of the student worker manning them told a story of many omelets, so he continued on his way. When he saw the soy milk was empty, he got himself a dry bowl of cereal, some black coffee, and tried to swallow his bad attitude before he got to the table.

  Clearly it didn’t work, because Rose looked at him in concern, then glanced at his tray. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She slid her heaping plate of food away.

  Kelly stopped her gesture with his free hand. “Don’t. It’s not your fault.” With a sigh, he sat down and poked at his cereal. “I should go and ask for soy milk. I probably will in a minute. I just…I get tired of it sometimes, even though it’s been most of my life. It’s not any fun when the rest of the world can eat and you can’t.”

  Rose patted his hand. “If it helps, the food sucks, just like always.”

  Kelly took in her red eyes—total pufferfish she was, this close up—and sobered. “Is everything okay?”

  Rose folded up like a picnic blanket and all but pasted a no trespassing sign on her forehead. “Fine.”

  Kelly tried to figure out how to nudge the story out of her, but before he could Walter appeared, slouching into the seat beside Kelly.

  “What the fuck is this, you won’t even wait for me?” Walter nodded at Rose. “Hey, Manchester. Kelly, what the fuck is this you’re eating? Christ. Let me guess, no soy milk. And polluted hash browns. Fucking idiots.”

  He rose from the table and stormed off toward the food counters. Kelly, who hadn’t even been able to set down his coffee and manage a reply, sat with his cup in midair and watched his roommate turn into a tornado.

  Rose sipped at her tea, eyes twinkling. “You and Walter are such a couple, and it
’s adorable. I know. You’re not dating. Except that you are. It’s almost like you skipped dating and went straight to married.”

  “Walter doesn’t date.” Kelly had said this to her before, but it felt like a lifeline right now. Remember that, before you hurt yourself.

  Rose had a wicked look about her. “Walter takes better care of you than anyone I’ve ever dated, slept with or simply called a friend.”

  “I want to date.” Why did he feel so panicked? “I don’t just want to fool around when one of us is horny. I want to have a boyfriend.”

  Now Rose looked intrigued. “You’ve been fooling around? With Walter?”

  “No.” Do not think about licking his neck. Do not think about licking his neck. “This has nothing to do with Walter,” he lied. “I want the full package. I want to meet someone at a restaurant and wonder if we’ll kiss at the end of the night. I want a sweet first kiss and to lie in bed wondering when we’re going to have sex. I want it to feel special.”

  Rose snorted into her coffee. “Honey, you want a fantasy. Which is fine, except you need to remember that life isn’t a fantasy.”

  “What’s wrong with wanting what I want?”

  “Nothing—except you want the experience, not the person. Relationships aren’t mail order, and people don’t have tidy little boxes to check off. I know you’ve been trying to be more discerning since Mason, and I applaud that, but—come on. Are you telling me you scan guys and think about whether or not that one or this one will open the door for you, and that’s how you decide if you’ll date them?”

  Kelly did, kind of, but the hell he was going to admit that with her making it sound like a bad thing. “So what if I did that?”

  “Well, it’s a free country, so do what you like, but I’d sure like to know how is that any different than Walter eyeing their asses.”

  Kelly was so thrown by her question he could only blink. He was still trying to form a response when Walter came back to the table, brandishing a tray of clean hash browns, a bottle of ketchup and a paper quart of soy milk. He had a wild look about him, and he put down the tray with a bit of satisfied flourish.

  “They’re making a tofu scramble with clean utensils. It’s too bad I’m not straight, because I think the vegan girl behind me in line was about to blow me on the spot. I’m having them hold a plate for you, and I’ll pick it up when I go back in line.” He glanced at Rose, as if just now realizing she too might need to be cared for. “Hon, you need anything?”

  Rose lifted an eyebrow and eyed him with open lechery. “One of you that comes in bi and poly.”

  Walter laughed and openly fondled his crotch as he did a brief, exaggerated porn wiggle for Rose. “I’ll be right back, baby, and all this is sitting right next to you, throbbing like a mighty hunter.”

  Rose laughed, and Walter grinned.

  He put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder and nudged the disappointing tray out of the way for the one he’d prepared. “Eat up, Red. I hear you need to replenish some fluids and nutrients after your shower.”

  Kelly was so embarrassed the room spun, and when he recovered himself, Walter had already walked away. Even before Kelly looked at Rose, he could feel the weight of her meaningful stare.

  “He doesn’t date,” Kelly said, almost desperate this time. Thank God she couldn’t know how his shoulder tingled from Walter’s touch or how the murmur in Kelly’s ear had made his insides churn into gooey butter.

  Rose said nothing, just kept smiling and staring as she drank her coffee.

  Chapter Ten

  On the last Sunday before Thanksgiving, Kelly went to church.

  Even though Williams was right about his wanting to feel part of a community, Kelly didn’t actively try to engage with any of the parishioners. He was polite when they introduced themselves and inquired about him, but he left things at that. Being in church, being in the space, hearing the comforting murmurs of call and response, that’s what he’d come for. The service wasn’t exactly the same as the one he attended back home, but it was close enough to be a balm, and he appreciated it.

  He saw Williams across the sanctuary, his entire family in tow. Williams’s wife was beautiful in a way that reminded Kelly of his mother: no makeup, only striking features and a plain but pretty style. The children were an adorable mob, each one towheaded and apple-cheeked from the cold snap that had taken Danby by surprise that morning. Though Williams waved, Kelly didn’t close the distance between them, choosing simply to wave back and observe the happy clan from across the room.

  As he headed back to campus—a mile-and-a-half trek leaving him plenty of time to think—he pulled out his phone, rubbing his thumb against his ring as he scrolled through. No messages, no texts, not even from Walter.

  None from any potential boyfriend.

  He’d gone to lunch with a nice guy from his econ class, someone as bored and lost in the back of the room as he was, and everything looked great until he’d found out Jason already had a boyfriend, and he couldn’t wait for Kelly to meet him.

  Worst of all? They’d met by being roommates.

  The fall wind whipped around his ears, making Kelly shrug the collar of his coat higher. He stared at the leaves as they swirled in soft eddies around his shuffling feet. The crunch of leaves and cold burn of wind soothed him, reminding him of walks through his neighborhood back home, the same walks that had helped him first come to terms with his orientation and then how to go about dealing with that reality. Kelly found he wanted to keep walking, keep letting his mind spin slowly, quietly, with no one and nothing to impede it.

  He walked so long and far that he missed the cafeteria lunch service, so he swung through a deli on the highway in front of campus and grabbed a soup and sandwich. He watched the couples of all ages, noticing the ones who clung to each other didn’t seem half as connected as the older couples who barely touched at all. He found he couldn’t stop watching an elderly pair who barely spoke, the woman fussing to get more coffee and napkins for her husband whose eyes seemed slightly cloudy and unfocused—all until he looked at his wife. Kelly saw the affection he had for her, his gratitude, his love.

  As he finished eating and headed back onto campus, past the lake to say hello to the swans, his insular world felt ridiculous and strange, more so than usual. He wished the rest of the day could be as quiet and pensive as his walk had been, so much so that he took the long, outdoor and out-of-the-way path back to his dorm, which was why he passed Ritche Hall and saw Williams hurrying inside.

  Kelly followed.

  Though he hesitated at the professor’s open door, Williams beamed at Kelly. “What a lovely surprise. Come on in.” He regarded Kelly as he sat down, and his expression schooled to concern. “What’s on your mind?”

  Kelly hadn’t really known why he’d gone into the building until that moment, but at Williams’s inquiry, all became clear. “I’ve been thinking more about what I expected and why Hope has been a little disappointing. I think I’ve figured it out.”

  “Oh?” Williams settled back in his chair in a half slouch and laced his fingers over his midsection. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I think I expected, or really, assumed, that going to college would mean growing up. That everything about being at college, at Hope, would be moving me toward that. Except I don’t always feel like it is. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it seems even more ridiculous than high school.”

  Williams’s expression was wry. “I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t go away after college. It’s pretty much a constant state.”

  “But why?” Kelly could feel himself almost whining and tried to rein himself in, but it was difficult. “I don’t understand. If I’m not supposed to grow up in college, when the hell am I?”

  “Ah. That right there, Mr. Davidson, is where you begin to go wrong. There is no supposed to. There’s no magic ruler by which we’re all judged and weighed, not in this life. If you wait for someone to tell you it’s time to grow up, you’ll wait forever.
Some people, quite happily, do just that. They don’t do anything until they’re forced to by circumstance.”

  “Well, that’s awful.”

  “You might see if you can squeeze in a few philosophy courses next semester. I know they’ve cut that department down to nearly nothing, but I think you might enjoy the academic exercise.”

  It seemed an unsatisfying response to people being lazy and awful by definition, to take a course about why they might be so, but Kelly didn’t want to point that out. “I’m not sure I’ll have time. I was planning on switching over to history education, and I hear that major has a really tight timeline.”

  “Teaching. Well, far be it from me to countermand the education department, but my advice, as an educator myself? Make the time for that philosophy class, Kelly, if you truly do plan to be a teacher. Because those people who wait forever to grow will be all over your schoolroom.”

  Kelly was starting to feel more depressed by the minute. “So you’re saying don’t bother trying to help them?”

  “Not even close. I’m saying get inside people’s heads a little before you try to fill the spaces there.”

  “Isn’t that psychology?”

  “It might be. It might be both.” Williams’s smile was slow and knowing, and something about the back end of it made Kelly’s skin prickle. Like Williams knew a secret, and if Kelly were very good and patient, he’d let him in on it.

  Kelly, however, wasn’t feeling very patient. “How am I supposed to find out?”

  “Have you heard of the Philosophy Club?”

  “Yeah, Rose has talked about it a few times.” She’d tried to get Kelly to come, but the reading list made Kelly’s eyes cross.

  Williams pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Kelly. “We’re having a meeting on Tuesday afternoon in the back room at Opie’s. Why don’t you come? You don’t have to do the reading. Just show up and see what you think.” He winked. “I’ll buy your dinner, though, if you can rope Walter into joining you.”

  Kelly still wasn’t sure about this, but he supposed at the very least he’d have something good to eat. “Okay.”