Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Turbo was shaking his head in disgust, but Jock’s thoughts went down a more violent path—picturing his fist pounding Jules’s skull until the dude’s brains leaked out his ears.

  “We’re here!” a female voice sang out just then, saving Jules from imminent death. “The party can start.” It was Ashley—Kyle’s girlfriend, who he’d met a couple days before—and a bunch of her friends. Sorority sisters? Whatever, there was a gaggle of them already, and more coming in the door.

  “Sweet,” Jules crowed, voice cracking. “The babes are here. I dunno about you,” he said to Turbo, “But I’m not sleeping alone tonight.” Then he was gone.

  “He’s sleeping alone the rest of his life unless he gets a clue,” Jock said.

  “Word,” Turbo agreed, holding his fist out for a bump. Jock obliged, and for possibly the first time since he got to TAG, he had a moment where he felt as if he belonged. Then Turbo went off to talk to some chick, and Jock went back to being the village queer or whatever he was to these guys.

  “Dude!” Ricky shouted, drawing Jock’s attention. Ricky’d broken his leg in the fraternity fire by falling down the stairs (Gomer said something about an exploding water heater, but Jock made it a policy to not believe half of what the guy said), and he was still in a wheelchair. He had the biggest cast Jock had ever seen, and it poked straight out in front of him like a battering ram. Ricky mostly used it like a cattle prod, moving people out of his way. And to punctuate his statements. “I’m telling you—they’re reopening registration just for us, all we gotta do is find a place to stay,” he said excitedly to the guys sitting on the couch.

  Danny and Gomer were there. Jock didn’t know them that well yet, but he knew the third dude well enough: Noah, the sophomore who’d hinted around that he’d like to spend some alone time with Jock. So far Jock hadn’t taken him up on it. What was that saying about shitting in your own sandbox? Hooking up with a TAG dude had to be a bad idea.

  As Jock was watching, Noah asked, “How’re we gonna find a place to stay in France?”

  They were going to France?

  Ricky bugged his eyes out at Noah, as if he was the stupidest creature on earth. “Not France. Provence.”

  “Provence is in France,” Danny said.

  “Are you sure?” Ricky asked, squinting suspiciously.

  “Yo, Kyle!” Danny yelled over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Kyle! Mr. President, sir!”

  Kyle poked his head around the corner. “What?” He tapped his fingers on the doorjamb, looking around the room. “Which one of you said my name? What d’ya need?”

  “Me.” Danny raised his hand. “Is Provence in France?”

  Kyle did that slumping thing people did when they were annoyed. Then he rolled his eyes to make it more obvious. “Yes. It’s in France. Don’t ask me shit you can look up on your phone—that’s why they call them smart.” He disappeared from view before they could ask him more.

  “See? Told ya,” Danny said, leaning over Gomer to get into Ricky’s face.

  Noah pulled Danny back to his side of the couch. “Whatever,” he said, cutting off a comeback from Ricky. “How’re we gonna find a place to stay in France?”

  Danny grinned, lifting his butt off the cushion and digging in his back pocket. “Duh. Ask our smartphones.”

  “But we don’t know French,” Gomer said, brow wrinkling up. “Don’t you gotta know the language to do a term abroad?”

  “Not for this program,” Ricky said, balancing on his back wheels and grinning like a maniac. “They’ll even give us credit for learning French.”

  “I need language credits,” Gomer said. He dug his phone out of his pocket too. “Did you guys know English doesn’t count?”

  Danny laughed at him and punched him in the arm. “Good one, man.”

  Gomer blinked a few dozen times, then shrugged to himself and went back to his phone.

  “Hey, man,” Danny said, leaning toward Jock to tap his knee. “You wanna go to Provence for spring term with us?”

  Fuck no. “You guys are going to France? With who?”

  “The international studies department. Or maybe foreign languages.” Danny screwed up his face. “Pretty sure it’s the first one, though. They’re gonna let us register later because of being homeless and all.”

  “We aren’t homeless,” Noah said.

  Danny ignored him. “Maybe getting the frat house blown up has a silver lining.”

  “TAG House didn’t blow up, dude, it only caught on fire. It was just a bomb threat,” Ricky said, wheeling his chair closer to poke Danny with his cast. “And I lost my leg.”

  Danny scowled at him when Ricky poked him with his very-much-present cast.

  “Sounds cool, but I can’t guys,” Jock said, cutting off the inevitable argument about whether Ricky had actually lost a limb or not. “You go on and have fun without me though.” Maybe all the guys would go, and he’d have the frat to himself. That’d be so sweet. Peace.

  Fucking Tank. Jock had joined this frat because his big brother, Tank, was a Theta Alpha Gamma brother, and Tank had really wanted Jock to join. Pretty much begged him. And since Jock had already fled Avalon and enrolled at Calapooya because his big brother was there . . . A lifetime of hero worship couldn’t be ignored.

  In the time he’d been here, Jock had discovered a lifetime of hero worship couldn’t cancel out the anger he felt toward Tank. The anger he hadn’t even really copped to until he was with his brother all the time. Being with the frat guys brought it all into focus, almost too sharp a picture. They all knew he was gay because, before Jock had even met the dudes, Tank had fucking announced it last spring, months before he was outed to his hockey team.

  In spite of everything Tank had done for him, Jock was having a hard time getting over that. Even knowing why Tank had done it and figuring out TAG was a safe place, it still gnawed at him. Like, made him prone to biting people’s heads off and imagining pounding Jules’s brains out of his ear canals. He usually didn’t have a hard time controlling his anger—fifteen years of hockey had trained him to keep his cool—but it had been unpredictable since he’d gotten here.

  Longer than that, even—since before he’d gotten kicked off the team. Since Coach Schnigglehoeffer had his little rant over the You Can Play representative wanting to talk to the team about partnering with his pro-LGBT organization. The Dean of Athletics had made Coach give the guy his say, but Schnigglehoeffer had spent equal time afterward spouting off about homosexuality being “of the devil” and swearing he’d never had a “faggot” in his locker room and never would.

  “I guarantee you’ve had a gay guy on your team, Coach. Probably more than one,” Jock had interrupted mid-rant, not even thinking it over, his voice dripping with contempt. That was it, wasn’t it? The moment he’d lost control over his anger. It was also the moment when Coach had put a target on his back.

  “Bro,” Tank said from behind Jock, making him jump. Shit, he’d spaced out everything going on around him and gotten lost in his thoughts. Another thing he didn’t used to do much of. “C’mon into the kitchen and hang with us there,” Tank suggested.

  Shit. He’d worked up a pretty strong aversion to the guy’s voice. Every time Tank spoke, Jock could swear the hair stood up on the back of his neck. He passed a hand over his nape, checking for bristling. He couldn’t tell—it was all too short to lie on his skin back there anyway.

  “Jock,” Tank said louder.

  Oh yeah, might’ve felt some hair jump there.

  He hid his sigh and tilted his head up and back. “Yeah?”

  “You’ll like the guys that hang out in the other room better.” Tank grimaced toward the couch, where one of the frat boys was spitting a loogy into someone’s unattended beer while typing into his phone.

  “Why will I like them better?” Would his brother admit the real reason?

  “’Cause I like them better than most of these guys.” He leaned his thigh against the back of Jock’s chair but ke
pt his eyes on the guys in front of them.

  Jock slouched further into his seat. “You just want me to come in there because those dudes are gay.” Tank thought that gay guys were his peeps. It wasn’t that Jock disagreed, it was just that all the overprotective crap from his brother lately made him want to have a little fit and roll around on the carpet with the dude, wrestling out some frustration. Make his brother understand he didn’t rate the sympathy.

  Except Tank was huge—six and a half feet and mostly muscle, even bigger than Jock himself—and had always won matches when they were kids, and Jock knew for a fact that the rug at their feet was soaking with beer.

  Tank’s heart’s in the right place. Or whatever.

  “Sorta.” Tank nodded. “But we aren’t all gay. I’m in there and so’re Kyle and Ashley.”

  Jock shrugged.

  Tank leaned closer to him, saying in his ear, “I don’t like seeing you mope out here.”

  Jock clenched his teeth. This was why he’d moved out of Tank’s room at the frat—he was sick of being managed all the freaking time. “I’m not moping.”

  “Yeah? So what are you doing?”

  “Watching. And even if I was moping, I can if I want to.” He didn’t stick out his tongue, only stopping himself by taking a swig of his nearly forgotten beer. Ugh. He kinda hated the taste now, plus it was warm. He associated it too much with that night. The last party he’d gone to, come to think of it.

  “I’m just looking out for my little brother,” Tank said quietly.

  The guy was showing him more patience than he deserved. Jock took a second to try to find that objective, icy part of his mind, and got just enough. “Sorry, Beau,” he muttered, nudging the coffee table with the toe of his sneaker. Even though Tank hated it when Jock used that name, he also knew his brother would understand that’s what made it a sincere apology. “I’m just, I don’t know. Adjusting.”

  Tank ruffled Jock’s hair. If he knew how much less guilty and more irritated it made his little brother, Tank wouldn’t do that shit. But Jock gritted his teeth and bore it.

  “C’mon, bro. Let’s go into the kitchen. There are some people there you haven’t met.”

  Jock looked over at his frat brothers again. Noah had his tongue clamped between his teeth, typing carefully into his phone, thumbs so huge and stubby it looked like he was trying to text via chicken wings. Ricky was doing wheelies, and Danny was throwing peanuts at Julian, while excitedly telling the guys, “Yeah, getting out of this country is a real opportunity to develop the Beer Terrorist Response Team away from, you know, prying eyes and all.”

  Across the room, he could just hear Jules—talking way too loudly—telling some chick, “I’m a member of Mensa!” right before a flying nut hit him in the eye. As Jules shrieked and clawed at his face, the girl fled.

  He probably did need to meet some new people. “Okay, lead the way.”

  In the kitchen, Tank immediately got called over to answer some question of Kyle’s and didn’t introduce Jock to anyone. Which was fine with him. He trailed along behind his brother, then propped up a wall near—but not too near—the group Tank was now a part of and started scoping out the people in this room.

  There were some guys he’d never met before, but they all looked older. More like Sebastian’s friends than his frat bother Brad’s. One guy looked kinda familiar, and Jock inspected him for few minutes (balding, blue eyes, linebacker build, bubble butt) before he remembered meeting the Calapooya softball coach. The coach was standing next to a Sebastian-type. Glasses, grad-student goatee, superior look on his face—he made Jock’s skin prickle in irritation from ten feet away. The way Coach Gardiner kept casually touching Sebastian-clone, they had to be a couple.

  Okay, so that was kinda cool, that the softball coach was gay, too.

  Whatever. He shoved that thought away, focusing on something else. Brad caught his eye. He was one of those dudes Jock had clicked with immediately. Not, like, romantically or whatever, but platonically. He’d only known the guy a week, but Jock trusted him more than anyone else in the frat, so he didn’t even try to deny it.

  Brad was doing something over by the sink, and Sebastian was next to him, talking to someone else Jock didn’t know. Another mystery man. When that dude turned a little more toward him—in profile now—Jock’s skin prickled in a whole different way, sweeping down from his head, preparing him for something. Mystery Man leaned against the counter, legs crossed at his ankles. Relaxed and having a good time. Shortish wavy hair that looked black in this light, and deep, dark eyes with thick brows and lashes, plus a perfectly angled jaw with heavy stubble. His hands were stuffed in his jeans pockets, biceps relaxed but obvious under his short sleeved shirt, veins outlining and enhancing their shape.

  There was nothing about him that was special in any way, as far as Jock could see, but still . . . there was something about him. Maybe it was that smile, or the expressiveness of his face, or the way a thin slice of pale skin with a few curly hairs was visible between the hem of his shirt and waistband of his jeans, but he totally caught Jock’s attention.

  Maybe it’s because you’re horny, and he’s the only single gay guy in the room.

  Then the dude laughed, head tilting back and neck stretching out, the sound rolling toward Jock and drenching him like a sneaker wave, and it didn’t matter what made him so attractive. Jock would give anything to run his teeth along the line of his throat, hearing that guy moan in his ear while Jock worked his fingers into his pants.

  While Jock stood riveted, the mystery man’s conversation with Sebastian wound down. He began surveying the kitchen, turning to look at each grouping, each movement of his head making Jock’s neck tighten up a little more. He straightened from where he’d been leaning, trying to find a more comfortable position. Then Mystery Man’s gaze swept over Jock like headlights picking out an animal on the side of a road, halting there. When their eyes connected, it pinned him in place, heart banging against his breastbone, unable to move. Either trying to blend into the background or let the dude get a good look at him.

  He did want to be noticed, didn’t he?

  Mystery Man smiled, a very lazy, confident tilt of his lips, eyelids lowering. Jock swallowed.

  Okay, if he wanted something to happen—yes, yes, I do—he should maybe give an answering smile. Before he could though, the guy’s eyes flickered down Jock’s body, cataloging him, making him tingle everywhere, and all Jock could do was sway, shoulder brushing the wall, trapped in some kind of sexual magnetic stasis field, blood rushing in his ears and an echo of his heartbeat in his dick. He could feel the gaze sliding down his neck and across his chest, following the contours of his torso. His lungs forced in a breath when the guy’s attention concentrated on his groin, lingering there a few seconds, then worked back up to Jock’s face.

  Jock parted his lips to take in more air, and immediately the dude focused on them, his own nostrils flaring. He blinked once, slowly, then zeroed in on Jock’s eyes, quirking his brow.

  Oh yeah. Whatever that eyebrow was asking, Jock was saying yes.

  Not whatever he wants, his alarmist self chimed in, stopping him from responding immediately.

  “Dude,” Brad said from right next to him, and Jock all but jumped, swinging his head around and breaking the connection with his mystery man. “Did you meet Toby?”

  “Who’s Toby?” He blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision or his brain. Come back to reality after a major lust high.

  “That guy eye-fucking you from across the room.”

  Jock gaped. “How did you see that?”

  Brad snorted but didn’t answer, other than crossing his arms over his chest.

  Jock leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Tank didn’t catch that, did he?” His brother kept mistaking him for a virginal little sister and getting all protective. Tank would totally try to stop him from hooking up. If he decided to.

  “No, but he’s not stupid, just straight. You keep it up and
he’ll notice eventually.”

  He glanced at the guy—Toby—again from under his lashes, but Toby had started another conversation with Sebastian, no longer watching him. “I don’t think he’s that interested,” he muttered. Lying.

  Brad laughed. “Uh, yeah. He is.” He eyed Jock sideways a second before adding. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but he gets around. I mean, he’s not really a player, but he kinda thinks he is.”

  Jock cast another glance at Toby, and this time the dude was looking at him, locking onto his gaze and smiling. Jock held it for a second before glancing away. He couldn’t just not have sex for the rest of his life because of one bad experience, right? Gotta get back on that horse. He shifted his weight, then shifted back. “So, he’s not, like, trustworthy?” he asked Brad.

  “Trustworthy?” Brad frowned. “I mean, he’s safe and all, and he doesn’t jerk guys around. I dunno, I could ask Sebastian, I guess.”

  “Forget it,” Jock said quickly. “I’m being dumb.”

  Brad shrugged his eyebrows but said, “If you just wanna get laid? He’s the dude to do it.”

  Laid. Jock adjusted his shoulders, trying to loosen up his chest. He didn’t know Brad very well, but he had a gut feeling that when Brad got “laid,” he was the receptive partner. So . . . was that what he meant?

  Fuck. Who did he ask about this shit? He’d thought Collin might be someone he could talk to, but that was a dead end. The guy was either with or thinking about his new boyfriend all the time. Jock shifted his weight, trying to figure out what to say next. He didn’t want to talk about that, but he did sorta . . .

  Brad scratched behind his ear, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “When I first came out, I would have liked someone to talk to about it. I mean, I was kinda stupid—didn’t even figure it out until I was twenty-one—and then the only guy who knew was Sebastian, which was cool, but he was my boyfriend, or close enough at the time.” He snorted. “Then Ashley figured it out.”

  “Kyle’s girlfriend?”