Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Still, he should’ve run back to Avalon the second he found out about that. Or once he met some of the guys.

  Whatever. He sighed, heading for his too fucking small bed. The fucking room was too small. Too small for him alone, not to mention two guys. Of course, Collin was never there, he was always with his boyfriend. It wasn’t like Jock wanted a companion or anything, but it would be nice to not feel abandoned. He’d never really had a gay friend, or at least not one that had a clue about how to go out and, like, meet guys or something useful. (Although Max could give a hell of a blowjob.) Coming to Calapooya and joining TAG was supposed to fix that, but Collin was a bust.

  Brad’s my friend.

  Yeah, but the dude wasn’t here, was he?

  No hockey coach screaming you’re a pussy, and you turn into a whiner.

  Okay, that was it, no more whining. Things’d be better tomorrow. And next time he had a chance with Toby, he wouldn’t let those fuckers scare him off.

  Shortly after they met, Jock bailed on the party. Toby didn’t know when it happened, or why, but Brad made a point of telling him.

  “Yeah, he was beat.” Brad shrugged, but the way he watched Toby belied his supposed disinterest. “Guess he didn’t have a good reason to stay.”

  Oh, ouch. That hurt. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, losing a fair amount of his social veneer.

  “’Cause you looked interested,” Brad said baldly.

  “I am.” And it was true—he was downright fascinated, and even those few minutes of conversation with Jock had led him to thinking about the possibility of something beyond just sex. When was the last time he’d met a guy who made him think that way?

  “No worries.” Brad gave his shoulder a bro-slap. “You’ll get another chance.” Then he wandered off, with Toby staring after him, trying to figure out what he meant. Did the guy intend to make sure he and Jock had another meeting in the future?

  Regardless, tonight’s festivities had lost a lot of their luster.

  The problem with the party was that it wasn’t huge. It was only twenty-odd frat boys, more than half of whom Toby had no interest in, and twenty-odd sorority girls. The few people he did have an interest in were all in the fairy-tale kingdom of coupledom, AKA the kitchen. That was suddenly the last place he wanted to be.

  He should go back to his apartment and work on his thesis.

  Too tired. I’ll put in a full day on it tomorrow.

  Toby ended up in the living room, getting steadily drunker and having surreal conversations with various frat boys. None of whom were nearly as hot as Jock, and all of whom had a bizarre and ardent belief in something called a beer terrorist.

  “You gotta watch out for them, dude,” a guy who Toby thought might be named Danny said. Maybe-Danny was sitting next to him on the couch, leaning toward Toby, one arm braced along the back of the cushions. So intent on conveying his warning that he’d violated the straight-boy-personal-space rule by about a foot. “If you give them an opening, they’ll strike,” he said with all the fervor of a true disciple about to handle poisonous snakes. Or maybe something even more dangerous, such as a wine cooler.

  I wonder what he’d do if I kissed him? Toby thought idly. He didn’t care enough to find out. “Beer terrorists, huh?” He lifted his own bottle to his lips, about to take a drink, and suddenly it was ripped out of his hands, a few drops sloshing onto his T-shirt. “Hey!”

  Maybe-Danny had it, holding it tauntingly at arm’s length, eyes shining with the light of a zealot. “See? They’re a real threat, and they’ll strike when you least expect it.” He nodded emphatically.

  Toby mimicked his nod, holding his avid gaze. “I believe you. They’re very much a threat.” The only menace here was this fratbro’s puny mental prowess.

  The dude studied him a second longer, and then he gave Toby his beer back, expression settling into satisfied lines. He’d made his point. “Yep. A real threat. But don’t worry,” he added sotto voce. “We’ve got a plan for, like, thwarting them.”

  Toby grasped his nearly full beer, tugging to make sure fratbro would actually let him have it. The guy’s grip loosened, and Toby stood up. “Well, time to find another one.”

  Maybe-Danny frowned. “Your bottle’s almost full.”

  “Yeah . . .” Toby shifted his eyes around, casing the joint, then leaned forward to stage-whisper, “I’m stockpiling in case of a terrorist attack.”

  “Duuuuude.” Danny’s brows flew up his forehead. “Smart move, man.” He pointed his index finger at Toby, thumb cocked like a pistol, and “shot” him, winking at the same time.

  Apparently he approved. Toby smiled in farewell and carefully backed away.

  Somewhat to his astonishment, he outdrank and outlasted every one of the fratbros. He was lying on the couch, concentrating on being one with gravity and not flying around the room along with the wildly revolving walls, when Brad appeared, carrying something. Toby closed one eye to better focus on him, and the blurry image resolved into a walking smirk holding some fabric and what looked like a large bowl.

  “’Zat?” Toby asked.

  Brad lifted the bowl. “This is for you to puke into.” He bent over and set it next to Toby’s head.

  “Though’ful of ya.”

  Brad straightened up and shook out the fabric. “This is a blanket so you don’t get cold.” He snapped it out and let it settle over Toby, drifting down on him, sheltering his alcohol-sodden form.

  “’M I sleeping here?”

  Brad nodded. “Or passing out.”

  Toby sighed. Then hiccuped. “The service here’s excellen’. Have to remember this place.”

  One nice thing about not being young and eternally horny (as opposed to youngish and horny most of the time, as Toby found himself at the ripe old age of twenty-four) was that he’d become more discerning. He might have decided to not pursue a guy like Jock because he’d been bailed on like that, but sometime in the middle of his morning-after shower at Brad and Sebastian’s place, Toby’s backup sexual response system kicked in—the Libidinous Mistake Detection Network.

  Usually it warned him (too late) when he’d slept with a guy he probably shouldn’t have, but it had moments of real usefulness, such as now, when it was telling Toby that Jock was worth another attempt. The kid was skittish, understandably, but Toby would swear he was attracted. Something else might have scared him off last night. Initiating further contact might be worth the attempt.

  At least that’s what he thought until he walked into Brad and Sebastian’s kitchen, wearing only the pair of sweats he’d had in his backpack, hair still dripping, and noticed the computer sitting abandoned on the table. The chair in front caught his attention, pushed back and askew, giving the impression that whoever had been sitting there had gotten up and left in a rush. So of course he looked to see what had made Brad or Sebastian go flying off.

  Shock jolted him when he met Jock’s eyes on the screen over a stranger’s condom-wrapped dick. The image filled up Toby’s entire field of vision, interrupting the feed from his other senses. But when the rush of heat that had slammed into him started to subside, other stimuli started to filter in. He could smell the coffee anew, and soak in the coolness of the linoleum under his feet. And sounds drifted in from the living room. Footsteps.

  Brad walked into the kitchen as Toby was still staring at the image of Jock, trying to puzzle things out. He stopped short, pale and frowning mad.

  Toby lifted his hands up, palm out. “I didn’t mean to. It was there and I came in—”

  “S’okay,” Brad sighed, running a hand over his head. “Just fucking sucks.”

  All of a sudden the picture didn’t look so hot. It looked like a good way to out someone. And the knot in Toby’s stomach just knew that’s what had happened. If someone had sent it to some people, like a guy’s coach? Oh no. His heart plummeted in his chest, felled by the tragedy that was Jock getting outed. Poor kid. “This is how he got outed? Where did you get it?” And w
hy was Brad looking at it?

  “Someone sent it to everyone in the frat. Probably the same someone who put copies of it all over the locker room at Avalon College.”

  Toby blew out a breath, a lump in his stomach settling into his gut. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah,” Brad muttered. He headed over to put the screen to sleep, then toward the counter where he picked up a cell phone and texted someone.

  “What are you doing?” Toby couldn’t imagine Brad would do something like spread this further.

  “I’m getting ahold of Ashley. She’ll be able to find out faster than anyone if other people were sent the picture. At least, she’ll be able to do it without exposing him further.”

  Toby nodded, still staring at him. “She’s a very useful female.”

  Brad rolled his eyes, then his phone buzzed in his hand. Ashley answering, Toby assumed. More texting ensued, and Toby stood there watching for long minutes, heart aching for Jock all out of proportion for how well he knew the guy. But it was tragic. Any gay guy would empathize, right? How good had the kid been at hockey? Toby didn’t know, but somehow he had the impression Jock was really good. Like, professional career potential good. And now his whole world had been ruined by one stupid mistake. One time letting a guy he trusted—it had to have been a boyfriend, right?—take a picture.

  “What can I do?” he heard himself asking.

  Brad looked up at him, eyes wide. “Huh?”

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  “Um.” Brad scrunched up his brow. “Be his friend?”

  Toby waited for more.

  “That’s all I’ve got.” Brad frowned, then went back to his texting.

  After a few more minutes of being ignored (admittedly for a good cause), Toby drifted out of the room to find his pack again. He dug out the shirt he kept for emergency gym trips (but that never got used except as emergency post-shower-at-some-guy’s-house clothes), threw his dirty garments in, said good-bye to a distracted Brad, and left.

  Jock had never been a black dude that Politically Correct White People pandered to, but when all the guys in the frat were sent the picture of him sucking that dude’s dick, he suddenly got how it might feel.

  It felt like being stifled under a ton of eager frat boy “sensitivity.” It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the support, and all the guys swearing they’d keep it on the downlow, and telling him they really didn’t care (even if he didn’t believe them). It was that when Kyle had patted him on the back and said, “I just want you to know we’re taking care of this,” it made Jock’s skin crawl where Kyle touched him, even through his sweatshirt.

  “Taking care of what?”

  Kyle screwed up his face. “Of making sure nobody in the frat leaks that picture. You don’t need the whole world seeing it.”

  Jock stared at him, trying to figure if Kyle was that naive, or if he was that cynical. He nodded, finally, once he figured it was Kyle’s problem. Because that image was like a guillotine blade hanging over him, about to slice through his neck. It was only a matter of time before he lost his head. Under other circumstances, he might’ve been touched by the way his frat brothers thought they could protect him. Now, though, he was irritated to the point of being pissed off at them. None of them blamed him for it. They all thought he was a victim.

  How would they all feel if they knew how that shit really went down? Because seriously, he’d put himself in that position, and let that guy take the picture—did they think he hadn’t noticed the phone in the dude’s hand? Or the flash going off?

  It was all right, though, because Jock spent most of the afternoon in Brad’s spare bedroom, blaming himself.

  Too bad that when he’d escaped to Brad and Sebastian’s, Tank had insisted on coming with him for support. Every sympathetic, protective thing Tank said got all over Jock’s last nerve, and he had to grind his teeth to keep from biting his brother’s head off. As soon as Brad showed Jock the extra bed, saying, “Just chill out, dude. You need it,” Jock had responded by shutting the door on them. He’d apologize for being rude later. He was too fucking exhausted to deal now.

  Judging by the way the sun was coming in the windows, it was late afternoon when he decided he couldn’t avoid everyone forever. May as well face the shit he’d created. Shoving himself out of his hidey-hole, he found Brad alone in the kitchen.

  “Hey,” he said to the dude’s back.

  Brad was standing at the counter, doing something to vegetables, but he looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Want something to drink?”

  Jock shrugged and balanced on one foot to rub his instep with his big toe. He didn’t know what he wanted.

  “I can make coffee.”

  Jock squinted. “It’s, like, late, right?”

  Brad indicated the microwave clock with a tilt of his head. 4:26.

  “Nah. I don’t even like it anyway,” he admitted a second later.

  “You want a beer?” Brad asked, wiping his hands on the dish towel he’d tucked into his waistband, then dropping it on the counter. “Sit down and I’ll get you one.”

  “Okay.” Why did everyone think beer made things better? Whatever. For now, he made his way over to the kitchen table, half-sliding—sock skating—on the slick floor. “Where’s everyone else?” Like his brother?

  “Sebastian went to the library to work, and Penny called and convinced Tank to go do something with her.”

  “She did?”

  “I might’ve talked to Ashley and got her to tell Penny to distract your brother.” Brad snapped a bottle cap into the garbage can, giving a fist pump when he scored a basket.

  “Thank fuck,” Jock sighed, pulling out a kitchen chair. “How did you know I didn’t want him here?”

  Brad snorted and set a beer in front of Jock’s place, then sat himself down with another. “’Cause you wince every time he opens his mouth.”

  Jock winced. “Shit. Is he pissed?”

  “He hasn’t noticed. He still thinks you need him. I had to work pretty hard to convince him you were okay here with just little old me, even with Penny offering him fuck all to get him to leave.”

  “Thank you. Shit. Seriously, thank you.”

  “He’s really getting to you.”

  “Everyone is. I mean, not you, I dunno why.” Jock took a long swallow of his beer to shut himself up, forgetting it kinda nauseated him now. He couldn’t help the face he made in reaction.

  “You want something else?” Brad asked.

  “No.” Jock picked at the label on his bottle. “I drank a lot of beer that night. When I hooked up with that guy in the picture.” He yanked the corner too hard, and a strip of paper tore off. He kept mutilating it, peeking to see Brad bunching his brows up and watching Jock’s hands.

  “So that’s how that guy got the picture? You were wasted.”

  Jock’s throat closed up, so he nodded, swallowing to try to move the blockage. This was his chance to tell someone what really happened, and he was going to fucking do it, even if his heart was climbing up his trachea with a grappling hook. But when he tried to take a breath for the words, he choked on it, falling into a hacking fit.

  Brad leaned toward him, elbows on the table. “Dude, you don’t have to tell me about it. Let’s talk about something else,” he said over Jock’s racket.

  Jock coughed once more before he could croak, “Okay.”

  Brad nodded and looked at him expectantly.

  Jock took another chug of his beer and nearly hacked that up too, eyes watering.

  “Or you could veg in front of the TV, or something else.”

  “I wanna talk,” he said quickly, swiping at his eyes. “Tell me what you didn’t last night at the party. About being with another guy.” He took another swallow of beer, forcing himself not to react, nervous about bringing up the subject, but Brad half smiled at him. Then he stood up and started talking.

  “Sebastian was the first guy I hooked up with,” he said, reaching up to open a cupboar
d door.

  “He was?” When did this other guy show up then?

  Brad pulled out a wineglass. “After the first couple of times Sebastian and I hooked up, Collin jumped me in the shower.”

  “Collin?” Jock started to take a reflexive—or maybe emphatic?—drink of beer, but then his stomach objected so he set it down. Shit, he’d already drunk three-quarters of it.

  Brad smiled with nostalgia or something. “Yeah.” He slid a half-full bottle of wine out from behind the toaster, pulling out the cork. “He sucked me off. I didn’t even really want him to, but, you know.”

  Oh yeah, he knew. “He had his mouth on your dick.”

  “That.” Brad nodded, bringing the glass of red he’d poured to the table and placing it in front of Jock.

  “Um, wine?”

  Brad shrugged as he sat back down. “Hey man, you’re gay. You’re totally allowed to like wine and think beer sucks. Maybe I’ll even make a quiche for breakfast in the morning and you can enjoy that, too.”

  “Guess there’re benefits,” Jock muttered. “So, um, about Collin, does Sebastian know?” He had to, right? Brad wouldn’t tell him if his boyfriend didn’t know, would he?

  “Yep.” Brad drained his beer, then grabbed ahold of Jock’s. “We weren’t, like, exclusive then, so he was okay with it.” He grinned, but to himself. “At the time.” As much as he’d seemed willing to say already, Jock still got the feeling he shouldn’t ask. Too personal. Talk about sex? Whatever. Relationships? Not without an explicit invitation.

  And shit, the wine was pretty good. Jock had had it at family dinners and stuff, but he’d never really tasted it, he guessed. Or something. He took another swallow, and as it went down he could feel it warming him up. Not like whiskey or liquor—because of course he’d tried that stuff; it was more mellow. It made the lights in the kitchen buttery and the darkening sky outside the windows seem serene. Silent Night–ish. Man, if he could think poetic shit like that after two swallows of wine and three-quarters of a beer . . . had he eaten today?