Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  “What?” Jock stared at him opening drawers and riffling through the contents. “Did you say—”

  “The bathroom’s out and Gomer’s trapped on the john until we find some.” Noah huffed a laugh while he looked through both dressers—the second one was quicker, because Jock hadn’t put anything in it yet.

  “That’s gotta be ugly,” Jock muttered, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. This time he stretched for real, yawning and everything. “Can you even see? Turn on the light, man.” It was getting really dark.

  After Noah flipped the switch, Jock helped him search the rest of the room. They didn’t have any cupboards or anything, but they checked under the beds, then in the single closet, which was totally empty. It was just a shallow depression in the wall with a door and hooks inside it to hang stuff on, so the chances that it’d been anything other than thin air were slim.

  Jock stood in the center of the room, hands on his hips. “There’s no toilet paper in here.”

  Noah flopped onto his bed, spreading out as much as possible. “Looks like it,” he sighed.

  “Guess Gomer’s on his own, huh?” Jock sat also, but on his own bed.

  “Yup.” Noah shifted, getting more comfortable, it seemed. “What are you gonna do tonight?”

  “Not sleep. I shouldn’t have napped this afternoon, Toby was right.” He’d been to Europe once or twice on family vacations, not to mention all the times he’d been dragged along on his mother’s buying trips during the off-season. He’d known what Toby had said was true before the dude had even said it, but Jock had fallen asleep out of spite or some other stupid, self-harming urge. He had a vague recollection of Noah trying to wake him up a couple of times, but he’d fallen into that weird jet lag space where he just. Couldn’t.

  “You wanna talk about him?”

  “Toby?” What did he look like, a girl? “Nope.”

  “’Kay. Lemme tell you how Turbo fills out a Speedo, then.”

  “He wears a Speedo? You sure that dude’s straight?”

  “He’s straight, in spite of all my efforts. But dude, you need to get over the stereotypes. You believe in more of those things than a Bible Belt preacher.”

  Jock ignored him. “Maybe I should get a Speedo,” he mused.

  Noah clutched his chest, gasping. “I might not survive that. But if anything’s gonna turn Turbo . . .”

  “Yeah.” Because seriously, pretending he didn’t know he had a totally smoking body would be a big lie. “Except it’d turn him toward me.”

  “I’ll stay away from Toby if you leave Turbo for me.”

  “You got a deal.”

  The Calapooya satellite campus in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence was small, which meant there were only two courses of study, one beginning and one more advanced. All the bros were taking the beginning track, which probably meant learning a bunch of local history and some language. Toby didn’t know because he didn’t care enough to find out. Mostly he cared that he had five hours of uninterrupted time on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays (and three on Tuesdays and Thursdays) to drink café, write, watch people walk by, maybe wander around, stop for une bière à la pression, and write some more . . . then repeat.

  Once he delivered the fratbros on the first Monday of the term, Toby left the van in the campus lot and walked into the center of town—a picturesque, antiquated area where a smallish ring road no more than a mile or two around circled the medieval city. He’d spent a term here early on in his program, then last summer he’d come up from Barcelona for a week when he was doing primary source research for his thesis. As a result he knew the town, at least this part of it, well. The Calapooya campus wasn’t far from the asylum where van Gogh had been treated for mental illness, and only a little beyond that was the ancient ruin of Roman and pre-Roman Glanum. He’d revisit those sites another day, and probably a few times. Today he had an appointment with his favorite café on that tiny square across from the Musée des Alpilles.

  The weather was still iffy as he walked into the center of Saint-Rémy. Last week it had been warm enough one day that some of the guys had tried to swim; they hadn’t lasted long. Today it was sunny, but the mistral was blowing hard enough that Toby had to fight against it while he walked. Too warm for the wool peacoat he’d brought, too cool to shrug it off. At least, not until he’d found his café of choice and procured a seat by the window.

  As powerful and pervasive as the mistral could be, Toby loved it. When it blew throughout Provence, it subtly affected everyone’s mood, but it also defined the whole area. Sometimes when he met locals, such as Madame Bouvinet, he would swear the lines on their face had been grooved by the mistral.

  You are sadly romantic, my friend. But he liked himself that way, didn’t he? For the first time in many months, he felt like his old self. Not excited about finishing his thesis, but able to focus. Confident he could do the job, and meanwhile interested to see what the world around him would bring. This could all work out.

  And amazingly, the day went according to plan. Even better than planned—he didn’t feel the need to get up and stretch for a couple hours, and he finished more work than he’d outlined for the day. When he did quit, he ordered another café and went outside to enjoy it on the Place Favier, idly inspecting the chestnut and plane trees and the sand-colored buildings with the light aqua shutters for changes in the last year or two. It was late afternoon, and people were out, making a last stop at the grocer’s before it closed until evening, going by the bakery, picking up their kids from school. Everyday things like that that he didn’t have to do; the best part of any vacation. And of course, tourists wandered by regularly. Not as busy as it would be on market days—Wednesdays right?—or as the summer got closer, but definitely noticeable.

  He should bring the guys out here tonight. Not late to the bars or anything, but for dinner and to experience what it was like to be in a French town, even a somewhat touristy one. There were a few brasseries that weren’t too expensive. He’d wander by one or two on the way back to the campus and see. Toby had to admit he liked introducing them to this part of the world. They got excited every time something struck them as especially “French” and acted a little like kids. Or a lot, depending on the guy. At any rate, it wasn’t as much of a burden as he’d expected it to be.

  The rest of the guys were standing behind Jock, horsing around while they waited for Toby to show up, but he was still fighting sleep in the late afternoons. He sighed and leaned his head on the cool glass of a front window in the tiny admin/student center/library building of the Saint-Rémy–Calapooya complex, watching the road. Not looking for anything in particular, just tired and drained. Weird how the street was paved, but still gave the impression of being that same light beige color of the surrounding dirt.

  The French class they’d started today would be easy, since he’d taken the language in high school, but French history could be interesting or not. Maybe when they got into the term it’d be cool, especially when they started going out to visit sites. Tomorrow was their first French lit class, and if he wasn’t rested up for that it would probably bore him right into unconsciousness. Why couldn’t they teach French math, for fuck’s sake? He’d get into that. Or science. Physics. Now there was something he understood bodily. Nothing’d taught him that an object in motion tends to stay in motion better than being on skates half his life, and applying force to get the desired (equal and opposite) reaction learned from a hockey stick meeting a puck (or hooking a blade, or hitting flesh, whatever) was something he knew instinctively at this point. Repeat something enough and it became innate.

  Jock’s vision cleared suddenly, making him realize he’d been blurring out, eyelids drifting shut. He blinked, focusing to find whatever his brain had picked up on. A guy walking down the road. Hands in the pockets of his hip-length coat, left unbuttoned in front. Jock could just make out the gray straps of a backpack on his shoulders. The way the dude moved was mesmerizing. Confident, long strides in a
swinging rhythm, but head down as if thinking. Dark hair whipped in the wind, just long enough to blow up off the top of his head, but the sides were clipped short.

  Toby. Duh. Just then the dude tilted his head to one side, like he was in the middle of an internal debate and now arguing the opposite point. Jock could make out the upper edge of those heavy-rimmed glasses Toby wore sometimes. Why were they so hot on him? It kind of drove him nuts, the way he wanted to get close and personal with those eyes as soon as they were behind that shield.

  Worse was when they weren’t behind the glasses and anyone could get personal just by talking to the dude.

  “Here he is,” Jock said, straightening up and shoving out the door into the cold wind. It had only been cool earlier, but as they got past late afternoon into evening, it seemed chillier. He shrugged his bomber jacket up around his neck more and headed straight across the lawn and the dirt parking area until he stood in front of his quarry. “Hey.”

  Toby jerked his head up, expression going slack, then he squinted at Jock. “Your eyes are bloodshot. Jet lag’s still getting to you, isn’t it?”

  Jock nodded and shifted his stance, not sure what to say, a little glow over Toby noticing heating him up.

  “Driving back to the house would probably put you right to sleep now. I was going to suggest to the guys that we eat early in town tonight, hang out awhile, since Madame Bouvinet won’t be providing dinner.”

  Jock was pretty tired of bread, salad, fruit, cheese, and salami in the evenings. One thing he’d forgotten about Europe was the way lunch was the main meal and dinner almost an afterthought. “That sounds cool.”

  Toby grinned, and the little glow inside Jock responded to the smile, upping its heat output. “I have a place in mind. It’s not horribly expensive, but nothing around here is cheap. Too many tourists.”

  “But it’ll broaden the cultural horizons of the guys?” Jock lifted a brow, smirking.

  Toby’s lips curved up even more. “Yeah. You get the idea.”

  “Not short on ideas,” Jock said, eyes stuck on Toby’s mouth.

  “Hey!” Danny said, his outdoor voice booming right into Jock’s ear, and Jock flinched forward, grabbing Toby’s arm. Either to steady himself or steady the other guy or possibly just to touch him. Danny shoved his head between them, and Jock let go reflexively. “What’re you guys talking about?”

  Toby blinked, long and slow. Moving his attention from close-focus to wide-angle or something. He pasted a whole different smile on his face and turned to Danny.

  “We’re talking about food,” he said, then a bunch of other stuff that Jock wasn’t really paying attention to because he was trying to tease out the change in Toby’s expression. Jock could pick out individual muscles in Toby’s cheeks and jaw now—like Toby’d had to make them react in the appropriate ways. Had to school his expressions, where before he maybe’d just let them happen.

  Jock was still thinking about the implications of that when they were loading into the school bus. Somehow, he ended up in the passenger seat without even trying. The brief drive into the center of Saint-Rémy zoned him out again, his mind wandering around and bumping into questions like, Could I maybe just tell him I don’t wanna bottom? and If I asked him to, would Toby blow me while wearing those glasses? He sorta knew the answer to the first one, but the second question consumed his thoughts all the way to the parking lot in town.

  “It’s a hundred meters or so to the brasserie,” Toby was saying as they got out, but Jock focused on the low hum of his voice more than the words. He opened his door, and the wind slapped him in the face and cleared the cobwebs and fantasies out, leaving him teetering there a few seconds, getting his bearings.

  “C’mon man, let’s go get some bière,” Gomer said, walking up and slugging Jock in the arm. “I wonder how you ask for beer in French?” he continued in a hushed tone, as if pondering a religious mystery.

  “Je voudrais une bière pression, s’il vous plaît.” Jock answered automatically, his four years of academic French welling up from the depths of his brain. Well, academic with a little extracurricular thrown in.

  “That would be it,” Toby said from his other side. Jock wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with how pleased that made him feel inside, like he’d gotten the approval of his coach. The dude wasn’t his coach, and considering his last coach? He didn’t want another figure like that in his life.

  Dinner was in one of those places he never got to go into when here with his family because it was too local and down-market. Basically a bar, but the food was good. Jock ordered the classic steak frites and, on the advice of Julian, a white wine. According to him, if Jock drank white, he wouldn’t get the headache red gave him. The other thing he learned from that conversation was that straight guys drank wine too, at least guys like Jules.

  “Of course straight guys drink wine.” The dude rolled his eyes. “Do you think the vineyards of the world could continue to run a profit on the amount women and gay guys consume?”

  Jock nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  Jules sighed theatrically. “Maybe it’s because all your information is from straight guys who play hockey? I bet they aren’t chugging wine in the locker room.” He leaned back when the waiter came at that moment to deliver their drinks.

  “Probably not so much,” Jock agreed, watching Jules dig through his backpack under the table, pull out a wet wipe, and then carefully polish the rim of his glass with it.

  When he was forced to turn away or laugh out loud at Julian’s neurosis—totally cruel thing to do—he caught Toby watching also, then similarly looking elsewhere. Right at Jock. Was it random they could communicate with a look, or was it because they’d fucked? Thinking back to when they’d met, Jock had to go with random connectedness, because they’d totally been sending each other eye-messages that night too. And he didn’t think he’d managed it with any of the other guys he’d been with before or since, but maybe that was lack of opportunity.

  Nah. He and Max had blown each other tons of times, and hung out together, and he’d never shared any sort of private jokes with the dude, not like he and Toby were now, both suppressing smiles and both knowing exactly why. Or could he be reading into it? Maybe Toby was just trying to figure out what Jock’s problem was, and that quivering lack of expression on his face was him trying not to make Jock feel weird?

  But then Danny whined loudly next to Toby, “How come you didn’t tell me steak tartar is raw meat?” and just before Toby turned away to explain once again that, since the menu had been in English, he’d thought Danny’d actually read it, one side of his mouth slid upward, and he rolled his eyes, just enough for Jock to see, but no one else.

  Yeah, they had a connection.

  Jock looked like he was falling asleep at the table. He’d had two glasses of wine with dinner, and eaten everything on his plate, plus a salad, and now he’d propped his cheek on his fist, leaning on his elbow, eyelids drooping while around him the guys continued to have a good—or at least animated—time. Julian and Gomer were talking excitedly about that movie they’d seen the other night. Noah was still trying to flirt with Turbo, and Turbo was still mentally scratching his head over it, at least judging by his expression. Not offended or threatened, more like confused and not sure that what he thought was going on actually was.

  Toby hadn’t thought about whether Noah was into guys until Turbo had shown up in skimpy briefs the afternoon the bros had tried to prove late March was a reasonable time to swim in Provence. Noah had been sitting (fully clothed) on a lounge chair next to Toby (similarly dressed), making jokes about needing popcorn for the show, when he’d cut himself off mid-sentence. When Toby’d looked at him, Noah had been staring at the back porch of EuroTAG, mouth agape. Salivating over Turbo. The dude was hot, Toby wasn’t blind, but his tongue hadn’t been in danger of rolling out the red carpet the way Noah’s was either. There was something . . . less about Turbo. Less tall, and less cut, and less broad-shouldered. Less
light hair and more dark.

  Toby hadn’t delved into any secrets his inner self wanted to keep on who Turbo was lesser than. Instead he’d nudged Noah with his elbow. “He’s totally straight, I can tell from here.”

  “So are all those gay-for-pay guys on the internet,” Noah had murmured. “How much cash do you have on you?”

  Since then, Noah had chatted up Turbo every chance he got. Toby figured another week or so of this and Turbo’d be about done. Which was probably about two weeks longer than the average frat boy would put up with it. At least that’s what his innate assumptions about their kind told him. Although he was starting to wonder how accurate those assumptions were for any frat boys, not just these ones.

  Movement to his left drew his attention from Noah and back to Jock. Judging by the way he was blinking and swaying while upright in his chair, his elbow had just slid off the table, jarring him awake. He was cute with his hair all messy like that and the squareness of his jaw somehow softer, like dozing off blurred all his sharp edges. He made a very sleepy, very sexy boy. Someone needed to take him to bed.

  Put him. Put him to bed. Either way, Toby’d volunteer for the job.

  Stop it.

  He surreptitiously checked his watch. Almost seven. If he could keep Jock conscious a little longer, the kid would beat the forced exhaustion of jet lag for the day. He leaned across the table. “Want to walk back to the van with me?” Nerves fluttered in his stomach as soon as he asked, because to him it sounded shockingly similar to the time in tenth grade when he’d asked Lewis Maldonado if he wanted to walk over to his house after school since his parents wouldn’t be home.

  Was he seriously getting nervous about walking through a night-shrouded, very romantic European city with another guy? Even one he was very attracted to?

  Yes. Yes he was.

  Jock nodded heavily. “I should probably get up and move around.”