“There’s no too much when it comes to the people we care for. But what do you mean, you don’t have friends? You practically have a fan club.” He stopped, frowning. “Oh. That’s why you don’t have friends here. Goddamn you, Nussy, and goddamn me for not figuring it out. I’m sorry.”
How Aaron’s pathetic life was the fault of either Dr. Nussenbaum or Damien was unclear, but Aaron was too worn-out to argue. He glanced down at his phone. “I’m supposed to be at my lesson right now.”
“Fuck your lesson. You’re coming to the White House, and I’m making you lunch. Baz ought to be there, and he can lord over me about how right he was and what an idiot I’ve been. You can help us plan the karaoke party Baz is desperate to have. It’ll be great.” He nudged Aaron with his elbow. “Come on. I’ll call Olivia for you and have her spread the word we won’t be in any lessons or classes until choir, and you and I and probably Baz and Marius will spend the afternoon together. Three new friends, coming up.”
More tears leaked out of Aaron’s eyes, but his sobs were fully tamed. He smiled at Damien. “Thanks.”
“No thanks necessary.” Damien stood and held out a hand to Aaron. “Let’s get out of here. As it happens, I know a secret way out that should let us avoid most of your paparazzi.”
By Friday of homecoming week, Giles was completely confused.
At the Salvo auditions on Tuesday, Aaron hadn’t been stiff or catty to him. If anything, he’d been nervous. Hesitant, timid like a rabbit. Weirder yet, twice Giles could have sworn Aaron was cruising him in the same hesitant way.
On Thursday he saw Aaron and Damien in the hall, Damien’s arm around Aaron as he spoke in hushed tones, and Aaron seemed kind of upset. Giles wondered if something was wrong, but if it was, it was fixed by Friday. When he went to orchestra rehearsal, the Ambassadors were heading down the chorus hallway for their own practice, Aaron laughing and beaming as he was frog-marched by Baz on one side, Damien on the other, Marius pretending to drive them like a chariot from behind.
The four of them were so hot together Giles tripped.
He didn’t have any sexy escorts to his rehearsal. He had alumni.
When the former orchestra members filed into the rehearsal hall, Giles was annoyed. He didn’t want to perform for strangers reliving glory days. They weren’t as intrusive as he’d feared, though. Dr. Allison welcomed them, some by name, but the alumni were universally reserved. They applauded after each piece, but they said almost nothing, even when Allison prompted them to engage.
Before the orchestra rehearsed the last song, Allison had the alumni stand and give their year of graduation, their major and what they were doing now. It seriously scared Giles how many of the recent grads had no job at all. Those who were employed hardly ever had jobs correlating with their college studies. Biology majors sold insurance. French majors worked at Target corporate. Social work majors worked as bank tellers. A few of them lined up, but by and large, no.
After they’d all been introduced, Allison invited the alumni to join rehearsal for “Canon”. Only about half of them accepted his invitation.
A thirty-year-old woman with a blunt-edged haircut and severe blonde highlights drew up a chair next to Giles. When Allison counted them in, Giles’s stand partner focused on the conductor, playing each note of the song as if it had come out of her soul. When she lowered her instrument to her lap at the end, she had tears in her eyes.
This was probably the first time she’d played since college. Someday Giles would be in the back of the room, watching a strange sea of students play where he’d once sat. He thought about not playing violin every day, of having a job he hadn’t planned on, or no job at all, coming to a place that had once been a second home…knowing it could never be home again.
When the woman thanked Giles for letting her sit by him, he told her it was his pleasure and he looked forward to playing with her at the concert.
He went to a dorm party with Mina—who couldn’t stop smiling, because she’d officially made it into Salvo that day—but he kept thinking about the alumni, wondering where they were tonight. Hotel rooms, he supposed. Were there alumni parties? Was it like the movies where people stood around with punch and sagging streamers, everyone bald or with gray hair?
Dear God, he hoped not.
Someday he’d be an alumnus returned. The warm feeling he had when he was in rehearsal, the sense of family and community he’d developed with Brian and Mina and their ragtag group of friends, not quite as cool as choir people but still pretty awesome—it would end, and they’d all move away. Giles would marry some guy or live in an apartment alone.
What would Aaron do? Who would he end up with?
Why could Giles not stop thinking about him?
Why had Aaron looked at him that way at tryouts?
Had Mina been right? Had Giles been wrong?
His melancholy lingered as he walked through the campus carnival the next morning. Every time he saw alumni, he had the same pang of regret. He had to walk against the tide of them as they went to the football game and he went to beat one last round of practice out, and he carried their wistful nostalgia with him all the way to rehearsal.
As he played that afternoon, for the first time since he’d joined chamber he didn’t fumble and freak at the difficult measures. He thought of his alumni stand partner and soared through the runs, sang out on the held notes, each thrum of vibrato for her and the others not brave enough to rejoin the orchestra.
I hear you. I see you. I play for you.
The concert was a real monster: combined choir and orchestra, with all the small groups in between. During his quartet he saw his mom and dad and brother in the front row, smartphones poised as they took video and pictures. Giles spotted his stand partner in the audience.
Someday Giles would watch with her instead of playing. Someday much sooner than he was ready to think about.
Giles’s quartet exited with a bow, and the Ambassadors came onto the stage.
For as much as Giles wanted to hate them, when they started to sing, he couldn’t. It hurt nothing that the guys were all hot, all bright and full of life and joy, but they were talented too, carrying energy and vibrancy Giles doubted strings could ever capture. The audience had liked the chamber orchestra, but they loved the Ambassadors. Giles had to admit he did too. The melancholy he carried bled away when the boys bopped around the stage. Even the gag-me Cody Simpson song made Giles feel better.
Maybe this was why everyone loved them.
They started their final number, Aaron taking the solo on “Somewhere Only We Know”—and the last icicles inside Giles melted.
Everyone gushed and carried on as if Aaron singing was the second coming of Christ. Giles had written it off as hyperbole. But when Aaron sang, soul shining through the music, Giles realized they’d undersold him. Aaron was amazing. Aaron could start and end wars with his voice, could move a stone to tears.
Maybe Aaron hadn’t rejected Giles because he was scared of being gay—maybe he’d simply been scared. Maybe it was because Giles wasn’t right for him, or Aaron wasn’t ready.
But as the song went on, as Aaron’s high notes made Giles shiver, he remembered what he’d seen in Aaron’s longing gazes as they worked on Salvo. Aaron’s singing undid Giles’s cynical heart, and despite himself, he began to believe.
Maybe there was a chance after all.
I have to talk to him. The thought resonated as the orchestra took their place for “Canon”. I have to go to him, now, and talk to him. Tell him. Find out if I’m right.
The thought echoed as he played the song. When it was finished, his stand partner rose with tears in her eyes. Giles hugged her, accepted her thanks again and bounded off the stage, tucking his violin under his arm as his pulse kicked at his ears.
I can’t waste time. I have to talk to him now. Right now.
Giles f
ought his way through the crowd, waving an in a minute gesture at his parents. He kept going until he was in the lobby, until he saw Aaron’s dark head of hair and those bright blue eyes, his shy, sweet smile. Aaron stood smiling and talking with guys from the Ambassadors, ducking his head and blushing at something they said.
Giles’s grip on his instrument slipped as he approached. He’d figure out what to say when he got there. He had to find out if the boy who stole his heart, who lived in that song, was real. He had to do this.
The crush of bodies was too thick to pass through, Giles’s dream a horrible reality. By the time he reached the lobby where Aaron had been, Giles saw him disappearing through the door.
Disappearing with Baz, arm around Aaron’s waist. Hand resting on Aaron’s ass.
Baz leaned down to whisper something, and when Aaron laughed shyly, Baz moved his hand lower and squeezed.
The euphoric rush carrying Giles forward crashed like glass around his feet.
Too late. Whether or not Giles would have had a chance, it was too late now. He’d done exactly what Mina had said he would do, and now it was too late.
Chapter Eleven
Aaron tried not to crush on Baz, but the more he resisted the urge, the more he longed to give into his hopes his friendship with the upperclassman might turn into something more.
Ever since Damien rescued Aaron from his meltdown, Aaron had hung out frequently at the White House. It was an old mansion turned dormitory across the street from campus, where eight people lived at a time. Right now the residents were Damien and Sid, Marius and Baz, Karen and Marion, and Rob and Daniel. Karen and Marion lived in the carriage house apartment with their own minikitchen, and they pretty much came into the main house for parties and to do laundry. The rest of the guys piled into the three upstairs bedrooms.
The first floor was a living room, a music room with a grand piano named Fred, a study room, and a butler pantry used as a second practice room. There was also a ballroom bigger than the floor plan of Aaron’s mom’s house in Oak Grove, where the White House had its infamous parties, one of which Aaron witnessed homecoming weekend. It was mostly choir, but there were some upperclassmen orchestra and band members too, and a few friends of the music department. Aaron helped Baz run the karaoke machine, and he sang plenty himself.
A few times he sang with Baz.
Aaron and Baz hung out together all the time now. They went to breakfast, and of course they were often together at the White House. Aaron always wound up next to Baz on the couch. He drank beer and sat with his leg pressed against the upperclassman’s thigh, getting drunk both on the alcohol and the sharp, peppery smell of his host.
Baz coerced Aaron into helping make pancakes with him and Marius, and one Sunday morning Baz took him along on a run to the store in his slick red sports car, letting Aaron drive. He listened to a lot of rap while they cruised around, which Aaron couldn’t ever get into, but Baz loved the song “Titanium”. He belted it out at the top of his lungs, urging Aaron to sing along. When he found out how well Aaron knew the song, he’d goad him into a duet randomly through the day—in the lounge, the hallway, the cafeteria or the middle of campus. Aaron was always excited to see him, and a few times when he felt listless and anxious, he drifted to where he knew Baz would be and waited for another hit.
Aaron ran into Giles a lot too, now that Salvo was official. They performed for Dr. Nussenbaum the Sunday afternoon of homecoming, and the performance was a huge hit. He and Giles were now officially part of the group—though they were only freshmen and not music majors, they got to arrange songs.
They had a quiet rhythm down. Aaron would work up the compositions, and Giles would fill in the holes or make suggestions along with Jilly and Karen. When classes and other practices got to be too much for Aaron alone, Giles took over some of the transcriptions.
Sometimes Giles seemed a little sad. Sometimes Aaron thought maybe, maybe, Giles was hitting on him. But he couldn’t ever figure it out for sure, and he didn’t know what, if anything, he should do about it.
In addition to Baz and Giles, Aaron still had to navigate the joy that was living with Elijah. Emily and Reece still came by to pick him up for Bible study, and though Aaron took great pains to not be there when they arrived, sometimes he couldn’t avoid an encounter. Emily dialed her vamp down to a low-grade just in case baseline flirtation, but Reece still looked one Red Bull away from a manic meltdown, always trying to invite Aaron along, always waving at him across the campus.
One day Reece and Emily ran into Aaron when he was with Baz.
Baz had his arm around Aaron’s waist, drawing him close. Reece, who’d smiled as he approached, lowered his gaze to Baz’s wandering hand. His expression morphed into a look of utter betrayal. Emily appeared ready to unpack a crossbow from her pretty blue handbag and bury an arrow between Aaron’s eyebrows.
Baz snorted, pulling Aaron closer as he glanced over his shoulder to watch them walk away. “Aw, so sad. We pissed off the toads.”
“Toads?”
“There’s a crazy evangelical church outside of town, and it tends to spill onto campus. We call their group the toads, because they sit there like lumps staring at you, trying to get you to join their cult of guilt and shame. On the books Timothy is gay friendly, but the toads are here to remind us never to let our guard down. They’ve been especially bad ever since the marriage ban was overturned in Minnesota. Pastor Schulz doesn’t want them here, but he can’t do much unless they fuck up first.”
Schulz, even atheist Aaron knew, was the head campus pastor. Aaron was about to ask why the hell Baz hung out with him when a hand wandered more firmly onto Aaron’s ass.
Baz accompanied this grip with a nuzzle of Aaron’s ear. “I think we were too gay for that particular amphibian. Now he’ll have to go jerk off over how sinful we were. I’m sure he’ll thank us later.”
Aaron couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Jerk off? Because we were sinful?”
“Hell yes. The quote-unquote Christians who get up in everyone’s grill about sin are mostly jonesing for a fix of rage. Emotions are a natural high, and fury fuels the engine. You should see the church where the toads go. Sometimes they do the thing where they feel the Spirit or speak in tongues. Now, I’m not saying some of them aren’t actually making some kind of divine connection. Most of them, though? They’re getting off. I about shit myself the first time I saw. Looks just like somebody having an orgasm, right there in church.”
“You actually went there?”
Baz shrugged. “Sure. Marius insisted on going along, but yeah, I went. Sat in the back. Took notes for class. The professor didn’t say we had to go to the toad church, but I wasn’t going anywhere else.”
“There’s a class where you have to go to church?”
Laughing, Baz tweaked his nose. “You’re required to take two religion courses before graduation, remember? Except this was when I thought it’d be my major.”
Aaron pulled away from him, ready to call bullshit. “No fucking way. You, a religion major?”
Baz’s grin arced all the way to the bottom of his sunglasses. “Yessir. I was all set to be a Lutheran pastor, or maybe a youth minister. For almost a whole year. A record for me.”
“Religion creeps me out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My roommate is one of the toads. The guy who passed us is always taking Elijah to Bible study and trying to get me to go along.”
“Toad roommate, huh? He spend a lot of time trying to convert you?”
“He’s said ten sentences to me since we met.” The Dr Pepper can was still in the fridge, but Aaron wasn’t sure how to explain it without sounding crazy. “Mostly he pretends I don’t exist. His parents are super, super creepy. But they don’t talk to me, either.”
“Roomie know you’re gay?”
Aaron swallowed. “I haven’t…really told anyone. A few people here and t
here.”
Even with the dark sunglasses, Aaron could read the amusement on Baz’s face. “It might not be the best move to let me drape myself all over you in public, then.”
“No—I mean, it’s okay. I like it.” Aaron blushed. “I mean, I’m not hiding. Just not advertising.”
“You’re advertising. Right now. The toads have figured out you’re gay. They’ll probably tell your roommate. That going to be a problem?”
Usually Baz was all laughs and flirts, but now he was a lot more like Walter: bossy and care-taking…and a little badass. It was kind of hot. It rendered Aaron completely unable to process the real danger Baz had pointed out. “I…don’t know.”
“Where is your roommate right now? I want to meet him.”
Aaron didn’t know where Elijah was, so Baz took them on a kind of aggressive campus tour, poking their heads into every public area once they established Aaron’s room was clear.
They didn’t walk fast—Baz never did. “Old football injury,” he’d joke whenever someone tried to get him to move in a hurry, and usually he’d clutch the left side of his chest dramatically. He got headaches a lot too, Aaron noticed. He took pain pills after too much dancing, and he always seemed to be at a doctor’s appointment. More than seemed normal. Baz never drove his own car, either. He had Aaron drive him, or Marius, or Damien. Not once had Aaron seen him behind the wheel.
By the time they’d made a circuit of half the campus, it was clear Baz was in pain, holding his ribs and his shoulder, but he refused to end the search. “Really want to meet your roomie,” he kept saying.
They found Elijah in the public computer lab in the basement of the student union. It was an old one hardly anybody used and was rarely open. The occupants of the lab were strange at best. Everyone was hunched over their keyboards. A few people were clearly the odd ones out who didn’t have their own personal computers in their rooms. Some had flash drives and were using the lab only to print. Mostly though the lab was deserted.
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