Fever Pitch

by Heidi Cullinan

  When they finished, the cheers echoed for a full minute, the audience so pumped they vibrated. Walter and Kelly were in the front row, and they whooped and catcalled as if they went to Saint Timothy.

  Salvo greeted them offstage, mobbing them, cheering and hugging them. Jilly had tears in her eyes when she let Aaron go.

  Even without hearing the last group perform, Aaron knew it would be the Ambassadors and Salvo heading to Chicago for the semifinals. Like the Ambassadors, Salvo performed a mashup in lieu of individual songs with an anchor song threading through the middle, but Salvo’s arrangement was special. The words were from “Good Times”, but the melody line was Aaron’s own. The notes were subtle, buried within the familiar melody lines, but Aaron could hear each note weaving through, and it made his soul feel like a sun inside his chest. For the first few beats he was nervous, but it was fussing for nothing, because Salvo shone so bright they were a star.

  Aaron’s soul flew with them as they soared.

  The crowd went twice as wild for Salvo as they had for the Ambassadors, and when the final scores were tallied, Salvo didn’t just place. They won.

  The entire body of the Ambassadors mobbed Salvo, hugging them, spinning them, hoisting them into the air, many of the men weeping more openly than the women.

  No one’s heart was more open than Aaron’s. He still didn’t give a shit about the competition, but Baz was right. This was good. Karen and Jilly held the trophy high into the air. Baz whooped. Walter and Kelly stood on their chairs and shouted Aaron’s name.

  It was glorious. It wasn’t for anybody but them—and they kicked ass.

  Fuck the regents. Fuck his dad. Fuck everybody who thought they could drive his life. Somehow, someday—this was what Aaron was supposed to do.

  And no matter what, he was going to find a way to do it.

  The bus was a riot of sound all the way back to Saint Timothy.

  Giles felt bad for the Drs. Nussenbaum, because even he winced at the decibel level a few times, but the two professors seemed to be enjoying the mania, particularly Dr. Mrs., who was almost smug. Nussy appeared slightly stunned, but in a good way. Like the world had surprised him, and he kind of dug it for the plot twist.

  The White House had already declared it was having a party after, a fête of epic proportions. Giles dropped Aaron off at his room to change, promising to pick up him and Mina on the way over to the party. When he got to the room, he saw Brian settling on the futon, getting ready for a Halo marathon, and it burst out of him. “Brian. Get dressed. You’re coming to the best party of your life, right now. Women, wine, dancing. You gotta.”

  “No, thank you.” Brian snorted and indicated himself with a controller. “You do not want to see this dance.”

  “Come on. We won, Bri. Salvo took first, Ambassadors second. You have to come celebrate.” He smiled as a text came through on his phone. “Min’s bringing friends too. Probably girls.”

  “No fucking way.” Brian held up his fingers in the sign of the cross, an awkward one because he still had a controller in one hand.

  “You like girls, remember? You have to come.”

  “Forget it. I’ll stay here and kill pixelated enemies.” Brian indicated his cell phone on the bed as he took down a troop of aliens. “Feel free to live-text me.”

  “You know, the girls are missing out. You’re funny, smart and supportive.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. If you can find me a female who doesn’t mind that I look like a Napoleon Dynamite reject and have less sexual experience than most Disney princesses, please aim her at me.”

  Giles patted his clothes. “I gotta change out of my monkey suit and pick up Aaron and Min and whoever else they’ve coerced into coming along.”

  “If you want to borrow my pearls, they’re in my top drawer.”

  Giles headed for his dresser but paused as something on Brian’s side of the closet caught his eye. “Is it too gay to ask to borrow your black V-neck? Or can I not pull it off?”

  “Sure you can borrow it. Try it on and see how it looks.”

  Giles did, holding out his arms as Brian studied him. “Well?”

  Brian stroked his stubble with his thumb, pushing up his glasses with his free hand as he pondered. “I think it’s good, but bear in mind I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about. I think you need to do the hair thing you do.” He mimed messing up the top of his head. “It’s not as styled as it usually is. Probably the shirt mashed it.”

  Giles put a bit of product in his hand and teased his mop back into a semirespectable fauxhawk. “Not bad. Too bad I let my ear grow closed, because a hoop would be badass.”

  “I’m telling you. Guyliner.”

  “Don’t have any.” Giles fussed a bit more, grabbed a chunky silver watch that didn’t work but looked great, and gave himself a final nod. “Okay. I think this is as good as it’s going to get.”

  “Go break his heart. I’ll get rid of the zombies while you’re gone.”

  Giles tossed him a salute and headed to Aaron’s dorm.

  He was in the lobby with Jilly, and after collecting Min and her friends, they were off to the White House, heading across the street in a happy, chattering mob. In a fit of vanity, Giles forwent a coat so he could show off his borrowed shirt, which meant he was freezing cold. He double-timed it to the White House—at least he did until Mina grabbed him and pulled him aside.

  “Hottie. What did you do? You look fierce. New shirt?”

  “Brian’s. It’s not too slutty? It’s a little tight.”

  “Hell no. In fact.” She glanced ahead at Walter and Kelly, a wicked gleam in her eye. “You should let me put eyeliner on you. I have it in my purse.”

  “No way. Come on, Min, I’m freezing—”

  Mina ignored him, hauling him off into a bush while she called to the others to give them a second. Giles fought her until he realized she would draw all over his face if he didn’t hold still—as still as he could get with chattering teeth. When she finished—adding a hint of pale gloss to his lips, God help him—she held up her compact.

  Giles blinked at his reflection, stunned. “Holy crap. Why didn’t you hold me down and do this before?”

  “Because they would have beat you up at A-H.”

  “They already did. Think of how much more I’d have gotten laid, though, with eyeliner. Possibly by a higher class of guys.”

  Mina looked startled, probably because he’d never told her about being beat up before. Not now, Min. I’m enjoying a new level of cool here. He turned his face from side to side, admiring his profile, but Mina only indulged him a few seconds more before closing the mirror and dragging him back to the others, telling him he could admire himself again once they were inside.

  The house overflowed, people filling every available square inch of space in the living room, but once they got to the ballroom, the crush was practically a fire hazard. Music beat through the house like a pulse. Giles held fast to Aaron’s hand, leading him to the stage, where Baz welcomed them with a wink and a helping hand onto the platform. “You want your fiddle or a synth, G?”

  Giles hesitated, thinking a violin would be silly, but he decided, fuck it. “Give me my strings.”

  Baz passed over the case. “Let’s burn this house down, bitches.”

  They kind of did. They had to spill into the audience to perform with all thirty-two of them, they messed up three times, one of them Giles on his violin yinging when he should have yanged, but nobody cared. They ran right from that song into another, and another. People dropped in and out when they needed a breather, but the song kept going on and on.

  When Aaron got his turn at the keyboard, he banged out the opening cords of Florence + the Machine’s “Lover to Lover”, which Giles knew was his boyfriend’s favorite song. He didn’t sing, though, calling out Salvo members to take up Welch
’s vocals instead. Giles watched him, reveling in the glory that was Aaron Seavers serving music up on a silver platter.

  Then he picked up his violin and joined in the dance.

  Later, when Karen and Jilly took over the keyboard, Aaron and Giles ended up next to each other on the stage, swaying to the beat. Giles held his violin above his head and gyrated while Aaron ground on him, laughing, his eyes full of heat and promise. Any second, Giles decided, they were finding a condom and an empty bedroom and Aaron was getting epically laid.

  Aaron seemed to know that too, and had no arguments with his destiny.

  On their way up the stairs, Giles caught a look at himself in the mirror, and for a moment the sight arrested him. Yes, the shirt rocked, and he would be wearing eyeliner again soon. But that wasn’t what caught his eye. Somehow everything about him was different, so much so he didn’t recognize himself. He wasn’t a lanky geek with weird hair and embarrassing ears anymore. He was…cool, in his own way. It wasn’t how he looked. It was how he looked back.

  Damn, he thought, reeling from this unexpected answer to a life riddle.

  Aaron tugged his arm, and Giles turned away from his reflection, ready to fuck his boyfriend into happy oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  J-term ended four days after quarterfinals, and because of the way the calendar fell, they essentially had five days of a minibreak before full spring semester began. Especially since “spring” semester was rolling up to the plate in the middle of a huge blizzard, many students elected to stay on campus. The White House had a party planned for each night.

  Aaron had to go home to Oak Grove, because his father had declared it was “time for a talk”. Giles insisted on driving Aaron back.

  It wasn’t like Aaron was going to argue too hard. Having Giles drive meant it wasn’t his mom, or worse, his dad, who would launch into everything the second he got in the car. Instead, it was him and Giles winding the long way back to Oak Grove, stopping at Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis to have fortifying Jucy Lucys with Walter and Kelly. Everyone had the molten-center cheeseburgers except Kelly, who was allergic. He said he’d be making himself a faux version with Teese Cheese as soon as he got home, because they looked good.

  “Remember.” Walter paused to wipe grease from his chin, holding his cheeseburger in his hand. “Jim can bluster all he wants, threaten whatever he likes, but in the end this is your life.”

  “What if he threatens not to pay for it unless I major in something he approves of?”

  Giles, who had his arm around Aaron in the booth, pulled him closer. “He’s already paid for this year. He can’t take that back.”

  Aaron wasn’t terribly comforted by this. Jim Seavers wasn’t a successful trial lawyer because he rolled over easily.

  Aaron usually rolled over even before people started yelling.

  Kelly took Aaron’s hand. “Whatever happens, we’ll help you through it. Promise. We can’t go in there with you, but we’ll be waiting to hear how it goes.”

  That reassurance was more comfort than Aaron expected it to be.

  Stopping at the bar for dinner had been a good call. Walter offered to buy him a pitcher, but Aaron declined, thinking it would be wiser to face this down sober. The bar was a cute little dive, rough around the edges yet overflowing with people. He took heart, too, that when he got up to use the bathroom, he passed a rowdy group of guys wearing matching football jerseys, watching a game and flirting with waitresses…all except for a male couple in the group holding hands. There was something about the normality of it all: guys watching football, some of them gay. Most of the guys were bruisers, but one of the boyfriends was slight and elegant, not a typical football guy at all. Yet everyone included him like he belonged.

  I can be different too. I can be gay and study music and be okay. I don’t have to fit in with what people decide for me, because I know where I fit in. Everybody has somewhere they fit in. We just have to look hard to find it sometimes.

  His spirits were buoyed as he went to the table, but Walter gave him one last pep talk as they left. He stood with Aaron beside Giles’s car, holding Aaron by the shoulders and all but shouting affirmations at him and making him swear on his theory notebooks he’d call as soon as the conversation was over. Aaron promised he would.

  He held those laughing football players in his mind’s eye all the way home.

  “I’ll come in with you, if you want,” Giles said as they pulled in to Oak Grove.

  He’d offered ten times. Aaron loved him for it, but instead of saying no again, he spooned up the last bite of Frosty and held it out for Giles. “Here. Put this in your mouth.”

  Giles did, but he swallowed and gave Aaron a meaningful glance. “I will. I’m serious.”

  “I know you are.” Aaron wiped a chocolate trail from Giles’s lip with a napkin. “But I need to do this on my own. I don’t have any illusions I’m going to transform into a brick wall between your car and the door, but I need to learn to at least stand my ground.”

  “You’re calling me the second it’s over. I mean, when you leave the room, you’re dialing me.”

  Aaron leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Yes.”

  Giles began babbling rapid-fire reassurances, alternating between bolstering Aaron’s ego and trash-talking Jim Seavers. It was good, and it helped, but as soon as Aaron got out of the car, fishing his suitcase out of the trunk, he got queasy.

  “You can do it,” Giles called through the rolled-down passenger window. “No matter what happens, Aaron, I’m going to be here. Right here.”

  Aaron drew a steadying breath. He blew Giles a kiss.

  Dragging his suitcase behind him, he went up the walkway to his house and opened the front door.

  He saw his mother first. She and his dad sat in the living room. When Aaron came into the room, Beth rose, arms tight over her body, her smile thin. Jim remained in the chair with his back to the door. He didn’t rise or acknowledge Aaron’s arrival.

  That, Aaron knew, was bad.

  “Aaron.” His mom kept her hands over her body. Her smile slipped as she gave up trying to appear happy. “Thanks for coming, sweetheart.”

  “Take a seat.” Jim’s voice boomed out across Beth’s living room. “We need to have a talk.”

  After letting go of his suitcase, Aaron took off his coat, stepped out of his shoes and padded over to the couch. He sat beside his mother, in the place she had left for him. Sitting upright, using the breathing Nussy had taught him so he didn’t hyperventilate, Aaron faced his father.

  Jim’s face barely moved—but that was when he was the worst. In high school Aaron had shadowed his father to trial for career day, and he’d seen his father make this expression right before he decimated a hostile witness. He’d gotten in trouble with the firm because he’d been so ruthless the jury had turned against him instead of the witness.

  No jury was here to side with Aaron.

  Jim nodded at Beth. “I got tired of your half answers about how school was going, so I asked your mother. She was cagey too, so I called up Bob’s friend who’s a pre-law counselor at Saint Timothy.” Jim tapped his long fingers idly on the arm of the leather chair. “When, exactly, were you planning on telling me you’d changed your major?”

  Aaron drew a deep breath from the bottom of his diaphragm. “I’m officially undecided right now.”

  “I could tell by your evasion whatever was going on wasn’t good. Never, though, did I dream you took an entire semester of your college career and threw it into the fucking toilet. Music. The pre-law counselor is a fan of your work. He told me I should be quite proud of you. I had to sit through that, Aaron. I had to pretend to this fool I knew my own son had abandoned a promising profession to chase some fucking fairy tale.”

  Aaron closed his arms over his belly, pressing them in to stop the cold, stabbing feeling there.


  Jim rolled on. “I tried to go in and check your courses for second semester under your password, but the system wouldn’t let me. I expect changes to happen the second you’re on campus. If I don’t receive confirmation—with proof—within twenty-four hours, there’s going to be hell to pay.” He grimaced. “I should have seen this coming. Of course you’d dive into nonsense the second I turned my head.”

  “Jim,” Beth said, her tone a gentle warning.

  Jim snorted. “Oh, don’t you go soft on me now. You were all for this when we planned this meeting. Did you change your mind and decide you wanted to see him peddling for spare change in the skywalks?”

  Beth stiffened. “That’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. I lay this firmly at your feet for letting it go on this long. What, I’m supposed to parent all the way from California?”

  Beth replied tearfully, and Jim talked over her, raising his voice until he was shouting and she was openly weeping. Normally this was when Aaron would exit, retreating to his room to cower and wait until it was over. Two months ago, he would have. Two months ago he would have let his dad change his classes, would have let him rule his life.

  Not now.

  For the first time, this thing his father hated, that apparently his mother did too, wasn’t just what he wanted—it was what he knew he was meant to do. Writing music, playing it, performing it—he’d felt more alive in the past five months than he had his whole life. At this point even if his dad took away his money, kicked him out of college, Aaron would still find a way to be in music. It wasn’t simply something he enjoyed doing. It was his soul, his reason for being. Having drawn music back into his life—to take it away now would be like dying.