Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (18 page)

“Yeah. Awesome.” But he still sounded disillusioned, and I felt bad. Rex was supposed to sound larger-than-life.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you on Thanksgiving—man, it must have been lonely.”

“Not so much,” Rex said. “Professor Pritchard took me out to Denny’s. Said he was flying out to see his daughter over Christmas so he didn’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. It was okay. He brought his nephew—it was all good.”

My brain was shorting out with the thought of hobnobbing with a professor like he was a real person. “His nephew?”

“Yeah, nice guy. Fucks like a god. Too bad he’s in the closet.”

And there was Rex back, all insecurities gone.

“I’ll, uhm, take your word for it. I’ll see you Monday.”

“Yeah. Uhm, Rusty?”

“Yeah?”

“Man, you’ll let me know where you land, right? I mean, I don’t have a lot of
friend
friends. You’re not just going to disappear?”

And wow. Just, well, wow. Rex who had it all together? Rex, who could pretty much fuck anything that moves? But then, it was hard to be a friend when you fucked first and asked first names maybe.

“I lost all my friends when I picked Oliver,” I told him. “I would
love
to keep in touch.”

“Awesome. I’ll see you Monday.”

And we hung up.

I turned to Oliver who was eyeing me suspiciously. “You’re not just saying that because he’s hot, right?”

I grinned. “
You’re
hot,” I told him. “He’s a friend. He’s saving my stuff so it doesn’t get shipped to who-the-fuck-cares.”

Oliver perked up, his blinding smile popping out. “I’m hot?”

The fluorescent lights backlit the halo of rain in his hair, and his lower lip was looking especially full. I reached for him and—ignoring the shoppers running around us all bitchy and frenzied and in dire need of one more fucking cup of coffee—I palmed the back of his head and brought him in for a kiss. He came, eager, pliant, and although at first I’d planned to plant a short one on him and then let go, his mouth opened, and he was so warm that I fell into the kiss, happy, breathless, and all of a sudden aroused.

“Jesus, faggots, get a room!”

The harsh mutter pulled me back, and I felt Oliver jerk in my arms. For a minute I thought of picking a fight, but I looked around and couldn’t pinpoint the speaker. Any one of half-a-dozen men were walking around us, avoiding the spot where we were standing, so I figured I’d ignore the big scary word and take the advice. Necking in public had never been my thing anyway.

But then, Oliver was
definitely
my thing, so maybe that’s why that one rule had changed.

“C’mon,” Oliver said, not even bothering to look around. His mouth was swollen, and I could see a very faint darkening under his cheekbones where he was blushing, just for me.

“Where we going?”

“Home for leftovers and a movie. I worked today, damn it—I get my hanging out!”

We turned for the truck, and when Oliver’s hand bumped mine, I tangled our fingers, and we kept walking into the chill, flat gray-black of the evening.

I think Oliver was as overwhelmed with Rex as I’d been at first.

They got to spend lots and lots of time together as I was going around to my professors and the TAs, trying to get my add/drop form signed. The thing that sucked was that for most of them, I had to explain the reason.

My English 101 TA was almost as thrown as Rex. “Seriously? I mean . . . seriously? That’s why you’re dropping out? Your parents pulled your dorm cash?”

I shrugged. “I guess it’s better than losing my nut.” Because, you know, that had been damned close to happening, we all knew it.

The TA shook her head, lots of straight, shiny brown hair falling around her shoulders. I liked her: she had apples cheeks and a big smile. In fact, she looked a lot like Jenny Brukholtz, and I guess if I’d had a type when I was dating girls, she’d be it. Maybe the fact that I hadn’t had any fantasies about hitting that should have been a big clue that I was Oliver-sexual, right?

“I’ll tell you what,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ll sign this, but you know the final is already online, right?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, but I haven’t gotten to it—”

“No, see, that’s the thing. Get it in before the deadline in two weeks, and you’ll get your class grade. I mean, if you tank the final, there goes your . . . well, B-, but if you pass it, you’ve got three units from Berkeley, how’s that?”

I grinned. “That’s awesome, Tracey. Thank you.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, well, good luck—” She looked at my name on the top of the add/drop form. “—Russell Baker. Enjoy the holy hell out of your boyfriend for me, okay?”

Now Rex would have smiled and offered to do a threesome. Me? I blushed and said that I’d try.

Professor Pritchard gave me the same deal, but that was because he had all his paper topics online already. People could have had their finals done from the second day of class if they could have figured it out without him. I was grateful. My trig professor couldn’t do that, although he was nice about it and wished me luck as he signed my form. My chemistry teacher couldn’t either, but my Early American Literature professor could.

So I was actually feeling sort of triumphant when I got back to the dorm and found that Oliver and Rex had taken care of stashing what was left of my stuff and were now toe-to-toe, arguing.

“I said that’s not his.”

“And I’m saying it is.”

“I know what he brought; I helped him cram it in his car.”

“Well, maybe I want him to have it, did you ever think of that?”

“He’s not sleeping with you under that thing!” Oliver snarled, and given that Rex could have snapped him in half like a Hershey bar, he must have
really
been feeling the jealousy thing.

Rex took a step back, hands out in front of him, clutching the quilt his moms had sent him before Thanksgiving. “Whoa! Stand down, little man. I’ve got no designs on his body, okay? I’m
trying
to give you a housewarming present, is that okay with you?”

“Omigod!” I reached out and took the quilt from him without hesitation. “Seriously? You’re
giving
this to us?”

I had
coveted
(good word) this quilt. I’d
hungered
for it. It had arrived three days before I’d left, and I’d tried to contain my envy. It was done in what I thought of as a tic-tac-toe pattern, in shades of blue and brown, and I remembered when Rex had opened up the box, he’d laughed.
Moms—it’s like they love with handicraft, you know?

Did they make that for you?

Yeah—they have weekends, sometimes, where they’ve got nothing on the roster, and they get together and make them for charity or something. This one’s a little more detailed—this one was meant for me special.

And that had been it. I’d
yearned
to be
loved with handicraft
. I remembered that day I’d crawled into my bed with the intention of never getting out, and thought about how much better that would have felt if I’d been covered by some sort of love.

“Rusty?” Oliver sounded hurt.

I hugged the blanket to my chest. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked him. “It’s warm, too—see? All the stitching makes it extra heavy. And the back side is some sort of multicolored fabric—”

“Batik,” Rex supplied helpfully, and I nodded, turning to Oliver with excitement.

“See? It’s got a fancy name and everything. And . . .” I swallowed, suddenly seeing the tiny apartment I knew I was going to move into, the one that wouldn’t have any furniture or any pictures on the walls or anyone else there who would care about me. “Wouldn’t it be great on the wall? Or the couch? Wouldn’t it be pretty? It would look . . .” I swallowed, suddenly filled with the terror of what I was about to do. “Wouldn’t it look warm?”

The tenseness in Oliver’s thin little face eased up, and his cheekbones stopped poking through his skin. His sigh sounded irritated, and he scowled/smiled at Rex, and when he spoke, each syllable came out very distinct. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “That is really thoughtful of you.”

Rex pinched the bridge of his nose and squinched his eyes shut, like he was having trouble deciding which box Oliver belonged in. “You’re welcome,” he said, each syllable as mockingly separate as Oliver’s. “Rusty is a friend, and I’d do anything for him.”

Oliver relaxed a little more. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess that’s true.” He turned to me. “So, are you all done?”

I nodded and held up the paperwork copies I’d gotten from the registrar. “Yup. Officially dropped out of Berkeley. Who wants to eat?”

Rex looked at the papers, stricken. “Wow. Wow. Okay. This is real.” And I knew then that he would really miss me, and that he really liked me, and he would have liked me whether I was gay or straight or smart or stupid. It was good to remember that: there were good people out there. Oliver’s family, Rex’s family, Nicole. Even my professors and the TAs who’d helped me out; they were good people. Way more good than bad.

“You know,” I said, suddenly eager, “there was this place that had sliders—you know, those little mini-hamburgers? They’re supposed to be
really good.
Want to go there?”

Rex’s face lit up. “
Yes
!” We all looked around the dorm room, and it looked really empty without my stuff, and without the quilt I was clutching against my chest.

“We can come back,” I offered wildly. I didn’t even know where I was going to live in a week, but I felt like I had to offer. “I’ll only be up in the foothills. It’s only two hours away.”

Rex looked so happy, and I realized then how important it was to have a friend who
wasn’t
going to get in your pants.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I’d make it a priority. Get apartment, start living on my own, be with Oliver, visit Rex. “I promise.”

Later, after sliders and dropping Rex back at the dorms, Oliver let me drive the truck back up the hill.

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you have class today?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I emailed my professor.”

“You’ve got friends at school, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And at the library?”

“Yeeeaaah?” Like he may possibly know where this was going.

“Are any of them trying to get into your pants?”

“No,” he muttered.

“Are you sure?”

His voice was getting lower and surlier with every answer. “No.”

“Do I need to be worried about them?”

Sigh. “No.”

“Then I can keep Rex’s blanket, right?”

Another sigh. “Fine.”

“You won’t hold it against me? Because it’s a really nice blanket, and I sort of love it.”

“Can we have sex under it?”

I had to breathe really deeply and concentrate on my steering.

“Can we have sex under another blanket and hang that one on the wall? I think those things are hard to clean.”

He growled a little. “Okay. Fine. Can we have sex?”

Since Saturday, we hadn’t really had any time alone in the house. “In the cab of the truck at a gas station?” I asked, puzzled, and he laughed like I’d forced him.

“No, damn it. I want to have sex with you in a bed. Or on a couch, at the very least. And I want it to be like last time, except I won’t weenie out and run and spit if you come in my mouth.”

I was getting hard. “Uhm . . . can we talk about this when I’m not driving?”

I didn’t actually
see
the look Oliver shot me, but since he reached over into my lap and squeezed gently before putting his hands back at his sides, I’m going to assume he looked hella fucking evil.

“So, there’s going to be sex?” he asked hopefully.

I tried not to groan. “God, yes.”

“Exclusive sex. You and me, and nobody else, let-the-condoms-be-damned kind of sex.”

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“If I’m Oliver-sexual, then don’t you think I’d have a hard time having sex with anyone else?”

Oliver laughed. “Okay. Well, consider me Rusty-sexual. I don’t want to have sex with anyone else either.”

“Rusty-sexual? That’s my favorite kind of Oliver!”

His laugh carried us all the way up the hill.