Getting Him Back (2 page)

“Jock Itch Tower.” She made a disgusted face. “It’s on the West Campus. Take the El.” She turned and pointed behind her. At the top of the slope, a glass-enclosed bridge stretched across the ravine. “Then go left at Administration. It’s the tower before the field house.”

“Thank you.” I started hustling that way.

“Hey,” she called.

I turned, but I couldn’t help my feet from walking backward. Toward Blake.

“They aren’t all dicks over there but you might want to...” She made some gesture with her hand, pointing it toward me sideways like for a handshake but we were too far away.

“What?”

She made another face, as if she was embarrassed by what she was going to say. “Act straighter.”

I almost tripped and not because I was walking backward. I didn’t...swish or anything. I had on cargo shorts, loose. My T-shirt was advertising Oakley sunglasses, not I Heart Dick. I’d been told I had the grace of a giraffe trying to limbo. There wasn’t anything wrong with guys who were obviously gay, I just
wasn’t.
Maybe she was a lesbian and had gaydar?

Besides, Blake had been here all of last year and hadn’t said anything about problems with bigots on campus. Coborn College had a diversity policy. And he’d said all the guys on his team knew he was gay.

I saw it coming too late to do anything about it. She was facing me, and some guy was zipping along on his skateboard. I swear for once this disaster wasn’t my fault, though maybe yelling a warning made them swerve into each other.

He barely clipped her, but when she tried to regain her balance she got tangled in her long skirt and ended up trying to slide into second on the unyielding asphalt.

I ran back toward her. The skateboarder kept right on rolling.

“Asshole,” I yelled at him.

He grabbed his dick at me and disappeared over a small hill.

“Oh, shit, are you okay?” I crouched down next to her.

She didn’t answer and I felt all my first aid training from my senior community project kick in.
Survey the scene.
The scene is safe.
Help.
Call 911.
Unconscious person.
It was one breath every five seconds
,
right?

She still didn’t move, but she spat out, “I’m. Fine.”

In my experience, people who were fine didn’t stay face-planted on asphalt.

“Let me help you up. It was sort of my fault.”

“I can’t.”

I hit mental playback. It still didn’t make sense.

“Did you hit your head?” I scanned the buildings and the path. Just my luck all the people who I’d seen around had suddenly vanished. “Let me call for help.”

“Noooo.”

“Okay.” I sat on the grass next to her and eased my phone out of my pocket.

“I see that. Don’t call anyone. Really. I’m okay. I just poured a flirt,” she mumbled the last part, so it’s possible she didn’t actually say that.

“What?” I leaned down so my face was close to hers.

“I. Tore. My. Shirt.” She turned her face toward me.

“Oh.” And then I really got it. “Oh. And you don’t want to uh...flash people?”

“And I was starting to worry about the admissions policy. Yes, genius. I don’t want to show my tits around campus, thanks.”

But girls wore bras, right? And they were kind of like bikini tops.

“Uh, what about your...I mean, don’t you have something under your top?”

“You mean my bra? God, you really are gay, aren’t you?”

“Yes. So I swear I don’t want to look. But I’m guessing we’re going to draw a crowd sooner or later. Maybe it’s not too bad.”

She exposed her upper half to me and the ravine. There was a definitely a lot of girlness on display. What had her top been made of? Wet tissues?

“I’ve got it. You can wear my shirt and I’ll come with you to your room.”

“Okay.”

I shielded her as much as possible while she dragged on my T-shirt. I had to fight the urge to cross my arms over my naked chest. Like I said, I’m more super lean—skinny—rather than muscled, pale and freckled.

“Where are we headed?”

“Fisher.” She pointed. My pale yellow T-shirt covered her to her thighs.

“That’s my dorm too.” Shit, I
had
made a big wandering circle. “Wait. I thought that was for freshman.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“How come you know your way around?”

She put a hand on her hip. “Orientation. Didn’t you go?”

It had been a weekend in July. I’d spent it texting Blake. And taking pictures with my phone, but not anything that helped me navigate.

We walked back up to Fisher and she led me to the door right next to mine.

“I’ll be right out,” she told me and disappeared.

Right out meant something completely different to her than it did to me. I could have changed into fifteen different tops and jogged around the building by the time she came back out. I considered just grabbing another shirt from my room, but I looked cutest in yellow.

She finally came out and handed me my folded shirt. “What do you think?” She made a turn in front of me. Her top was a dark brown and her skirt much shorter.

“You should be okay if you avoid crazed skateboarders.” I pulled the shirt over my head.

“I meant the outfit.”

“I guess it’s fine.”

She pouted. “What’s the point of a gay friend if he can’t help me pick out clothes?”

We were friends? I liked the idea. As long as she got rid of the idea of me as her personal fashion consultant. “He will sacrifice his shirt to keep you from flashing all of the East Campus.”
Even if it delays him getting some longed-for dick
, but I didn’t think we were that kind of friend yet.

She smiled. “I’m Makayla.”

“Ethan.” I offered her my hand.

“Hi, Ethan.” She shook it, then pulled me closer with the grip. After dragging my head down, she muttered. “I better not see a word of this adventure on social media. I’m from Philly. I know people. I’ll have you killed.”

I pulled away and stared down at her.

She tilted her head, pretty face dimpling with her wide smile. “I don’t believe in vague disclaimers.”

* * *

The pedestrian bridge over the ravine was cool, or it would be when the August sunshine didn’t come through the glass, turning it into a conveyor-belt oven. I bet it made for cool photography opportunities, too, but I didn’t stop to take any pics. I was sweating by the time I escaped into the West Campus. I could see Kilpatrick Tower now, the only building over four floors tall on campus.

Blake was in 1208. I squeezed in with someone hauling what looked like half of an electronics store up to the twentieth and punched the button for twelve. My throat was dry when I stepped off the elevator, my skin too tight.

Then I was there, in front of 1208. Unlike some of the other doors I’d passed, this one was closed and free of any decoration. I knocked.

“Yeah?” The voice didn’t belong to Blake.

He hadn’t said much about his roommate. Only that the guy’s name was Wyatt Reese and he was a quiet computer nerd and always at the library—or as Blake had said, “Maybe instead he’s running a meth lab someplace. He gets this look sometimes. Kinda creeps me, but he’s cool.”

“I’m looking for Blake.”

“Not here.” The guy didn’t even open the door as he barked the answer.

“Do you know where he went?”

“Nope.”

God, I was so stupid. I’d forgotten the whole reason Blake had to be back early. He had to be at soccer practice.

There was Lake Murphy behind the tower. The field house, the home of the locker rooms and weight rooms and stuff, was next to it. I could hang out there and wait for Blake to come back from practice.

I walked up a little hill, stretching out on the grass under a tree, and waited for him to walk by. Until I jerked myself awake, I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep. All that excitement, I guess, and then the bleh of waiting around. But there were people moving on the path now, and all the excitement came rushing back.

Blake was easy to spot in the group of people. Tall, broad shoulders, the sun shining on his hair turning the brown to red like it always did. I was on my feet and had yelled his name before my heart started beating again.

He looked up, then held his hand palm out toward me. It was more like a stop sign then a wave hello.

He talked to the guys he was walking with, then tipped his head at me, indicating the path around the lake. I headed down to meet him, hearing his laugh.

“Catch you later.” He waved—not a stop sign—at the guys as they went on toward Kilpatrick Tower.

I didn’t do the run-across-a-field-of-flowers thing, but I did move pretty fast those last couple of steps, aiming to land lips-first.

It went about as well as most things did for me when they involved coordination. I fell into him. For once he didn’t catch me, but he did sort of kiss back when I got my lips to his.

I was starting to have a bad feeling about this. Maybe Coborn wasn’t as diversity friendly as everyone had said.

“What’s wrong?” I stayed pressed against him, despite how hot it was.

“I’m just surprised. I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.”

“I know. Surprise.” I smiled and tried to kiss him again.

His hands landed on my shoulders and his mouth was a bit softer before he pulled away. “Yeah.” The word was mixed in with a shaky laugh.

“Seriously, Blake, you’re freaking me out. What’s wrong?”

He hitched his backpack up on his shoulder and urged me on the path around the lake, away from his dorm.

Since he didn’t answer, I tried to guess. “You said you were out to the guys on the team, that you told them when they recruited you.”

“Yeah, I am. But this is all kind of public.”

We’d kissed in the halls in high school. No tongue or anything, and there were some people who made gagging sounds, but they were a minority of the seven hundred or so kids who managed to pass the tests to get into our magnet school.

“I wasn’t going to drag you into the bushes.” However much I might have wanted to. “My roommate isn’t here yet. We could—”

“Uh, I’m pretty beat from—”

I stopped walking.

He stopped a step ahead and turned back. “What?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

He took my arm and pulled me down the path a bit more.

I went along for a bit, then stopped. “Okay. Tell me.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. His green ones were so serious.

God, he was dying. His mom was dying. His dad. Their cat. Because if ever there was a someone-is-dying look, that was it.

“You know I love you.”

I smiled, but I wasn’t feeling it. “Yeah.”

His throat bobbed on a swallow. “But, Ethe, I don’t love you like that anymore.”

Turned out the person who was dying was me.

Chapter 2

No heartbeat, no breath, I didn’t even think my feet were still touching the ground. Dying was taking a hell of a long time.

“Ethan?”

Blake’s eyes had shifted to anxious, guilty. Good. The murderer. Then I wondered if this was Blake doing his throw-himself-on-the-sword thing. He had this white knight complex sometimes. If he felt he’d done something wrong...

“Is this because of something like last spring? Because I told you that was cool. I mean, we’re guys. Sometimes dick happens.”

Blake had told me he had um-kinda-sorta messed up. Based on his stammered excuses, I’d figured out that he’d cheated on me. After being pissed for a few minutes—mostly because I’d passed up my own chance with some flirty sophomore who’d stuffed my locker with roses on Valentine’s Day—I’d gotten over it. Now that we were both far from home, I’d been counting on trying a threesome together.

Blake looked away. “No, it’s not that.”

Liar.

He’d been holding on to my shoulders the whole time. Now I shrugged his hands off.

“I don’t get it. What the hell happened?”

He shoved his hand through his hair. I’d always thought that was adorable. Now it looked stupidly dramatic. And that Makayla girl had thought
I
looked gay?

“I told you. I don’t feel that way about you anymore.”

The numbness I’d felt when he first told me was gone and, like anytime sensation comes rushing back, it made my whole body burn and tingle, and not a pleasant way. “And you thought now was a good time to mention that?”

He shrugged, then shifted his arm, looking pained, like when his rotator cuff was bugging him. He was uncomfortable?

“You know when would have been better? How about before any of the times I got a stiff neck trying to find space to blow you in your mom’s Jetta this summer?”

He rubbed at his shoulder, biting his lip. “I didn’t know then.”

“Exactly when did you know? Before we tried fucking again? Without a condom?”

“Don’t be like this.”

“Like what? Fucking truthful?”

“All...” He waved at me, like the entire problem was summed up right there. Ethan Zachary Monroe. The Problem.

“Like you’re being,” he finished in a completely lame way.

“Because you know when would have been a fucking time to tell me you wanted to break up?” My voice echoed back to me across the lake, and I didn’t give a shit.

He had the nerve to keep rubbing his shoulder, looking like I was hurting him.

“Anytime before I followed you to college here.” I turned and started jogging away. No one could catch me if I started running for real. Long legs were good for something.

My throat got tight, jaw aching like I was going to cry and no way was that happening. I had enough to deal with now that I was stuck alone at this stupid college in the middle of nowhere without being
that
guy. The tall freak who ran across campus while crying.

Or according to that girl, the tall
gay
freak who ran across campus crying. The one who’d actually believed all the bullshit that when you fell in love you stayed that way forever.

* * *

It was three weeks AB (After Blake). More or less. I didn’t have much reason to mark time. For the first time in two years, I wasn’t counting down till when I was going to see Blake again. I sure as hell wasn’t counting down the days until I went home for Thanksgiving and had to admit to my parents that they’d been right about my going to Coborn College being a mistake. I’d lied my ass off in texts and emails, telling them everything was going great. Even according to Facebook, I loved it here.