Heaven Can't Wait (2 page)

“Look at this! A purple shirt! Holy crap, Kevin is such a fuckin’ flamer.”

Brian recognized the deep voice. It was Randy, one of his and Chuck’s friends, being dickwaddish. Then again, that was Randy’s singular duty in life.

“Stay out of his closet. Christ. What’s wrong with you?” That was Chuck.

“Gay,” Randy said, accompanied by the sound of sliding hangers. “Gay, gay, oh, fuck that is so gay.” Laughter.

“Just close it, will you?” Chuck snapped. “For fuck’s sake. What are you, twelve? Are we playing Halo or not?”

Kevin’s hand dropped from the door handle and he turned on his sneakers, silent as a ninja. That allowed Brian to get a good look at his face. Kevin stared at the wall, his jaw clenched. His nostrils flared as he took in a shaky breath and there was a resigned pain in his eyes. Cold, wet, and rather funky, truth be told (Brian still had his sense of smell), Kevin turned away from his room and headed back toward the stairs. He paused at a door and looked around. There was no one in the hallway except for Brian, and he apparently was the invisible man. Kevin opened the door—it was a supply closet—and stuffed his instrument case under the bottom shelf, hidden from view.

It was such a natural move. Kevin had clearly done that many times before. He returned to the stairwell, wiped his face with the back of one wet sleeve, and pushed through the door. The squeak of his sneakers pounding down the stairs echoed through the hall.

Brian stood there, feeling like shit. Actually, shit would be like log-shaped gold compared to how he felt. But what was he supposed to do about it?
It’s not my fault
, he thought.
Why do
I
have to fix this
?

A small screen blinked into existence in front of Brian’s face, scaring the crap out of him. He looked around, but there was no sight of Peter or Brutus or anyone else—human, spirit, or otherwise. The screen flickered to life. Brian saw himself and Chuck walk into Chuck’s room. It was the day Chuck moved in, back in August. Brian was helping Chuck carry up some boxes.

“Oh, hi!” Kevin said, getting up from his bed where he’d been sitting organizing CDs. He wore a large, welcoming smile. “One of you must be Chuck. I’m Kevin.”

Chuck stood perfectly still and stared at Kevin as if he’d been zapped by a paralytic ray. On-screen Brian scanned Kevin’s side of the room with a smirk. Kevin’s single bed was made up with a worn red comforter and his white pillowcases had a frill on them. Above Kevin’s bed hung a Teen Wolf calendar and a poster of a whale leaping into a sunset. Then on-screen Brian turned a look of contempt on Kevin himself. He was thin and wore too-new, too-blue skinny jeans and a plaid button-down shirt with pearl buttons. His hair was white-blond, straight, and long enough to curl into a flip on his shoulders like a girl’s. He had big blue eyes and his face was delicate and fey and pretty—or it would have been if not for the bad case of acne the kid rocked. To put the nail in the coffin, Kevin’s voice was soft and high.

On-screen Brian burst out laughing. Chuck dumped the box he was carrying on the unmade bed and looked at him with a frown. “Shut up.”

But Brian laughed harder and nodded his head toward Kevin, his hands full. “Oh, God. Chuck!”

“Knock it off,” Chuck said weakly, shooting Kevin an apologetic look.

Kevin was blushing and watching them with a frown.

“I’m Chuck,” Chuck told Kevin gruffly, not meeting his gaze. “C’mon, Brian, just put the box down, okay? There’s more shit to carry up.”

Brian dumped the box on the bed and Chuck pushed him, still laughing, out the door. As they exited the room, Brian snorted. “Awesome! You have to room with a fag all year! Wait till I tell the guys. Where ya’ gonna change your clothes, huh? Gonna drop trou and give your roomie a free show? Whoo!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chuck said with a growl. He gave Brian another little push toward the stairs. He looked uncomfortable, like he wanted to disappear. It was an interesting look on Chuck, since he was a big, tough-looking guy. But Brian had seen it on him plenty. Chuck was easily embarrassed.

Brian and Chuck walked off, Brian still hooting and Chuck ignoring him. But the replay went back into the room where Kevin stood, his face red, his eyes bright, and his fists clenched. He actually
cried
, or, okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but he wiped his eyes furiously and got a bit blotchy.

Brian remembered what happened later that day. He and Chuck had met up with a bunch of the guys for pizza and Brian had teased Chuck mercilessly about his gay roommate. After that…. Yeah, after that, all the guys liked to go over to Chuck’s room to give him shit about Kevin.

The video playback stopped, and the words “You Started It” flashed on the screen three times then vanished, along with the screen itself.

Damn.
That was… incredibly awkward. Brian felt exposed, like he wanted to roll up and vanish too. In retrospect, he did look like a big fat jerk. It wasn’t much fun to see yourself like that, not to mention being called out on it by, oh,
God,
or whoever Peter represented. Yes, Kevin was the kind of guy who deserved being made fun of a bit. Or at least, Brian had always thought that way. If you were going to look like a total dork or a loser or a fag, then how could you expect people not to notice? Not to comment on it, or tease? He wasn’t blind. It wasn’t like he would have hurt the guy. He wasn’t the kind of person who would push someone’s head in a toilet or anything like that. And he didn’t care if people were gay as long as they were gay
over there
somewhere. It had just been an opportunity too rarified to miss, to tease the hell out of Chuck for having to
room
with one. That didn’t make Brian a terrible person.

Right?

But justify as he might, it didn’t make Brian feel any less craptastic, not after seeing that look on Kevin’s face, not after seeing the kid chased away from his own room today by Randy’s obnoxious words.

“I get it. I was wrong! Okay?” Brian said it loudly, but his voice sounded hollow and insubstantial to his own ears. “I’m sorry!”

There was no reply.

K
EVIN
DROPPED
his book bag in a chair and got out his laptop. He had his small coffee, which he’d loaded with cream and sugar for the free calories, even though sugar wasn’t good for his skin. The coffee shop people were pretty cool about letting him hang out here for hours, even though he only ever bought a small coffee and nursed it the whole time. He couldn’t afford more.

He spent
a lot
of time at the coffee shop.

He opened up the Word document he was working on and tried to focus, but he was upset and he couldn’t shake it.

Damn Randy and Chuck. Kevin hated them. Well, not really hate. He didn’t want to hate anyone. He just wished his roommate, and every single one of his stupid friends, would be expelled from college en masse. Maybe after a tar and feathering. Nothing painful or scar-producing just a mild one, like a quick coating of Elmer’s glue and some synthetic pillow down. The mental image made Kevin smile.

He’d been so excited to start his first year of college—excited to get away from his small Wisconsin hometown and from all the stuff he’d had to endure in high school. His senior year hadn’t sucked too hard. The people in his own class had finally either accepted or ignored him and the younger classes didn’t pick on seniors. He’d been in the marching band throughout high school and he’d been first chair in trumpet his last year. He had some band friends and they hung out. He’d thought things were looking up, people got older and more mature. They got over the bullying shit. He’d thought he’d survived the hardest part and it was all downhill from there.
It gets better.

Bullshit.

The very first day of college it started again. His roommate Chuck had come in with his friend Brian, and… laughed.
Gay. Fag. Loser
. College wasn’t better at all. In fact, it was
worse
, because he couldn’t go home to get away from it. Half the time he couldn’t even get in his own damn room.

Kevin had gone to see the housing department right away, looking for a swap. He’d explained, calmly, that he was gay and his roommate was homophobic. But even though the lady had listened politely, she didn’t have a better option. Kevin was on hardship scholarship and work study. He had the cheapest housing option on campus, and there was nothing else available that wasn’t more money. He was stuck.

Chuck wasn’t that bad when he was alone. He mostly ignored Kevin, said the bare minimum when he had to communicate, and avoided looking him in the eyes. Kevin made sure he dressed in the bathroom and never looked at Chuck, especially when Chuck had his shirt off or was in bed. Chuck was really macho looking and, well,
hot
with his dark hair, muscled, hairy chest, and tough-guy face. So Kevin never,
ever
let himself look. Chuck would probably pound him if he got the slightest vibe that Kevin was ogling. But still, the worst was when Chuck’s friends came around. They were all assholes and Chuck went right along with them.

They came around a lot.

He just had to make it through this semester. Admin said they always lost a few freshmen after Christmas. Kevin was on the list to get a new spot then.

He stared at his screen blankly. It blinked a few times, drawing him back from his own head.

Blink. Blink, blink.

Kevin pressed on the power cord. Damn it! His laptop could not die now. He couldn’t afford a new one.

Blink.

Cursing, he dug out a USB drive and backed up his latest papers in case the hard drive crashed. He looked up and caught the glance of a guy he’d seen there before. The guy wasn’t bad looking, even though he wasn’t Kevin’s type. His hair was dyed black with a rust-colored swag in the front. He was thin and wore a torn, skull-emblazoned T-shirt.

The guy gave Kevin a small, sheepish smile, as if he’d been caught looking. He went back to his own laptop.

Kevin watched him a moment longer. Was the guy flirting? Deciding he probably wasn’t—Kevin didn’t exactly inspire lust in strangers—he went back to his paper and tried to focus.

A few minutes later his pen rolled off the table and onto the floor. With a sigh, Kevin bent over for it, but the pen kept rolling. It rolled and rolled and finally stopped on the boot of the goth guy, doing a little turn at the last moment to get there.

Kevin stared at it. Okay, that was weird.

The goth guy wasn’t paying any attention. Kevin got up and went over.

“Sorry, my pen made a bid for freedom. It seems to think you’re Switzerland or something.”

Goth guy blinked at him. “Excuse me?”

Kevin pointed down at the pen. “I’ll just grab that.”

He bent down and picked it up.

“Oh, no problem. John.” The guy was looking up at him.

“Huh?”

“John,” the guy said slowly. “That’s a name, not a place. I’m often called by it.”

Kevin felt like an idiot. “Oh, right, sorry. Kevin.”

Was he supposed to shake hands? The guy didn’t offer, so Kevin didn’t either.

“Having trouble with your laptop?” John asked, nodding in that direction.

“God, I hope not. The screen was blinking. It’s never done that before.”

“Good idea to check the power cord. If it keeps happening it might be your LCD going out. Sorry, not trying to be nosy. Tech is what I do.”

“Oh. Okay, so, um, if it were the LCD, that wouldn’t make me lose my work, right?”

“No, it wouldn’t affect your hard drive, but you’ve got, what, an older Dell? If your monitor goes out, it’ll probably be cheaper to replace the whole laptop than the screen. Of course, you can always hook your laptop up to another monitor and work that way if you had to.”

“Right.” Kevin smiled. “That makes sense. Thanks a lot.”

“No problem.”

Kevin went back to his table. After a while he snuck another glance at John. That had been pretty nice of him. The guy still wasn’t really his type. He was a twink, like Kevin himself, except actually cool and decent looking. But who was Kevin to be picky? It was the inside that mattered, right? Anyway, John might not even be gay. Kevin’s gaydar sucked.

Whether it meant anything or not, the conversation made Kevin feel better. Not everyone in this world was an asshole.

T
WO
DAYS
later, Kevin returned to his room to find a couple of bottles on his bed. He picked one up and looked at it frowning.

Clearly Beautiful
. Kevin’s heart skipped a beat. He knew what this stuff was. He’d researched acne online and this brand was supposed to be the best. But it was super expensive, and his parents didn’t believe in vanity. When he’d brought it up with his mom, she’d told Kevin to just use soap and water and that “it would pass.”
You’re a boy, not a girl. What does it matter what your complexion is like?

His mom and dad said that to him a lot—
you’re a boy, not a girl
. And every time they said it a little part of Kevin died. Because what they were really saying was that they were uncomfortable with how feminine he was, even though he’d never told them
I’m gay
. Everyone seemed to know he was gay regardless; he’d never had to say it. But his parents were older, in their late fifties, and very old-fashioned. He wasn’t even sure they could say the word out loud.
Gay.
They just pretended they didn’t know, and Kevin pretended he didn’t see how disappointed they were with their only child.

Neither they, nor Kevin, had been sad when he’d left for college.

As for Clearly Beautiful, it certainly wasn’t something Kevin could afford now, when he was doing work study and racking up student debt.

The first thought he had, in a flush of shame, was that he was being pranked. Maybe the bottles were the equivalent of
Hey, you need some of this, pizza face? Ha-ha
! But the more he thought about it, the less that made sense. Why would someone give him brand new bottles of an expensive product just to make fun of him?