Hush (8 page)

“Prime example,” Jason points in her direction with his beer bottle. “Well-known singer underground. I’ve heard she mes­merizes.”

“Good singer, then?”

“No, honey,” Jason says and leans in for emphasis. “Like I said, she’s gifted. She
literally
mesmerizes with her voice.”

“O-kay…” Skepticism and confusion bleed through his voice, and Cam blinks and shakes his head. “So what you’re saying is that there are… these, uh,
gifted,
” he clears his throat. “And they… mesmerize people?”

“No. Well, some, I guess. They have different abilities, some more obvious than others. But they can be pretty in-group, if you know what I mean. These are word-of-mouth gatherings, from what I understand.”

“So they keep to themselves?” Cam asks. A part of his brain is whirling, watching the group of people in front of him, while another is scoffing; really, this is ludicrous.

“No,” Jason shrugs. “My friend Mary says her mother was gifted. And she can sort of sense things. Not that well, but some­times she clues into things a little more than a regular person would.”

“You’re saying she can read minds?” Cam says, disbelieving.

“How have you never heard of this? I mean, I just grew up know­ing this. This is
Chicago
. There are like, thousands of gifted people here. There are gifted people everywhere!”

Cam thinks of home. How disconnected he had been: from his family, from people he considered friends. From the world. “I have no idea,” he says faintly.

“You don’t really believe me, do you?” Jason’s voice is laced with wonder. “I promise, I’m not lying. Look it up—” he ges­tures to Cam’s phone, sitting next to his glass on the table.

Frowning, Cam picks up his phone. “So I just type in ‘gifted’ and I’ll get…?”

“I have no idea; that’s pretty broad,” Jason says. “But it can’t hurt. You’ll probably get a Wikipedia page somewhere.”

“Ding ding ding,” Cam says breathlessly, because there is a page. There are lots of pages. “Holy shit.”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around where you are right now,” Jason offers. “My brain would be exploding.”

“Would it be unoriginal of me to say ‘ding ding ding’ again?”

“I won’t hold it against you,” Jason says.

“I can’t—” Cam sets his phone down and closes his eyes. “No offense, but I don’t know if I can even
believe
you right now. I don’t think I can even process this.”

“You’re a processor, eh?” Jason watches him carefully. Cam shrugs.

“I guess so,” he responds. There’s a beat of silence.

“That’s cool,” Jason says. “Well, here’s what we can do. We can call it a night if you need to process immediately. Or we can stay here and you can enjoy what I am told is a fantastic experience.”

“Oh, um—” Cam frowns.

“I won’t be offended,” Jason holds his hands up. “Although I will say…” his eyes flutter down in what is not shyness so much as uncertainty and a little flirtation. “I would love to see you again.”

“Yes,” Cam says without thinking. He’s not sure what he’s say­ing yes to—another date with Jason, staying here, finding time to process? Jason’s responding smile is brilliant.

“Want to get another drink, and we can stay?” he asks hope­fully. “I’ve always wanted to see this.”

“Yeah.” Cam exhales and looks at Jason carefully, examining him in profile when he turns to signal the cocktail waitress. When Jason turns back to him with a small smile, Cam is taken by the symmetry of his face. He’s really very good-looking, with lovely light blue eyes. Cam’s always loved examining the shades of blue and green in other people’s eyes.

Jason’s foot bumps his under the table and something fizzes in his stomach. He feels a little out of his own body, and a crazy idea floats into his head that if he could lean over and trace the shape of Jason’s lips, he might feel more grounded.

Cam shakes his head and smiles when the waitress comes over. He’s a mess; his brain feels like a stew that’s been stirred too hard. He orders another Coke and wishes he’d brought his fake I.D., because he could definitely use a beer right now.

They leave in a daze.
The air is cold,
and it’s dark, and they aren’t the only ones stumbling out of the bar. Are they all buzzing the way he is, with a little electric fire coursing through them? He’s so
alive
. Alive and turned around and in some sort of shock.

Cam had no idea what he wanted when he agreed to go on this date, but when Jason stops him under a streetlight by the corner of Oak and Second, where the sandwich cart is shut down for the night, and kisses him, Cam’s chest and body loosen. It’s as if he’s exhaling into himself, effortlessly filling a space beneath his skin. He doesn’t know if it’s Jason’s kiss, or the way that singer, Elise, unlocked him with just the timbre of her voice—or both—but right now, this moment, is
right
.

Other than during the aftermath of his encounter with Wren, Cam has never felt the sharp sting of desire the way he does right now, as Jason’s lips close over his in a simple, radiating kiss. Jason doesn’t press for more; he allows Cam to pull away easily, smiles into Cam’s eyes and reaches for his hand. They walk back to Cam’s dorm slowly, past the throng of bodies lining the doors of a club, the quiet refuge of a coffee shop and the echoing, darkened doors of shops closed for the night. The wind hushes through barren trees; Cam turns up the collar of his coat and tucks his chin into it, but once that’s done his fingers slot back through Jason’s. He can’t feel the heat of Jason’s skin through their gloves, but the action warms him anyway.

On the quad, bright lights spill from the doors of the dorms. Glowing windows scatter yellow luminescence like stars.

“I had a good night,” Cam says inanely, once they’ve reached the door of his room.

“I did too,” Jason says with a smile. He swings their joined hands a little.

“Even if my head is spinning and a little crazy right now,” Cam admits.

“Well, I did drop a bomb on you, followed by a really fucking intense…” Jason doesn’t say the rest, but Cam knows what he’s thinking. That singer, Elise, had influenced him deeply. He spent the hour of her set enthralled, his body coursing with heat and yearn­ing. The effects are waning now, and only the small­est ten­drils remain deep in his belly.

“Can I see you again?” Jason asks. Another student Cam knows—Brad—walks by. Cam sees him do a double take and try not to stare. For the first time, Cam really wonders what people will think.

“Yeah,” he says simply. Because he wants to, and because this feels so much easier than it had with Maggie. When Jason leans in for another kiss, Cam tilts his head back and lets Jason crowd him against the wall. It’s a hungrier kiss, maybe a bit too much for the public setting; but that’s even better, a dark sort of thrill. Jason takes the kiss in a way Cam is certain he’s never experienced and he has to hold in a sound when Jason bites gently on his lower lip. When Cam pulls away, the small wet smack of their lips parting excites him too.

“I’ll call you,” Jason says with a satisfied smile. Cam can only breathe out a
yes
and fumble behind himself for the doorknob.

He finds the room bright and Nate typing away at his laptop. Cam wasn’t expecting Nate to be here, much less working. His lips are tingling, still damp from Jason’s mouth.

“How’d it go?” Nate doesn’t look away from his screen. Cam takes a shaky breath.

“Fine,” he manages. Now that he’s in his room, in the safest place he has, everything seems to be hitting him at once: the date, what he’d learned about the gifted, that kiss. Oh god, that
kiss
. First, Cam had not expected it. Second, his expectations of inti­macy had not prepared him for this. He’d liked being intimate with Maggie, but what he had just felt was so much more imme­diate and, frankly, hot.

“Just fine?” Nate turns around this time, and when he sees Cam, still leaning against the door with the knob in his hand, a wide smile breaks across his face.

“You look like you’ve been
well
fucking kissed, man.”

“Do I?” Cam touches his lips. “Is that—is this weird for you?” Cam holds his breath.

“Was it weird for you?” Nate asks.

“Not the way I thought,” Cam says. “There was plenty of weird tonight I can’t wrap my head around, but it doesn’t have to do with this,” he gestures toward his lips.

“If you’re good with it, I am,” Nate says. Cam closes his eyes, breathes and then opens his eyes again to look directly at Nate.

“How is this so easy for you?”

“Because I care, Cam. Because I’ve known you for a while. Because I want you to be happy,” Nate says. Cam nods and smiles. A deep, genuine feeling of warmth swells inside of him.

“Thank you,” he says finally.

Nate just shrugs and says, “Of course,” before turning back to his work.

* * *

Cam has never believed
he
has a high sex drive, especially since he’s come to college, where sex is so much more visible and attain­able. In high school, and after his initial arrival here, his fantasies were always generic. He’s never masturbated much. Occasionally, he’s wondered why he seems so much less sexual than everyone around him.

It’s just been another of the many ways that Cam has felt dif­ferent, a phenomenon that he’s wanted to observe and under­stand. There are days when he wants to sit down with someone and say,
I don’t understand any of this
and
it feels so right, I’m not ashamed of these feelings even when the world tells me I should be.

The night of his date with Jason, Cam showers and jerks him­self off in a way he never has before. He touches his dick softly at first, letting himself thrill at the thought of dragging out the plea­sure. He cups and rolls his balls and wraps his hand around his cock, stroking himself torturously slowly. He recalls feeling overwhelmed by Jason. How very much it turned him on to have someone take the initiative and press assertively against him.

When he thumbs over the head of his dick, when he feels how much pre-come has gathered there, he shudders and leans his head against the cool tile of the shower. His thoughts wander seamlessly from Jason to Wren, and, for the first time, Cam lets himself revel. He lets himself think of the press of Wren’s erection against his leg that day. Something clenches in his stomach when he pictures that cock in his hand—in his mouth.

Cam’s mouth waters when he wonders what Wren’s come might taste like, and how the ridge of the head of his dick might feel against his tongue; and when he does he comes hard he has to bite his free hand to keep in his moans.

* * *

Despite how blown away
Cam
is by learning about people with gifts, he manages to hold off on research until he can do so at the library. For some reason, he wants to be alone for his research—something niggles at the back of his mind and he wants space and books to figure it out.

Luckily, the day after his date is Sock Saturday; and while Nate doesn’t take advantage of it every weekend, he does so this time, text­ing Cam a picture of ridiculous socks he must have found online, knitted shark socks made to look as though the shark’s mouth is stretched around the ankles. They even have little fins. Although he’s in line at the coffee shop, Cam laughs so hard sev­eral patrons turn around to stare at him

He doesn’t mind spending a Saturday night in the library. It’s at its most hushed then, private and familiar. He has a usual table, where Wren found him sitting last semester. Even though he knows it’s stupid, he’s drawn to it in the hope that Wren might want to find him there again.

After arranging himself at the table, laptop up and notebook ready, water bottle in its usual spot, Cam thinks through a plan of attack. Books would be ideal, but he hasn’t any idea where to start. Sifting through the Internet will be time-consuming, but there he’ll be able to easily find firsthand information and stories.

Wikipedia is a tool he always takes with a grain of salt, but also a helpful starting place because it offers summarized information and references. The article he finds on gifted people refers to two topics he wasn’t expecting: mythology and concrete studies.

For now he’s not interested in lore, but reality.

As overwhelmed as he was by the revelation that people with special gifts exist, the reality of this deluge of information is stag­gering. The list of references alone is mind-blowing. Cam has to pull away from the laptop, take out his notebook and write down ques­tions that have nagged him since his date with Jason; he hopes to use them as tools to help guide his initial research.

Most pressingly, he wonders what sorts of abilities one can have, how the community works and how the hell he could have gone nineteen years of his life with no idea that people with such gifts existed.

His first objective is answering the last question. It takes a while, but after a lot of searching and sifting, he manages to find a semi-current map based on census results, charting population den­sity of those with gifts in the United States. Although the pop­ulation is small, it’s clear from the data that a number of these people do reside in Nebraska. Chicago, it seems, has the second largest population cluster in the country. Cam knows that his ignorance has nothing to do with
where
he lived, but rather
how
he lived, burying himself from the world.

Cam thinks of the swelling number of patrons in the restaurant shortly before Elise arrived and took the stage. Jason’s comments made it sound as if a community dynamic exists between people with gifts. Researching this is harder, because there’s nothing straightforward about it; nothing he finds in a quick search leads him to any sort of organized community, or conversation about one. He’s not sure he has enough data to hone his questions here, either, so he moves on to abilities.

It turns out that defining abilities is often murky: some pri­mary ones are identified, and then what are called secondary and tertiary abilities. Without work and study, these are often under­developed, and not all choose to study the application and development of them past initial discovery.

Ability emerges between ages fifteen and twenty-five, the late teens being most common. Cam is staggered to discover that Carlina actually offers a course on the history of people with gifts. He had obviously not perused the university course catalogue closely.

He begins to click through the list of most common abili­ties.
Siren Call
, which is apparently what Elise performed on Friday, is in the top five.
Bonding
—the ability to create bonds between people, like marriage but stronger, and unbreakable with­out release by the creator—is one that Cam finds especially intriguing.

But it’s the ninth on the list that takes his breath away.
Compel­ling
. Cold shock washes through him when he reads the descrip­tion. The niggling idea that led him here is suddenly crys­tal clear. What happened with Wren—that connection, that indescrib­­ably magnetic pull—
this
is what that was. Cam is sud­denly, startlingly sure.

That night—that night in this library, almost exactly
here
—Wren’s knowing smile and the way Cam followed with­out under­stand­ing why—the way Wren looked, lounging against the wall with triumph and desire in his eyes—he’d been fucking
compel­ling
him.

Cam remembers so clearly now that startling crash of clarity as he broke free from drowning pleasure and then Wren’s excla­mation, words that made no sense:
I thought you knew
.
I don’t play with new
. What did that mean, then? What had Wren meant by “play”? And how could he have known that Cam was so innocent?

Cam has never felt embarrassment over losing his virginity later than most of the people he knows. Maybe because sex always seemed like this
thing
, this force he had never been tuned into, never wanted so badly he actively sought it out. But for days after that moment with Wren—if he’s being honest with him­self, months—Cam had agonized over it and wondered if Wren wouldn’t have walked away if Cam
hadn’t
been inexperienced. He’d had no idea
how
Wren had known, but he obviously had.

Now, armed with clear knowledge—well, speculation really—Cam has to wonder what Wren had been playing at. And playing it certainly was; Wren had said so. For reasons Cam can’t begin to name, the certainty sends a deep wave of desire through him; he finds himself actually starting to harden.

The idea of being someone’s plaything, of being compelled by some­one else, taken out of his body, away from the constant run­ning of his consciousness and his hesitation, is suddenly the single most erotic thing he’s ever desired.

Cam checks the time and slams the screen of his laptop closed. It’s only ten thirty, and chances are he’s still soxiled; he hazards a text to Nate. His whole body is thrumming, and he tries to dis­tract himself by reopening his laptop and searching the library catalogue for books, but he’s hardly paying attention because his brain is swarming with these
images
and a visceral heat. Laughter spills from his mouth; for the first time in his life, Cam is acting like a completely sex-driven teenage boy. He finds it hilarious and freeing and natural.

In less than half an hour Nate texts back an all-clear. Cam col­lects his stuff to trek back to his room and then straight to the shower.

* * *

“Jason wants to take me
to Decoy.”
Cam checks the fit of his jeans in the mirror, and considers his shirt.

“That’ll be a change for you,” Nate responds.

“Not my speed?” Cam strips off the shirt and digs through his closet for another.

“Dude, who knows what your speed really is?” Nate says, still looking down at his copy of
Sports Illustrated
.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re figuring stuff out,” Nate explains. “Let yourself be open to new things and you’ll figure out what you like.”

“That makes too much sense,” Cam says. “Want to come?”