Off Campus (20 page)

“Whatever. Ready, you fashion plate, you?”

He slid his feet into the LL Bean slippers Reese had given him a week ago, claiming he'd have to give up his New England citizenship if he didn't own a pair.

“Ready.”

Reese pulled the door open and swept Tom through with a half-bow.

“I'll try to keep my hands off you. But you're not making it easy for me, dude.”

Fuck it. How bad could it be? In the grand scheme of things, this was the least invasive exposed moment he'd had in two years. This was like stepping onto the track in the minutes before the start of the race. A whole lot on the line, but the worst that could happen was a bunch of people seeing him make an ass out of himself. And he never did. Not then. Not now.

He had this.

Feeling cocky, a flash of old Tom, without the asshole qualities, he smacked his own ass and gave it a little shake as he headed for the stairs.

“No lie. You know you want it.”

Reese snorted.

They clattered down the worn, sloping steps to the ground floor. He lifted his chin at Scruffy Beard at the front desk. Minimum wage to sit there and do the homework you were gonna do anyway was a win even for the over-thirty crowd at Perkins apparently. And fin aid was fin aid.

He thought for a minute about what that would be like, being able to work for nothing more than enough money to keep yourself in beer and cell phone service. Shook that thought off with an actual shrug, because going down that what-if road would fuck him up. He'd learned that one already. Too many times.

The living room with the fireplace was unoccupied. A lot of shouting echoed down the hall from the living room with the television on the flip side of the lobby.

Reese caught his glance at the opposite end of the hall.

“So you think you can dance.”

“What?”

“
So You Think You Can Dance
. It's a TV show, with—”

“I got this one. Dancers.”

Reese's middle finger was far more elegant than his own. “It's really good.”

“I don't think I'm gay enough for that one yet.”

The throw pillow that smacked him in the face was only to be expected.

He snagged it as a bonus and stuffed it behind his back as he sank into the corner of a worn blue canvas couch that sagged in the middle. Then the second-guessing started.

Should he have sat in the middle? Were they supposed to
snuggle
? All at once he wished there were other people in the room, although those first moments of realizing it was vacant had been a relief. If there were other couples here, he could have gotten an idea of how this was going to work. Was it possible he'd never done this with a girl? Fuck. He hated looking like an idiot.

Reese's sigh filled the room.

“Seriously. Dude. Relax.”

Reese dragged the coffee table closer to the couch, planted his stack of library books on it and sat at the opposite end. With slow and exaggerated motions, he kicked off his Chucks, swung his feet up onto the couch and dropped them into Tom's lap.

He grabbed a book off the top of the stack and started reading.

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Okay. Cool.”

It wasn't that simple, of course. The first couple of times other students walked by the entryway to the room and glanced inside, Tom flinched and knew Reese felt it. The first time it happened, Reese waited until the laughing women moved down the hall then rubbed his foot over Tom's crotch until Tom glared at him and grabbed his ankle.

“Stop that.”

“I'm just saying. You'll get your reward, sailor.”

The fight to keep the grin off his face was compromised by his attempts to look stern and keep Reese's wandering feet under control. He was so caught up in his efforts not to start sporting wood in a communal study room he barely noticed when a woman who looked familiar, as most residents did, came in and spread her work over half the round table in the corner. She nodded at them.

“Hey.” Reese was always going to be the friendly one.

“Hi.” She flipped open her laptop, smiling. “I always fall asleep on the couches.”

“Totally. Which reminds me,” Reese said and tossed his book back on the coffee table stack. He stood up and stretched, distractingly. “Caffeine will be required.”

Tom tore his gaze away from the gap between the hem of Reese's T-shirt and the waistband of his jeans. “Coffee?”

Reese scoffed. “Not unless you're hiding a Keurig in your closet. Our caffeine will be cold and bubbly. Coke?”

“Sure.”

Reese stopped at the end of the couch, on his way to the second floor vending machines. Tom glanced up in time to catch a hesitant smile and the pinch of his lip between incisors. Reese braced himself with a hand on the couch arm, brushing against Tom's shoulder, and leaned down.

A split second to decide. Turn his face as if he didn't notice Reese about to kiss him? Was that chick looking at them? Did he care? Maybe? Fuck it.

Before his brain had time to implode, he felt a puff of air hit his cheek as Reese laughed.

“Don't kill yourself trying to figure out what to do,” he said in Tom's ear, voice pitched low. He pressed a swift kiss to Tom's cheek. “Just relax.”

Tom kept his eyes on the book in his lap. “I'm trying to.”

A ruffling hand in his hair.

“I know, baby.”

He couldn't help watching Reese walk away from him, hips swinging loosely with long strides, and then couldn't help checking if the woman at the table had noticed. When he got a grin as she finagled a twisty knot with her long hair and a pen, he blushed hot enough to see across the room.

“I need to get me one of those.”

What did that mean? She wanted a gay boyfriend?

“I have to suck it up and get my own Diet Cokes.”

He laughed shortly. “Yeah. Carbonated beverages. Perk number one.” He slid his phone out of his pocket and tried to text surreptitiously.

His dad may have been an asshole, but he'd been brilliant at making people like him. Tom had used that skill once upon a time for pathetically unimportant crap like being the center of the groups of hard-partying rich kids in high school and the first years of college. He could sure as shit use it to grease the wheels of this grand coming out experiment.

If that was manipulative, he could feel bad about it later. After he bribed the nice lady to like him and not sell photos of him to the fucking tabloids.

When Reese swung back in the room and delivered a can of Diet Coke glistening with condensation to the Study Lady, she squealed with happiness.

“I got a text that you might want one of these?” Reese grinned at her.

“Aww, you guys are the best!” She blew them a kiss as Reese flopped back on the couch, delivering his feet to Tom's lap.

“You cheating on me now, Theresa?” Scruffy Beard dude leaned in the doorway and helped himself to the conversation. Tom hunched his shoulders and sank lower into the couch.

“If you had a boyfriend who brought me drinks, maybe I'd be faithful.”

Holy shit. Maybe he could fit
under
the cushions of this couch.

“Soda whore.”

“You wish it was that easy.”

Their words could've been tiny daggers, but Tom's social radar wasn't so rusty he couldn't tell there was a heavy dose of flirting going on there. In the meantime, he reined in the urge to slither off the sofa and belly crawl out the door like a Navy SEAL sneaking up on the bad guys.

Too late.

“Hey! It's the cavemen!”

He was saved from having to figure out the response to
that
by Study Lady's eye rolling and snapped out retort.

“Jesus, Dave. That's nice.”

“What?” The guy tugged on his beard and glanced at them as if Tom would clear it up for him before the light bulb finally went on upstairs. “Aw, I don't mean, like, stupid, ugly dudes. I mean men. Who hide out in their cave. You know what I mean. Right?” His eyes were pleading with them to get him off the hook for looking like an asshole.

It felt kind of slimy, being so aware of every interaction with these people and how he could manipulate it for his own benefit. This was why he avoided people, so he didn't have to do this anymore.

But he was damn good at it.

“No worries, dude. Even us cavemen gotta venture out now and then to make sure we don't start thinking the shadows on the walls are the real thing.”

His mental bet that Scruffy Beard Guy would take a Plato reference and run with it in an effort to impress the girl would have won big in Vegas. SBG perched on the arm of the couch across from them and kept the chat going even as it devolved into gossip about a campus rumor that one of the philosophy profs was shacking up with a student. Again.

By the time Study Lady and SBG decided to organize another Friday drinks party, Reese and Tom had already been co-opted to coordinate cups and ice procurement with the other three floors of the house. When Tom flinched at the thought, Reese pressed squirmy toes against his dick and Tom took that as a promise of a blowjob if he didn't run out of the room screaming.

He ground his molars and smiled.

Reese took pity on him an hour later and scooped his books up as he stood.

“Later, gators. We'll see you on Friday?”

“You bet. Don't forget, no Styrofoam. Parry flips out when he sees that stuff. Save us the drama,” Study Lady advised.

Scruffy Beard Guy waved and mouthed
thank you
at Tom as they headed out.

Back in their room, he faceplanted on his bed and groaned. Reese laughed, the hiss of a zipper and the smack of books on his desk background noise as he unpacked. But after a moment Tom felt blunt fingernails scratching through his short hair. He tilted his head up to maximize Reese's reach. Fuck, he loved having his head scratched.

“That sucked.” A pinch on his ear yanked a correction out of him. “Not being with you. Talking to people I don't know. Hate it.”

“Aww, baby, they loved you.”

He rolled onto his side and tucked his hands under the pillow at his cheek. Reese trailed a fingertip over his eyebrow and down to his jaw.

“I know. I feel kinda bad about that.”

“That they liked you? Why?”

“Because I made them.” At Reese's quizzical look, he explained, knowing it would make him sound like an arrogant jackass. “Like me, I mean. I made you bring her a Diet Coke and cracked jokes with Dave—”

“Tom.”

“I know, I just—”

Reese sat on the edge of his mattress, scooching Tom's hip over to make room for himself before planting a hand behind Tom's butt and leaning over him casually.

“I made that stupid philosophy joke 'cause I know that's his major—” and it was weird how he'd picked that up, through osmosis maybe, since he'd hardly exchanged more than five minutes of conversation with the guy before tonight, “—so he could show off in front of his girl—”

“Theresa.”

“Right.” He exhaled hard and twisted his face back into the pillow mashed into a ball beneath his head. His voice was muffled. He almost hoped Reese couldn't hear him. “I manipulated the whole thing, so they'd like me. Maybe not talk about me.”

“Because you don't want people to know we're sleeping together?”

He rolled over in a hurry. Fuck. Everything he said came out wrong.

Reese was staring at him, a neutral expression on his face, and Tom hoped that wasn't cover for a look of disgust.

“No. Swear to God. I wasn't even thinking about that. I mean, I was. At first, because your feet were in my crotch and my dick was kinda hard and walking around with a hard-on was not really part of the coming out deal. But no one gave a shit, so I forgot about that. I just wanted them to like me so they won't, you know—”

“Fuck you over.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. Maybe Reese did get it. And he didn't seem too horrified. Maybe he already knew that Tom was still an asshole, deep down, and didn't mind. Or maybe he didn't care, because Tom was simply one more guy he was fucking instead of figuring out how to deal with the shit that had happened to him.

He closed his eyes when the hand stroked his cheek, fingertips curving behind his ear and down the back of his neck until Reese's hand clamped down and gave him a shake.

“Jesus, baby, you're so fucked up.”

“I know. I'm an asshole.”

This shake was hard enough that his eyes flew open.

“No, you're an idiot. That's not manipulating people, you dork.” Reese leaned down into his face, moving his mouth in exaggerated slow motion. “That's making friends.”

“Shut up.”

“You did something nice for someone. You held up your end of a conversation. If they like you and don't screw you over, that's just a side bennie of having friends.”

Tom huffed and rolled over onto his back.

“Not in my experience.”

Reese draped himself along Tom's body, his left leg squirming down between Tom's thighs and pressing up against his dick. His arm rested on Tom from shoulder to hip, fingers playing with his waistband, scraping over the ticklish skin at his waist. He spoke into Tom's neck, his breath warm and damp against Tom's skin, his tongue sneaking out to lick a delicate stripe up to Tom's jaw.

“Well, your friends before were assholes. Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Reese's hand drifted over to the front of Tom's pajama pants, where his dick was calling out for attention, what with all the stroking and tickling.

“Can't we just stay in here all the time?” He pushed his hips into Reese's palm, feeling the squeeze on his dick like a shot of adrenaline that pooled in his belly before racing down his legs and up his spine until his asshole clenched and he pushed his head back into his pillow, closing his eyes again.