Screwups (16 page)

“I was shitfaced,” Mark growled. He had been, Danny knew. Danny had been pretty drunk that night too, and he didn’t feel like taking that little trip down memory lane any more than Mark did.

But Kevin wasn’t done ribbing Mark. He told Jake, “The train started coming, and he practically ripped his tongue off to escape.”

“Jesus,” Jake said.

“It was just the tip,” Mark protested. “I had a…” He waved a hand in the air as he tried to think of the word. “…canker sore for few days. That was all.”

Eva grimaced. “Sounds lovely.”

They continued down the path on the other side of the tracks, heading past the transformers and some small brick buildings Danny had never bothered to learn the identity of, until the road turned off into the college woods. Nobody was in the mood to go trudging through the forest in the snow, especially at night. So they turned around.

Jake did something odd on the way back—he reached out and took Danny’s hand in his. He didn’t say anything, or even really look at Danny, beyond a quick glance and a shy smile. But the others saw it. Everyone pretended it was perfectly normal, but Danny could see the surprise they were struggling to mask. Except for Eva, who merely looked smug.

It was sweet and it felt very romantic to be walking hand in hand on this beautiful evening, but Danny knew that it was a big deal to Jake. He’d just outed himself, not just to Danny, but to the entire dorm.

It shouldn’t have bothered Danny. He’d been out himself for years, and he rarely thought much about it. And Eaton House was pretty much the most gay-friendly dorm on campus. So Jake should be perfectly safe. But Danny saw something in Mark’s eyes, something calculated and malicious in that brief look at Danny’s hand in Jake’s, and he couldn’t help but worry.

“I’
M
GOING
to die.”

“No,” Jake said patiently, “what you’re gonna do is have fun.”

Paul frowned at him, the ear flaps on his brown knit hat making him resemble a fighter pilot. A petulant one. “Fun? Look at how
steep
that is!”

They were at the top of the hill beside the college library, which had a nice long stretch of even lawn and was probably the best sledding hill on campus. With all the snow that had accumulated the night before, it was swarming with students on cheap plastic sleds and saucers. Jake had already been down the hill more times than he could count, and so had Danny and Eva. But Paul had been standing at the top of the hill for almost two hours, griping about the cold and threatening to go into the library and do something productive.

Finally, Jake had had enough and practically picked him up bodily to shove him into the sled.

“It’s not that steep,” Jake countered. “Christ, Paul, haven’t you ever gone sledding before?”

He was on the sled with Paul, partly to reassure him and partly to keep him from bailing. He had his arms around Paul’s middle and his legs on either side, which forced Paul’s butt into his crotch. The position might have been sexy if it was Danny in the sled with him, but Paul didn’t stir anything in him except perhaps a sense of protectiveness. The guy needed friends to drag him out of his safe little world of D&D and fantasy novels now and then, kicking and screaming if necessary. And Jake felt obligated to do his part. The gaming and the novels were okay—Jake had finally finished book one of the Mercedes Lackey trilogy and been forced by Eva to start book two—but they could all use a lot more fresh air and exercise, and as far as Jake was concerned, that was
his
contribution to the group.

“Yes,” Paul grumbled, “and I hated it.”

“Well, today you’re gonna
love
it!”

And with that, Jake pushed off.

Paul screamed. It would have been surprising if he hadn’t. But Jake ignored him and concentrated on steering the sled around the few large bumps on the hill and other sledders who were moving too slow. Jake didn’t fuck around when it came to sledding. He went
fast
. If Paul hadn’t been there, clutching Jake’s knees in terror, he would have hit all those bumps and tried to get airborne. In fact, as they approached the bottom of the hill, it occurred to Jake that this might be the only time Paul would get on a sled with him, and there was one small outcropping left he’d been planning to steer around….

Fuck it.
They were going over. Paul was going into space. This would be a sled ride to remember, damn it! Not some wussy attempt to avoid all danger.

Paul apparently figured out Jake’s evil plan just as the outcropping swung into their path. He screamed, “Nooooooo!”—all drawn out like in a cartoon—and then they were
flying
! It was unlikely they got more than three feet off the ground, but it was marvelous. For a moment, they were weightless, and then they slammed down in a spray of snow and barreled down the rest of the slope. Jake contemplated tilting the sled over, because that was the sort of thing
he
found fun, but he suppressed the urge, digging his heels into the snow instead to bring them to a more or less graceful stop.

He climbed out of the sled and turned back to see if Paul needed a hand getting up. Paul wasn’t moving. His face was red and he was glaring up at Jake, his arms folded across his chest.

“You did that on purpose!”

“Yee-
up
!”

“What if we’d flipped over?”

Jake was panting a bit, though less from exertion than adrenaline. He shrugged. “We would have rolled into the snow. It happens. Life goes on.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Wanna do it again?”

Paul’s mouth opened, hung there for a minute as if the suggestion was so absurd it had caused his brain to short circuit, and then snapped shut again. He climbed out of the sled and began trudging up the hill, looking ridiculously childlike in his sweater, winter jacket, scarf, hat, and two layers of pants. After a few steps, he turned back to look at Jake impatiently. “Well, come on.”

Jake had to carry the sled, of course.

Danny and Eva were waiting at the top of the hill. They only had the one cheap plastic sled between the four of them. The Durham Marketplace—affectionately known as “the DuMP”
—
had put them out a couple of weeks ago for just a few bucks each, and Jake had picked one up in anticipation of snow. The others hadn’t been quite as enthusiastic, and this morning, with ten thousand students hitting the local stores for anything resembling a sled or a saucer, the town was pretty much tapped dry.

Eva had named the sled “The Blue Ballistic Bomber,” and they were all hoping it would survive until at least the end of the semester, if not the whole winter.

Paul went down the hill again, and even a third time, though he insisted upon Jake going with him each time, and nothing could cajole him into making a fourth trip. Eva and Danny both grumbled that nobody was protecting
them
from a possible sledding fatality, so Jake took a turn with each of them. Then he took one more turn with Danny, because he liked the feel of Danny’s butt snuggled up in his crotch.

N
OBODY
HAD
commented on Jake quietly coming out the night before, at least not in Danny’s presence. Of course Eva had probably guessed and Paul most likely didn’t care. Hopefully the rest of the dorm would be cool. Nobody had ever bothered Danny, except for Mark. But if Jake started holding Danny’s hand in the lounge or kissing him in front of everyone… that might test some boundaries. Danny wasn’t particularly worried about himself, but he was fretting about what it could do to Jake if some people reacted badly.

At least nobody would be dumb enough to threaten him physically. After a naked Jake had chased Danny into their room, word had gotten around pretty fast about how muscular he was—and how scary he could be when he was pissed. Even Mark was liable to think twice about antagonizing him.

Apart from his concerns, Danny was pleased that Jake no longer felt he needed to hide. And the way he’d announced it…. Well, after that gesture, everyone would pretty much assume they were a couple. Even though they weren’t.

But it’s a nice fantasy.

When they’d gotten back to the room that night, neither had said a word. They’d simply undressed, lit the illegal sandalwood candle Danny kept in his top drawer, and turned off the lights. The sex had been sweet and gentle—the closest they’d ever come to “making love.” Unfortunately, that voice of warning in the back of Danny’s mind had refused to be silenced, and later when they fell asleep, the nightmares had punished him for daring to hope.

It wasn’t for him, this cozy, almost domestic, fantasy. It would never be for him.

But daylight and Jake’s enthusiasm for getting outside to take advantage of the snow had temporarily banished the darkness. The hill by the library was one of the traditional spots for sledding on campus, so by the time they’d arrived, it was packed with students. But Jake had been undaunted. He plowed into the fray, dragging his three more socially challenged companions behind him—including Paul, who’d only come along under duress. And they’d all had a wonderful time. The crowd didn’t seem that big a deal, once they were going down the slope. Even the occasional collision or near miss just added to the fun.

When Jake convinced Paul to go down the hill with him, Eva had proclaimed it a miracle. After the
third
time, she declared Jake a saint, pending acknowledgement from the Vatican. But Jake wasn’t impressed.

“I’m not Catholic,” he told her as they walked back to the dorm.

“Would you like to be? I get to count conversions in my own list of miracles.”

In response, he emitted an enormous, resonant belch.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“If she hands you a cracker or a glass of wine,” Danny warned his roommate, “don’t take it. It might seal the deal.”

They dropped off the sled in the lounge and went to lunch. But immediately afterward, Jake was outside organizing the Eatonites to build a snow labyrinth. Eva and Paul sat that one out, but Danny sighed and went out to be supportive. Sonny was one of the participants, and by the time the maze started to show some real promise, he shouted across it to Jake, “Dude! I think we should make you the official winter activities coordinator!”

A general cheer of “Huzzah!” went up among the twenty or so maze-builders.

“Is there such a thing?” Jake asked Danny, who was helping him roll snowballs for the two snowmen Jake wanted to guard the entrance to the maze.

Danny shook his head. “Not really. At least, not until now. I think you just got elected.”

“Great.” It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic or if he actually liked the idea.

Danny shouted back at Sonny, “I think this project should count as Jake’s dorm project!”

“Don’t look at me,” Sonny replied. “I’m just the RA. The committee has to vote.”

It turned out the members of the committee were all present, so a quick vote was taken. It passed.

“Seriously?” Jake asked, looking completely broadsided. He’d been struggling to come up with an idea ever since Danny pointed out that posing naked in the lounge for art students to sketch might be deemed “pornographic,” considering Jake’s usual reaction to being naked in front of people.

“Congratulations, roomie! You’ve just gotten credit for your project.”

Jake grinned broadly, surveying the labyrinth taking shape on the dorm lawn. It was certainly a work of art, albeit a temporary one. “Cool,” he said.

T
HE
LAST
two weeks of December and the first two of January were Christmas break. Or, as Jake preferred to think of it, The Longest Month of the Year. It was going to be made worse by the fact that he would now be enduring his father’s cold silence and his brothers’ pummeling while pining for Danny—and without the support of his mother. She’d moved out just after Thanksgiving.

“She’s staying with Aunt Helen for now,” Robbie told him over the phone when Jake called home to arrange a ride. “Dad’s acting like a bear in a bee’s nest. Christmas is gonna suck—no decorations, no dinner, he won’t even let us put up a tree.”

Apart from being impressed by his brother’s use of an analogy—neither twin was particularly fluent in English, despite it being their only language—Jake was miserable to hear that things were developing so fast. Though he supposed it only felt fast because he was away so much. To his mother, it probably hadn’t been nearly fast enough.

After he hung up with Robbie, he dialed his aunt’s house and spoke with his mom.

“I’m sorry to spoil your Christmas, sweetheart, I really am,” she told him. “Your brothers’ too. But once I told your father I was leaving him, things got very tense between us. He does
not
handle rejection well.”

Jake felt sick in the pit of his stomach. A thought had just occurred to him that he’d never had before. “Mom… he didn’t… hurt you, did he?”

“No, Jake,” she answered evenly. “That was never an issue. I could say a lot of things about your father—not that I will—but he never raised a hand to me. Trust me on that.”

Jake breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t blame you for needing to get away, Mom. It doesn’t matter about Christmas. You need to look out for yourself, for once.”

“Thank you for understanding, sweetheart. I’d like it if you could swing by sometime over the holidays. It doesn’t have to be Christmas Day.”

“I will.”

He told Danny about the situation, of course, not expecting anything but a little sympathy. Danny surprised him by saying, “Why don’t you spend Christmas at my house?”

Jake stared at him like an idiot for a minute. Then he asked, “You mean Christmas Day?”

“I mean the whole four weeks. If you want to. It doesn’t sound like you really want to go home this year.”

That was an understatement. Jake shrugged, for some reason feeling he shouldn’t appear overeager. “That would be cool, if your mother doesn’t mind. Four weeks is a long time for a houseguest.”