Screwups (2 page)

Of course, if Mark moved into the single, Danny could have his own room. At least for a semester. But then he recalled the look of desperate pleading he’d seen in Jake’s eyes….

Oh hell.

“Sure,” he responded. “Why not?”

W
HEN
J
AKE
received the e-mail telling him he’d made it into Eaton House, he stared at it in shock for a long time. Then he whooped and danced around his ugly gray-tiled and eggshell-blue-brick room for ten minutes. Fortunately, his roommate was out somewhere, so he didn’t need to explain.

The e-mail told him that he’d be receiving his room assignment within a few days, but Jake couldn’t sit still that long. He had to walk over to Eaton House this very minute and see if he could sort out which room would be his. Even if he couldn’t find it, he’d be able to walk around, knowing that it was now
his
dorm. Maybe there would be people hanging out in the lounges.

The dorm was fairly empty when Jake wandered in. It was still midafternoon, so it wasn’t too surprising that most of the students were in classes or otherwise away from their rooms, but he was still disappointed. He’d hoped to find the place vibrant and full of activity—people doing performance art in the lounges, playing music, painting,
something
artistic. Instead, Jake contented himself with wandering through the halls, admiring the brightly colored, and admittedly somewhat garish, murals. Some appeared to be old and painted over in places with new designs. Others were half finished, but somehow that made them even better, because it made them feel like living, growing things.

In the downstairs lounge, Jake came across an empty refrigerator box that somebody had painted to look like a puppet theater, with a cutout front that had curtains hanging in it. There was nobody squatting inside with puppets on their hands—Jake checked. The phone booth had been painted blue and there was a light on top of it. The words “POLICE BOX” were painted in white along the top of the doorframe. The rest of the lounge was dedicated to a couch and two chairs, pulled up in front of a television. Boring.

The upstairs lounge was much better. It held a baby grand piano and an easel with the beginnings of an oil painting on it. The oil painting appeared to be a nude woman, which made Jake wonder if students actually posed naked in the lounge. If they did, would it be blocked off? Or could anyone who wanted to come in and sketch or paint too? That would be incredible.

He didn’t know how to play piano, but since he had nothing better to do, he sat down in front of the keyboard and started plunking on the keys, trying to see if he could make a chord. His musical talent was severely lacking. But maybe somebody could teach him some basic stuff. That would be cool.

“Oh, hey.”

Jake yanked his hands away from the keyboard like a kid caught sneaking a cookie.

It was Danny. He was standing in the doorway, leaning in as if to see who was violating the piano so brutally. He was also shirtless—less just about everything, in fact. The only thing he had on was a pair of khaki shorts. He was even barefoot. That seemed odd, considering the fact that it was almost October. But then the dorms tended to keep the temperature up really high.

“It’s okay,” Danny said, laughing. “You’re allowed to play it.”

“I don’t know how to play,” Jake replied, sure his pale, freckled face had gone beet red.

“Yeah, I could tell.” Danny entered the lounge and walked up to him. He was a small guy and not very muscular, but his body was well proportioned and his skin was perfect—the color of milk and honey, and not a blemish or scar to be seen anywhere. As he drew nearer, Jake couldn’t help but notice that the shorts rode awfully low on Danny’s hips… and there wasn’t any underwear waistband showing. Danny looked down at him with an amused expression, those gray eyes peering out from behind unruly bangs. “That’s okay. I can’t draw to save my life.”

“Can you play piano?” Jake asked.

“It’s my major.”

“Can I hear something?” Jake wasn’t sure if he was being obnoxious. Probably the guy was asked that all the time.

But Danny just shrugged and said, “If you want.”

Jake slid off the bench and allowed Danny to take his place. The piece he played was beautiful and mesmerizing, delicate one moment and then flowing rapidly along like water the next, rising to a sweeping crescendo and then falling down like rain. Jake felt himself swept up by the music and carried along with it. He didn’t dare say a word to disturb the effect it had on him, even after the music stopped, until Danny set his hands in his lap and said with a shy smile, “Well, that’s the piece I’ve been practicing this week. It still needs work.”

“What was it?”

“
Clair de lune
,” Danny replied, “by Debussy. It’s actually a pretty easy piece. You’ve never heard it before?”

“No.”

Danny laughed, but it was a warm, friendly sound—not at all mean-spirited or belittling. “Well, you’ll probably be sick to death of it before too long. I practice a
lot
up here.”

Jake couldn’t imagine ever getting sick of hearing Danny play, but he just smiled and nodded. “I just got the e-mail saying I was accepted into the dorm,” he said.

“I know. I sent it.”

“Then thanks.”

Danny stood up and said, “Wait ’til you hear the bad news.”

“What’s that?” Jake asked, suddenly anxious that they’d changed their minds about letting him in after all. Had he left his room too soon to get a follow-up e-mail?
Sorry, bud.
We meant to send that first e-mail to the other dude.

But Danny stuck out his hand, inviting him to shake it, and said, “I’m your new roommate.”

A
LOOK
of surprise flashed across Jake’s handsome face, but then he smiled and shook Danny’s hand. “Hey, roomie!”

He didn’t seem displeased. Thank God. Mark had acted like rooming with Danny was a prison sentence and he couldn’t escape fast enough. Of course, Jake hadn’t heard the rumors yet. Give it time.

“I wanted to warn you,” Danny continued, “because you’re probably going to get a letter or something from the bursar’s office telling you you got a single. But my old roommate threw a hissy fit and said
he
wanted the single and he had seniority, so….”

Jake shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t mind sharing.”

“Do you want to see the room?”

The excitement that flashed into Jake’s eyes was adorable, like a little kid being asked if he wanted to ride the pony. “Sure!”

His excitement didn’t let up, even when he saw that the room was pretty much like any other dorm room: two metal-framed, institutional beds against opposite walls of the room—they could be stacked as bunk beds, but Danny hated sleeping above or below someone—and two desks with chairs. There were a couple of small bookcases, but that was about it.

“This is great!” Jake said.

“It’s the same as any other room.”

“The rooms in Christensen are all brick and cement. They’re ugly as fuck.” The walls in Eaton House were plaster, which Danny supposed was better than brick. And they were just off-white, instead of the hideous pastels he’d seen in the other dorms. So maybe Jake had a point.

Only Danny’s side of the room had any decorations on the walls—a poster of a piano keyboard with a red rose lying on it and other posters of sword & sorcery wizards like the ones he enjoyed playing in the weekly Dungeons & Dragons game. The one thing he felt embarrassed about was the calendar he’d picked up in Portsmouth with a different naked man for each month. Mark had hated it, but that was the point. Danny had only put it up because Mark insisted on having one with naked women on it.

Now he saw Jake’s eyes settle on the stupid thing, and he gave a slightly nervous laugh. “Oh, sorry about that. Um… I suppose this might be a good time to tell you that I’m gay.”

Jake just shrugged. “That’s cool.”

He looked a little uncomfortable. Danny wondered if the initial impression he’d gotten of Jake as a closet case was wrong. Maybe the guy really was straight. Of course, someone who was really closeted might feel uncomfortable rooming with a guy who was openly gay too. Did the fact that Jake didn’t respond “I’m straight,” mean that he wasn’t? Or did it just mean he assumed it was obvious?

Who knows? As long as he doesn’t try to beat me up.
But that wasn’t really the reason Danny was worried about it.

“Are you into role-playing games or something?” Jake asked.

“You mean the wizard posters?”

“And the D&D books.”

Danny laughed. “Yeah, I am. Paul—he was the other guy at your interview—is the dungeon master for the game I’m in. Eva’s in it too. She’s a halfling thief. I have a human mage named Kareth.”

“What’s a halfling?”

“A hobbit,” Danny replied. “But they couldn’t get the rights to use ‘hobbit’ in the game, so they call it a ‘halfling.’” Jake still looked confused. Was it possible he’d never heard of
The Hobbit
? It was hard to imagine. Danny plowed ahead anyway, though he was rapidly losing hope. “Do you play?”

Jake shook his head, looking a bit lost. “I guess I’d be willing to try it.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

“Would Paul even want me in the game?” Jake asked skeptically. “He didn’t seem to like me much.”

Danny shrugged and flopped down on his bed, folding his hands behind his head. “Don’t worry about it. I think he got beat up by jocks in high school or something.”

The moment he said it, he regretted it. Jake pinched his lips together tightly for a moment, perhaps in an attempt to smile, but Danny got the impression that he’d hurt his feelings. “Do I look like a jock?”

“Sorry.” Danny suddenly felt self-conscious. “It’s just… you’re kind of jacked.”

“I’m not ‘jacked.’ I mean, yeah, I play soccer a bit and I like to swim….” Jake sat down on the bare mattress that was to be his. “Is that… I never thought of myself as a
jock
. I don’t play a lot of sports, and I don’t work out or anything.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an asshole. I just… I had a bad experience myself with one of the athletes in my high school.”

“Did he beat you up?”

“No.” Danny really didn’t want to talk about this with someone he’d just met. Why did stupid shit always have to come out of his mouth whenever he opened it? He sat up and tried to think of something to change the subject. “Hey, some of our friends down in Mass. invited us to play in their LARP.” When Jake’s blank expression made it clear he had no idea what a LARP was, Danny explained, “That’s a Live-Action Role-Playing game—LARP. If we end up going, and you wanted to join us, you’d probably be a kick-ass fighter.”

Jake nodded, but he didn’t really seem all that interested. He glanced around at the empty walls and bookcase on his side of the room and asked, “So when do I get to move in?”

Danny shrugged. “They’ll probably take a few days to process all the paperwork, but nobody would care if you moved in right away. You could sleep here tonight, if you want.”

“I want,” Jake said.

It bothered Danny how happy he was to see Jake’s face light up in a smile again.

J
AKE
MOVED
into Eaton House that afternoon. He hadn’t planned on bringing everything over that day. He figured he’d just bring his pillow and blankets, toothbrush, shampoo, a few clothes…. But it turned out he didn’t really have much stuff after all. It only took about an hour for him to pack everything up into a few boxes and garbage bags. Feeling a slight twinge of guilt, he left a note for his roommate, explaining why he’d suddenly disappeared. But really, they’d barely ever seen each other in the few weeks since the beginning of the semester. He knew the guy’s name was Roger and he was a chemistry major, but that was about it. At least he’d been nice enough to let Jake use his computer for e-mail.

Jake ate alone at the dining hall and then came back to Christensen to call Danny on the phone in the lounge. Danny had told him to do that. Eva had a car, and he was convinced he could press her into service. When Jake protested that he barely knew her and didn’t want to inconvenience her, Danny shrugged off his objections by saying, “Maybe
you
don’t know her, but she’s
my
best friend. Besides, I have dirt on her she wouldn’t want made public.”

True to Danny’s word, he and Eva pulled up in front of Christensen about twenty minutes later. The three of them were able to load everything in, haul it over to Eaton, and unload in less time than it had taken to pack it up.

And just like that, Jake was an Eatonite.

Despite her obvious skepticism during the interview, Eva didn’t seem to have any issues with him now. She hung out in the room with them as he made up his bed and unpacked his clothes.

“I can’t believe Danny already hit you up about our D&D game when you’d only been here, like, five minutes,” she commented, sitting cross-legged on the end of Danny’s bed.

Danny was sitting on Jake’s desk—on
it
, not the chair in front of it—looking through Jake’s meager collection of sci-fi and fantasy novels with unabashed curiosity. “I wasn’t trying to recruit him,” he said defensively. “I was just saying he could join us if he wanted to.”

“He probably thinks we’re freaks now, or part of a cult.”

Jake laughed to hide his discomfort at being discussed so openly. “No….” Truthfully, he did think they were a little weird. But that was good. He needed weird. Ever since he’d fucked up his friendship with Tom, his life had been completely normal and boring and lonely as hell. He knew his time at Eaton House would be way too short. A couple of years from now, he’d be graduating and on his way to becoming a corporate drone with a lot of earning potential and little else that appealed to him. But maybe if he was lucky, he’d be able to pretend his life had some kind of meaning for just a little while.