Tipping the Balance (19 page)

Nick smiled. “Just your eternal regard.”

“You’ve already got that,” Drew said.

“Then everything will be just fine. So what can I do for you?” Nick said, shepherding Drew out to the deserted dock, where a beautiful summer morning was just getting started. “Since you’ve got to get to work and I’ve got a warm and willing Morgan waiting for me to take him to the city for a weekend of debauchery—”

“Yeah, right,” Drew scoffed.

“—a weekend of museums and walks along Lands End,” Nick continued with a glare, “I’ll shorthand this for you. Brad?”

“Brad,” Drew sighed.

“I warned you,” Nick said.

“I guess that’s better than ‘I told you so’,” Drew said. “Keeping it brief, we were finalizing the bid for the Bayard House last night. During dinner, I thought he was going to kiss me. You just know sometimes, right? I mean, he leaned toward me and everything, but he freaked the fuck out and ran from my house like a frightened schoolboy.”

“That’s an unexpected development,” Nick said.

Drew stared at him. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

Nick shrugged. “What do you want me to say? You were right, I was wrong. It sounds like Brad may be switching teams. So what’s the problem?”

“So what’s the—the problem is that he ran screaming out of my house after aborting a kiss. Nick, I really like this guy. Help out with some magic coaching words that’ll help me unlock his heart,” Drew said.

“I don’t have any magic words,” Nick said, putting an arm around his friend. “This is why we don’t go after men who are ‘bi-curious’ or ‘questioning their sexuality’. It’s not because we don’t like their answers, it’s because we get hurt.”

Drew rested his head on Nick’s shoulder. “I thought we were friends, he and I, but he’s totally ignoring me.”

“What do you expect? You’ve shown him a part of himself he didn’t know existed. You’re radioactive, now. You’re kryptonite.”

“But I still need his signature on the bid for the Bayard House. On top of everything else, his personal issues are making this damned complicated, and I certainly don’t need any more anxiety about it,” Drew said.

“I’d say something about mixing business with pleasure, but I’m dating one of my rowers and have apparently incurred the wrath of the oversight committee,” Nick said, “so I’m probably not the best authority to cite.”

“Yeah, that does kind of let the wind out of your sails on that score, doesn’t it?” Drew agreed. “But dating? You two are so married.”

“Not yet. Maybe when Morgan graduates,” Nick said, blushing.

“So what am I going to do?” Drew said.

“What do you want to do?” Nick countered.

“I want to sit him down and kiss the stuffing out of him after I bitch him out for running off like that,” Drew said. “So instead I’ll leave him alone until tomorrow and then try to get his signature for the bid. I won’t bring up kisses that might’ve been.”

Nick nodded. “Sounds like the right approach.”

“And I’ll let him take the next step about anything personal,” Drew added.

“I’d been hoping for ‘I’ll give up this notion of luring him out of the closet,’ but I guess if you haven’t by now, you’re not going to, not with him almost kissing you,” Nick said.

Drew’s eyes watered suddenly. “It just hurts, you know?”

“That’s why they call them crushes. If they didn’t hurt, they’d call them something else,” Nick said softly.

“Isn’t that from
Sixteen Candles
?” Drew said suspiciously.

“Probably, but that doesn’t make it less true,” Nick said. “There’s nothing original anymore anyway.” He looked at his watch. “So are you good? Or at least good enough for now?”

“Yeah, go take your hot boyfriend to the big bad city for a weekend of your tepid debauchery. I’m going to go sell houses so I can afford to reduce my hours if we get the Bayard bid.”

“
When
you get the Bayard project bid. Visualizing’s half the battle,” Nick said.

“Thanks, Coach,” Drew said, kissing Nick’s cheek before heading to his car.

Brad
parked his car outside Rico’s apartment with plans to crash there after the party. He had no intention of being in any condition to drive home.

“You seem tense,” Rico said as they walked the handful of blocks to the frat house hosting the party.

“Yeah, being a grown-up and working and all kind of sucks. Put it off as long as possible,” Brad said.

“I’m on it. I just keep changing my major. It’s my fourth year, and I’m only a sophomore,” Rico laughed. “My folks’ll catch on sooner or later, but in the meantime, the beer’s cheap and the girls are free.”

“Beats the other way around,” Brad pointed out.

“It so does not, dude,” Rico said. “Are you mental?”

“Yeah, what am I thinking? Free beer and cheap girls for the win!” Brad said, making himself inject it with false cheer.

“Dude, are you okay? You’re quiet and kind of moody. It’s just not right,” Rico said.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Brad thought about how he’d feel tomorrow, but it was nothing compared how he already felt. Everything he’d thought was Brad Sundstrom had just been yanked out from under him by the realizations of the last few days. He didn’t know who he was anymore.

“Whatever, dude, just stay pressed. I don’t want to be the one who brought Debbie Downer to the party,” Rico grunted.

Stay pressed
. Brad had no idea what that meant. Out of college for a few months, and already they’d passed him by. Now he felt worse than he already had. Oh well, there was a cure for that, and they were heading right for it.

But he knew he had to pick up his game, or he’d have to explain why he had his head up his ass. He couldn’t stomach the thought of a long conversation about feelings with Rico. He felt like enough of a girl as it was.

Their destination was a frat house around the next corner, and they heard and felt the party before they saw it, a heavy thudding sound cranked up so loud that the words were indistinguishable and the music nothing but ear-massacring audio sludge.

The doors and windows were open to the mild summer night, and in Brad went, right behind his friend. The frat house was in an old mansion a few blocks from campus. It was nestled among other such houses, clustered into a sort of ghetto that made the presence of the small private school easier for the neighbors to stomach, since the damage was confined to a relatively small area.

Large rooms, formerly the formal living and dining rooms, opened off the foyer, and a double staircase snaked up to the second floor and the private living spaces of the frat brothers, or at least as private as a space could be with the front door thrown wide.

Rico veered right, toward the smell of marijuana, pulling a small pipe out of his cargo shorts as he walked. “Coming?”

“No, man, I’m good. I’m gonna go find the beer,” Brad said. Smoking anything had never been his thing. Randall had a nose like a drug-sniffing dog, and besides, he’d been into sports. He knew a lot of high school and college athletes who’d used, but he hadn’t. Crew demanded too much lung capacity to piss it away with pot smoke.

Chants of “Go-go-go!” told him where to find the beer, so Brad followed his ears, and sure enough, there was a veritable buffet of booze in the living room and a small pyramid of kegs in the kitchen.

Beer, sweet beer. He was golden, and with any luck, soon to be buzzing all those uncomfortable thoughts right out of his head.

Too bad it didn’t work out that way.

Brad helped himself to one of the ubiquitous red plastic cups and filled it with beer from a keg. Thus fortified, he looked around for people he knew.

After ten minutes, he changed his plans and started looking for people he liked. He’d seen plenty of people he knew but only one or two he really wanted to spend more than a few moments grunting at noncommittally.

Drifting from room to room, he finally located some guys he knew, brothers of the fraternity, so technically his hosts. They and a whole lot of other people were taking their turn under a beer bong, chugging cheap beer to catch a buzz as quickly as possible.

“Brad!”

“Dude, where ya been?”

“They finally get sick of your ugly face and kick you out?”

“I graduated,” Brad said, shrugging. “No help for it. Your turn’ll come… or it would if you’d stop flunking classes.”

Laughter rolled around the room, and someone got up and pulled Brad to the bong. Brad knew these people, and he knew their capacity. He could best them.

“You’re done when you have to breathe!”

Smirking, Brad knelt down while someone held the long tube with the funnel on it over his mouth, and the beer started flowing.

While he hadn’t trained hard in months, crew had bequeathed to Brad a very useful gift, an ability made for a situation like this. He could hold his breath for a long time—a
very
long time.

One beer followed another into the funnel, one, two, and three before he held up his hand and stood up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Damn, man! We shoulda got a deposit from you.”

“Bitches,” Brad said with a snort.

Brad took his turn holding and pouring, even as the cheap beer worked its magic. He was a big guy, but three beers was a lot in a short period of time, and it wasn’t long before he was a bit unsteady on his feet.

Unsteady, perhaps, and buzzing, but with it enough to take stock of the evening. The beer hadn’t been the best, he’d known that going into it, but that Blue Ribbon crap? He’d allowed himself to grow spoiled since graduation, developing a taste for locally crafted microbrews that made the stuff coming down the funnel taste like horse piss. He’d had enough of that for this lifetime.

Brad thought beer goggles were supposed to make things look better, but as he roared out a belch, he realized what a dump the frat house was and decided it might possibly qualify as a shit-hole. Yeah, the brothers were hard on their houses, but would a little paint have killed them? Something just off white, maybe in an eggshell finish for easier cleanup? Was that too much to ask?

He stumbled and decided he’d like to sit down, but one look at the filthy armchair, its dated patterns dulled to a shitty brown, had him reconsidering that in a hurry. Did armchairs get bedbugs?

He could only imagine what Drew would make of a place like this, and found himself agreeing with what he imagined the other man would say as he flopped down into the chair anyway.

No, Brad thought to himself, Drew would take one look at this place and spin on his heel and march back to his car, and Brad wouldn’t blame him.

He brooded in the armchair for a while. Then a realization fought its way through the beer’s haze, and he sat bolt upright. He had come here to escape Drew, but there he sat, imagining what Drew would think of a seedy frat house. Even in his absence, Drew was right there with him.

He felt like Drew’d worked some kind of gay mojo or something so all the women looked cheap and all the guys hot. The girls at these parties used to be hot, but now they just seemed… sleazy. He knew not all women were like this, Emily sure wasn’t like these girls, but she only liked other women. These girls… sorority chicks with too much make-up, too keen to find a husband, and who wouldn’t do anything but a hand job; future barflies and biker chicks who put out like photocopiers but who already showed signs of partying too hard; even the occasional Goth girl, and if he’d been into blood sacrifice or looking for spells, he’d be on one like stink on a monkey, even if they frightened him a little.