Little Stalker (5 page)

Is it that easy?

The one slightly taller pulls away and screws up his nose.

“Did someone puke in here?”

The other stops to sniff and then covers his nose.

Then they both look at me, their eyes going from my face to my crotch.

“Hey there handsome,” says the taller one with a smile on his thin lips. “There’s

mouthwash at the top shelf if you want to join us.”

What – the
fuck
sort of a fraternity is this? And why the hell is my cock all stiff and

my heart beating faster than the techno beat coming from downstairs? These guys aren’t

Grayson or other scrawny little twinks. I’m pretty sure I’ve never considered beefy guys

before.

I hunch over the toilet again to spew out what I hope to be the rest of the alcohol from

my guts.

“Hookay, we’ll just go find a room,” says the shorter one.

When they’re gone, I wipe the tears from my eyes. God damn it. Why me? What did I

do to deserve this?

“Coby? You in here?” asks Ray as he knocks on the door and pokes his head in,

screwing up his nose in the same way those guys did. “Hey, are you okay?”

I wipe the rest of the tears away, spit in the toilet, and blow my nose in a wad of

tissues with fingers so numb that I can barely hold onto it.

“Yeah,” I say in a raspy voice. “Hey, I think ’m gonna go. Not feelin’ s’ good.”

“All right, buddy. I’ll walk you back.”

“’m not a girl,” I try to snarl, but my voice comes out all slurry and weak.

Ray steps into the room and closes the door, dampening the loud music.

“I know that, Coby, it’s just that you’re very drunk, and I’d like to know you get back

all right.”

“’m fine,” I say, spitting into the toilet again before swirling down the whole thing

after three attempts to hit the flush button. I wobble on my feet as I get up with the aid of the

counter.

“Here, I’m helping you back,” says Ray and grabs my elbow.

As I yank myself free, I lose my balance and end up in Ray’s long, gangly arms.

“Shit, Coby!” Ray yelps.

He may be taller than me, but I’m bulkier and manage to drag him down to the floor

with me. There I close my eyes against his chest where he sits with me half in his lap. I just

want to doze off for a minute.

“Are you okay? You banged your elbow pretty hard there,” he says with an arm

groping my arm and elbow.

“Ray,” I say in a whiney voice, my face squashed against his chest, slack with

numbness. “There’s something wrong with me.”

“I know, buddy,” he says while he checks out my elbow. “You drink too much.”

“Not that,” I say, voice still weak. “Something else... Think I hurt Grays’n. But I like

‘im. He’s a guy ‘n I like ‘im, but I hurt ‘im.”

Ray stops groping my elbow. “Hurt him how?”

When I open my eyes, the room tilts fast, just before it starts spinning. “Head feels

funny,” I hear myself slur from a distance between shallow breaths.

“Fuck! Coby!”

***

The florescent lights at the hospital buzz me awake. I feel like I’ve just been squashed

by an elephant, and it’s still sitting on top of me. It takes effort to lift my arm to see the tube attached.

What the hell happened?

I can’t remember anything. I can barely remember who I am. I lie still for what feels

like hours, bits and pieces of what happened returning to me, though I can’t remember much

from the party.

A nurse walks through the door, blond mane of hair held back in a ponytail, pushing

in a tray on wheels.

Sandra? Sarah? Cindy.

Without acknowledging me, she checks the machines and the tube attached to my

arm. Then she turns to pour water into a plastic cup and sticks in a small straw.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a hoarse, raspy voice and watch her shoulders stiffen. “Sorry for

how I treated you. It’s not you, it’s just...it’s...” I was going to say something, but it slipped from my mind. What was it?

“It’s just that I’m the wrong sex?” she says, finally turning to look at me with a

mixture of annoyance and sympathy in her eyes.

Grayson
. I now remember his sweet voice, the soft touch of his hair, the warmth of

his skin, and the hurt in his eyes. But how did Cindy know?

My internal puzzlement must be visible on my face because she continues with an

explanation. “You’ve been mumbling in your sleep for the past hour.”

She sticks a thermometer into my mouth, either to keep me from talking or because

it’s procedure.

“Didn’t know you’re a nurse,” I say around the thermometer, trying to change the

uncomfortable subject.

“I’m not. They’re understaffed, so they accepted some temporary first-year interns. I

was out celebrating Friday night.”

I close my eyes with a sigh. “Sowwy.”

“Well,” she says, pulling out the thermometer without checking it, and then bustles

around, checking and fixing things. “I don’t appreciate being used liked that, but since you

did apologize, I’ll accept it.”

She brings the glass to my lips and helps the straw into my mouth. My jaws feel all

weak as I suck it down, half spilling out the sides of my mouth. She sits down on my bed and

wipes it away with a napkin.

“Why do you hide it from people?” she asks in a calm tone, running her deep-brown

eyes over my face. “There are a bunch of people at school who are out. I don’t think they

have it so hard – at least I haven’t seen it.”

“I don’t know,” I say in a low voice. “I barely admit it to myself. I don’t know how

people would take it.”

“You think they’ll turn you away?”

“Yeah,” I say with a weak nod. “Or no, I don’t know. I guess, maybe, my parents. We

don’t know any people like that. But Ray would be cool with it, I think. He’s been trying to

get me to admit it for a while now, but it’s only been...what day is it?”

“23rd of October, three PM,” she says with a small smile. “You were brought in last

night.”

“Oh, well then it’s only been about twenty-four hours since I, well, since I couldn’t

deny it any longer.”

“After you met Grayson,” she says, smiling a little wider.

“Um, yeah, you know him?”

“You kept saying his name,” she says.

A flurry of disappointment flares through my chest. What did I expect? For her to tell

me how he’s doing? Maybe for her to tell me who hit him or how I can find him?

“But if Ray is cool with you being gay, then perhaps you should tell him. I’m sure it’ll

make you feel better,” she says, resting her hand on top of mine before standing up.

“Anyway, thanks for the apology. I’ve got to go back to work now. I’ll check on you

before you leave, okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Oh,” she says on her way out, turning in the door. “You got alcohol poisoning. You

should seriously consider getting help for that.”

I close my eyes as she leaves. Alcohol poisoning? That sounds serious.

***

I sleep like the dead, the next two days at home. When I do wake up to go to the

bathroom or to get liquid stuffed down my throat by Ray, I feel starved, but I can’t get myself

to eat anything. The elephant resting on my body doesn’t start leaving until the third day

when I wake up to Ray flipping through page after page on the floor.

“Hungry,” I mutter, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“There’s a granola bar by your bed,” says Ray. He sits up with a book in his lap,

painting the page in yellow highlights.

I get out of bed, take care of my business in the bathroom and sit by the window with

the granola in hand. There’s no sign of Grayson. Is it because I’ve been inside the past few

days or because he took my words literally and stopped stalking me? With a sinking feeling, I

think it may be the latter.

“I think you should know that I’m seriously pissed off at you,” says Ray, glaring up at

me from the floor. “Alcohol poisoning is serious. You could have died, Coby, if I hadn’t been

there.”

“Yeah,” I said with my head hung. “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“Right,” he says with a derisive laugh. “Until the next time you need to prove to

people you’re straight.”

With a deep sigh, I take a bite of the granola and munch on it before I man up and ask

Ray what I need to know. My whole body breaks out in sweats as I speak.

“Why are you so interested in my sexuality? You don’t have like a thing for me or

anything?”

Ray’s mouth drops open for a second before he starts laughing.

“No, buddy, I’m not gay. I hope you didn’t think I was.”

I shake my head, exhaling with audible relief.

“Good,” he says. “But seriously, stop drinking like that. I don’t want you permanently

dead. I hate funerals.”

I chuckle once through my nose before I eat the rest of the granola bar and let his

words sink in. He’s wrong about one thing. The girls weren’t to prove to people I’m straight;

they were there to prove to
me
that I’m straight.

“How’d you figure it out?” I ask, looking out the window again in hope to catch a

glimpse of my stalker. He’s either hiding very well or he’s not there.

Where is he?

“I don’t know; I just did. There are little things; like you never talk about girls.”

I look at Ray, who stands up and takes a seat on a chair opposite mine.

“You always hang back in locker rooms until everyone else has showered before you

go in. You sometimes look at boys a little too long, though I’m not sure you know you do

that. Just bits and pieces. Don’t even know when I knew, I just did.”

“Smartass shrink,” I say with a half-smile, scrunching up the granola wrapper and

tossing it in the trash.

“I’m not gonna be a psychologist – I want to be a scientist, a researcher,” he reminds

me for the umpteenth time with a mock scowl.

“You’ll be a great mad scientist,” I say. “You’ve got the crazy hair and all.”

He reaches over and knocks me on the shoulder. “Now who’s the smartass?”

I chuckle again before I curl myself up on the chair, hands looped around my knees.

“You seriously okay with me being like this?”

“Of course I am,” he says with widening eyes, painfully reminding me of Grayson. “I

mean, it’s not like you can change it.”

“Thought I could,” I mutter to the window, checking one more time to see if he’s

there.

“Hey,” says Ray after a while. “Grayson. That’s the stalker, right?”

I nod.

He rubs his face before he continues; his dark eyes solemn.

“When you were drunk, you said that you hurt him. You didn’t force yourself on him

or anything?”

I shake my head.

“No – I mean, a little, but not like that. I mean...” With a sigh, I bump my forehead

against my knees. “I hurt his feelings, and I feel like shit. I...I really like this guy, Ray. I don’t know him, but there’s just something about him, you know?”

When Ray doesn’t say anything back, I look up. The brightness from the window

reflects in his brown eyes as he thoughtfully traces his lip with his index finger.

“Well, then you just have to find him and apologize,” he says, now looking at me.

Apologize...

It did feel good to apologize to Cindy back at the hospital. Maybe I should find the

other girls and apologize to them, too. But Ray is right. I really need to find Grayson, but the

thought of it makes my hands prickle because I don’t know what’ll happen when I see him.

What if he turns me down?

***

Two days and some serious lack of sleep later, I still haven’t found him. I have no

idea what he’s studying, and I haven’t seen the tiniest glimpse of him. I’ve skipped classes

just to walk about campus, looking through windows, threading the library, staking out the

cafeteria, and hanging out by the lockers in the hopes of seeing him. But there’s nothing.

The thought that has been lurking beneath the surface keeps bobbing up: Did whoever

gave him that shiner hit him so badly he hasn’t been able to show up for school? Why would

someone hit him?

I wish he would have told me his last name. That way I could charm my way through

registration to find out his address.

But the name ‘Grayson’ isn’t that common. I’ve been asking around if people know a

guy in school, about yay high, brown hair, blue eyes, named Grayson. It seems that my little

stalker wasn’t well known because not one person seems to know him.

I head for the campus bar with Ray that same evening after giving him my solemn

word I won’t touch a drink. It took a lot of persuading, but he’s been helping me try to find

Grayson and agrees I might be able to find him at the bar. It was, after all, a place where he

said he hung out – in the back.

But he’s not there.

Ray starts chatting up girls while I sit myself down at the bar. A brown-haired

bartender cocks an eyebrow at me. She’s a girl I once threw out after a night together. I

gesture for her with my fingers, and she approaches me with hands folded in front of her

chest.

“What can I get for you, Coby?” she asks in a flat voice.

“Nothing tonight,” I say, ignoring her mock gasp. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for

how I treated you.”

“What, you’re in that stage of the twelve step program already? I’m pretty sure I saw

you pissed last week.”

“No,” I say with a little smile. “I’m not in the program. I’ve just had a nasty wake-up

call.”

“What, you knocked someone up?”

“No,” I say with a shake of my head. “Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”