Love Lessons (38 page)

“They’re doing that so if they decide negatively, there can’t be any more pushback,” Rose complained.

“There won’t be any more pushback if they decide in favor of keeping Williams,” Ethan pointed out. “I just can’t believe they’ll drag this out that long. If he doesn’t get to keep this position, he has to find a new one.”

“That’s probably what they’re counting on, that he’ll have to get another job first and save them the trouble,” Walter said.

Kelly agreed that he wished they’d decide sooner rather than later, though for different reasons. He and Walter didn’t discuss the next school year much, only during the week Walter had been eligible to sign up for housing. They were now secured for a room in the upper story of Hampton, which was great—except Kelly didn’t know that he could come back.

He hadn’t said a word to Walter about what his family’s stark financial situation might mean to their plans, but sometimes Kelly thought Walter knew what might be coming. He wanted to talk about it, but every instinct he had told him not to bring it up until he had no other choice. When Kelly found himself in Williams’s office discussing some scholarship opportunities, he decided to lay everything out on the table and see what Walter’s advisor thought of the situation.

Williams sank back into his sagging office chair with a sigh. “Normally, I’d tell you to shoot straight and be honest. With this? With Walter, right now?” He shook his head with a grimace. “Let’s just say I’m hoping one of these donors comes through with a full ride for you.”

Kelly blinked. “Is that even a possibility?”

“Only if we’re living one of your Disney movies.” Williams ran a hand over his face. “God, I hate this. I don’t know how much he’s told you about his past, but your boyfriend is the poster child for abandonment issues. Doesn’t help a damn thing that he has such a big, giving heart. He tries to hide it, but he has to have at least one or two people he can shower affection on like a kind of outlet. That would be you and me right now, kid, and we’re both poised to abandon him like nobody ever has.”

Kelly felt sick. And trapped. “Dr. Williams, I can’t make my family pay thirty-six thousand a year just because I don’t want to make Walter feel bad.” He hugged himself and hunched over a little. “Maybe I could go part-time or something, and stay here until he graduates and I can transfer.”

“No, Kelly. You were right the first time. You can’t make your family strain just to avoid a nasty situation for your boyfriend.” He rubbed at his temple. “Let me keep working on this, okay? Or are your parents pressuring you to make a decision right now?”

Kelly shook his head. “They’re ready to send me here again if it’s what I want. The thing is, the only thing here specifically that I want is Walter.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He shook his head. “If the appeal falls through, I hope he goes elsewhere. This has always been settling for him. I know he says it doesn’t matter, but it does. He’s so smart. Brilliant, even. But he needs to have somebody supporting him, or he’s not okay. God, he’d hate us talking about this. Except it’s true.” Williams looked at Kelly over the top of his glasses. “You get that, right? That Mr. I-Don’t-Need-Anyone only says that to keep people from suspecting what a big fat lie that is?”

Kelly smiled sadly. “Yeah. I’ve known that for a while now.”

Williams went back to skimming his computer screen. “We’ll find a way to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but we’ll find a way.”

The talk helped Kelly. It made him feel less like he was keeping a secret from Walter and more that he was working on a solution.

The April meeting of Philosophy Club was on Francis Herbert Bradley and the philosophy of idealism. While Kelly still thought the whole philosophy thing went a bit above his head, he found he really liked Bradley and his good self vs. bad self. His favorite part was Bradley’s suggestion people lean on religious teachings to find their way. Kelly had started becoming a regular churchgoer, much to Walter’s chagrin, and he found the hour to reflect and remember what was important in life centered him, helped him pilot better through the rest of his week.

He held Walter’s hand as they headed back to the dorm after the Bradley meeting. The usual herd was headed for Moe’s, which hopefully meant Porter would be a bit more isolated than normal. It was hard to believe in a month he wouldn’t have to live there anymore, one way or another. He’d be either in the air-conditioned Manors with Walter, or he’d be…somewhere else.

“Three weeks until the decision,” Walter said as they crossed the common and headed past the student union. His voice was quiet, and he sounded sad. “I hope we’ve done enough.”

Kelly squeezed his hand. “If it isn’t enough, you’ll know you gave it everything you had.”

Walter looked so tired. “Kelly, I don’t know what I’ll do if they don’t keep his position. I honestly have no idea.”

“Whatever it is,” Kelly said, “we’ll face it together.”

Walter pulled him close, and Kelly slipped an arm around his waist.

As they made love that night, though Kelly hadn’t set out to plan it, he found himself subtly shifting the tables. It was he who pressed Walter into the mattress, he who covered Walter with kisses and urged him to let go, give in to pleasure. It wasn’t the first time he rimmed him or added a combo blow job, but it was the first time he ever felt so intent on caretaking, on giving Walter a safe space. What came next, in the end, was only a natural extension.

They exchanged no words to confirm their switching of previous roles, but when Kelly began to ease him open, Walter opened his legs and helped him along.

As soon as Kelly began to push inside, feeling the heat and tightness around his cock, he quietly vowed he’d be doing this again and soon. Being fucked felt good, but fucking wasn’t bad, either. Walter seemed to like the change as well—he shut his eyes and let go, gasping and clutching at the futon, urging Kelly on. Kelly didn’t hesitate to give his lover what he asked for.

When they came down, breathless and sweaty and sated, they spooned together, the smell of sex wrapping around them. Walter smiled sleepily and twined his fingers lazily in Kelly’s hair.

“I can feel your spunk leaking out of my ass,” he murmured, laughing. “I haven’t felt that since I was too stupid to demand condoms.”

Kelly fought to shut his eyes against the gentle massage at his scalp. “I like that feeling too.”

Walter nuzzled Kelly’s lips, his fingers in Kelly’s hair slowing to a more deliberate caress. “Thank you.”

Kelly nuzzled back. “You’re welcome.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Walter was five, he’d been lost in a department store. One moment his mother had been standing at the perfume counter while Walter touched the shiny rows of dangling necklaces, admiring the way they danced in the light, and the next his mother was gone. He’d wandered the gleaming white counters, heart pounding, wanting to call for her but not daring to shout and get in trouble for making a scene. Though the adventure had likely only been a few minutes, it had felt like hours that he’d wandered up and down the center aisle, hoping for a glimpse of her red coat, until he couldn’t hold back his tears and a saleslady took him to customer service. He’d been reunited with his mother right away, and she’d even fussed over him, giving him hugs and telling him never to wander off again, but that horrible feeling of what it felt like to be lost, hopelessly lost with no idea of how to find himself, had never gone away.

Whenever he was particularly stressed out, Walter replayed variations of that moment in dreams. The night before Williams’s decision was to be announced, he had the version where he was lost in an airport—still young, still looking for his mother, but it was seas of suitcases and suit legs he navigated, not white counters and rows of perfume. In his nightmares, unlike real life, he never found his mother, and no one ever rescued him. He always woke agitated, hollowed out and sick to his stomach.

That Thursday morning when he climbed out of the dream, Kelly was there, asleep beside him on the futon. They were both naked and twined together, pulled close in one of their last nights together until whenever they visited one another this summer. Walter intended to put in an appearance for a week or so in Northbrook and then head for the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. He had, without telling Kelly, priced apartments in Windom and looked for part-time jobs so he didn’t seem stalker-ish. He hadn’t committed to anything yet, but he hadn’t ruled anything out either. Their room was almost completely packed. Kelly’s parents were coming on Saturday to move him out, though Kelly himself would be in Northbrook at Cara’s wedding with Walter. They were taking Walter’s things too, in a little trailer they’d borrowed from a neighbor for the occasion. Walter felt this was a sign his apartment idea was a good one.

At that moment he wasn’t thinking much about apartments, though.

It was early, but he couldn’t stay in bed any longer, and he didn’t want to wake up Kelly, so he dressed quietly and headed out to wander the campus. He skipped the cafeteria, meandering around the pathways that led to the lake instead, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets and letting his caged thoughts spin out across the early morning mist. The leaves were in bloom, but they still had that stark green that came with first leaf. The flowerbeds were lush and primed for the marigolds the seniors would plant as part of their graduation ceremony on Sunday. The swans swam serenely as ever. Everything was quiet and beautiful, and it gave Walter hope, something to hold on to while he waited to hear what the future would bring. He wanted to sit at Williams’s office, but he knew Williams was at home, waiting for the 8 a.m. phone call that would decide his fate.

Walter paced the length of campus and back again, waiting for it too.

At 8:16, his phone rang. He held it in his hand a moment, heart tight, arms aching. Then he swallowed hard and answered.

“Hey, Williams,” he said, trying—and failing—to keep his tone glib. He looked up at the beauty of a magnolia tree in bloom above him, fixating on the frail, pink blooms. “Tell me the good word.”

He had his answer before Williams spoke, in the heavy, painful beat of silence. “I’m so sorry, Walter.”

Walter shut his eyes, breathing against the heaviness that hit him, pulling him down and down into a sorrow that did not stop.

“Walter, listen to me.” Williams’s voice sounded broken, like he was crying or trying not to. “You did everything you could. I know that. I saw that. I watched you, watched everything you did. I know you got to them, and I think you moved a lot of the regents. You did amazing things, worked miracles and moved mountains, and that counts.”

Walter’s throat was so thick he almost couldn’t speak. “Not enough.”

“Yes, enough.” Williams’s voice grew stronger. “You did far more than enough. You were amazing, Walter, like you always are.”

Walter felt sick. He swayed on his feet and put an arm out against one of the magnolia branches to steady himself. “They can’t do this. They
can’t do this
.”

“They can. They did. They’re selfish, idiot bastards, and I don’t have to play nice for them anymore—but yes, they can do this. Right now, though, I don’t care about them. I care about you. Where are you, Walter? I’m halfway to campus, and I’m coming to find you.”

Walter opened his eyes at that, panicked, as if Williams might already be there. “No. I want to be alone.”

“The hell you do. Listen to me: we’re going to be okay. Both of us. You get that? I don’t care what they did or didn’t do. I’m not leaving you, and you’re going to be okay.”

Walter’s laugh was hollow and dangerously watery. “I didn’t lose my job.”

“No. But you and I both know, Walter, that you feel like you lost something a lot bigger than that. I’m telling you it’s not true. I don’t care where I am next year, or where you are. I will not abandon you. Understand that, please, because I’m going to keep saying it until you do.”

Walter wiped at his eyes and moved away from the tree, heading to the other side of the union. He could see the lake in the distance, the cove on the far side where the swans liked to hide in the shadows. He saw them now, swimming silently together on the mirrored surface.

He wiped his eyes again.

“I have to go,” he said, choking on the words.

“
Walter.
” Williams was almost shouting. “Walter, don’t you dare hang up on me.”

Walter kept looking at the swans.

Kelly.
Kelly would go too. He knew it in his bones. He’d known it all along. He’d known Williams would leave, Cara, Kelly—they all would. They all did, in the end.

“
Walter Lucas,
you get your ass to my office right now, or so help me God, I’ll send the SWAT team out to find you.”

Kelly would leave. They all would leave.

Walter’s stomach lurched, and he almost fell on his face. “I have to go.”

He hung up the phone. He turned off the ringer.

He let tears stream down his face and stumbled toward the lake.

Kelly woke to someone pounding on his door. The knocking was so insistent that he didn’t bother getting dressed, only wore the sheet to the door, where his equally rumpled RA stood holding a piece of paper.

“You’re supposed to call this number, right now. It’s some professor.”