Screwups (15 page)

But he didn’t really know. He thought of Danny as his best friend, and as far as he could tell, Danny thought of him the same way. The sex hadn’t changed that. They still hung out together all the time, talking about whatever random shit came to mind, going on increasingly chilly walks in the college woods, playing D&D—which Jake was beginning to enjoy, despite the baffling rules…. And Jake pretty much had every inch of Danny’s body, including parts Danny himself couldn’t see, committed to memory. Eva had joked that they were beginning to
act
like a couple, even if they weren’t having sex, not knowing of course that they
were
.

But despite all that, Jake was beginning to sense there was something Danny was holding back from him—something he never wanted to talk about. Something dark. Something that made him cry when he didn’t think anyone could hear.

Jake had only caught him a couple of times, though he suspected it happened other nights as well. It had happened the night after they’d first had sex. He’d awoken to find Danny crying very softly. They were lying together in Jake’s bed, Jake spooning Danny’s warm, naked body with one hand draped around Danny’s waist. The moment Jake stirred, Danny seemed to freeze, but Jake had the weird impression that something was wrong.

“Are you okay?”

Danny didn’t answer, but Jake knew he wasn’t sleeping. He raised himself up on his elbow so he could look down at Danny’s face. Even though he was turned away and covering his eyes with his hand, Jake could see the shimmer of wetness on his cheeks. “Are you crying?”

“It’s nothing.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’? Why are you crying?”

With a frustrated snarl, Danny wiped the tears away with his hand. “Go back to sleep, Jake.”

“What the fuck?”

“Jake!” The warning in his voice was clear, so Jake let it drop. But as he laid his head back on the pillow, he felt unsettled and worried. He couldn’t escape the thought that he must be doing something wrong if Danny wasn’t happy in his arms.

The second time was about a week later. Danny was sitting up in bed when Jake woke. He didn’t actually see tears this time, though he saw Danny wipe his face quickly. Jake didn’t try to force him to talk but lifted his hand to stroke Danny’s naked back. Danny tensed for a second before relaxing into the caress. After a few moments, he lifted the blankets off Jake’s body and leaned down to take Jake’s cock into his mouth. Jake was surprised, and he suspected Danny was doing it to distract him. But it worked. Within seconds, Jake was no longer able to think coherently about anything.

T
HE
ONE
thing Danny hadn’t expected when he got involved with Jake was that the nightmares would grow worse. He hadn’t been having them that often since he’d arrived at UNH. Hardly at all, in fact. Everything was different here.

Well, mostly. There were students from his high school at UNH, so he hadn’t completely escaped from them. Mark was the worst. There had been no way the college could have known not to put Danny in with someone from his old school, but it had been like a slap in the face nonetheless. Things had seemed okay at first, as though Mark might be willing to let things lie. Then Danny made the mistake of trusting him.

But all of that aside, Jake was the complete opposite of Mark—sweet, considerate, amazingly handsome, and gay, of course, even if he was still in the closet. Danny had no doubt Jake wanted him, at least sexually. So things should have been good.

Except that now the nightmares came almost every night. And it was harder to hide it when they were sharing a bed. Jake hadn’t woken up often—thank God he was a sound sleeper—but when he did he tried to comfort Danny, which just made it worse. If Jake really understood what was going on, he’d drop Danny in a second. Well, Danny had to admit, maybe he wouldn’t be quite that cold about it. Jake was a good guy. He’d try to be sympathetic, perhaps. Maybe they’d stay friends. But he’d certainly give up this silly fantasy he had about there ever being anything serious between them.

There were times when Danny wanted to tell him the truth, times when he thought he was just being an asshole by letting it all drag out. It would be better for Jake if he nipped this relationship in the bud. It was already too late to avoid hurting the guy. The longer things went on, the more painful it would be for Jake when he realized Danny wasn’t what he’d been hoping for. But every time Danny thought about ending it, Jake would smile at him as if he loved him, or give him a gentle caress, and his resolve would melt. The fantasy was too beautiful, too seductive.

But he knew it was just a matter of time.

J
AKE
’
S
FIRST
snowfall at Eaton House was magical. It came down in fat, downy flakes and blanketed the landscape like his best Christmas fantasy. By midafternoon all classes were cancelled, and the snow was still coming down hard.

Jake was ecstatic. He loved the snow. He dragged Danny and Eva outside for a brief snowball fight until they both started grousing about being cold and having snow melting down their necks and went back inside. Paul, of course, never set foot out the door. But Jake didn’t care. He stayed outside by himself, trying to build a snowman. It wasn’t quite deep enough yet—his snowman had as much dirt and dead leaves embedded in it as it did snow—but he found a couple of pebbles for eyes and then ran into the dorm to beg for a carrot to use as the nose. Nobody had one. The dorm had a small kitchenette, but most of the students used it for cooking ramen noodles or macaroni and cheese out of a box. Nobody had a supply of fresh vegetables on hand. Not even the hippies—he checked.

Eventually, someone turned up a fluorescent-orange plastic kazoo. About ten students followed Jake outside to watch him plant the silly thing in the middle of the snowman’s face. A cheer rose up and the snowman was declared a masterpiece of postmodern art—whatever the hell that meant—before everyone scurried back inside to warm up.

A short time later, as the sky was beginning to darken, the campus carillon proclaimed the hour. Jake had thought the carillon was beautiful when he’d first arrived at UNH as an eighteen-year-old, but like most students he soon grew tired of it—it was programmed to play just a few songs, and some of them had mistakes in them. But with the snow falling softly all around him, the carillon bells sounded ethereal and magical. Jake went inside to see if he could catch his friends before they trudged up the hill to the dining commons.

What he found in the lounge took his breath away.

It was Danny, looking magnificent in a black tuxedo. There were other people in the lounge, all dressed to the nines in tuxes and evening gowns, but Jake was only dimly aware of them. He’d never seen Danny like this, and Jake was amazed by how beautiful he was—hair slightly damp and combed back from his high, smooth forehead for once and tucked behind his ears. He was turned profile when Jake first saw him, eyebrows furrowed as he seemed to be scanning the crowded room. Then he turned and saw Jake, and his face lit up with a radiant smile. For one brief moment, Jake fantasized he was walking down the aisle with Danny standing at the altar dressed like that, smiling, waiting for him….

“There you are!” Danny exclaimed, coming up to him. “Shane thought we should all commemorate the first snow by dressing up and processing to dinner in
style
.” Shane was one of the theater majors living on the first floor.

Jake was enthralled by the way the waves of Danny’s golden-brown hair shimmered like satin when he moved his head. But he brought his attention back to what Danny was saying. “I don’t have a tux.”

Danny shrugged. “You kind of have to have one if you’re a music major. A lot of the theater majors have them too. The girls have evening gowns. Everyone else is just dressing up in their best clothes.”

Jake wasn’t poor. He had all the clothes he needed, but generally his wardrobe consisted of jeans and T-shirts, with some athletic wear thrown in. He did own a couple of business suits, but he hated them. They would make him feel even more out of place in this gathering of musicians and actors and artists than his current, somewhat sweaty attire.

“Don’t worry about it,” Danny said, reaching up to put his hands around the back of Jake’s neck, inside his winter jacket. “There isn’t time for you to change anyway.”

Jake thought he might be moving in for a kiss—though he’d never done anything that bold in public before. Jake was still technically in the closet, despite the fact that rumors were probably running rampant, and Danny was doing his best not to out him. Danny brought his hands around to the front and fastened something under Jake’s Adam’s apple. Then he stepped back and gave him an appraising look.

“Perfect!”

Jake lifted a hand and found a bowtie fastened around his neck.

“Let’s go, people!” Shane called from across the room, waving a silver candelabrum in one hand. “Break a leg!”

They processed up the hill, about forty of them, wearing boots—they weren’t dumb enough to wade through half a foot of snow in dress shoes and high heels—but heedless of the snowflakes accumulating on their jackets and wraps. Shane, tall and lanky in his tux, brandished the candelabrum like a sword and led the charge. When they entered the dining hall, shivering but fabulous, the students there gawked at them, then laughed and applauded.

Jake executed a dramatic bow alongside his dorm mates, struggling to keep his expression solemn, though inside he was bursting with joy. For the first time since he’d moved in almost two months ago, he felt like he belonged. His shitty, mind-numbing major no longer mattered. He’d found his true home, among people he’d always been told were “weirdos.” Well, if this was what weird was like, then bring it on! He was an artist! He’d just built his first postmodern snowman—whatever that was—and he’d just made his first
entrance
!

D
ANNY
WATCHED
Jake all through dinner, marveling at his energy. He was grinning from ear to ear. The Eatonites had more or less taken over one of Philbrick’s dining rooms—the one that overlooked the dorm—and violated the rules by moving all the tables into a giant U. When they began competing with each other to see who could make the most pompous, affected toasts, Jake jumped up more than once to play along. Danny had never seen him happier. It was adorable.

“That kid needs Ritalin,” Paul grumbled under his breath.

“No,” Danny replied, looking up at Jake—who was standing beside him, going on about lunching with Princess Diana that afternoon—and smiled fondly. “No, he doesn’t.”

When Jake finally wound down long enough to take his seat again, Danny said in a fake British accent, “I say, old man—where did you get your bow tie? It’s quite dashing.”

“You’re too kind. I believe my valet purchased it at Victoria’s Secret.”

“Oh! They have such
lovely
negligees!”

“Quite. I own several.”

Danny noticed Eva watching them from across the table with a smug expression on her face.
Oops. She’s on to us
. Not that Eva would seriously think they were cross-dressing. But there was something about the way she was smiling at the two of them that made it clear she regarded them as a cute couple.

Hopefully Jake wouldn’t freak out if she said something. But really, they hadn’t exactly been secretive. They were inseparable, they touched each other a bit too much in public, and the way Jake looked at him when Danny played piano in the lounge was pretty much a dead giveaway.

After dinner, they all went back to the dorm. The mood that evening was too mellow to do anything productive, so homework was tossed aside for hanging out and watching videos of Christmas specials in the downstairs lounge—after they had changed into more comfortable clothes, of course. Danny wasn’t at all surprised to discover that Jake adored the specials and could recite the dialog of
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
and
A Charlie Brown Christmas
. But it was also clear that Jake wanted to get outside again. He kept going to the glass sliding doors and sticking his head out.

When the snowfall hadn’t stopped by ten o’clock, Jake suggested taking a walk in it to anybody within hearing. Danny wasn’t sure he felt like trudging through a foot and a half or more of accumulated snow on the ground, but he could see the excitement and anticipation in Jake’s eyes. So they ran upstairs and donned their winter jackets and boots and then gathered in the lounge. This idea had met with less enthusiasm than the march to the dining commons, so in the end there were only about fifteen people. Eva decided to come along, but there was no way anyone was dragging Paul back out into this weather. Unfortunately, Mark was one of those tagging along, but Danny could handle that as long as he didn’t start anything.

The snow had transformed the landscape into something beautiful and ethereal, and as they crossed the minidorm circle and climbed up to the train tracks, they barely spoke, reluctant to disturb the silence. Or near silence—their footsteps made muffled
chump
ing sounds in the fallen snow, they were panting a bit, and the faint sound of traffic on Route 4 could be heard in the distance. There was also a dog barking at one of the farm houses on the edge of the college woods. But there was no wind, no nearby traffic, no laughter or shouts coming from the dorms.

Just a lonely band of explorers with snow drifting down around them like a veil from a low-hanging slate-gray sky.

As they crossed the tracks, Joe, one of the theater majors, laughed and said, “All right, everyone keep an eye on Mark.”

“Shut up,” Mark said.

“We’ve managed to make it this far without fatalities.”

“I said shut up.”

“Mark decided to stick his tongue to one of the railroad ties last year,” Eva explained to Jake, since he was the only one there who hadn’t been at Eaton during the incident. “It was a pretty cold night and it froze there.”