Screwups (17 page)

“True,” Danny agreed. “Come on.”

He got up from his bed and led Jake downstairs to the TARDIS phone booth. Jake felt awkward standing there and listening in on Danny’s conversation, but Danny was the one who’d told him to tag along. Everything seemed to go okay, at first. Danny asked his mother if it would be okay to have a friend come home for break—all four weeks of it—and she seemed cool with it.

Then he said, “No, don’t bother putting him in the guest room. He’ll just sleep with me.”

Jake nearly choked on his own tongue. “Dude!”

“Hold on, Mom. I’ll call you back in just a minute.” Danny hung up the phone and leaned against the wall of the booth. Fortunately, nobody else was in the lounge at the moment. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I assumed if you were out here, you’d be out at my house.”

“Not necessarily.”

Danny grimaced. “I’ll tell her you’re going to sleep on the floor. We have an air mattress that’s pretty comfortable.”

“It’s too late
now
,” Jake protested. “She already thinks we’re fucking!”

“She might believe me, if I tell her we just like to talk—”

The phone rang and Danny picked it up. “Hello? No, Mom. We’re not fucking.”

Jake groaned. “Screw it! If you want her to know, go ahead and tell her.”

“Scratch that. We
are
fucking.” Danny paused a minute. “I can’t help it if he’s indecisive. But he’s cute, so I put up with it.”

They talked a bit longer, arranging the details, while Jake quietly hyperventilated and paced back and forth in front of the booth. On the one hand, it was kind of cool that Danny’s mother seemed okay with them sharing a bed—and having sex. They wouldn’t have to sneak around, grabbing a kiss or a caress when her back was turned, and then go to sleep in different rooms, about to explode from sexual frustration. On the other hand, Danny had just
outed
him—to his mother!

Asshole.

When Danny hung up the phone, Jake stood there a moment, glaring at him.

“I said I was sorry,” Danny said, spreading his hands in surrender. “I tell my mom everything. And I thought you’d want to keep sleeping together. I mean, it’s four weeks, man.”

Jake frowned and shook his head. Then he sighed. “Fine. I just think you should have asked me first.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

Danny stepped out of the booth and put his hands on Jake’s hips. That kind of gesture had been more common lately, for both of them. So far, nobody in the dorm had objected. Danny raised his face, and Jake leaned down to kiss him. That was something they hadn’t been brave enough to try when there were people around.

“Would you like to have makeup sex?” Danny asked him, smiling impishly.

“Okay.”

Danny turned to go upstairs, with Jake trailing behind him, but he stopped on the first step and turned around, a look of distress on his face. “Oh. I forgot to mention… we don’t really do Christmas.”

“Don’t…
do
Christmas?”

“We don’t celebrate it. We’re Wiccan, so we celebrate the Solstice and Yule instead.”

Jake knew Danny’s mother was into Reiki and meditation, and Danny had described her as “kind of New Age,” but he hadn’t thought much about it otherwise. “What’s ‘Wiccan’?”

D
ANNY
WAS
surprised to learn that Jake had never even heard of Wicca. There were about a million books in the stores about it. Then again, he couldn’t imagine Jake browsing the occult section at Barnes & Noble, so maybe it wasn’t so unlikely after all. He spent some time explaining the basics—how it was an earth-based religion, honoring both a god and a goddess, and following the cycles of the moon and the seasons.

“
Which
god and goddess?” Jake asked.

Danny shrugged. “Pretty much any of them. Mom’s coven likes Herne, the god of the Wild Hunt, and Brighid, the goddess of the hearth.”

“The hearth?”

“The home,” Danny explained. “Well, technically the fire that warms it. The point is, different covens honor different gods, depending on who they feel an affinity for. But they have two, because they believe there has to be a balance between male and female.”

Jake regarded him for a moment, his brow furrowed. “Do you believe all this?” he asked finally.

“I’m kind of agnostic, but I’ll roll with it in a pinch. It’s what my mom raised me with.”

“I think my parents are Baptist. But we never went to church.”

They were lying naked on Jake’s bed, spent from sex and a little on the sweaty side. Danny rolled on top of him, feeling Jake’s cock almost instantly harden between their abdomens. The guy was inexhaustible. “Look, you don’t have to believe it. You can think it’s silly, if you want. Just don’t make fun of it in front of my mom, okay?”

“I’m not a complete barbarian,” Jake grumbled. “I know not to insult my host and not to pee on the carpet.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Danny didn’t hover around the phone when Jake called his brother back to beg off going home, but Jake was in a foul mood when he returned. “He’s pissed” was all he said. Danny tried to pry more out of him but gave up when it was clear Jake didn’t want to get into it.

The dorm was nearly empty on their last night of the semester. Sonny was downstairs in one of the empty rooms hosting a drinking party, despite the fact that half those present weren’t quite twenty-one yet. Danny, Jake, Eva, and Paul were the only ones left in their wing, and Eva technically shouldn’t have been there, because her last final had been two days before. But she’d convinced Sonny she needed to stay in order to drive the three boys home.

They decided to have a D&D campaign in the lounge. Wallace wasn’t there, so that meant they couldn’t continue the main campaign they were on, and Paul had to improvise a side adventure for the three of them while Wallace’s character, Hastur, made a pilgrimage to a local temple. It was fun but not very eventful.

Danny found it more interesting to watch the subtle changes that had come over his friends in the past couple of weeks. Jake was openly affectionate—even flirtatious—with him now, not caring that Eva and Paul were watching. He poked Danny, made playful grabs at his knee, caressed his shoulder. After a particularly good roll that saved Jake/Berengar’s neck from a worg, Jake even kissed his cheek. It was a little unsettling, given that their relationship had been in the closet for Danny as much as for Jake. He was relieved they were no longer hiding it, but he hadn’t quite adjusted to being openly affectionate and kept glancing around to see who might be watching.

Eva and Paul acted as if it were perfectly ordinary, which made it easier. Paul had changed recently too. On the surface, he was still petulant and antisocial, but ever since Jake had taken him down the hill on the sled, he no longer made subtle jibes at the “jock” in their midst. It was a bit too early to say for certain, but Danny thought he saw a hint of admiration in Paul’s eyes now whenever he looked at Jake.

And that pointed out another change. Even though Danny was sure—well,
pretty
sure—that Paul was straight, he found himself feeling a bit… proprietary whenever he caught Paul giving Jake that look. As if Jake was
his
.

Not good.
Yet who had been the one to suggest spending a month together, more or less just the two of them?

The next morning, Eva dropped him and Jake off at Danny’s house in Peterborough before heading on to Keene, where she and Paul lived. Danny had to admit, he loved his house. It was warm and welcoming, with small herb gardens flanking the door in the light half of the year, and a dried herbal wreath on the front door in the winter.

When he opened the door for Jake, he was acutely aware of the effort his mom went through to make the house a place of sanctuary. There was the tang of sandalwood incense in the air. Not a thick pall of it—just a faint lingering scent. The rooms were lit by Chinese lanterns and candles, producing a pleasant yellow-orange glow without harsh bright lights. You couldn’t exactly read by it, but it was relaxing. The walls were decorated with prints from India and China, and the hardwood floor in the living room was largely covered by an Oriental carpet—fake, of course. His mom was far from wealthy. There was a low table in the center with a number of throw pillows surrounding it. Mom didn’t really believe in sitting on chairs. And the fireplace had been lit.

“Wow,” Jake breathed, as though afraid to disturb the peaceful atmosphere. “This is something else.”

Danny’s mother must have heard them enter, because she came scurrying out of Danny’s bedroom, her caftan billowing around her small frame. “I thought I heard the door! Welcome to our home, Jake!”

Jake looked a little overwhelmed as she embraced him, kissed her son, and then took her guest by the hand to give him a brief tour of the house. Danny followed along, struggling not to laugh at Jake’s bewildered expression while his mom jabbered on cheerfully.

There wasn’t much to see. It was a single-story ranch with just a few rooms. But they were all clean and cozy. When they came to the sun-room, Jake noticed the tree in the corner and said, “Danny told me you don’t celebrate Christmas.”

Danny’s mom laughed gently. “Oh, that isn’t a Christmas tree, hon. It’s a Yule tree.”

Jake looked at her blankly.

Much to Danny’s relief, his mother didn’t go into the longwinded explanation. She simply said, “Let’s just say it’s a cross between the old pagan customs and the newer Christian ones.”

“Okay.”

The last room she showed him was Danny’s bedroom. It looked exactly like it always had—except for the small basket full of condoms on the bed stand. That, and the bottle of lube next to it.

“Mom! For fuck’s sake!” Danny went over to the basket and held it up. “Jake’s going to think I host orgies here or something.” He looked pointedly at Jake. “I do
not
normally have a basket full of condoms by my bed.”

His mom shrugged. “I just want you boys to play safe.”

All the blood had drained from Jake’s face, and he looked like he might pass out. Danny decided to rescue him from further embarrassment. At least for the moment. “Thanks, Mom,” he said with a wry smile. “Let me show Jake where he can put his stuff. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“All right, hon. I was thinking we could take Jake to the diner for dinner.”

“Sure.”

The look she gave them clearly suggested she thought they’d be up to something X-rated during those “few minutes,” but she left them alone. Jake collapsed on the bed and buried his head in his hands. “Fuck me.”

“If you like. We’ve got plenty of lube.”

Jake groaned and sagged even further into his hands. Danny had to laugh. He sat on the bed beside him and said, “You knew it was coming.”

“I didn’t expect her to be so blatant about it,” Jake protested. “She bought us
supplies
!”

Danny shrugged. “She’s always like that. She sat me down for ‘The Talk’ before I’d even hit puberty. She wanted me to be prepared.”

Jake raised his head and scrunched up his nose as if he smelled something disgusting. “Ew. My parents never even gave me ‘The Talk.’ I think they assumed the twins would tell me whatever I needed to know.”

“Did they?”

He barked out a small, bitter laugh. “They taught me all the derogatory names for women they knew, and how to manipulate girls into putting out.”

“Did it work?”

Jake gave him a look of disgust. “You don’t seriously think I’d ever treat girls the way
they
did?”

Danny could see that Jake wasn’t in the mood for teasing, so he backed off. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed him. “Look, my mom’s just trying to show us she’s cool. There are a lot worse things than your… friend’s mom telling you it’s okay to have sex with her son.”

He’d almost said “boyfriend,” and from the way Jake glanced at him, he knew it hadn’t escaped notice. Fortunately, Jake didn’t pursue it.

“Does she think we’re screwing around right now?” he asked, looking at the closed bedroom door as if she might walk in at any moment with some sex toys she’d forgotten to leave behind.

“Maybe.”

“How about we go eat some diner food?”

“Sure,” Danny said. “But there won’t be any avoiding things tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Jake sighed. “Yeah. I guess not.”

D
ANNY
’
S
MOTHER
made it very clear that she was not to be called
Mrs
. Sullivan, because she’d never married Danny’s father—“Thank the goddess!”—and she wasn’t particularly fond of
Ms
. Sullivan either. She preferred Althea. “It’s the Greek word for ‘healing,’ which is what I do!”

Jake suspected it wasn’t her given name. According to Danny, it was common for people in the Wiccan religion to take on “craft” names—names they felt better represented their true spirit. That struck Jake as a little odd, but it was hardly the oddest thing he encountered at Danny’s house. Besides, he thought the name suited her.

She was a vibrant woman and one who seemed fundamentally comfortable with who she was, or at least who she’d made herself into. Like Danny, she had flawless skin with a golden honey glow to it, and thick light-brown hair that shimmered like satin when she moved. Danny’s mysterious father appeared to have contributed only one thing to his son’s appearance—Althea’s eyes were a bright, sparkling blue, instead of Danny’s smoky gray. But if Jake ever met the guy, he’d have to thank him for that. Danny’s eyes were the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.

Jake couldn’t help but compare Althea to his own mother. Both were beautiful women, and he found them both admirable, but where his mother’s strength seemed to be the ability to endure—until now, at any rate—Althea simply plowed through obstacles. Over the course of the evening, Jake learned details about her past that many people might have been embarrassed to talk about. As a young woman in college, she’d suddenly found herself with a newborn baby and no husband or family to rely on, yet she’d completed her liberal arts degree and worked whatever jobs she could find in order to support the two of them. At one point, she’d lived in some kind of commune in Vermont until the guru they all admired was accused of sexually harassing young women. He hadn’t lived in that particular commune, but she’d left nevertheless. She had no tolerance for bullshit. But she’d never stepped off her path to spiritual fulfillment, and somehow she’d managed to survive and bring Danny along for the ride.