Screwups (22 page)

“Well, I’ll say this for him,” Mark said, apparently oblivious to the menace in Jake’s stance. “He gives great head.”

“You two can’t stand each other. You expect me to believe he had
sex
with you?”

Mark snorted. “Dude! He has sex with
everybody
. In high school, he sucked off the entire wrestling team.”

The rage boiled over. Jake was hardly aware of chasing Mark out of the bathroom, bellowing something incoherent. Somehow as they ran past the upstairs lounge, down the stairs, and through the downstairs lounge, they picked up a host of startled onlookers and people trying to halt what must have looked like a murderous rampage. Shouts of “What the fuck!” and “Jake!” and “Jesus Christ!’ followed them as they burst out the lower lounge door into the freezing cold night air. Mark screamed as Jake tackled him at the edge of the walkway and sent them both sprawling into a snow bank.

“Jake! Stop!”

“What the
hell’s
going on?”

“For fuck’s sake!”

Jake got in one good punch to Mark’s arrogant mouth before he was yanked backward by two people grabbing his arms.

“Jake! Stop it!” It was Danny’s voice. And the sound of it brought Jake back to reality enough to realize that Danny was practically wrapped around his left arm, struggling to restrain him. His right arm was being held by Sonny.

“Get the fuck away from me, you fucking
psycho
!” Mark screamed at him, though his words were muffled by the hand clutching at his mouth.

“If you ever say anything like that again, I’ll fucking
kill
you!”

“Dude!” Sonny snarled at him, “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but you need to calm down right now!”

“Everyone at Keene High School knew about it, you stupid gorilla!”

“Mark!” Sonny snapped. “Both of you need to shut up!”

“You’re nothing special! Give him two beers and he’ll fuck every guy in this dorm!”

Jake growled and tried to lunge at him again, but Danny and Sonny held him fast. Sonny was angrier than Jake had ever seen him—angry at both of them. “I swear to God, if you don’t stop this, I’m gonna call the cops and get you both thrown out of the dorm!”

“Jake….” Danny’s voice was the only one that seemed calm, and it drained some of the fight out of him. Jake looked at him and to his horror, Danny didn’t look angry. He didn’t look like he couldn’t believe anyone would say this shit about him. There was no righteous indignation, no disgust, just… resignation.

This isn’t the first time someone’s said this about him.

“Jesus…. Danny….”

Danny looked at him with an expression of tremendous pain, and the words that came out of his mouth were the last words Jake wanted to hear. “I’m sorry.”

N
OBODY
CALLED
the cops, but that was only because Sonny didn’t really want the hassle, and he spent a half hour talking Mark out of doing it. He’d ordered Jake to go up to his room and get some clothes on. Jake did what he was told, but Sonny was still furious with him by the time he came upstairs.

“You owe me, man!” he said, pacing back and forth between the beds. “He still might go to the cops and file assault charges in the morning, and if he does, that’ll be too fucking bad for you. Nobody’s gonna care what he said about your boyfriend. You’re just gonna be out of this dorm and maybe out of school. And someone might get it into their head to file sexual assault charges against you too! There’s not a goddamned thing I could do about it. That’s what running around naked in public can get you, you stupid shit!”

Jake sat on his bed with his head between his hands, listening to Sonny’s tirade. He didn’t try to argue. And he wouldn’t look at Danny at all.

Danny watched silently from his own bed, feeling like his whole world had just exploded. He remembered the kiss Jake had given him just before heading to the shower, and he realized that might have been the last time Jake would ever kiss him. The truth was out now. And the disgust in Jake’s eyes when he’d realized it had ripped Danny’s heart out. Jake hadn’t said a word to him the entire time they’d been in their room, waiting for Sonny to come up.

He’d known it would happen, sooner or later.

You just sucked off three guys. Get away from me, you filthy cum whore.

“If you have any fucking sense at all,” Sonny went on, “you’ll go down there with me tomorrow and apologize to him.”

“Apologize?” Jake said. He looked as if he’d never heard anything so insane in his life.

“If you want to stay in the dorm.”

“Did you hear what he said about Danny?”

Sonny looked at Danny and asked, “Was he lying?” Danny knew he’d heard the rumors. Everyone in the dorm had, except for Jake.

Danny’s hand was shaking, as he lifted it to brush his hair back from his forehead. “He exaggerated.” He took a deep breath. “But no, it wasn’t really a lie.”

Sonny shook his head and let out a puff of air. “Look, I don’t really care what you did in high school. But where I come from, you don’t beat someone up for telling the truth.”

He left them alone, and the silence that fell in the room when he closed the door felt like the silence at the end of the world. Judgment had been passed. Jake would never be able to look at him with the same adoration and affection he’d shown before.

“You sucked off the entire wrestling team?” Jake asked him, his mouth set in grim line. He was staring fixedly at the floor between them.

“I said he exaggerated.”

“How many was it, then? Just
half
the wrestling team? Three-quarters?”

Danny didn’t even know the answer to that question. How many guys had there been on the team? He’d never thought about it before. “There were three of them. And another guy was watching.”

“Did they force you?”

“No.”

“You wanted to do it?”

“I guess so.”

Jake seemed to be chewing on that for a long time. Then he said, “Dickwad said you… did the same for him.”

Fuck me.
“The night the idiot stuck his tongue to the tracks. By the time we got back here, we were both pretty drunk. We got horsing around a little. It was the only time he was ever nice to me. When he said he was horny and asked me if I’d do it… I guess I thought he’d be less of a dick to me if I did.”

Jake still couldn’t look at him. “So… what? You just suck off anyone who sticks his dick in your face?”

“Maybe.”

“Jesus.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say after that.

J
AKE
HAD
never been so miserable in his life. Even losing Tom paled in comparison to how awful it was to no longer have Danny in his bed every night, to no longer be able to touch him. He’d had everything, and now he’d lost it. And Jake wasn’t even sure who to blame. Mark for telling him? Danny for doing it? Or himself for not being able deal with it?

It wasn’t just the wrestlers, though he had to admit that had wigged him out. He’d known Danny was casual about sex, but to just have a bunch of guys line up like that…. It was so sleazy. Was that really what Danny wanted? Did he
like
that sort of thing?

And to give
Mark
a blowjob, when the guy was such an asshole! The thought of touching Mark in any kind of sexual way nauseated Jake. It had been hard enough to go to his room with Sonny the next morning and choke back the bile enough to say, “I’m sorry.” Mark had been a snot about it, of course. He’d threatened to call the police if Jake ever even looked at him again. It had taken every ounce of strength Jake had to keep his fist from reconnecting with Mark’s face.

But no, the real issue was what Mark had said that night:
You’re nothing special. Give him two beers and he’ll fuck every guy in this dorm.

He’d wanted Danny to tell him it was bullshit—the only guy he wanted was Jake. But he hadn’t said that. He’d just confirmed that he would have sex with anybody who asked him to. Jake had asked, so no big deal. Just another guy to fuck.

They barely spoke to each other after that night. Danny hadn’t tried to climb into bed with Jake when they turned the lights out, as he’d been doing for the past few months, and there had been no physical contact between them for days now. It wasn’t that they were hostile. They didn’t fight. They nodded at each other when they passed in the hall or the lounge. Jake just couldn’t think of anything to say to Danny anymore. He’d thought they were in love, but he’d been wrong. At least about Danny’s feelings. He’d never said he loved Jake, and now it seemed pretty clear that he hadn’t. It was just fucking around.

Once, Jake woke in the middle of the night to hear Danny crying softly in his bed. He’d wanted to reach out to him then, but when he called Danny’s name, the crying stopped. Danny didn’t respond, though he must have known Jake wasn’t fooled into thinking he was sleeping again.

Just when Jake had thought things couldn’t get any more miserable, his father came to see him.

“There’s some guy looking for you,” one of the girls watching TV told him when he returned from class through the lower lounge door. “He says he’s your father.”

“Oh Christ….”

“I told him he could wait for you in the upstairs lounge.”

“Thanks.”

Jake found his father standing in front of the painting of the nude girl. Jake knew who the artist was now—a girl named Sara who was in his oil painting class. There had been some progress made on it since he first moved in, and now it was pretty detailed. But for a straight guy, Mr. Stewart didn’t appear to take much pleasure in the female form. His expression indicated he found the painting distasteful, at best. As far as Jake knew, his father hated art.

Mr. Stewart looked up when Jake opened the door in the glass divider that separated the lounge from the upstairs hall and stairwell.

“You could have waited here forever,” Jake said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I was driving by the campus, and I took a chance. It’s just before dinner, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I thought you might go to your room to drop off your books or something.”

It was true. Jake generally did do that. He dumped his accounting book on the table, as if to prove the point, and then closed the door behind him. He doubted this was going to be a pleasant visit.

His father didn’t disappoint him. “I’ve had a call from the father of one of your dorm mates. Mark Peterson? His father was threatening legal action because you beat up his son—while you were naked, I gather.”

“I was in the shower when he started the fight.”

His father looked at him coldly. “I’m not concerned about the fight. Boys fight. It’s how they become men. Mr. Peterson was bluffing, of course. I gave him the name of our lawyer and he immediately backed down. It’s no wonder his son is such a pussy. But what I am concerned about is what appears to have started the fight.”

Mr. Stewart moved closer, until they were looking eye-to-eye. They were the same height now. Jake might have even been a bit taller. But this man had hit him so many times as he was growing up, he couldn’t suppress a twinge of fear in the pit of his stomach.

“I’ve always known you’d turn out to be a faggot,” his father said quietly. “You’ve been a mommy’s boy your whole life, no matter how much I’ve tried to beat it out of you. Are you going to deny you’ve been fucking your roommate?” The word “fucking” was already crass and obscene, but somehow he managed to fill the word with so much loathing it felt to Jake as if he’d just been accused of having sex with barnyard animals.

“He’s been fucking
me
, actually.”

He’d never dared say anything like that to his father before, but he no longer gave a shit what happened. His mother had found the strength to stand up to this bastard. It was time he grew a pair and did the same.

His father looked as if he wanted to kill him, but he’d never before struck out at one of his sons in front of witnesses, and it must have been the possibility that someone could walk by at any moment that stayed his hand now.

“I don’t have fags for sons,” he said. “Everything you own, every trace of you in my house, will be thrown in the dumpster tonight. If you want any of it, remember trash pickup is this Saturday. I’m not going to bother challenging the college for the money I’ve already paid them, but after this semester you’ll have the fun of supporting a college education on minimum wage at Cumberland Farms.”

He did strike Jake then, though just hard enough in the chest to shove him out of the way. Jake let him leave the lounge, slamming the door behind him, and then watched him walk calmly down the stairs as if nothing had happened.

Jake wondered if he should feel something, if he should be upset that his father had just disowned him. But he didn’t.

He didn’t feel a thing.

E
VA
DROVE
the getaway car. And despite all the tension between them, Danny had come along to help with the dumpster diving. Jake was pleased that Danny still seemed to consider him a friend. Maybe they could at least salvage that much from this mess. Paul joined them, though he stated flatly that he wasn’t going to crawl around in anyone’s dumpster. He’d just go along for “moral support”
—
though how sitting in the car grousing about germs would support anything, Jake had no idea.

He wasn’t really sure if there was anything from his house that he needed, but he wanted to check, just in case there was something he’d regret losing. Something he’d sketched, perhaps, or a present from his mother. Maybe nothing. But he knew his father was dead serious about tossing it all, and this would be his only chance to retrieve it.

The street was well lit, so there was little chance of getting in unseen. Jake didn’t give a fuck. He directed Eva to pull up in the back of the house beside the dumpster and pop the trunk. Then he and Danny scrambled out with a handful of garbage bags each.