Screwups (9 page)

I
F
J
AKE
thought jerking off with Danny in the dark was hot, this was completely over the top. Danny had grown hard while they were talking about it, and then he’d moved to lie down on his bed and grab hold of himself. Then they went at it, occasionally closing their eyes when the pleasure was intense, but mostly watching each other.

Jake had never watched another guy masturbate. Not even Tom, though he’d desperately wanted to. He’d heard classmates in high school joke about circle jerks—usually as something
other
kids did, but not
them
—and he knew his older brothers had done stuff like that with each other. But before tonight, Jake had never even seen another guy’s dick hard, except for glimpses in porn magazines.

He still couldn’t see Danny’s that well. It was across the room and mostly covered by a hand. But that didn’t stop this from being the hottest sexual experience of Jake’s pathetic virgin life. He timed his orgasm to coincide with Danny’s, and they both watched each other splash come on their chests.

Jake lay there for a long time, thoroughly sated and breathing heavily. Danny seemed content to do the same. Eventually, when the silence had dragged out longer than he could stand, Jake took a deep breath and asked, “You’ve figured out by now that I’m gay, right?”

His heart was racing. He hadn’t intended to say that. Not yet. It had just kind of come out on its own.

“I thought you might be.”

Another long silence fell between them, until Jake took another breath and said, “I’ve never told anyone before.”

“I figured that too. Thanks for telling me.”

Jake’s heart was still pounding in his chest, but the relief he felt was amazing. He felt better than he could remember having felt in a very long time. He wanted to whoop and run across the room, maybe crawl into bed with Danny and say, “Fuck me!” But no, he wasn’t really ready to take things that far. Not even with Danny. Even though part of him wanted to.

Baby steps.

He didn’t even know if Danny would be interested.

“I just…. Can we keep this to ourselves? I mean, I know everyone’s probably figured it out already, but….” He didn’t know what to add. He couldn’t think of anything that would make sense. If everyone already knew, why did he still want to keep it a secret?

But Danny sat up and looked at him with a serious expression. “Jake, anything you tell me… anything that happens between us… is just between us. Okay? Just us. Until you say otherwise.”

Anything that happens between us?
The implications behind that statement turned Jake’s throat dry, and he was forced to swallow so he could talk again. “Cool. Thanks.”

Danny found his discarded T-shirt from earlier in the evening and used it to wipe himself off. Then he tossed it down and got into bed, while Jake continued to lie there like an idiot, still covered in come. Danny reached up and snapped his light off. “Good night, buddy.”

“Good night, Danny. You’re awesome.”

F
UCK
ME
,
Danny thought.
I might as well have offered to be his new sex toy.

Was that where this was headed? Danny didn’t think Jake was necessarily thinking that, but come on! He’d just come out. He might never have even had sex before, or at least not with another guy. Of course he was going to want to do some “experimenting.” Who wouldn’t?

And Danny would probably give him whatever he wanted, because he was still a sucker for a cute guy saying, “I just want to know how it feels. Just once. And we’re friends, aren’t we?”

He needed to learn how to say “no.” Just because a guy acted sweet and vulnerable, and looked like Danny’s idea of a god, didn’t mean he wanted more than sex. It didn’t even mean he
liked
Danny.

He was vaguely aware that Jake hadn’t necessarily asked him for anything. Maybe he wouldn’t want to do anything with Danny, after all. But Danny’s mind had spiraled off into the familiar black hole of anxiety and memories he managed to avoid recalling during daylight, but which often engulfed him during the night. Unbidden, the high school guidance counselor’s words came back to torment him now.

I’m sorry, but I can’t find it in myself to have any sympathy for you.

None at all.

Those boys gave you exactly what you’d been wanting.

N
EITHER
OF
them really knew what to say about Jake’s dramatic—and in the light of day, somewhat embarrassingly raunchy—coming out the night before, so by mutual consent they simply didn’t bring it up. Instead, they hung out in their room after eating breakfast, showering, and packing to go home. There were some classes on Wednesday, but the residence halls all closed at 6:00 p.m., so Jake skipped his classes to pack. Danny sat on his bed watching him. Whether he had classes too, Jake didn’t know, but he didn’t seem concerned about them.

“So I’ll get to meet your brothers?” Danny asked as Jake debated whether to bring his sketchbook home.

“I guess so.” He thought about the naked picture of Danny in the sketchbook and decided against it. Instead, he slipped it into his desk drawer.

“What are their names?”

“Robert.”

“What about the other one?”

“They’re both named Robert.” Jake laughed and zipped up his backpack. “Seriously. My dad named them both Robert because they’re identical twins.”

Danny shook his head and quirked one corner of his mouth up. “How do you tell them apart?”

“We call one Robbie and the other Bobby.”

There was a loud bang in the hall, as the outer door that led to the handicapped access ramp opened and a voice called out, “Yo! I’m looking for Jake Stewart!”

“There they are,” Jake muttered. Then his eye fell on the calendar of naked men behind Danny’s head. “Jesus! Get rid of that!”

The door to the room shook as someone pounded on it and then, before Jake could answer, it flew open. “Hey, faggot!”

While Danny scrambled to yank the calendar off the wall and drop it down between the wall and his bed, Jake frowned at his older brother. “What the fuck? What if this wasn’t the right room? You could have walked in on a couple girls.”

Bobby grinned and darted in low to give Jake what he considered a “love tap” to the stomach. Jake tried to block the jab but missed and ended up doubled over for a minute. “Still too fuckin’ slow.” Bobby straightened up and ruffled his hair affectionately. “You said you were in room 202. God, this place is small.” He glanced over at Danny and stuck his hand out. “You his roommate?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, grimacing slightly as Bobby shook his hand. No doubt Bobby was squeezing the shit out of it, but the moron was too stupid to notice.

“Good to meet you.”

Still holding his aching stomach, Jake made a halfhearted attempt to introduce them. “Bobby, this is Danny—

“We gotta go,” Bobby interrupted, already having forgotten Danny’s existence. “Robbie’s waiting in the car. Grab your shit.” He remembered to wave briefly at Danny on his way out the door. “Good to see you.”

Jake sighed and looked at Danny’s shell-shocked expression. “He’s always like that,” he said apologetically. “I’ll see you on Saturday.”

“I’ll see you.”

Jake grabbed his backpack and a garbage bag of clothes and then headed downstairs.

They found Robbie at the wheel of his metallic-gray BMW, revving the engine impatiently. As soon as Bobby opened the back door to let Jake in, Robbie started bitching. “That goddamned campus cop keeps coming around giving me the hairy eyeball. We need to get out of here before he comes around again, so I don’t punch the little shit.”

Jake didn’t bother asking him to open the trunk. He just tossed his bags onto the seat beside him and got into the car. Bobby hopped into the front passenger seat and they took off.

The trip was about an hour, which meant that Jake was expecting his brothers to ramble on interminably about stuff he didn’t care about—their jobs, the stock market, whichever girls they were fucking this month until things started to get too serious, what expensive hi-tech toys they’d just bought….

What he hadn’t expected was for them to be grimly silent while Robbie navigated the car off campus until they hit Route 4. Jake was beginning to get paranoid, wondering if somehow they’d found out about him being gay—though he couldn’t imagine how—when the twins exchanged a look and Robbie said, “Mom’s filing for divorce.”

That hit Jake harder than any punch the twins might have thrown at him. Their mother had always been his only ally in a house full of straight men hopped up on testosterone. How would he be able to stand it there without her?

He glanced out the window and muttered, “Fuck.”

D
ANNY
WAS
playing piano in the lounge when his mother arrived to pick him up. She was a small woman, pretty and always smiling. She’d been a flower child once and the whole hippie mystique still clung to her like perfume—not just the faint smell of the amber-and-jasmine cologne she liked, but the faint jingling of her copper bracelets and hoop earrings, and an almost-tangible aura of calm that accompanied her. Danny found her difficult to be around, not because she was unpleasant, but because he felt filthy and unpleasant by comparison.

She walked into the room and waited quietly for him to finish the piece he was playing before asking, “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah. Just let me grab my bag.”

“Is your new roommate here? I’d love to meet him.”

Danny shook his head. “His brother picked him up. And trust me—you’re better off not running into
him
.”

“You like your roommate, don’t you?” Danny had told her a little about Jake the last time they’d talked on the phone.

“Oh yeah. He’s great.” He didn’t mention anything about Jake being gay, not only because he’d promised not to, but also because she would have assumed some kind of romantic relationship between them. That was the last thing Danny wanted.

“Well, maybe you can invite him over sometime.”

“Sure.”

T
HANKSGIVING
DINNER
in the Stewart household had always been chaotic and loud, with the twins shouting over each other at the table and later roughhousing in the living room until their mother ordered them outside. Jake’s father largely ignored everybody, reading through the ever-present mound of paperwork he always had with him, while Jake and his mother did their best to talk about innocuous things and dance around any topic that might set his father off—politics, religion, money, art—basically anything that might come across as “liberal.”

“So I met Jake’s new roomie,” Bobby announced at one point. “He seemed like kind of a hippie.”

Robbie snorted. “Was he wearing a tie-dye?”

“He wasn’t wearing anything, hardly. Just shorts and bare feet.”

“How does that make him a hippie?” their mother asked, looking perturbed. “If he was in their room, perhaps he just hadn’t fully dressed yet.”

“His hair was all long and scruffy too. You should know, Jake. Is he a hippie?”

Jake frowned at him. “If you want hippies, check the downstairs wings in the dorm. Danny’s just a guy. He’s probably my best friend now.”

Robbie gave him a smirk and said, “Let’s hope he doesn’t try to get in your pants like your
last
‘best friend.’”

Tom had been a terrific best friend. It was Jake who’d failed by panicking and running away when Tom came out to him. If he’d had the balls to admit he felt the attraction too, that he’d
loved
Tom too….

But that had been three years ago and it was too late to fix it. Jake’s family had moved to Concord after he graduated from high school, and he heard Tom had moved away too. Jake wasn’t even sure where. It was all ancient history now. Jake had found new friends, and hopefully Tom had too.

Now Danny was beginning to move into that empty space Tom once occupied. Jake didn’t know where things were going with him—maybe nowhere. Maybe they’d just end up being friends. But he was excited to find out.

“I liked Tom,” his mother said, looking down at her mashed potatoes as she scooped some up on her fork. Jake cringed when she said it because he knew that tone of voice. She was challenging Robbie—challenging both the twins and their father, since they were one of a kind. She was in the mood for a fight.

“Tom Langois was a little pervert,” Mr. Stewart said, stirring like a bear coming out of its winter hibernation. He put his paperwork down for a moment and glared at his wife. “And he’d set his sights on your son, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Tom was half Jake’s size. I’m sure Jake was quite capable of defending himself if he needed to.”

“He probably didn’t want to,” Robbie said. He snapped the back of his hand at Jake’s face, making contact with his cheek. “Did you, faggot?”

Jake flinched when Robbie’s hand hit him. “Jesus!”

“That’s enough!” their mother shouted, slamming her hand on the table. “I’ve had enough of you two hitting Jake all the time just because he’s younger than you!”

“I thought you said he could defend himself?” Jake’s father observed.

Furious, Mrs. Stewart threw her fork onto her plate, causing gravy to spatter onto the tablecloth. She stood up from the table and stormed out of the room. The twins just snickered and jabbed at Jake as if he’d somehow caused the fight. He did his best to pretend they didn’t exist, though it wasn’t easy, especially when Bobby got in a good poke to his ribs. Their father muttered, “Christ” under his breath and went back to his paperwork.

After a few minutes, Jake got fed up with his brothers and left the table to see where his mother had gone. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but the door to the back porch was open, so he went out there. He found her sitting on the porch swing, smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t even known she smoked.