Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (9 page)

It also said I had something like forty messages on my phone, voice mail and text. I checked the register—Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Oliver, Nicole, Oliver, Oliver, Nicole, Oliver’s
dad
, Oliver, and so on. My message box was full, and I blinked blearily, wondering when I’d turned the phone down.

“Oliver?” I mumbled. “Oliver, keep it down. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Rex said, his voice alive and loud, right by my bed. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for two days!”

“Go away. I don’t want to whack off. I just want to sleep.”

“Man, your class starts in ten minutes—that history one you’ve slaved over—can you at least get up for that?”

I pulled the covers over my head. “Fuck no!”

“Is that him?” Oliver’s voice again. “Is that him? You put your damned computer next to him and let me yell at him—”

“I’ve been trying to get him up for days, man. I don’t know if he’s going to—”

“You shut up, Mr. Naked Sexy Man! You’re half his problem—you and your declaring a major. He’ll declare a major when he’s good and ready, and it’s not going to be pre-law, and it’s not going to be sex-ed, so just leave him the fuck alone!” There was a pause, and I actually pulled the covers down because I’d
never
heard Oliver yell like this, not even when my supposed friends were giving him shit at school.

“Oliver? You’re mad? You never get mad.” Suddenly my phone was moved and Rex’s computer was thunked down by my head. I had a sideways vision of Oliver, looking furious and worried through a phone lens. His hair was longer, no longer bowl cut, and the bangs had grown past his eyes so they were pushed back on the side. He’d let his sideburns and mustache grow, but they were sparse and wispy, and basically he looked sort of like a beatnik—all he needed were glasses.

He was beautiful.

And I was pretty sure I smelled bad.

“Rusty, get the fuck out of bed,” he said, and his voice sounded clogged and snotty.

“Whose phone are you on? Your computer doesn’t Skype.”

“Nicki’s—she was freaking out over you, I was freaking out over you, my
dad
is freaking out over you. Finally I remembered your damned roommate’s on your list of people you send stupid rabbit videos to, and we contacted
him
.”

“Jeez, Oliver, that’s a lot of trouble. I just wanted some sleep.”

“You’ve been in bed for three days, asshole. Get your lazy ass out of bed and shower. I can smell you from here!”

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s untrue,” I said with dignity. “I got up to pee. I think.”

Oliver sighed, and his voice was getting thicker. “Rusty, baby. What happened? You were going to talk to your professor and then you . . . you just disappeared. Talk to me, man. What did he say?”

“He said I was worthless,” I mumbled, although the professor hadn’t used those words. “He said I was worthless, and I was spoiled, and I didn’t deserve to be here.”

“Did he really say that?” Rex asked, and I nodded even though I couldn’t see him.

“Yeah.” It came out as a whisper. I barely heard Rex moving across the room, and then our door slammed, and I didn’t care.

“Well, he was wrong!” Oliver snapped. He was openly crying now, and even though it was stupid, I reached out and touched the screen.

“Don’t cry, baby. He was right. I’m spoiled and dumb, and we both know you should be here. I . . . I mean, I was trying, right? I didn’t just give up? I mean”—because it couldn’t be argued—“I gave up
now,
but, well, no big loss.”

“That’s what
you
think, you clueless motherfucker!”

“Oliver, you
never
swear!”

“Well, look what you made me do. You’ve got one hour to get up, get showered, and get to class to try again, do you hear me?”

“And then what happens?” Because my parents hadn’t called me once, and we both knew it. No calls, no texts, just a receipt from the bank when they put their money in my checking account. I was pretty sure they’d cut me off if I didn’t get out of bed. That would be fine. Some janitor at Berkeley would pick up my bed and haul me out and leave me on the side of the road, and I could rot in peace.

“You listen to me, Rusty,” Oliver said, his voice low and serious. “If you do not get out of bed right the fuck now, me and my dad are going to go down there and get you. We will pick you up and throw you in the car and abduct you, and throw you in the shower until you come to your senses. So you get up now, or we’ll do it for you!”

I straightened up a little and frowned at him. “But Oliver, I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Oliver’s face wrinkled, like a napkin. “Baby, when was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do! You must have lost thirty pounds in the last two months. Could you, please, for me, just get up, take a shower, and eat some fucking pancakes or something?”

“You’ve got to stop swearing. Man, you’re freaking me out.”

“
Get the fuck up, you dumb motherfucker, you are hurting me by lying there
!” He yelled so loud his voice blacked out in the high parts, and the speakers squealed. I managed to push myself up so I was looking down at the screen, and my bladder gave a big, fat, thump in my abdomen.

“Sorry, Oliver. I don’t ever want to hurt you, you know that. Jesus, I’ve got to pee.”

Oliver nodded, then wiped his eyes with his palms. “You do that, okay? You go take the world’s longest piss. Then you come back. But—hey, you got your phone?” I reached behind the computer and held it up. “Good. Now set the alarm. You’ve got an hour, Rusty. You text me or talk to me, or get on Skype with your sister on your own computer, and you show me that you’ve showered, you’ve shaved, and you’ve changed. And I wouldn’t object to you shoving some food in your mouth while you’re on the phone. And if I don’t hear from you
in an hour
, my dad and I are coming to get you. He’s been trying to talk me into doing that since the end of September.”

“I looked this bad a month ago?”

“You sounded this bad,” he conceded. “Now you look fucked up, too.”

Shit. All my fucking self-pity, and I’d pulled him into it. Now I
felt
bad. “I’m sorry. How’d he talk you out of it?”

Oliver shook his head. “I talked him. I wasn’t sure you’d want me to come. You weren’t even thinking about me the same way I was thinking about you.”

I remembered shouting into Pritchard’s face, and I thought I should probably tell him this. “Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m gay.”

“Me too,
pendejo
.”

“And even if I’m not gay, you know what?”

“What?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m Oliver-sexual.” I nodded, smiling, proud of this, and the smile he gave me back was like a solar flare.

“Then go clean up and eat something. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“And don’t forget to text me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Love you, Rusty. Don’t let that freak you out none.”

“Love you too.”

I signed out of Rex’s Skype then and swung my legs around my bed and tried to stand up. My knees wobbled, and I sat down on my ass again and wondered if Oliver was going to have to come get me because I hadn’t eaten since . . . when? Thursday? And I was too weak to actually do all that showering stuff, but I still needed to pee.

I’d managed a wobbly legged trip to the bathroom to pee and had just sat back down on the bed, dizzy and frustrated, when the door was thrown open. Rex marched in, dragging Professor Pritchard by the arm. I tried to use the blankets to cover up my knees.

“Rex? What in the fuck did you do?”

“Mr. Baker?”

Reluctantly I looked up and met the professor’s eyes.

“Sorry I missed your class today,” I apologized, but it was sort of insincere. The pull to go back to bed was so strong, I felt my shoulders hunching.

“Yeah, so am I.” He sat down next to me, and I flinched back.

He looked up at Rex and said, “Can I get a chair, since you dragged me up here?”

Rex thunked the roller chair from my desk down in front of Professor Pritchard. He was
scowling
, which I’d never seen him do.

“Be. Nice.”

Pritchard grimaced as he moved to the chair. “Yes, I hear you.”

Rex scowled back, and Pritchard turned his attention to me.

“You forget,” he said, looking suddenly old. “You forget how fragile young people are sometimes. We think they’re all grown-up because they’re here, but they’re not always. It’s your first time away from home, and it’s not always easy.” He grimaced again. “
Especially
if the people at home aren’t exactly warm. And you’re having a hard time.”

“I don’t belong here,” I said miserably, pulling my knees up to my chest, and his hand on my shoulder was a surprise.

“No,” he told me honestly. “But not because you’re stupid. I reread your paper. It was really very good.”

I perked up. “Really?”

“Yes, I made some assumptions about you. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “I am spoiled.”

“Maybe. But I think you’re spoiled for the wrong things. Do you really have a boyfriend back at home?”

That made me lift my head. A boyfriend? Oliver was my boyfriend? For some reason, that was
so
much less scary than saying I was gay.

“Yeah,” I said, and I arched my back, suddenly needing to stretch. “I need to call him in a bit, after I shower; he’s worried about me.”

“You do that. I will go,” and here he glared at Rex, “
finish teaching my class
, and Rex will get you some food, okay? We’ll meet back in an hour. How’s that sound?”

“I have other classes,” I told him, thinking about it, and he nodded, but then surprised me.

“No, no, I don’t think you do. I think what you have is a long conversation with a guidance counselor, and a walk around the campus, and at least two good meals. Today, you become a big exception to everything we ever tell you about college, how’s that?”

I smiled a little. The conversation with the guidance counselor sounded boring, but the rest of it? I was
really
starting to get hungry.

I came back from my shower with a growling stomach and the dizzy vision that I used to get after a football game if I forgot to have my banana and milk beforehand. When I got to my room, Rex was there with a
stack
of peanut butter and jelly on wheat, as well as a half gallon of milk and a bunch of bananas.

My eyes got big when I saw that plate of sandwiches on his desk, and I’d shoved half the first one in my mouth before I remembered to talk. “Mmmf omf fa frrrkn mnnds.”

“Milk,” Rex said with a tired smile. “Here.”

I wiped out a quarter of the bottle, and after I swallowed, he handed me another sandwich. This one I took actual bites from, and on my second bite, he said, “So, what did you say?”

I grinned through the PB&J on my teeth. “Food of the fuckin’ gods.”

He laughed then, and I thought that he looked like he’d gotten a little older too.

“What’s the matter, Rex? You look
exhausted
.”

Rex gestured to the chair that Professor Pritchard had vacated and sat down on his own bed, pulling one knee up under his chin. “Did it really bother you? That whole, ‘declaring your major’ thing?”

I took another bite of my sandwich. “You weren’t trying to be mean,” I said, thinking. “I mean, you gave a shit, and that was nice.”

“But it bothered you,” he stated, and I shrugged.

“You know . . . I guess I just wasn’t ready to be pushed. I’m not smart—”

“Rusty!”

“Okay, I’m not
quick
. But I get to most stuff on my own. I just . . . I needed some quiet I guess, you know, in my head? To think about Oliver and me.”

Rex laughed a little and nodded. “But you know, you’ve hardly talked in the last couple of weeks. How much more quiet did it need to be?”

I shrugged and set my sandwich down. It was my third—I figured I’d done enough damage. “It wasn’t quiet,” I said, feeling empty after the storm that had blown through me. “It was all messy and loud.”

Rex nodded, like he understood. “What’d’ya have to do to quiet it down?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I had to decide who I was.”

A slow grin bloomed on Rex’s uncharacteristically thoughtful face. “Who are you?”

“I’m not a Berkeley man,” I said, and for the first time, this didn’t make me want to cry. “And I’m not going to be my dad’s little clone. And women
don’t
turn me on. And Oliver is my home.”

Rex put both feet on the floor and hopped up. “Well boo-fuckin’-yah!” he whooped, and then picked me up in a colossal bear hug and whirled me around the room. Two months ago, I would have batted him off and called him a fucking moron, but not now. Now I laughed, and let him hug me, and tried to remember,
really
remember, the last time I’d been touched.

He set me down, and I was standing there, in his arms, my head on his chest, when he gave me a friend-to-friend kiss on the top of the head.

“Nicole,” I said out loud, and he jerked back.