Fever Pitch (23 page)

The house overflowed, people filling every available square inch of space in the living room, but once they got to the ballroom, the crush was practically a fire hazard. Music beat through the house like a pulse. Giles held fast to Aaron's hand, leading him to the stage, where Baz welcomed them with a wink and a helping hand onto the platform. “You want your fiddle or a synth, G?”

Giles hesitated, thinking a violin would be silly, but he decided,
fuck it
. “Give me my strings.”

Baz passed over the case. “Let's burn this house down, bitches.”

They kind of did. They had to spill into the audience to perform with all thirty-two of them, they messed up three times, one of them Giles on his violin yinging when he should have yanged, but nobody cared. They ran right from that song into another, and another. People dropped in and out when they needed a breather, but the song kept going on and on.

When Aaron got his turn at the keyboard, he banged out the opening cords of Florence + the Machine's “Lover to Lover”, which Giles knew was his boyfriend's favorite song. He didn't sing, though, calling out Salvo members to take up Welch's vocals instead. Giles watched him, reveling in the glory that was Aaron Seavers serving music up on a silver platter.

Then he picked up his violin and joined in the dance.

Later, when Karen and Jilly took over the keyboard, Aaron and Giles ended up next to each other on the stage, swaying to the beat. Giles held his violin above his head and gyrated while Aaron ground on him, laughing, his eyes full of heat and promise. Any second, Giles decided, they were finding a condom and an empty bedroom and Aaron was getting epically laid.

Aaron seemed to know that too, and had no arguments with his destiny.

On their way up the stairs, Giles caught a look at himself in the mirror, and for a moment the sight arrested him. Yes, the shirt rocked, and he
would
be wearing eyeliner again soon. But that wasn't what caught his eye. Somehow everything about him was different, so much so he didn't recognize himself. He wasn't a lanky geek with weird hair and embarrassing ears anymore. He was…cool, in his own way. It wasn't how he looked. It was how he looked
back
.

Damn
, he thought, reeling from this unexpected answer to a life riddle.

Aaron tugged his arm, and Giles turned away from his reflection, ready to fuck his boyfriend into happy oblivion.

C
hapter Twenty-Two

J
-term ended four days after quarterfinals, and because of the way the calendar fell, they essentially had five days of a minibreak before full spring semester began. Especially since “spring” semester was rolling up to the plate in the middle of a huge blizzard, many students elected to stay on campus. The White House had a party planned for each night.

Aaron had to go home to Oak Grove, because his father had declared it was “time for a talk”. Giles insisted on driving Aaron back.

It wasn't like Aaron was going to argue too hard. Having Giles drive meant it wasn't his mom, or worse, his dad, who would launch into everything the second he got in the car. Instead, it was him and Giles winding the long way back to Oak Grove, stopping at Matt's Bar in Minneapolis to have fortifying Jucy Lucys with Walter and Kelly. Everyone had the molten-center cheeseburgers except Kelly, who was allergic. He said he'd be making himself a faux version with Teese Cheese as soon as he got home, because they looked good.

“Remember.” Walter paused to wipe grease from his chin, holding his cheeseburger in his hand. “Jim can bluster all he wants, threaten whatever he likes, but in the end this is your life.”

“What if he threatens not to pay for it unless I major in something he approves of?”

Giles, who had his arm around Aaron in the booth, pulled him closer. “He's already paid for this year. He can't take that back.”

Aaron wasn't terribly comforted by this. Jim Seavers wasn't a successful trial lawyer because he rolled over easily.

Aaron usually rolled over even before people started yelling.

Kelly took Aaron's hand. “Whatever happens, we'll help you through it. Promise. We can't go in there with you, but we'll be waiting to hear how it goes.”

That reassurance was more comfort than Aaron expected it to be.

Stopping at the bar for dinner had been a good call. Walter offered to buy him a pitcher, but Aaron declined, thinking it would be wiser to face this down sober. The bar was a cute little dive, rough around the edges yet overflowing with people. He took heart, too, that when he got up to use the bathroom, he passed a rowdy group of guys wearing matching football jerseys, watching a game and flirting with waitresses…all except for a male couple in the group holding hands. There was something about the normality of it all: guys watching football, some of them gay. Most of the guys were bruisers, but one of the boyfriends was slight and elegant, not a typical football guy at all. Yet everyone included him like he belonged.

I can be different too. I can be gay and study music and be okay. I don't have to fit in with what people decide for me, because I know where I fit in. Everybody has somewhere they fit in. We just have to look hard to find it sometimes.

His spirits were buoyed as he went to the table, but Walter gave him one last pep talk as they left. He stood with Aaron beside Giles's car, holding Aaron by the shoulders and all but shouting affirmations at him and making him swear on his theory notebooks he'd call as soon as the conversation was over. Aaron promised he would.

He held those laughing football players in his mind's eye all the way home.

“I'll come in with you, if you want,” Giles said as they pulled in to Oak Grove.

He'd offered ten times. Aaron loved him for it, but instead of saying no again, he spooned up the last bite of Frosty and held it out for Giles. “Here. Put this in your mouth.”

Giles did, but he swallowed and gave Aaron a meaningful glance. “I will. I'm serious.”

“I know you are.” Aaron wiped a chocolate trail from Giles's lip with a napkin. “But I need to do this on my own. I don't have any illusions I'm going to transform into a brick wall between your car and the door, but I need to learn to at least stand my ground.”

“You're calling me the
second
it's over. I mean, when you leave the room, you're dialing me.”

Aaron leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Yes.”

Giles began babbling rapid-fire reassurances, alternating between bolstering Aaron's ego and trash-talking Jim Seavers. It was good, and it helped, but as soon as Aaron got out of the car, fishing his suitcase out of the trunk, he got queasy.

“You can do it,” Giles called through the rolled-down passenger window. “No matter what happens, Aaron, I'm going to be here. Right here.”

Aaron drew a steadying breath. He blew Giles a kiss.

Dragging his suitcase behind him, he went up the walkway to his house and opened the front door.

He saw his mother first. She and his dad sat in the living room. When Aaron came into the room, Beth rose, arms tight over her body, her smile thin. Jim remained in the chair with his back to the door. He didn't rise or acknowledge Aaron's arrival.

That, Aaron knew, was bad.

“Aaron.” His mom kept her hands over her body. Her smile slipped as she gave up trying to appear happy. “Thanks for coming, sweetheart.”

“Take a seat.” Jim's voice boomed out across Beth's living room. “We need to have a talk.”

After letting go of his suitcase, Aaron took off his coat, stepped out of his shoes and padded over to the couch. He sat beside his mother, in the place she had left for him. Sitting upright, using the breathing Nussy had taught him so he didn't hyperventilate, Aaron faced his father.

Jim's face barely moved—but that was when he was the worst. In high school Aaron had shadowed his father to trial for career day, and he'd seen his father make this expression right before he decimated a hostile witness. He'd gotten in trouble with the firm because he'd been so ruthless the jury had turned against him instead of the witness.

No jury was here to side with Aaron.

Jim nodded at Beth. “I got tired of your half answers about how school was going, so I asked your mother. She was cagey too, so I called up Bob's friend who's a pre-law counselor at Saint Timothy.” Jim tapped his long fingers idly on the arm of the leather chair. “When, exactly, were you planning on telling me you'd changed your major?”

Aaron drew a deep breath from the bottom of his diaphragm. “I'm officially undecided right now.”

“I could tell by your evasion whatever was going on wasn't good. Never, though, did I dream you took an entire semester of your college career and threw it into the fucking toilet.
Music.
The pre-law counselor is a fan of your
work
. He told me I should be quite proud of you. I had to sit through that, Aaron. I had to pretend to this fool I knew my own son had abandoned a promising profession to chase some fucking fairy tale.”

Aaron closed his arms over his belly, pressing them in to stop the cold, stabbing feeling there.

Jim rolled on. “I tried to go in and check your courses for second semester under your password, but the system wouldn't let me. I expect changes to happen the second you're on campus. If I don't receive confirmation—with proof—within twenty-four hours, there's going to be hell to pay.” He grimaced. “I should have seen this coming. Of course you'd dive into nonsense the second I turned my head.”

“Jim,” Beth said, her tone a gentle warning.

Jim snorted. “Oh, don't you go soft on me now. You were all for this when we planned this meeting. Did you change your mind and decide you
wanted
to see him peddling for spare change in the skywalks?”

Beth stiffened. “That's not fair.”

“No, it's not. I lay this firmly at your feet for letting it go on this long. What, I'm supposed to parent all the way from California?”

Beth replied tearfully, and Jim talked over her, raising his voice until he was shouting and she was openly weeping. Normally this was when Aaron would exit, retreating to his room to cower and wait until it was over. Two months ago, he would have. Two months ago he would have let his dad change his classes, would have let him rule his life.

Not now.

For the first time, this thing his father hated, that apparently his mother did too, wasn't just what he wanted—it was what he knew he was
meant
to do. Writing music, playing it, performing it—he'd felt more alive in the past five months than he had his whole life. At this point even if his dad took away his money, kicked him out of college, Aaron would still find a way to be in music. It wasn't simply something he enjoyed doing. It was his soul, his reason for being. Having drawn music back into his life—to take it away now would be like dying.

The power filled him, calming him, giving him strength. Despite what he'd told Giles, he found, to his surprise, he
was
a brick wall. Not on everything—but on this? About music? Yes. He could take on anything.

Rising from the couch, he said, quite clearly, “No.”

He stood there a moment, reveling in the word, in the power of it. But they hadn't heard him, too busy fighting, too used to him a silent shadow in the corner. Aaron said it again.

“No.”

They turned to him, startled. Surprised.

Aaron drew on his courage and continued. “I won't switch my major to law. I won't drop out of music. In fact, the second I get back to Saint Timothy, I'm declaring music performance. It's not something I'm going to debate with either of you. It's something I
will
do. One way or another.”

It felt good to declare that. Scary, terrifying even, but good. Because really, what could they do? Yell? Threaten? He understood, at last, what Walter had been trying to say. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible, and for the first time Aaron could see the way. It would be fine. It would be—

“Get out.”

Aaron startled out of his reverie and blinked at his father. “What?”

“What?” Beth echoed, stiffening on the couch. “Jim—”

“Get out.” Jim Seavers rose to his full height, his long arm aimed at the door. “Out. Of here. Right now.” When Beth and Aaron both sputtered, Jim's nostrils flared. “Oh, I'm sorry. Were you planning on staying here over break? Eating food? Wearing clothes I bought you? Using your expensive headphones and computers? Watching television I pay for, using Internet I provide? Did you expect I'd keep paying your cell phone? Depositing money into your account so you could fuck around like an idiot instead of doing your goddamn job and getting an education? Is that what you were thinking would happen? Or did you have a fantasy of me rolling over? You thought since I already paid this year's bill you had me over a barrel? You'd wait me out, figuring I'd soften by fall?”

“
Jim
, this isn't—”

“
Don't you pussy out now.
” Jim Seavers's expression was terrifying, belonging to a feral beast, not a father. “You were the one who called me here to fix it. You don't get to backpedal now that you've called in the dragon. Not if you don't want another legal battle with me over alimony. You
know
how painful I can make that for you.”

“You can't throw him out on the street.” Tears ran down Beth's cheeks as she turned to Aaron. “Baby—”

Aaron stepped away from her reach.

You're the one who called me here to fix it.

“He's not going to go to the street.” Jim looked in disgust at his son, still seated in his chair. “He's going to his room. He's going to hide under his covers like a baby, he's going to cry—and then he's going to do what he's told.”

Aaron didn't cry. He could barely breathe, but he didn't cry, didn't break. He didn't have the strength to speak, not with what he had to do. He thought of Giles, waiting at home for Aaron's call. He thought of Walter and Kelly in the Cities, doing the same. He thought of Baz and Damien and Dr. Nussenbaum, and Nussy.

He thought of the music, the songs that filled his head, his heart. Pushing aside his terror, Aaron steadied himself and headed for the front door.

“Aaron.”

Beth's voice tore through Aaron, making him move faster. He gripped the handle of his suitcase, snagged his coat and bent to pick up his shoes, figuring he'd put them on outside.

“Leave them.”

Aaron paused, startled, and glanced over his shoulder.

His father had risen and stood like a dark thundercloud drawing power from the center of the living room. “Those shoes are mine. That coat is mine. That suitcase, everything in it?
Mine.
”

“
James
, you can't—”

Aaron's father's lip curled in a snarl. “Everything about you, every thought in your head, every possession you hold—they're mine. They're only there because of me. You walk out, you only get what's in your head and on your back.”

Beth shoved Jim aside and clambered toward Aaron, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Baby, don't listen to him. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry—
”

Aaron turned away. Dropping his shoes and coat, letting go of his suitcase, Aaron walked out the front door.

He tried not to think of his laptop, full of his notes for semifinals composition, his course essays, the headphones in his pocket and the other in his suitcase, his phone—his ten thousand downloaded songs, the remixes he'd made himself. He choked when he remembered Giles's notebook was in his backpack, the song for him half-finished.

Aaron shut his heart down, telling himself it was still in his head, he could write it again, better this time.

He winced when the cold hit him, the sidewalk burning his feet, the wind cutting his face and ears, whistling through his sweater. He didn't stop, though, not even when his mother screamed his name, not when the ice on the sidewalk cut through the soles of his feet and went all the way into his teeth. He didn't let himself think or fear or worry. He only went forward, away, ready to burn down everything attached to his parents if that was what it took. Ready to freeze to death instead of lean on them for one more thing, ever.