Fever Pitch (29 page)

“
What
is he saving you from?”

Elijah glared, a tic forming in his cheek. “Russian gangs. I banged a delivery boy and shorted him his drug money. I have a huge price on my head.”

“Anybody ever tell you they want to knock your fucking block off?”

He regretted the words even before he saw the shadow cross Elijah's face. “Nah. Can't say it's ever happened.”

The wind was picking up, and Giles was cold, but he couldn't very well stalk off, no matter how much he wanted to. “That was a dumbass thing to say. I'm sorry.”

“Take your pity and your concern and your apology off to class, Prince Charming. We're all good here in the trenches.”

“If Aaron's made a project out of you, you've got something wrong
other
than the huge stick you can't get out of your ass, so like it or not, you're my problem now.”

“Bitch, you don't know
fuck all
about my problems. They're a hell of a lot more involved than someone shouting
fag
at me across the football field, so
back the hell off
.”

Giles closed the distance between them, not slowing down this time when Elijah flinched. “I'd had a little more than
fag
thrown at me, thanks. I just don't feel the need to flash it around like a
poor me
martyr poster.” He swallowed his fury and forced himself to calm down. “If you'd quit fucking winding me up so I could talk to you as an actual human, that'd be great.”

The wind left Elijah's sails, dragging his shoulders down and taking the piss out of his expression, leaving him ragged and weary-looking. “My parents are freak shows. Different than Aaron's, but he insisted on bonding. It's not as simple as he'd like to think, though. It's not simple at all, and nobody can help me, so let it go.”

“Yeah, probably not happening.” Giles stuffed his hands into his pockets. “What kind of freak show we talking here? I'm guessing religious homophobic wing nuts to start, given your tchotchke collection?”

“Did you notice it's freezing out here? Maybe
you
like blue balls, but I don't.”

“Then I'm taking you to the coffee shop next to the White House, and you're telling me everything you've got.”

Elijah's smile was grim. “Yeah. It'll be the student union coffee shop, because if I go north of Broadway, my father will call and ask why my GPS says I've left campus.” When Giles's eyes widened, Elijah held out his arm in an ironic
ta-da
. “Oh, sweetheart. We're just getting warmed up.”

Giles had a bad feeling Elijah wasn't kidding. “Let's go inside. Coffee's on me.”

Cha
pter Twenty-Eight

“My
parents are what you might call rabid, crazy, conservative Christians.” Elijah slouched in his corner of the booth and stared at his steaming mug of black coffee as he spoke. “They were always a little weird, but then my older brother went off to Afghanistan when I was ten and didn't come home. It was right about the same time they got wrapped up in this crazy right-wing church. We'd always been Lutheran, but they started going there for support-the-troop rallies and political events. They tipped slowly over the deep end and never came up for air. My dad has an arsenal in the garage because our president is from Kenya and the government is coming any second to gay marry us all, et cetera. Three times he's fired at deliverymen, to the point that we have to go to a UPS substation to get our stuff because they won't deliver. He sent Dan Savage hate mail until a lawyer served him a threatening letter.”

Giles grimaced and gripped his mocha latte. “And then you were gay.”

“The living poster boy of everything they hated, or at least a live-in outlet for their hurt and sense of alienation. I had a few good teachers in middle school but not in high school, and by then home had become a living hell. I took off. It didn't go well.” He sipped his coffee. “It wasn't so much the physical. That I'd accurately predicted. It was how much it hurt inside.” He ran a hand over his face. “The Cities were both better and worse. I got involved in a program in St. Paul at this youth center, but they were always in and out of funding, because this was right at the worst part of the Great Recession. There were more opportunities but also more dangers. Plus I was only sixteen. You're not quite as ballsy as you think you are at sixteen.”

This was like some kind of movie of the week, except awful because it was real, not because of the cheesy writing. “So what the hell did you do?”

“I went home. I found a police officer and told them I was a runaway. I told my parents God had come to me and I was ready to repent.”

“And your parents believed you?”

Elijah lifted his gaze, and Giles shivered at the dark smile. “Eventually. I had to go to the crazy pastor they loved so much, who never actually did anything outright to me, but sure loved to touch my ass. He
did
get caught with another boy, which was bad for the kid but good for me. My parents moved me back to the Lutheran church, which is still so conservative it nearly broke off when the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
went faggot
, as my dad likes to say, but at least the pedophiles stayed in their pews. It also meant all the Lutheran colleges were on the table once they decided I had repented enough. It helped how I stayed well past my eighteenth birthday. Seemed more legit that I stayed when I could legally walk out the door. It's true, I could, but I'd learned well the lesson I needed better ground under me before I could do it again.”

“So you're doing this for three more years?”

Shrugging, Elijah tapped out a nervous rhythm on the tabletop. “I worked like crazy to get a scholarship to Saint Timothy. I wanted a full ride so I could thumb my nose at them and run, but all I got was ten grand a year. So I'm stuck pretending to be a good Christian not-fag for three more years.” He shut his eyes. “Except I can't. I don't know if they're worse because they're convinced I'm up to something, if they think the liberal college is corrupting me, or if they're not any different but getting away washed off enough of a scab and I can't stomach them now, period. I can't stand one more weekend at home, let alone a summer. It's all I can do to bite my tongue when they visit, which is every weekend now. All the way from South Dakota they come, to make sure I'm not going to hell.”

“You should talk to a counselor here. God, they whipped a full ride for Aaron out of thin fucking air in ten minutes.”

Elijah's face turned dark and angry. “Yes, well, I'm not your darling boyfriend. I don't look like a stock photo ad for American boy. I'm not even a cute twink. I'm a femmy gay reject, and as you've pointed out several times, I'm not polite. And don't start in on Aaron's build-me-a-net crap. It doesn't work that way. I know. Do you want to know how many people saw my parents treating me like their live-in pariah and did anything? How many people saw me on the street in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and gave me more than a few quarters or told me to go home? Or hit me, or—” He pursed his lips and drew his mug up against his body. “It's not going to work. I'm not the kind of guy they move mountains for. I got the message loud and clear.”

Giles stared at him, trying to figure out what to say, except he truly didn't know how to counter that. He
did
get what Elijah was talking about. People liked to help pretty people, and Giles and Elijah weren't pretty. Not just in appearance but total package. Elijah wasn't ugly, but he was seriously rangy, his features feminine and yet not pretty or delicate. Giles, even hiding his scars, was the same. The battles they'd fought, inside and out, showed on their skin. They were not the poster boys. They were simply boys.

“Look.” He pushed his coffee aside and leaned forward on his elbows on the tabletop. “I get what you're saying. I'm going to point out, though, your attitude doesn't help. If it came down to it, my mother and father would help you find somewhere safe to be. They'd do it because that's who they are. I also don't think anybody helping Aaron would be all
whatever
if they find out you're in a similar sinking ship. And no. He has no idea how grisly the world can be. It doesn't mean he's an idiot. It means he's not quite as scarred up and defensive as you and I are. This is not exactly a bad thing to be around. It's easier to live in the world when you can forget it's constantly trying to eat you raw.”

Elijah stared at the ceiling. “It's more difficult when I connect to people. Makes it impossible to fake it.”

“Then stop faking it. Don't go home with them. Ditch your phone with the tracking software. I'll spring for a pay-as-you-go.”

Elijah kept his gaze pinned upward, but his hands tightened on his mug. “They'd cut me off the second they figured it out. They'd come here and make a scene. I mean, a
scene
. If they couldn't get me to leave, they'd work to get me thrown out. My father hates the idea of me a lot more than he ever loved me. If he can't mold me into the son he lost, he'll take me out. He's said so more than once.”

Giles fought a shiver. “So you're—what? Saying they'd what?”

It killed Giles how hollow and empty Elijah looked. “I'm saying I have no idea what they're capable of. I'm saying you don't get it.”

Shadowed, sharp memories of Aaron, stunned and sock-footed, trudging through ice and snow while his father gazed on, eyes burning with fury, washed out of the dark corners of Giles's mind. “I get it more than you think I might.” He shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to massage out a plan. “Okay—here's the thing. Crazy parents aside, you're not sixteen and friendless now. Even though, weirdly, you needed more help then, the narrative is a lot better today. You walk up to one reporter and tell them your fundy parents have kicked you out on your ear? First question will be what's the college doing for you, and Timmy doesn't want bad publicity. But this is all assuming we can't find ten different sponsors for you to live with.”

Elijah lowered his glare to Giles. “You're living in a fucking fantasy. Why would people who don't know me help me out?”

“Because all the people I'm thinking of are gay or have gay sons. Because we live in the age where a Make-A-Wish kid says he wants to be Batman and a whole city turns itself inside out to let him play superhero. Because even I could figure out how to package this and sell it and get you a GoFundMe account on social media, but I'd let Walter handle it because he could probably get a parade tossed in. Because though you're mocking it, you
do
have a net, and it starts with Aaron. And me.”

“Ooh, maybe your glee club could be my flash mob. I could live off the YouTube proceeds.”

“See, that's the kind of asshole comment not helping you out.”

“It's the kind of asshole comment that's kept me from taking one of my dad's guns and applying it to my brain stem.” Elijah shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. “You people are exhausting. Is this friend of Aaron's going to coo all over me too?”

Giles got a sudden image of Walter Lucas and Kelly Davidson taking on the prickly Elijah Prince, and he couldn't help it, he laughed out loud. “God. I can't wait. I'm getting popcorn.”

Elijah flipped him off, but it was a weary gesture. And though Elijah didn't smile, Giles would have sworn the guy looked a baby bit relieved.

In the week after Elijah's confession, Aaron's roommate was ten thousand times more caustic than he'd ever been, and yet not one of the barbs made Aaron tremble. One night as Aaron stood with him at the Dumpster while he smoked, Elijah got frustrated he wasn't getting any purchase and switched tactics. “You do get that all you're doing is projecting onto me, thinking if you can save me, somebody can save you?”

Aaron leaned against the brick wall of the dorm, watching his breath come out in white clouds as he stared up at the clear night sky. “Maybe. Except I'm starting to feel like you're my training wheels to figuring out how to save myself.”

Swearing under his breath, Elijah stomped out the butt of his cigarette. “I liked you better when you were a cowering doormat.”

Aaron had to bite back a smile. No, Elijah didn't. But he wasn't going to point that out, because unlike Elijah, he wasn't cruel.

Of course, now Aaron knew Elijah was cruel because he couldn't stand for the world to be unkind to him first. Accepting affection made him uneasy, whereas deflecting taunts was business as usual. The first time they walked through the union together and a group of frat boys shouted a fag comment, one clearly aimed at Elijah, Aaron had tried to call them on it, but Elijah only rolled his eyes. “Put down the shield, Cap,” he murmured, dragging Aaron away. But five minutes later a group of choir people stopped them on the bridge between buildings for a visit, trying to politely get to know Aaron's roommate, and Elijah looked like he wanted to jump through one of the windows.

After that, Aaron introduced Elijah to people slowly, more deliberately. He started with Jilly, whom he thought of as bottled sunshine and happiness, but Mina connected with Elijah more strongly. They sat in the Titus lounge for hours just talking, sometimes even laughing. It was Mina who got Elijah to admit what all those notebooks were for: they were stories. Elijah was a writer. He wrote steamy gay erotica as Naughty Nate, posting some of it online but mostly hoarding it because someday he wanted to publish.

He wouldn't let Aaron see a word of it, but he let Mina read his works in progress.

Next Elijah met Marius. That was accidental, because Marius came up to them in the coffee shop to ask Aaron a question, but since it was just him, and since Marius was cool
and
sex on a stick, Aaron gave it a go. Though Elijah was clearly nervous at first, he unraveled pretty quickly, at least enough to behave like an actual human. When Marius invited him over to the White House for movies on Friday night and Elijah had to decline, Marius winked and said, “Some other time.”

The only thing Aaron didn't like was that Elijah kept going to Bible study. They fought about it constantly, and every time Aaron lost the argument.

“You need to get it through your fat head,” Elijah ground out as he worked the knot of his tie up to his throat, “that the toads report directly to my parents. They've already noticed I have all these new friends and my fag roommate has become super chummy with me. My dad shouted at me for an hour about it last night.”

Aaron sat up straighter on his bed. This was news to him. “What did he say? What did
you
say?”

“He told me I wasn't to speak to you. He's already called the college six times trying to get me a new roommate, but the dorms are slammed. He's threatening to move me off campus so I can stay with a fundy family.”

“
What?
He can't—”

Elijah rolled his eyes. “No, he can't. Freshmen need a special dispensation to live off campus, and I asked the dean of students not to give me one.”

He'd talked to the dean? “Are you telling me you actually reported them, finally?” From the locked-down way Elijah stared at himself in the mirror, as if he were trying hard not to be terrified, Aaron got his answer. He wanted to hug Elijah, but he hugged himself instead. “God, leave it to you to bury the lead.”

“Yes, well, I don't know if it helped much.” Elijah gave up on his tie and went to the window, parting the blinds to stare out at the common. “Mostly the dean didn't know what to do with me. Now I have an appointment with the campus pastor tomorrow morning.”

That made Aaron stand up. “You
what
? Oh, fuck.”

“For counseling, dummy. Not rehabilitation.” Elijah laughed. “You're so funny, the way you hate religion. You hate it more than me, I think.”

Yeah, Aaron wasn't much of a fan. He hadn't seen it do much good for anyone so far. “How do you know this guy isn't going to dump Jesus on you?”

“Because it's Pastor Schulz. You keep forgetting I got here by saying I'm majoring in religion. I've had him for two classes now, and I know the whole pastoral staff. Some of them are lemmings, yes, but my dad would pass out to know how liberal they all are. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of knowing how out of sync what they're teaching me is with what my family would like me to be learning.” He stood over Aaron, amused but also…grateful. “Schulz won't haul me off to the gulag. I don't think there's much he can actually do, but you're right. It'll be good to talk to someone who can help me process the finer points of how to deal with them. And that's all happening because of you, Cap, so thanks.”