Off Campus (27 page)

He could try, at least. He wasn't used to talking to a parent like Mr. Anders, without a hidden agenda. But he could try. “It's hard.”

“Lots of things are hard. But if my Jeannie, Reese's mom, were here right now, the one thing that would make me feel better would be curling up with her at the end of the day and holding on tight.”

Tom didn't answer for a moment, but the temptation of having someone to talk to, even in the most general way, was irresistible.

“We can't, really, do that. The holding on tight thing. You know. He can't really have things wrapped around him. Holding him. It reminds him too much of…stuff.”

Reese's dad folded in on himself, shoulders turning in, elbows bent as he rested his forearms on the edge of the sink and dropped his head. He didn't look at Tom.

When he spoke, his voice was thick, sounding like he'd swallowed a mouthful of gravel. The words scraped out.

“Can you hold his hand?”

Tom remembered the first time he'd held Reese's hand, after finding him in the Perkins's living room during the party and leading him back to their room, painfully conscious of the eyes on them as he held his roommate's hand.

“Yeah. I can do that.”

“Because the things that have happened to you are bad, kid. I know you've had it hard. But what happened to my boy shouldn't happen to anyone. Ever.” Reese's dad straightened up in front of the sink and turned to face him. Tears ran down his cheeks behind the black plastic frames of his glasses and gathered on the soft edges of his jaw before dropping onto the collar of his short-sleeve button down. “So you can hold my boy's hand, okay?”

Tom swallowed, pinned to the floor by those tears. By his own too, as he felt something tickle his cheek and wiped wetness across his face with the back of his hand. Was this going to happen all the time now? He sniffed and straightened up like a man, hearing his own dad's voice in his head, scolding him for making a scene.

“Okay.” He nodded. “I can do that.”

He didn't imagine the look of surprise on Reese's face that night when he sat next to him on the couch instead of in the opposite corner. Mr. Anders knelt in front of the TV, putting a disc in the DVD player. They'd settled on
The French Connection
, which Tom had never seen. Apparently it had the best car chase scene of all time and both Anders were adamant that he needed to repair this shocking gap immediately.

He wasn't quite pressing his thigh against Reese's leg, but it was close, and Tom's heartbeat had kicked up a notch at the idea that sooner or later Mr. Anders was going to stand up and see him sitting this close, closer than anyone who was only a friend would sit. Which was crazy to worry about. Reese's dad knew they were together and didn't care. He was happy Tom was here with Reese, who had a deer-in-headlights stare now, as if startled beyond words to have Tom next to him.

Reese's dad braced a hand on his knee and pushed himself up. He grabbed his beer off the coffee table and dropped into his recliner with a sigh.

“Okay. Hit Play, kid. Let's show this guy what he's missing.”

He didn't look at them at all, ignoring Tom's shoulder-to-shoulder seat with Reese as if he'd seen it a million times. It wasn't the real world, because Mr. Anders was a great dad who had listened when Tom talked about how this was hard, but for one moment Tom had a vision of how life could be. How he could sit with his boyfriend and watch a movie and hold his hand and no one would stare at him or give a damn.

Not the real world, but maybe the small, private space in which the two of them existed had opened up a little.

He slid his right hand off his lap and onto Reese's, grabbing his hand and lacing their fingers together. Thank God the DVD had “Coming Attractions” for other loud action films, because the three of them were carefully not looking at each other or talking. But he saw Mr. Anders wrap both of his hands around his beer bottle and squeeze, looking steadily at the TV, and knew he saw.

He leaned his head down until Reese's hair brushed his cheek and he could talk into Reese's ear.

“I really like your dad.”

Reese squeezed his hand and nodded.

“Yeah, he's pretty great.”

By the end of the film, Reese had slid down next to him, half asleep and leaning against Tom's shoulder, his arm wrapped around Tom's from elbow to wrist. Mr. Anders was out cold in the recliner, snoring. Tom pressed Stop on the remote and shook Reese with his shoulder.

“Hey. Should we wake your dad up?”

Reese blinked up at him and sat up. Tom went to the DVD player and crouched, removing the DVD & putting it back in its case. He brought it back to the coffee table & set it down.

“Yeah, I can do it. Clear him out so you can get some sleep without the Snore Master over there keeping you up.”

He shoved his hands deep in his jeans pockets and kicked a table leg. It was the kind of sturdy piece you were allowed to put your feet on. The kind of table two guys living together would have that never would have got past Reese's mom if she'd still been alive.

“I thought maybe I'd, um, come with you.” Reese was still on the couch, staring at him. “To sleep. If that's okay.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He stood, his stance mimicking Tom unconsciously, hands in pockets, feet shuffling. “I mean, yes, that'd be good.”

He crossed to his dad and shook him by the shoulder.

“Hey, Pop, movie's over. Go to bed, okay?”

Mr. Anders scrubbed his face with his hands and sat up.

“Right. Right. Okay.” He got up and shuffled out of the room, waving over his shoulder. “'Night, boys.”

Reese stopped at the door on his way out of the room and snapped off the overhead light, plunging the room into darkness lit only by the Christmas lights circling the windows. He held a hand out to Tom.

“Coming?”

Holding hands was nothing compared to this. He wasn't fucked up enough to go upstairs with Reese and then wake up early to come back down here and let Mr. Anders find him on the couch when he came down for his coffee.

Okay, strike that. He was fucked up enough to think about it. But he wasn't going to do it. So this was it. He was going upstairs to sleep in the same bed with his boyfriend at his dad's house, or he was staying on the couch in the living room.

Reese was silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the light in the hall that his dad had left on.

Tom shook his head. There wasn't any question at all, was there?

He grabbed Reese's hand and held on tight.

“Yeah. I'm here. Show me the way.”

The entire January term vacation unrolled like some kind of strange, down-the-rabbit-hole fairytale for Tom. He drove a cab or gypsy-cabbed it in his own car twenty hours a day the first week, but he caught a few hours sleep with Reese after the bars closed almost every night.

After seven days though, his vision blurred and reflexes shot, Reese refused to let him out of the house until he got eight solid hours of sleep. He also sat Tom down at the dining room table with his dad and they tried to talk him into accepting a loan instead of killing himself.

Tom refused. No fucking way he was taking money from his boyfriend or his boyfriend's dad. Not when he could see that the Anders weren't exactly rolling in it. Whatever loan they offered him was coming out of funds they'd clearly need for Reese's own education. He did let them browbeat him into emailing the dean, the econ department head, and his favorite econ prof, to explain how difficult his situation had become—and if he'd thought laying out all of the details of his personal life had been humiliating the first time around, that was nothing compared to his new open book policy—and Reese refrained from saying
I told you so
when emails came back offering help.

It turned out that the dean couldn't extend the deadline to pay his tuition, but she could arrange for a work-study job on campus, which would cover money for meals. Plus, she made Tom talk to the fin aid officer again. This time around he managed to explain himself and she managed to listen. The documentation was going to be way more complicated, and would involve regular check-ins with a social worker, but she could get him an exemption for homelessness. It wouldn't help with federal aid until next year, but would allow the school to offer him some minimal aid, plus would allow him to access resources for students who were homeless. Even knowing that this was exactly what he'd hoped for all along, accepting the help was hard. Naming his vulnerability out loud was humiliating. He wanted to protest that he was nothing like
those people
, but Reese sat him down and made him see that he
was
, even if he had a place to stay right now and a fifty thousand dollar car to drive. He also forced Tom to repeat, over and over, that there wasn't anything wrong with asking for this help. Tom was not
taking advantage
of anyone. It sucked and Tom hated him for it for two days, but in the end he talked to a social worker who discovered a program that would cover all of his books for the semester.

Next, the department head offered him hours TAing a 100-level survey course, which paid a little better than the work-study hours. Best of all was Quillian, who knew of an unclaimed grant which the sponsoring foundation had decided not to award to any of the lackluster applicants that year. It took a solid twenty-four hours of essay writing and polishing, and Quillian pulling several of Tom's professors away from their families and to their computers to write letters of recommendation, but with less than seven days to go, Tom was awarded a grant for full tuition, conditional upon his agreeing to commit to working for a non-profit for two years post-graduation.

The foundation was sorry that they could only offer Tom a half a year of sponsorship at this time, but encouraged him to apply again next year.

With the prospect of room fees at Perkins being his only expenses, and a schedule of only classes and on campus work, Tom retreated into a dazed silence. The money he had in the bank would more than cover his room fees, leaving him enough to pay for an apartment over the summer months. He would be eligible for financial aid to wrap up his final semester the following year, or for a full year's worth at Carlisle if he wanted to take an extra semester and finish a double major before graduating. He didn't even have to work for the rest of J-term.

He sat on the Anders' couch for an entire day, wrapped in the afghan while Mr. Anders worked and Reese met Steph at Faneuil Hall for a day touring cheesy tourist sights all around the city in honor of her twenty-first birthday. Tom turned on the TV but couldn't keep track of any program for more than a few minutes.

He didn't understand what had happened to him, but he wasn't dumb enough to miss the fucking lesson. For a year and a half, he'd talked to no one, relied on no one and made it through with sheer willpower. Now, in less than four weeks, he'd vomited the worst of his secrets all over, had embarrassed himself in front of more people than he could count, and he'd ended up with so much help he couldn't wrap his brain around it.

And it felt like real help. Not help he'd conned out of someone or finagled his way into, but help that was being given to him the same way it would be given to anyone else. He'd managed, somehow, to make it back into the world where decent people lived.

He left a note for Reese, went to an old timer's bar three blocks down, next door to the VFW, and got drunk.

New habits died hard. There was Keystone Lager on tap for two dollars a pint. After a half a dozen pints, he'd tested his balance—as long as he could stagger he could make it three blocks to the Anders—when Reese and Steph showed up.

The grizzled bartender ignored them and they didn't try to order drinks, claiming to have drunk their weight in hot chocolate, spiked for Steph, already. They tugged at Tom's arm until he slid off his stool, letting them drag him out the door and onto the T. He was swaying in his seat, trying not to lean against Reese, when he realized that no one he knew took the T.

He squinted at Reese, who squinted back and grinned, making fun of the drunk guy.

“What, baby? Things a little blurry?”

It didn't even bother him that Reese called him baby. He was so not bothered by anything, T car rattling under his ass, that he leaned over and kissed Reese.

Who stared at him wide-eyed the entire time, lips frozen as Tom corrected his aim and dragged his mouth over from his jaw.

Fucking wobbly train threw him off.

“Holy shit.” Steph's whisper was as quiet as a shout. She turned all the way around in her seat to stare. “A public display of affection. Whatcha doing, Worthy?”

He glared at her. Or tried to.

“Don' call me that.”

Someone was pushing his face away from Steph but it was really important that he yell at her.

“Hey. Baby.”

Tom blinked.

“Reese.”

“That's right.”

“My Reese.”

“I sure am.” Reese's cheeks were pink and round. “You think you might do that again?”

He could spend all night kissing Reese, whose mouth opened under his, so soft and tasting like chocolate. When Reese broke away and dragged him to the exit, laughing as the car doors slid closed, he protested.

Steph got behind him and pushed. “C'mon, suddenly gay boy. You need to dance some of this booze off.”

“Don't dance.”

“You will.”

Even when he realized they'd dragged him to a gay club, bass pounding so loud his heart stuttered and realigned to the beat, he didn't care. Fuck it. There wasn't a goddamn thing the world didn't know about him already. He'd spent two weeks flayed open and spread on a slide for school administrators and social workers to examine under a microscope. Why care if anyone saw him dance with his boyfriend? He was pretty drunk, but it was
his
idea to pull Reese into a dark corner behind the pile of speakers edging the stage. Reese held his hands while Tom backed up until his ass hit the wall. Moving with exaggerated care, he raised his arms until Reese pinned his hands to either side of his head.