Off Campus (32 page)

Tom exhaled on a huff.

“Not like that. Don't get any ideas.”

But he could see Cash grinning out of the corner of his eye as he pulled up his player character and reviewed his weapons options. “I love you, man.”

With a quick glance at Tom and a nod, Cash started the game. They logged in to the network and waited to see if any of their regular competitors were online.

“Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Can we not be totally gay right now, though? I need to keep my manhood for tonight.”

“Hot date?”

“Don't tell Steph. This chick thinks I'm a genius 'cause I'm gonna graduate in four years. She's been here six. Steph'd kill me.”

He didn't figure out the last piece of the puzzle until he pulled on the heavy external door of the hall of the administrative building and almost fell on his ass when it flew open as someone inside pushed the release bar.

Jack jerked back, holding on to the door for a second like he wanted to shut it in Tom's face. When Tom held on and pulled it open wider, Jack let go. He flinched back a step.

“Jesus. You
asshole
. What kind of fairytale are you spinning for the dean?”

Jack shook his head and held his hands up, but the tips of his ears were pink and he didn't look Tom in the eyes.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The fuck you don't. You've been trying to make my life miserable since I got back here. God, don't bother denying it. For a total douchebag, you suck at lying.” He stepped into the building and Jack scrambled backward, tripping over the edge of the runner on the hall floor. “Relax. I'm not gonna—” He pinched his nose and mouth between his gloved palms and breathed into them. Jack still had his hands up like he'd taken tae kwon do in third grade. “I'm not going to fucking punch you, you moron.”

“I told you. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“What the fuck, man? Did I bang your girlfriend or something?” he demanded. Fuck this dude. He was pissed and for the first time in days he had a target he didn't feel guilty about attacking.

“Don't you mean my boyfriend?”

Ahh. Jack wasn't quite down for the count.

Neither was Tom.

“Listen, you homophobic jackass—”

Jack's laugh was short and harsh. “God, you're an idiot. I'm not a homophobe. I'm
gay
.”

“What?” Tom pulled his head back. “But then why…?”

“Because I could tell it bothered you so much. God forbid anyone should think the great Tom Worthington the third might be a faggot, right?”

Tom flinched, wondering for a split second if anyone else had heard that, before he tamped his self-consciousness down and let his anger take the wheel.

“Seriously, dude. What did I ever do to you?” He cornered Jack between an overstuffed leather armchair and a credenza in the long hall. For the first time in months he let himself feel his own size, looming over the smaller man, broadening his shoulders and standing with his feet wide apart. Jack ducked his head and looked down at his feet. God, he felt like a bully and it felt
good
. Let this fucker know what it was like for once. “Did I take your spot on a team? Interrupt your first bathroom blowjob at a party?”

He was spitting in Jack's face.

“You and your dad. You really don't give a shit about anything, do you?” Jack's eyes were bright when he tipped his chin up and looked at Tom, his body curved away protectively. “You fucking suck.”

In an instant, Tom deflated. Every hot flush of rage and superiority swirled out of him like piss down a drain. He backed up until he felt the opposite wall of the hall behind him and tipped his head back until he banged it.

“Shit.”

“The least you could've done was have the decency not to come back.” Jack dragged the back of one hand across his eyes and spat the words at Tom.

“What happened?” His voice was dead, no threat now.

“Don't act like you give a shit.” Jack straightened up and hitched the strap of his backpack more securely against his shoulder. He wiped his nose. “This is my last semester here because of you.”

He didn't even try to argue that it wasn't him. That he'd been fucked just as hard as Jack—or more likely Jack's parents—had been, watching their son's college fund disappear in the smoke of a Ponzi scheme. It didn't really matter. Certainly not to Jack. All that kid could see was the living, breathing representation of the guy who'd wrecked everything, back on campus to rub it in his face that
he
'd be here when Jack was finishing out his degree at a community college.

He might be wrong in the details, but Tom was sure enough of the big picture to know there wasn't a damn thing he could say that would make any of this right.

Didn't mean he was off the hook. He stood up straight.

“Man, I'm sorry.”

Jack lowered his head and turned for the door. His muttered
Fuck you
hung in the air for a minute after he'd left, while Tom stared blankly at the beige wall, barely breathing.

There was no end to the damage he caused.

“Dude. Get your shoes on. We're gonna run.”

He was trying to sleep, the only activity he enjoyed at the moment. Being asleep meant a break from the voices in his head, berating him, rubbing it in over and over again, how much he'd fucked up.

They came in a lot of pitches, those voices. One of them sounded exactly like the dean, who had managed to loom over him despite being five foot nothing, as he slumped in the chair in front of her desk.

“I seriously question the appropriateness of your being a student at Carlisle, Mr. Worthington, if only because you are obviously an utter wreck due, I assume, to your difficult experience with your father and
his
criminal activities. I would
never
threaten a student with expulsion because of circumstances beyond his or her control and I am mildly offended that you would think so.”

The dean had proceeded to pull up a copy of her letter on her laptop, the letter that he had refused to reread, and walked him through it point by point. With her sitting next to him, scary as shit but on his side, all of the words meant something different. Instead of threatening, it was clear she'd written a letter explaining to him exactly what she thought he needed to do in order to be able to enjoy his year at school. She was advising him on what to do to protect
himself
, not making him responsible for protecting the school from unwanted disruptions.

He hadn't known whether he should straighten up or slump so far he fell over as she continued to lecture him on not projecting his own fears onto the actions of other people and perhaps
asking
someone if he understood them correctly when their words or actions seemed egregiously unfair.

This entire time, the whole academic year he'd been at school, he'd been operating under assumptions that weren't just a little bit off base, but wildly, insanely, wrong. He'd fucked up his relationship, his friendships, his entire ability to participate in life on campus, for no good reason at all.

God, he was more screwed up than he'd thought.

He stuck his head under his pillow. “Leave it alone, Cash.”

His temporary roommate, although after six weeks of sleeping on the guy's floor he didn't know how temporary the arrangement was, kicked the corner of his air mattress, jostling him.

“Seriously. I'm not kidding. Get the fuck up and get dressed and come run with me or I'm kicking your ass out.” Tom narrowed his eyes at Cash, who wasn't cowed for a second. “I'm so not kidding.”

“What the fuck?” The hoodie Cash threw his way smacked Tom in the face.

“I can't take it anymore. Your misery is sucking the brain cells right outta me. And I am not what they call a genius.” Microfiber shirt. Running shorts. Sweats.
Thwap, thwap, thwap.
Tom didn't flinch. Let the clothes smack into him and slide down his chest. “You look bad. You smell worse. Get up off that stanky ass air mattress and come run or find someone else's floor to crash on.”

“You suck.” But he was kicking off his sleep pants and pulling on shorts and sweats.

“That's your job, lover boy. Put a hat on. It feels cold.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I just got off your mom.” Cash spun around and winced at Tom's horrified look. He waved his hands in the air frantically. “Sorry. I forgot. That was gross.”

“Little bit.”

“Sorry.” Tom relaxed back against the wall. A balled up pair of socks hit him in the chin. “But you still gotta get the fuck up.”

Cash wouldn't be argued out of his annoying idea. Not even the threat of replacing all the porn on his laptop with Cockyboys double penetration videos was enough to shake his determination to get Tom out on the track, on the grass, on whatever fucking flat surface he chose, but they had to run.

The sun was insanely bright in his eyes outside and Tom winced at the idea that he hadn't even noticed that spring—or hell, even summer, it was practically eighty, not cold at all—had come early to the Connecticut River Valley. He wasn't speaking to Cash, who hung back at his shoulder and followed silently when Tom headed for the back roads that paralleled the country highway up to and over the notch in the mountains between their campus and the next big town.

He'd run. He'd run until the voices in his head shut up and if that didn't work, he'd sleep until graduation.

When they made it back to campus and collapsed on the edge of the Green, Tom paused on his hands and knees for a minute, absolutely positive that he was going to puke. Cash broke out his phone and called for help.

Steph materialized like magic five minutes later. She was the lucky one, with a room in one of the smaller, old-fashioned dorms on the Green, crowing over the big bay window and hardwood floors in her room. She stood over them, a pitiless look in her eyes, and a white plastic CVS bag looped over her wrist.

“So are you guys, like, bananas and granola bars hungry, or turkey sandwich hungry?” Her eyes said they'd better pick the bananas.

“For the love of God, woman, give us the sandwich.” Cash spoke from his sprawl flat-out on his back in the sun.

“Okay, but that's my lunch, and dinner for tomorrow too. I'm down to my last ten bucks until payday.” She kicked Cash's feet to the side and sat in between the two of them.

Cash sat up and grabbed the sandwich, unwrapping it and pushing half toward Tom on the open wrapper. “I will buy you ten more sandwiches tomorrow. Sweartagod.” He shoved most of his half of the sandwich in his mouth with one giant bite.

Tom didn't move from where he lay on his belly, head pillowed on crossed arms. When Steph pointed out the half sandwich in front of his face, he grunted.

“Why's he such a wreck?”

He kept his eyes shut and let his friends talk about him as if he weren't there.

“Mostly because he's an out of shape motherfucker. And he's a sprinter.”

“Ha.” That was about as good a retort as he could come up with, since he'd left his brain somewhere back on the other side of the Notch.

“How far'd you go?”

“I dunno. Maybe twelve? Fourteen?”

“Miles?” The weirdly soft ripping sound turned out to be Steph peeling a banana, he saw when he cracked a lid open. “How do you
do
that? I'd be dead.”

Cash shrugged, too busy stuffing a turkey grinder into his maw to bother to answer. Some vestige of polite social behavior refused to allow Tom to lie there in silence also. His voice felt rusty when he spoke.

“Mostly it's mental.” Steph turned her head toward him and scoffed out loud, mouth full of banana. He shook his head. “When you train, you learn that the messages you get from your body and your brain are only that. Messages.” He tried to think of examples. Thinking, period, was moving pretty slow in his brain. At least the run had killed his hangover, or he'd be dead now. “Like,
I'm tired.
Or,
I need to stop. I can't go any farther.
They're loud, but you don't have to listen. You can just…keep going.”

Steph bit off another chuck of banana, spring sun shining weakly on the faded blue wash in her hair.

“Huh.”

“What?”

“What what?” She was playing dumb.

He pushed himself up on his hands. If he could sit up without vomiting, then he'd eat. “Don't gimme that. You're thinking something.”

“Well, I thought that maybe…maybe you should try to do that. You know. Ignore the messages you're getting from your brain about how you can't do
some
thing.” She lifted innocent eyebrows. “And just…keep going.”

“It's not the same thing.” He bit into the sandwich. His turn to use a full mouth as an excuse not to talk.

“No?”

“No.” He chewed what turned out to be maybe the greatest turkey grinder ever built by a deli sandwich maker. She stared at him, clearly prepared to wait until grass grew over him if that's what it took. “Maybe.”

Cash watched from behind Steph, propped up on his elbows, as she drove the message home with all the subtlety of a steamroller.

“I think it's exactly like that. When you think you can't do it anymore. You have to ignore it and keep going. Trust in your training.”

“I'm out of practice with that.”

“What?”

“Trust.”

But he tried.

He spent another week trying to figure out how to trust Reese. Or rather, how to show Reese that Tom
did
trust him, because as he thought about it, crossing the campus in the yellow-green light of new leaves and spring sun, Reese was about the only person in the world that he believed in. It was his absolute conviction that the rest of the world was out to get him, which to be fair had been accurate when barricaded in his old home with lingering paparazzi at the gates, that needed to be challenged. As a worldview, it was maybe the slightest bit
off
.