Page 5
Chapter Five
Josh
It was not my first rodeo, as they say.
I was lucky, and I knew it. I came out when I was fifteen. Thanks to my older brother Vance, I didn’t even really have to think about it or stress about it. He’d been the one to muster up the bravery to say, “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.” I got to ride his coattails with a, “Hey, me too!”
My parents were beyond supportive, and I’d been out and proud ever since. It was such a nonissue for our family that Hunter hadn’t felt the need for a dramatic coming out, he just brought a teammate home from baseball camp last summer and introduced him as his boyfriend.
My best friend, Devon, had had a similar experience to mine. Coming out at fifteen to supportive parents.
But I knew our experiences were not the same as everyone’s. Times were better, or at least they had been getting better, but not for all queer people.
When Cam said that the picture of three boys in matching Christmas sweaters with coordinating hats and scarves had been taken on his family’s farm, it told me all I needed to know. A small town even further in middle-of-nowhere New York than our little college town? A family farm? A sports hero with a full scholarship?
Campbell Ryan had been giving me mixed signals from the moment we met. But it wasn’t because he hadn’t felt the same spark as me; it was because he had.
I fought my way out of the crowded house, not running into a single person I knew, and cut through campus to get back home.
For my entire existence, I had grown up with Hampstead University as the backdrop to my life. Campbell Ryan wasn’t the first closeted athlete I’d run into over the years. Truth be told, I was known as a bit of a player, and having HU as a playground was a wonderful thing for a young gay man coming into his own.
As I was growing up, I looked toward my two eldest brothers as examples of adulthood. Dad had had Jamie and AJ with his first wife, and they were quite a bit older than me, so of course I idolized them both when I was younger.
Jamie met the love of his life, Anna, when they were both still kids, and they were together until she passed away a few years ago. Their story was romantic and heart-wrenching.
AJ was a firefighter in Brooklyn. He'd never settled down and was known to be a bit of a player himself. Apparently, he and his best friend used their hero status to play wingman for each other with women, to great success, according to the men themselves.
For a young gay boy who wanted to experience all life had to offer, the choice was easy. I wanted to be more an AJ than a Jamie.
When I met Devon, it just solidified my choice. Dev and I became best friends, always there for each other. We’d even lived together since freshman year. So except for what happened behind the metaphorical bedroom door, I had a best friend, almost just like Jamie had had Anna. But I also got to have the kind of adventures AJ did, and so did Devon for that matter, both of us burning up the hookup apps and having safe, filthy fun with nothing, and no one, tying us down.
My adventures meant that I occasionally ran into someone in the closet. A lot of the closeted types were people visiting the campus, who figured it was safer to sneak around and experiment in a strange town, away from family, friends, and routine. Another big closet-case category? Athletes.
When I leaned in to kiss Campbell, I had genuinely not made up my mind what I was going to do. Based on our flirty banter, the hand holding, and the way he’d dragged me to his room, I figured that I could have pushed him down onto his bed and convinced him to let go for a few quick minutes there in his self-imposed closet. Walking away from him and out into the balmy night, I tried to figure out why I hadn’t done just that. I could practically hear my anthropomorphized dick sputtering the same question at me in anger.
I imagined the scene as I walked, pushing him down, kissing him, feeling his hesitancy turn to urgency. Maybe I’d suck him off or take us both in hand. Quick and dirty either way, our sounds drowned out by the party below, our time together fleeting and hot and impersonal, just the way I liked it.
Impersonal.
That was it right there. Much as I considered myself a player, I didn’t want to play with Campbell. He was such a unique character. He had a vulnerability to him while at the same time he exuded a centered focus and confidence. His soft smile felt like it lit up the whole room, or hell, the whole of the outdoors when we were hanging out in his backyard. It went without saying that his body was smoking hot, but if it had been just that, I think I could have shoved him onto that bed and had my way with him. Actually, I know I could have, if he’d wanted that.
Fuck me, for the first time, it appeared that I didn’t want to just fuck some guy at a party.
Was it possible I wanted more?
I shrugged off the notion because it didn’t matter. I’d passed up the opportunity, and unless I ran into him again at physical therapy, or if I actually took it upon myself to go to a hockey game, which is something I had never done before, I would likely never run into number fifty-nine again.
I walked along Windmill Road until I could cut across a tucked-away corner of Hampstead University that my family called the forest even though it was really only a patch of trees that buffered our property, and that of our neighbors, from the campus. I pulled up a hookup app on my phone and scrolled for a few minutes, sitting in the gazebo that was located just on the other side of our forest. I stared at the icons on the map, some of them rather close, until my eyes blurred.
Eventually, I decided against reaching out to any of the anonymous pictures of six packs and hard dicks. I got up and walked along the path that had been carved out of the woods over the years.
I would be picking Devon up at the airport shortly. We’d have one last year to hang out together, to party, and to one-and-done a whole two semesters worth of willing guys. So what if I wasn’t feeling it that night? I had a whole school year to tear my way through my matches on that app and the myriad others like it.
I’d been looking forward to my senior year all summer, and I was sure there would be plenty of things to distract me from one sweet, handsome hockey player once Devon and our other friends got to town and the semester kicked into gear.
I filled the rest of the summer following Hunter around to travel ball and not running into a certain hockey player with an injured ankle at physical therapy. I did run into Diane there once; she went on and on about the hockey player she’d hung out with the evening of the party. I smiled politely, but hearing her effuse really didn’t help. I assumed she meant the other guy, Noah, but she never said his name, and a part of me wondered if Campbell hadn’t stormed back downstairs after I left and hetero’ed all over that party.
I was thrilled when Devon was back in town, and we moved into the dorm. He was as eager to make the most of senior year as I was, and we started the semester off right as soon as he returned, calling some friends to meet us at The Valley, the queer-friendly bar near campus. Devon and I were both hit on that evening, and Devon left with his new friend while I sat at the bar, chatting up a cute twink who asked me to go back to his dorm room with the highly romantic come-on line, “My roommate isn't back in town until tomorrow.”
I opened my mouth to say yes . I always said yes to hookups unless I got a weird vibe from someone. I’d sent Devon away earlier when he texted to make sure I didn’t need a save. I’d known then where the night was leading; my bar mate hadn’t been subtle, and neither had I.
But as I opened my mouth, I caught the bartender running his fingers through his hair, and it reminded me of a lumbering wall of a man with chestnut hair, and dark-chocolate eyes, and a complicated smile that was kind and sweet and haunted and confused and …
Fuck me. I let the twink down gently. He took it just fine, chatting up the bartender even before I had tucked my phone in my pocket and was heading for the door.
I was utterly confused as I walked back to the dorm. I’d given up a perfectly fun evening, for what? My pocket buzzed with a text from Devon that had just our room number on it. It was our code for when one of us had someone in our shared dorm room. So what I'd given up the cute twink for was a night crashing in the dorm’s common room until Devon came to fetch me and let me know the coast was clear.
I was still convinced it was going to be a great senior year, and I pushed thoughts of cute twinks and cuter hockey players out of my head the next time Devon and I planned an evening out. So what if one hookup hadn’t panned out? I shook off the strange feeling that random hookups weren’t doing it for me anymore and decided I just had to find the right hookup.
The day classes began, Devon was texting me before I’d even made it to my first lecture.
Dev: Drinks at Lefty’s again tonight? Some of the finance guys are going.
Dev: Thinking I might try and hit up that waiter. He seemed into it last night, right?
Josh: Until you left with someone else.
Devon sent a shrugging emoji before continuing.
Dev: I’ll charm him. You can have the room if you need it. Might be fun to see the stockroom at Lefty’s.
That text was accompanied by a winking emoji. I thought about the group of finance guys Devon and I had been hanging out with, guys Devon knew from his classes, trying to decide who I might take back to the dorm room that night.
Josh: Sounds like fun.
I pulled my course schedule up on my phone and switched gears to think about the class I was headed to, my sports journalism class. I wasn’t much of a sports guy, but spending time watching Hunter excel in baseball had made me want to learn. I’d been to any number of games over the years and found myself not only wanting to understand them, but thinking it might be fun and interesting to write about them. I hoped the class would help me learn about sports and determine if I could do anything with the spark I’d felt sitting in the stands at Hunter’s games.
I swear that was the only spark I was thinking about as I approached the door to the Cooper Building, looked up from my phone, and found the door being held open by a floppy-haired, brawny man with a soft, shy smile on his face and a Hampstead-red flush to his cheeks.
I didn’t think it possible that he could be more adorable than he’d looked right before I hadn’t kissed the fuck out of him the other week.
“Hey there, Shelley,” he said softly as I walked past. “How’s the hand?”
“Shelley?”
“Yeah, she wrote Frankenstein . I refuse to call you a monster.” He was speaking softly still, forcing me to stick close to him and strain my neck up to hear him as we walked down the hallway.
“All right, Fifty-Nine, I’ll take it. Hand’s about the same. I have an appointment later this week. Hopefully the pins will come out.” I flashed my brace at him, and we both smiled.
“That’s good.” The hall we walked down felt miles long, and I had no idea how to fill the silence. There were people everywhere, moving to and from classes, chatting as if walking down the hallway with another person and having a conversation was a normal, easy thing.
In that low, soft voice, Campbell said, “Everyone calls me Fifty-Nine.” He sounded less than positive about it.
“Oh, shit, sorry. You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that …” He shrugged but didn’t explain.
“Okay, a challenge, then. Hmm? Fifty-Nine. FN. Ooh, how about Finn, like that movie?” I pulled out my phone and quickly changed Campbell’s contact information from Fifty-Nine to Finn. I flashed my phone for him to see, and he smiled.
We kept walking until I stopped outside a classroom door. “Room 105; this is me.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his blush deepened. “Sports journalism? Me too.”
“Well, alright, then, Finn, let’s get to class!” As it turned out, talking to Campbell Ryan was fairly easy.
He opened the door for me, holding it open by the doorknob, forcing me once again to brush past him to fit through it, close enough to smell man and citrus and spice.
“After you, Shelley.”
I looked back as he followed me in, and his face had gone absolutely crimson. Fuck me, how was I going to survive three months in a class with the closeted hockey player?
We walked in, and of course he sat right next to me, but no sooner had we sat down than the man standing at the front of the room, whom I assumed to be the professor, came over to us. He looked vaguely familiar, like I’d met him at some faculty event my parents had dragged me to. It wouldn’t be the first time a professor sought me out in class to talk about one or both of my parents. I sat up straighter, noting how I was still a head shorter than Campbell, who sat slumped in his seat next to me.
To my surprise, the man went right up to Campbell.
“Campbell Ryan, I saw your name on my roster. I’m Professor Dayden. It’s really nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to this season. The team’s looking really good this year.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Professor.” I noticed that Campbell avoided talking about his team’s prospects.
“How’s the ankle?”
“Almost good as new.” Campbell stuck his foot out and swirled his ankle, and how adorable was that? “I was cleared for practice over a week ago. Great to be back on the ice, sir.”
“Glad you’re here, Ryan!”
“Thank you, sir.” Campbell shot me an embarrassed smile.
Class started, and Professor Dayden read down the roster, eventually getting to “Joshua Marchetti-Gordon” and looking up in acknowledgment but refraining from calling me out in front of the class.
“Welcome, class,” the professor began. “You should have the syllabus on the portal, and we’ll spend most of our classroom time discussing the various articles and broadcast videos I’ve assigned. There will be no final exam in this class, only a final project. Each of you will be assigned a sport, and you will either write an article or create a video about it. The criteria other than that is intentionally nonspecific. You can partner up or work alone. I want you to create the project you want. Check your email later tonight for your assigned sport.”
Great , I thought. This would be the perfect opportunity for me to bond with Hunter and feature Hampstead Valley’s own high school pitching phenom in a news article. I bet I could even get it published in the school paper, seeing as the article would feature the child of two of the school’s favorite academics.
And how bad could it be to have to sit next to Campbell Ryan for the rest of the semester? We’d had a moment, that was all. I had moments with guys all over campus all the time. I could handle one cute hockey player twice a week.
We walked out of the building together after class, and he held the damn front door open for me, like some kind of gentleman. I mumbled a, “Thank you,” and a, “See ya,” and intentionally headed in the opposite direction from him.
“Yeah,” he said to my fading back, and I had to turn around and throw a lopsided smile to match his. He sent a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m off to practice. But I’ll see you in class on Thursday, yeah?”
All I wanted to do was walk with him to the sports complex and chat some more, so I intentionally took a few steps backward to make it clear to him I was thinking just the opposite.
“Glad to hear your ankle’s better. See you Thursday, Finn.”
His face lit up at that before he averted his eyes. Fuck me, had I been flirting?
He recovered, turning and waving back at me. “Later, Shelley.”
I was three beers in at Lefty’s, eyeing a table of unfamiliar guys while my roommate ogled the bartender. We were with some of our friends, finance majors like Devon, and it was clear to me that if things didn’t pan out with the guy behind the bar, he could always take Kurt back to the dorm. They’d been on-and-off fuck buddies for years.
I tapped his foot to get his attention at the same time my phone buzzed. I pulled my phone out but ignored it to talk to Devon first. Tilting my head in the direction of the table I’d been staring at, I asked, “You think they're freshman?”
He gave them a cursory glance before locking eyes with the bartender again. Though he wasn’t looking at me or them, he nodded and responded. “They definitely have that new-car smell to them. I’m thinking the blond is in the closet, and the one with the glasses is queer. I vote for the closet case. You know, a challenge. You should go for it.” He wasn’t paying attention to me as he said all of that, and I was barely paying attention to him as I opened the notification on my phone to find an email from Professor Dayden.
“Hockey!” I exclaimed, and Devon focused back on me.
“I’m sorry, what? I thought we were talking about the fresh meat over there.”
“Objectifying, not cool.”
“You’re right. Can I objectify the bartender, though? Because he’s fucking hot.”
I snuck a look. “Agreed.”
Devon took a sip of his mostly full beer, then slid it in front of me. “I’m gonna get another one. Why are we talking about hockey?”