After I did some studying my room, I threw on my hockey jacket, patting my travel toothbrush to be sure it was still in the pocket. Graham wasn’t the sort of lover with whom you could take the liberty of leaving your toothbrush in his toiletry tray. He’d develop some wild theory about what the neighbor might think if he saw two blue toothbrushes together, or some shit. So I packed mine in and out with me, the way you handle refuse on the Appalachian Trail.
Walking over to Beaumont House, another student was exiting the iron gates just as I arrived. So I had no trouble getting in. I stopped there on the flagstone path, and pulled out my phone to text Graham.
“MisterRikker,” came a voice in the dark.
I looked up to see Graham’s mom walking toward me. Well, crap. Graham wasn’t going to be happy about the fact that I’d run into her here. “Hi, Mrs. G,” I said as casually as possible. I shoved my phone into my pocket, like the guilty man that I was.
She marched up to me and threw her arms around my neck. Then she kissed me on the cheek. “I love you. Always have. Always will. No matter what.”
Then, as I stood there, speechless, she let go. Without another word, she walked away into the night. I still hadn’t moved a minute later when I heard the iron gate open and shut again as she left the Beaumont courtyard for the street outside.
Okay…
Collecting myself, I walked to Graham’s entryway, following another student inside. Taking the stairs two at a time, I opened Graham’s door without knocking. Inside, it was dark except for the desk lamp, lonely in its corner. Graham was lying on his back on the big bed, his arms out in submission, like Christ on the cross.
“Hola, Miguel.” Kicking off my shoes, I crawled onto the bed beside him, looking down at him from hands and knees. His eyes were red and swollen. “What happened here tonight? I just got hug-mugged by your mother in the courtyard.”
He reached up to catch the back of my head in one of his big hands. Guiding me down onto his chest, he said, “I guess you don’t need to text before you come up anymore.”
“I see,” I said, snuggling up to him. Although I didn’t, really. Did Graham actuallytellhis mother? That seemed categorically impossible.
“She’s taking notes for three courses for me. She read four hundred pages to me this week,” he said.
“Yeah?” I whispered, hoping that he’d keep talking. Graham’s arm looped around me, his fingers swishing through my hair. I leaned in, wanting this unbidden affection from him almost as badly as I wanted to find out what had happened.
“Just couldn’t lie anymore,” he whispered. “Not toher,” he amended quickly, as if I were dumb enough to think that he could ever really go public about us.
“That’s big,” I said. Because it really, really was.
He only grunted. But he pulled me closer, too. He buried his face in my hair and took a big breath. His fingers traveled the length of my back. Skimming. Caressing. Graham wasn’t always so affectionate, and I was a slut for it. I burrowed into him.Hug me. Rub me more, my body language said. And he did. Maybe he felt he’d earned the right to hold me, somehow. I knew how hard it must have been for him to be honest with his mom.
We lay there a long time, just cuddling. I never wanted it to end. “Rub my head?” he asked eventually.
“Which one?” I joked. But I pushed myself up on the pillow, pulling my big, golden boy onto my chest. And I massaged his scalp with my fingertips, applying gentle force to the skin and muscle under my hands.
“Mmm,” he said. “Cómo fue tu mesa de Español?”How was your Spanish table?
“Muy bien,” I told him. Then I asked the question I’d been dying to ask for the past hour.“Qué dice tu madre?”What did you mother say?
He groaned into my chest. “What did she say toyou?”
I had to swallow hard before repeating it. Because the words were ones that myownmother would never, ever say to me. “She said that she loves me no matter what.”
“Lo mismo para mi,” he whispered.The same for me.
I traced a few more circles into his scalp. “I know you believe her. But I know that it’s still hard.”
“The rest of my family…” his words were muffled by my shirt. “Ugh. I don’t want to be talked about.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I don’t want them to look at me funny.”
“I know.”
He slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt, his rough hands finding the tender skin on my belly. “I’m a fucking coward.”
My own hands slid down his body then, fingertips breeching the waistline of his sweatpants. “Mmm… did someone say ‘fucking?’”
