Frat Boy and Toppy (5 page)

“Ashley, I kinda have t—”

“Buy me a coffee. I’ll be sitting over there, waiting for you. Light cream.” She tossed her hair and marched off.

He considered his options for all of two seconds.

She knew where to find him.

He bought the coffee. Then he put a splash of cream in it. It looked almost white. He stuck the lid back on, in case that wasn’t the right amount of cream.

He approached the table cautiously, holding the coffee in front of him. She looked like some offended Greek goddess. He hoped his offering would please her. Or at least not piss her off further. God knew why he was trying to placate her in the first place.

To make the whole thing end faster. Duh.

She eyed him, snatched the coffee from his hand, peeled off the lid, and inspected the contents. It seemed to be good enough for her to sip, but she gave him a disgruntled look as she did so. Like she’d
wanted
it to be wrong.

She took another sip and stared at the table, lips nearly frozen on the rim of the cup. Brad was starting to wonder if she was having some kind of seizure when she gave a short nasty laugh and muttered, “Who the fuck cares?”

That’s what it sounded like to him, at least. If she was going to talk to herself, he was outta here. He cleared his throat at her. Startled, she looked up at him, huffed, and waved at the chair across from her.

After he sat down, he realized he probably should have walked out instead. Whatever. Let her do her thing and then he’d go start on that paper. He was so lucky Sebastian was letting him have a do-over. Now he just had to explain it to Kyle and then—

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“What?” He jerked to look at Ashley again.

“How long have you and Sebastian been together?” She had a nasty smile on her face.

Oh fuck.

“Or maybe you aren’t together? Oh, that’d be classic. The guy who has girls falling all over themselves to get his attention can’t get the guy he
yearns
for. Poor wittle Bwad. Not good enough for the boy he wuvs.”

He’d felt this lightheaded before. In the middle of a football game, right before he’d passed out. He meant to say something, but Ashley went on. “What, you think I can’t see you’re hot for Sebastian? What was that all about? Did he turn you down? Did you offer him anything he wanted if only he’d just go out with you and he said he wasn’t interested?”

That hit a little too close to home. “Ashley, don’t fuck with me.”

Instead of backing down, like people usually did when he got pissed, she laughed at him, slightly hysterical. “Fuck you, Brad.” Ashley smirked at him over the edge of her cup, then took another drink. “I think I just caught your attention more effectively than I did the entire time we went out, didn’t I?”

Brad gritted his teeth and stared her down.

She won.

“So, what’s everyone going to say when they find out the Calapooya College football star is gay?”

Everything froze inside him as the real danger of Ashley knowing dawned on him.

Was it a danger, really? Was he ready to face everyone knowing? “So. You going to tell everyone?”

Ashley took an aggressive sip of her coffee that somehow reminded him of how angry women in old movies smoked when confronting the man who’d spurned them. Puffing smoke in his face, alternating with hollowing her cheeks, making the cherry glow.

Damn indoor smoking ban, anyway.

Ashley slammed the cup down, sloshing coffee over the edge. She looked out the window. “You’re really gay?”

What was his line again? “Uhhhhh . . .”

She stared at him a long time. “I was just pissed. I guess that’s what I thought, but I expected you to deny it.”

Brad swallowed a couple times.

“Aren’t you going to deny it?”

“Well, um . . .”

“So you
are
gay.”

“I don’t . . . know.”

“Are you seeing Sebastian?”

He stared at the table and shook his head.

“But you want to see him? You’re attracted to him.”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Are you maybe bi, though?”

“I don’t know.”
Liar
.

“So, you’re attracted to Sebastian. Are you attracted to me?”

“Not, um, not really.”

“Sounds gay to me, Brad.”

“Kinda does,” he managed.

“But you can’t say it.”

“Not really.” He shook his head at the table.

“Shit,” Ashley muttered. “I guess if you can’t even say it, you aren’t really ready to come out. I’m not that big a bitch. Not that . . . mad. I’ll keep it to myself.”

In a moment of stunning insight—especially for him, considering he was so wrapped up in his own head that his vision was graying—Brad realized maybe Ashley wasn’t just angry. She was humiliated. Which reminded him what she had to be humiliated about. He finally looked up at her. She was looking out the window, arms folded across her chest. He cleared his throat and scratched his ear. “I’m sorry.”

Ashley looked back at him. “What?”

“I used you. I didn’t know it, not at the time. Not exactly. I mean, I knew I wasn’t exactly . . . interested, but I didn’t realize it was because. Um.”

“You’re gay?”

Brad closed his eyes but managed a nod.

“So you sort of knew you were using me, but you did it anyway.”

He opened one eye and peeked at her. Then he nodded again.

“You’re an asshole.” She said it without any real anger in her voice. For some reason, his shoulders relaxed. “A confused asshole, but an asshole.”

“I am.”

“I saw you staring at Sebastian. In class, but also today in here. I was walking by and saw you talking to him and the look on your face. You looked nervous.” Ashley curled her lip, sneering out the window. “You’re hypnotized by Sebastian’s rear whenever he walks away from you. I was pissed off all over again. I’m not stupid.” Her voice actually softened some. “But I think you kind of are.”

He stared at her.
Huh
?

“I’m mad, and I wish you’d told me when you figured it out. I wish you’d never asked me out. But I guess I kinda believe that you didn’t know about being gay. We didn’t sleep together, so . . . Just . . . Brad, you know when I asked you if we could still be friends?” She looked at him.

“Yeah . . .”

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore. Right now? I’m so done with you.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She stood up, nodding sharply at him.

“Ashley,” he said as she walked away. She stopped and looked down her nose at him. “I really am sorry.” She looked at him a second longer, but didn’t say anything when she started walking again.

“So what, you just let him off?” Paul asked. He was across the office they shared, sitting at his desk, staring over at Sebastian. Backlit by the windows, weak winter sunlight washing in.

Sebastian shrugged. “Yeah.” He started pulling the massive stack of student essays out of his locked bottom drawer and let them fall onto his desk. It was a pretty satisfying
slam
. He had them about half done. Truth was, he kind of liked grading the essays. They got pretty amusing.

Paul scowled at him. “Jocks are always getting away with murder, and you just gave away that much power over one?” He had a real aversion to jocks, frat boys, and their ilk.

Sebastian shrugged. He’d have done it for anyone in that class, pretty much. Once. Unless they gave him a lot of shit. Which, if he was honest, he’d expected from Brad. “He didn’t react the way I thought he would.” Sebastian leaned back in his desk chair and looked out the window, thinking about the look on Brad’s face when he’d said
Sorry
. Just how wrong was it that that look had excited him a little bit?

Paul was silent a minute, thinking, so Sebastian let himself have a micro-fantasy. About Brad’s naked ass being introduced to his dick.

“What do you mean?” Paul finally asked, a touch annoyed.

Sebastian smiled but hid it by rubbing his chin. “He always comes across as really cocky, you know? Tries to be imposing, never smiles. He was nervous when he showed up, you saw that, yeah? It was completely unlike him.”

Paul nodded and waved him on, looking at Sebastian suspiciously.

“I thought he’d get intimidating and confrontational when I told him I knew he hadn’t written that paper, but he just, I don’t know, folded. I was almost afraid he was going to cry for a couple seconds.”

Paul was silent a minute longer, so Sebastian threw his feet up on his desk to wait him out. Paul narrowed his eyes. “How many students are in that class?”

Sebastian grinned, not trying to hide it this time. He’d wondered when this would occur to Paul. “About a hundred.”

“And you’re there, what, a half-hour a week? You don’t even take attendance for Ari, man. You just read all those essays those kids generate.”

“Some of those kids are older than me.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Paul snapped.

Sebastian linked his arms across his chest and grinned at the ceiling now. “Yeah, a half-hour a week. I noticed this guy. He’s got an amazing body, yeah? That T-shirt he was wearing today was painted on, and he’s got that dark-haired, bad-boy brooding look. It’s pretty appealing.”

“He’s a frat boy jock!” Paul gaped at him. Paul was an intellectual snob, and jocks had no place in his world except as objects of derision. For the typical reason, of course: the high school athletic teams’ natural prey was the weak, intelligent queer boy.

“Makes him that much better to look at. Did you check out those muscles? Brad has a nice set of arms on him. And, man, you should see the view from behind.” For just a second, Paul might have looked interested, but he squelched it with a contemptuously curled lip. Really, Sebastian was enjoying messing with Paul too much. It wasn’t nice.

Not that he was going to stop.

“He could be playing you!”

“What, like flashing his well-formed pecs at me to get what he wants? Showing me his corded neck so I’ll overlook his plagiarized paper?” Sebastian laughed. “He’s straight!” He was pretty sure. “Even if it occurred to him to do it, he’d never be able to make himself.” He grinned over at Paul, enjoying his flustered outrage openly.

“He could be trying to inveigle you!” Paul was so worked up he stood and leaned across his desk, planting his hands on the surface. “Get you obsessed with him, then get you to change his grade.”

“You
cannot
be for real.” Sebastian laughed more. “You think he’s trying to trap me with his masculine wiles, yeah? Even if he is, do you really think I would be susceptible?”

Paul pointed a finger at him. “Mock me all you want, but I’m telling you, you need to keep an eye on Frat Boy.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll be watching Frat Boy very closely.”

Paul glared at Sebastian and stalked out of the room, muttering something about coffee and traitors.

Sebastian chuckled to himself as he picked up the next essay from the stack he was grading. Paul was so easy to fuck with. Sebastian was probably going to have to apologize for it, but it had been fun while it lasted.

Truth was, Sebastian had kind of needed that. Just a little bit of stress release. For some reason, he’d been horribly disappointed when he’d seen Brad’s paper this week. When he started reading it, his chest had felt like it was filling up with concrete. He was so mad he didn’t even feel that amused disappointment he usually did when he caught a cheater.

He’d tried to shrug it off. Didn’t work so well. He’d ended up taking a walk. Normally he’d contact a student outside of class for something like that, but he’d just wanted it over with. So he’d gone back home and gotten Brad’s paper, scribbled the note on it, and went to Ari’s class to deliver it.

Then he’d spent the rest of the morning rethinking all the crap he’d already let himself think about Brad. Maybe Brad was exactly what he looked like. Sometimes stereotypes fit.

But sitting in that coffee shop, having Brad apologize, felt like such a relief he’d had to smile. For a few seconds he’d almost let himself start a conversation.

Fuck, he had to stop this. He thought about that kid too much.

Maybe Toby wanted to troll the bars, check out some guys tonight. That would probably do the trick.