On a Roll

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

There was nothing particularly awful about the door. The paint was chipped around the frame and some urban wit with a Sharpie had suggested calling Julie for a good time. A taped flier advertised office hours for the two TAs whose offices were inside. A Post-It declared, “Things to Remember: 1) Alamo! 2) Johnson, Intro Lit, Paper Due 10/15! 3) Call Julie.” In short, a perfectly ordinary classroom door.

Except that it was closed, and Beau was late. Not very late. Just ten minutes.

Stupid. He’d scoped the room out the previous week so he’d know exactly where it was. He didn’t want to be too early and look desperate. Or worse, get stuck chatting with someone else who was early. He wasn’t ready for that. He didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to listen.

But now he was late, and the door was closed. And everyone would stop and stare when he opened the door and walked into the room. Beau reached for the knob, then dropped his hand. No, he couldn’t do it. Maybe next week. Except next week he’d be the guy who had chickened out from the first meeting. Everyone would know each other, have started forming their cliques.

“Shit.” He touched the knob again. Which turned under his hand.

“Fu—” Beau started to swear, stopped, jumped back. The door opened outward—that was standard. His uncle was in the volunteer fire department, and “volunteer” apparently meant, to Uncle Jeff, telling everyone everything about buildings and fire safety and first aid, whether they wanted to know it or not. And in this case, Uncle Jeff had explained that public buildings were required by law to have doors that open outward, to prevent crowd crushing in case of a fire.

“Oh!” The guy who opened the door was good-looking in a J. Crew catalog, casual way, with clothes that Beau would have sworn were tailored to draw attention. A tight, plain white, cotton shirt fit well over a lean and sculpted chest. A three-button vest in one of those colors that had strange names like wine or claret hung open over it. The boy wore tight jeans, and a large, black leather belt encircled narrow hips. He topped the outfit off with a rugged, oval face, adorned with four-day stubble and a ready smile. Beau admired the look, then blushed for his own outfit and appearance. As his brother said, Beau dressed in retro-chic-redneck. “Sorry,” the guy said, edging past Beau. “Go on in, man. I gotta tap a kidney.” The men’s room was down the hall and around the corner. Beau turned to watch him go, observing the flex of J. Crew’s thighs and ass, not even paying attention to the door swinging closed. It struck the frame with a solid thunk.

“Ah, screw it,” Beau muttered. He backed away, then fled—and knew it for a retreat—down the hall. It was farther to the exit; the elevator was to the left, and he’d have to take the stairwell, but really, there just wasn’t any other choice. He didn’t want to risk bumping into J. Crew. “What kind of f****d up name is Rainbow Connection anyway?” He dug the battered and folded flier out of his pocket as he thudded down the stairs, turning the corners blindly. He threw it to the ground angrily. No one would be in the stairwell, no one ever was. By the time he hit the ground floor, ten stories later, he was sweating and gasping for air.

The September evening was still muggy, unpleasantly warm, and the tang of cafeteria grease lingered like a noxious cloud. Beau took several deep breaths anyway. He threw himself onto the concrete banister that lined the well-worn steps and leaned against the column, staring up at the sky. There were no answers in the shapes of the sunset-stained clouds.

He dug through his backpack and fished out a crumpled pack of Marlboros. Two left. He lit one and pulled the nicotine-laden stress relief into his lungs.

Beau closed his eyes, smoked, and let everything fade out. This was never going to work. When he got back to his dorm, he was going to throw out the pamphlets, go firmly back into the closet, and lock the door behind him. It worked for Aunt Lucy, it would work for him. Fake it ‘til you make it.

He finished the coffin nail, stubbed it on the cement railing. After it cooled, he’d stick it in his pocket until he could find one of the very few ash cans left on campus. He smoked and he knew it was bad, and he annoyed every crystal-twinkie, new age, left wing, egotistical health nut out there that insisted he should quit. Which is why, Beau pointed out, smokers often acted like selfish bastards to begin with. You may as well have the fun when you’re gonna be stuck with the blame, right? Despite that, Beau was not a litterer, and there was nothing appealing about a grassy lawn covered with used butts.

“Got a light?”

Beau fumbled in his pocket for the Bic and held it out without opening his eyes.

“Thanks, man,” J. Crew said. Of course it was. Beau started to get up. This was going to be awkward, and hopefully as short as possible.

“Keep it,” he said.

“Don’t let me chase you out of your perch, man,” J Crew said. He pulled an honest-to-God cigarette case out of his breast pocket. It was even engraved with flowery initials. Beau could barely make out a V and everything else was an incomprehensible scrawl. “Dunhill?”

Beau stared. “Really?” He’d never actually tasted one of the luxury cigarettes before; when smoke prices had risen to over five dollars a pack, he’d seriously cut back. Five a day, that was his limit. Frankly, it was all his budget could afford.

“I only smoke ‘em to piss off my grandparents,” J Crew admitted. “You looked like you were enjoying yours.”

Beau nodded, reluctant. “I keep meaning to quit, you know,” he said. He lit the Dunhill and pulled in a mouthful of the finest smoke known to man or gods.

“I hear ya,” said J. Crew.

“Good meeting, King!” A pair of girls danced out of the stairwell, one blonde and the other an Asian with hair a shade of impossible green, holding hands. They made for an odd couple, the blonde towering over her girlfriend by at least a foot and a half.

The shorter girl had the silhouette of a chess piece tattooed just under one eye. “We made the right decision, putting you in charge. No matter what Blake might have said.”

“Thank ya, thank ya verah much,” said J. Crew. “Elvis has left the building.” For some reason, this sent the girls into gales of shrieking laughter.

“No, really,” the blonde one said. “It was great. Thanks. I think you even got a smile out of Jody the grouch!” She punched J. Crew in the arm, grinning. J. Crew winced and rubbed at his arm.

“If you say ‘two for flinching’ Ann-Marie,” J. Crew said, holding up one finger in warning, “I will nominate you for the treasury position.”

“No, not that!” Ann-Marie snorted laughter. “Anything but that!”

“C’mon.” The petite Asian tugged at her girlfriend’s arm. “I’m starving!”

“For such a little person, you need an enormous amount of food. I told you to eat before the meeting,” Ann-Marie scolded, relenting to the yanking.

“Nag, nag, nag.”

Beau stared back at the sky, enjoying the smooth, British smoke. The girls’ voices vanished into the sultry evening.

“Well, that settles it,” J. Crew said. “You should have been at that meeting.”

Beau choked on a mouthful of smoke. “Damn, bro,” he said, “don’t make me waste it. What are you talking about?”

“Any straight guy on this campus would have asked them some stupid-ass question like, ‘Can I watch?’ or at least made some sexist, bullshit observation as they walked away, meaning for them to hear it. You didn’t even look at them.” J. Crew flicked his butt off into the bushes, earning a scowl from a passerby.

“So because I’m not an asshole, you assume I’m gay?” Beau wasn’t angry. He wanted to be angry. There should be some righteous indignation somewhere in his gut, but there wasn’t. Just a dull sense of shame and heat on his cheeks and throat.

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that straight guys are all assholes,” J. Crew snickered. “But they are all hardwired to be idiots about lesbians. My name’s Vin, by the way. I’m president of Rainbow Connections, but don’t let that worry you. I’m actually pretty much okay.”

“It’s a stupid name,” Beau said. The blush was fading slowly and he couldn’t seem to shift his gaze from the trees behind Vin’s head.

Vin shrugged one shoulder. “It’s an acceptable enough nickname, considering the alternatives. Not that I mind, really. But I do get tired of answering all the questions. And all the misspellings. And the people who think, no, really, I don’t know what my own name is, I must mean Vincent, right? We can just go with ‘my mom’s right mind was somewhere on vacation without her when she named me.’ Okay?”

“I actually meant the group,” Beau said. He forced himself to look at Vin’s face, then got distracted by the shape of his mouth. He had an engaging, open smile, full, sensual lips, and straight, white teeth. The double dimple on his left cheek lent him a look of impish mischief. It was the sort of smile that encouraged a man to smile back.

“Oh. I guess I jumped the gun on that one,” Vin said. “If you only…”

“Well, now that you’ve started it, I think you’re required to tell me the story.” Beau stubbed out the Dunhill reluctantly. “I’m Beauregard—people call me Beau—so believe me, I know where you’re coming from.” Was he flirting? Actually flirting? He offered his hand to Vin and was surprised by Vin’s firm grip. Nothing limp-wristed there. Vin’s fingers lingered just a moment longer than might have been appropriate, warm and friendly.

Vin c****d an eyebrow. “It’s Vinyl. Vinyl Elvis Reyes. Which would be why Shannon calls me ‘the king.’ She is under the misapprehension that she’s being amusing.”

“Wow, and I thought my mom didn’t like me,” Beau said.

“Actually, my mom loved me very much,” Vin said. His pale brown eyes shifted uncomfortably to the sidewalk.

“Loved? Past tense?”

“She died. I was four, so I don’t remember her very well,” Vin said, waving off any advanced sympathy. “My grandparents brought me up.”

“Good that you had somewhere to go,” Beau said.

“Come on,” Vin said. He gestured in the vague direction of the cafeteria. “Shannon’s not the only hungry queer around here.”

Beau ground his teeth together, then hopped down from the cement banister. “No, I guess she’s not.”

“That was smooth,” Vin said, clapping Beau on the shoulder. “First time you’ve actually admitted it to someone else?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t get any easier,” Vin said. “And I’ve been out since I knew what out meant.”