His mother almost didn’t let him go to college four hours away. Almost insisted that he live at home and commute to a local campus every day, but he told her he was an adult and he was going, and if she wanted to see him ever again, she would be happy for him. “Of course we’re happy for you,” his mother had said. “We’re proud of you. I’m just so scared.” Scared for his soul, scared for his life. He’d seen the panic pamphlets her pastor had given her: gays and AIDS, the homosexual lifestyle, gays and drugs, gays and disease.
His father, though, surprised him. “You broke her heart when you sent those photos,” he’d said, talking to an engine block in the garage instead of to his son. “Why didn’t you sit her down and look her in the eyes and tell her? She deserved to hear the truth from you like you loved her, not have it thrown in her face like you hated her.”
So family was complicated. He didn’t hate his mom, and he didn’t hate his dad, and they didn’t hate him. He wanted to rip his hair out if he was around them for more than a few hours, and there were still times he caught his mom looking at him, something indecipherable and heavy in her long, silent gazes. But he called regularly, sent photos of him smiling and happy and, most importantly, alone, and told them about the tests he’d passed. They sent birthday and Christmas cards, care packages of cookies, fresh socks and underwear. They paid his tuition and told him they loved him, always.
“Family’s okay.” Justin shrugged. “I’m a nursing major.” Not prelaw, like his mother had planned. Or even business. His father was in sales, vice president of something, and he brought home a bonus every year that had Justin’s mother thumbing through the Porsche catalog and planning month-long trips to Italy for the two of them. His dad had sent him a check for five grand for these three weeks in Paris.
He studied Wes. “Football scholarship… You’re a general studies major?” He winked.
It was a joke how the star athletes graduated. Most of them, at least. Some really studied. But the ones who were going to the NFL and who saw college as a speed bump in the path to their destiny? General studies, GPA 2.5. Every class taught by one of the coaching staff. How much English and history was really imparted in those classes, or was it more like the verb tense of a tackle, and the point of view of a blitz? How to diagram a handoff to the running back?
Wes smiled again, batting the beer glass between his hands. “Public health.”
Justin’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “I have never met an athlete in public health.”
Wes stared out the bar’s windows overlooking the street, watched crowds of Parisians mingle. They were in an older neighborhood, and cobblestones faded in and out of asphalt. Tires clacked and rumbled as vehicles drove by, winding through the clumps of pedestrians clogging the road.
“I’m surprised we haven’t had any classes together.” He would have noticed Wes. He would have remembered him. “Some of our early health classes could have overlapped.”
“Nous pouvons être en français ensemble.”
Justin laughed. “You’re taking another year of French after this summer? Shouldn’t you have what you need to graduate?”
“Yeah. But I think I’ll take another year. Maybe go all the way.” Wes shifted. “If you want to work overseas with a lot of the medical relief organizations, you have to know French. And if you want to work for the UN, you need to be fluent.”
“You want to work for the UN?” And overseas medical relief?
Wes drained his beer and looked outside again. “Maybe.”
Justin studied him, the hard lines of his features, the bulge of his jaw. The corded muscles along his neck. The way his shoulders tremored, ever so slightly. “Guess you don’t make that many touchdowns,” he finally said. “Not trying to go pro, huh?”
Wes tipped his head back and laughed.
In the morning, Justin rolled over in bed as Wes slid on his running shoes. He wasn’t trying to catch a peek at Wes changing, not really. He wanted Wes to know he was awake, though, so if he wanted to change in the bathroom or under the covers or out in the hallway, he could. The worst part of imploding friendships was always the accusations, the looks of betrayal. As if he’d been a predator all this time, fiending for a flash of hip or bare chest. Straight guys could be so Victorian when it came down to the nuts and bolts. As if any of his roommates had been his type, anyway.
Wes, though…
They weren’t friends, not yet, but there was potential there. Shockingly. He liked the guy. Wes was more than his cowboy hat and his bulging muscles. He had that still waters run so very, very deep vibe, which was so foreign to Justin’s life it was basically just a movie trope. Strong, silent cowboys didn’t actually exist, right? Apparently they did. And they played some football, too. And took French. And had a shy, killer smile that tied Justin’s intestines up into curly little bows.
“Did I wake you?” Wes whispered. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in his running shorts but no shirt. His muscles rippled, his biceps and triceps and trapezius all moving beneath his skin as he hiked up his foot to the mattress and tied his shoelaces.
“No,” Justin croaked. He shouldn’t have rolled over.
Wes stood, grabbed his shirt, and tugged it over his head. “I have to work out every day. I’m still in training, even though I’m here.”
“It’s fine.” Every morning, like this. He might not survive. He really should have gone out last night, tried to find a Parisian fling again, but… he was having too good of a time with Wes to end things. Dinner turned into wandering the streets, which turned into sharing a half bottle of wine as they people-watched at a sidewalk café until almost midnight. Damn it.
Wes fiddled with his phone. He didn’t look at Justin when he spoke. “You wanna come with? I can show you the park.”
Justin blinked. “Yeah, sure. Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Take your time.” Wes went to stretch by the window as Justin pawed through his duffel, pulling out his running shorts and shoes, which he’d thrown in optimistically, laughing at himself as he did. Running in Paris was half romantic and half ridiculous. He’d hoped for a different type of cardio on this trip. A minute later, he was laced up and ready to go, and he did a few stretches as Wes tapped at his phone and plugged one earbud in his ear.
“Ready.”
They only had three days of classes a week, which left long, empty weekends for everyone to pack in the optional extra outings. Justin had flicked through the catalog of options before he left, dog-earing the pages on wine tasting in the countryside, short trips to Vienna and Prague and an overnight in Rome, a weekend in Marseille and Monaco. The first long weekend loomed before them, and if he was going to catch the shuttle to the airport for the short hop to the coast, he needed to leave soon.
But Wes, at lunch, fed the birds at the pond in the university’s quad, and when Justin wandered over to watch, he saw Wes smiling as he tossed food into the water for the ducks and ducklings and the few swans joining the feeding frenzy.
All his weekend plans screeched to a halt.
Wes was bathed in the French sunlight, his cowboy hat shadowing his face, his plain white T-shirt clinging to his thick chest and his cut biceps and his trim, slender waist. His jeans that were too tight for decency. Sure, Justin wore skinny jeans, but Wes wasn’t wearing them by choice. They just fit him like a second skin because he had the body of Adonis. Thick, tree-trunk thighs. What would they feel like if Justin had his own thighs wrapped around them? If he was perched on Wes’s lap, grinding their hips together? If he got his fingers on Wes’s jeans and ran his palms over them?