Fever Pitch (11 page)

Chapte
r Eleven

Aaron
tried not to crush on Baz, but the more he resisted the urge, the more he longed to give into his hopes his friendship with the upperclassman might turn into something
more
.

Ever since Damien rescued Aaron from his meltdown, Aaron had hung out frequently at the White House. It was an old mansion turned dormitory across the street from campus, where eight people lived at a time. Right now the residents were Damien and Sid, Marius and Baz, Karen and Marion, and Rob and Daniel. Karen and Marion lived in the carriage house apartment with their own minikitchen, and they pretty much came into the main house for parties and to do laundry. The rest of the guys piled into the three upstairs bedrooms.

The first floor was a living room, a music room with a grand piano named Fred, a study room, and a butler pantry used as a second practice room. There was also a ballroom bigger than the floor plan of Aaron's mom's house in Oak Grove, where the White House had its infamous parties, one of which Aaron witnessed homecoming weekend. It was mostly choir, but there were some upperclassmen orchestra and band members too, and a few friends of the music department. Aaron helped Baz run the karaoke machine, and he sang plenty himself.

A few times he sang with Baz.

Aaron and Baz hung out together all the time now. They went to breakfast, and of course they were often together at the White House. Aaron always wound up next to Baz on the couch. He drank beer and sat with his leg pressed against the upperclassman's thigh, getting drunk both on the alcohol and the sharp, peppery smell of his host.

Baz coerced Aaron into helping make pancakes with him and Marius, and one Sunday morning Baz took him along on a run to the store in his slick red sports car, letting Aaron drive. He listened to a lot of rap while they cruised around, which Aaron couldn't ever get into, but Baz
loved
the song “Titanium”. He belted it out at the top of his lungs, urging Aaron to sing along. When he found out how well Aaron knew the song, he'd goad him into a duet randomly through the day—in the lounge, the hallway, the cafeteria or the middle of campus. Aaron was always excited to see him, and a few times when he felt listless and anxious, he drifted to where he knew Baz would be and waited for another hit.

Aaron ran into Giles a lot too, now that Salvo was official. They performed for Dr. Nussenbaum the Sunday afternoon of homecoming, and the performance was a huge hit. He and Giles were now officially part of the group—though they were only freshmen and not music majors,
they got to arrange songs.

They had a quiet rhythm down. Aaron would work up the compositions, and Giles would fill in the holes or make suggestions along with Jilly and Karen. When classes and other practices got to be too much for Aaron alone, Giles took over some of the transcriptions.

Sometimes Giles seemed a little sad. Sometimes Aaron thought maybe,
maybe
, Giles was hitting on him. But he couldn't ever figure it out for sure, and he didn't know what, if anything, he should do about it.

In addition to Baz and Giles, Aaron still had to navigate the joy that was living with Elijah. Emily and Reece still came by to pick him up for Bible study, and though Aaron took great pains to not be there when they arrived, sometimes he couldn't avoid an encounter. Emily dialed her vamp down to a low-grade
just in case
baseline flirtation, but Reece still looked one Red Bull away from a manic meltdown, always trying to invite Aaron along, always waving at him across the campus.

One day Reece and Emily ran into Aaron when he was with Baz.

Baz had his arm around Aaron's waist, drawing him close. Reece, who'd smiled as he approached, lowered his gaze to Baz's wandering hand. His expression morphed into a look of utter betrayal. Emily appeared ready to unpack a crossbow from her pretty blue handbag and bury an arrow between Aaron's eyebrows.

Baz snorted, pulling Aaron closer as he glanced over his shoulder to watch them walk away. “Aw, so sad. We pissed off the toads.”

“Toads?”

“There's a crazy evangelical church outside of town, and it tends to spill onto campus. We call their group the toads, because they sit there like lumps staring at you, trying to get you to join their cult of guilt and shame. On the books Timothy is gay friendly, but the toads are here to remind us never to let our guard down. They've been especially bad ever since the marriage ban was overturned in Minnesota. Pastor Schulz doesn't want them here, but he can't do much unless they fuck up first.”

Schulz, even atheist Aaron knew, was the head campus pastor. Aaron was about to ask why the hell Baz hung out with him when a hand wandered more firmly onto Aaron's ass.

Baz accompanied this grip with a nuzzle of Aaron's ear. “I think we were too gay for that particular amphibian. Now he'll have to go jerk off over how sinful we were. I'm sure he'll thank us later.”

Aaron couldn't help it. He laughed. “Jerk off? Because we were sinful?”

“Hell yes. The quote-unquote Christians who get up in everyone's grill about sin are mostly jonesing for a fix of rage. Emotions are a natural high, and fury fuels the engine. You should see the church where the toads go. Sometimes they do the thing where they
feel the Spirit
or speak in tongues. Now, I'm not saying some of them aren't actually making some kind of divine connection. Most of them, though? They're getting off. I about shit myself the first time I saw. Looks
just
like somebody having an orgasm, right there in church.”

“You actually went there?”

Baz shrugged. “Sure. Marius insisted on going along, but yeah, I went. Sat in the back. Took notes for class. The professor didn't say we had to go to the toad church, but I wasn't going anywhere else.”

“There's a class where you have to go to church?”

Laughing, Baz tweaked his nose. “You're required to take two religion courses before graduation, remember? Except this was when I thought it'd be my major.”

Aaron pulled away from him, ready to call bullshit. “No fucking way.
You
, a religion major?”

Baz's grin arced all the way to the bottom of his sunglasses. “Yessir. I was all set to be a Lutheran pastor, or maybe a youth minister. For almost a whole year. A record for me.”

“Religion creeps me out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My roommate is one of the toads. The guy who passed us is always taking Elijah to Bible study and trying to get me to go along.”

“Toad roommate, huh? He spend a lot of time trying to convert you?”

“He's said ten sentences to me since we met.” The Dr Pepper can was still in the fridge, but Aaron wasn't sure how to explain it without sounding crazy. “Mostly he pretends I don't exist. His parents are super, super creepy. But they don't talk to me, either.”

“Roomie know you're gay?”

Aaron swallowed. “I haven't…really told anyone. A few people here and there.”

Even with the dark sunglasses, Aaron could read the amusement on Baz's face. “It might not be the best move to let me drape myself all over you in public, then.”

“No—I mean, it's okay. I like it.” Aaron blushed. “I mean, I'm not hiding. Just not advertising.”

“You're advertising. Right now. The toads have figured out you're gay. They'll probably tell your roommate. That going to be a problem?”

Usually Baz was all laughs and flirts, but now he was a lot more like Walter: bossy and care-taking…and a little badass. It was kind of hot. It rendered Aaron completely unable to process the real danger Baz had pointed out. “I…don't know.”

“Where is your roommate right now? I want to meet him.”

Aaron didn't know where Elijah was, so Baz took them on a kind of aggressive campus tour, poking their heads into every public area once they established Aaron's room was clear.

They didn't walk fast—Baz never did. “Old football injury,” he'd joke whenever someone tried to get him to move in a hurry, and usually he'd clutch the left side of his chest dramatically. He got headaches a lot too, Aaron noticed. He took pain pills after too much dancing, and he always seemed to be at a doctor's appointment. More than seemed normal. Baz
never
drove his own car, either. He had Aaron drive him, or Marius, or Damien. Not once had Aaron seen him behind the wheel.

By the time they'd made a circuit of half the campus, it was clear Baz was in pain, holding his ribs and his shoulder, but he refused to end the search. “Really want to meet your roomie,” he kept saying.

They found Elijah in the public computer lab in the basement of the student union. It was an old one hardly anybody used and was rarely open. The occupants of the lab were strange at best. Everyone was hunched over their keyboards. A few people were clearly the odd ones out who didn't have their own personal computers in their rooms. Some had flash drives and were using the lab only to print. Mostly though the lab was deserted.

It was weird, because Elijah
had
a computer in his room, same as Aaron, and he was doing more than printing. He had his endless notebooks spread around him, a travel coffee mug and a bagel sandwich.

Elijah sat in the farthest corner, facing the door so he could see the whole room. He glanced up as Baz and Aaron entered. When he saw Aaron, his face flashed surprise, the same guarded, flat expression he always had. But then he saw Baz, and for the first time, Aaron saw real emotion on his roommate's face.

Recognition. Shock.

Fear.

Baz was harder to read, and not just because of the sunglasses. His mouth was flat, his face almost wooden as he stared at Elijah. Aaron couldn't tell if he was angry or not.

“Baz?” Aaron whispered at last.

Taking Aaron's hand, Baz led him out of the lab. He was quiet all the way up the stairs, so quiet Aaron didn't dare try and speak to him. But once they were in the main lobby of the union, Baz squeezed his arm and gave Aaron a wobbly smile.

“Hey.” His voice, for the first time, wasn't confident and breezy. “I gotta—” His voice broke, and he stopped, stone-still.

What the hell was going on? “Baz, are you okay?”

Baz let out a shaky breath. “I need to go do something. I'll see you later.”

Let me help you,
Aaron wanted to say, but he wasn't sure he was qualified to assuage whatever was making Baz look like this. He squeezed Baz's hand tight. “Take care of yourself.”

Aaron wished he could see Baz's eyes, because something told him they revealed everything about the man in that moment. “I will, baby. Thanks.”

With a kiss on Aaron's forehead, Baz went up the stairs, heading to the sky bridge leading to the campus chapel.

Aaron didn't see Baz again that day, not even at choir, which was weird, but when he asked Damien and Marius, they told him not to worry. Marius took off though, in the middle of rehearsal. Nussy had made it plain anybody who didn't show up to any rehearsal better be vomiting continuously and/or hospitalized, but apparently Baz and Marius had special passes. Unsurprisingly, once rehearsal was over, Damien vanished as well. Aaron went to dinner with Jilly and hung out in the music building after working on Salvo, hoping to run into Baz or someone who knew what was going on with him, but eventually he had to give up and go to his room.

Elijah waited for him.

He marched right up to Aaron, the same fear on his face from the computer lab stirred up with an ample helping of rage. “What did he tell you?”

Aaron blinked and backed into the door. He hadn't managed to shut it all the way, but he couldn't open it without walking forward into Elijah, and his roommate was practically radioactive. “What did who tell me?”

“Don't pull that shit. The sunglasses guy in the lab.
What did he tell you about me?
”

Aaron tried to shrink away, but he was seriously stuck. It didn't matter that Elijah was a foot shorter than him. He was a cobra ready to strike. “Baz didn't say anything.
I swear
,” he added, raising his hands defensively as Elijah pressed closer. “He took off, and I haven't seen him since.”

Then Aaron did something stupid. He kept talking.

“Do you guys know each other or something?”

He quite seriously thought he might piss himself from the look Elijah gave him. “You said he didn't say anything.”

“He didn't—that's why I was asking. Which obviously was dumb. I'm sorry.”

Elijah continued to bore into him with his gaze while Aaron held his breath. After what felt like a year, Elijah rolled his eyes, loosened his stance and walked away.

As quickly and quietly as possible, Aaron went to his desk, deposited his books and grabbed his toothbrush. When he returned to the room, the lights were off and Elijah was in bed. Aaron followed suit, but it was hours before he went to sleep, and then only when he put in his headphones.

They didn't speak to each other all the next day, and as much as possible, they didn't look at each other.

Things got tense, though, a day later when Emily and Reece showed up for Bible study. Reece didn't enter the room, instead planting himself in the middle of the hallway before spouting off loudly about traditional marriage until the guy across the hall loomed over him and told him to peddle his hate shit on somebody else's floor. Emily stared daggers at Aaron. She didn't just have the anti-equals sign on. She had on her
One Man, One Woman, One Marriage
T-shirt, stretched tastefully beneath her cardigan.

Elijah followed them out, but before he disappeared through the door, he cast a glance over his shoulder. He smiled, a dark and wicked gesture that said he didn't understand what was going on, but he found it funny.

Aaron knew Elijah was about to find out
why
the toads had given him the cold shoulder, and the idea scared him to death. When Damien and Marius invited him to the White House for dinner, he all but wept in relief. Anything to keep from going to his room.