Frat Boy and Toppy (21 page)

Heartbroken.

In this moment, if Sebastian thought he could make it work, he would have carved his own heart out with a butter knife and offered it to Brad. Not because he was in love; just as a sort of replacement heart. An emotional transplant. Then he could have the broken heart and Brad could feel better. He could handle the broken heart. It couldn’t hurt any worse than this did right now.

He’d
hurt
Brad.

He was an asshole.

Ergo, he needed a beer.

Brad rang the doorbell at Ashley’s sorority. No one answered within ten seconds—which was just too damn long for a reasonable person to wait—so he pounded on it to get someone’s attention.

Some young-looking girl swung the door back forcefully, shouting, “Just a— Oh, hi. Brad Feller, right?” She blinked rapidly at him.

“Yeah, hi. Is Ashley here?”

The girl stopped blinking. “Yeah, come on in, I guess.” Brad followed her fuzzy dinosaur slippers into the entry hall. “Wait here.” She turned toward the stairway and screeched, “Ashley! You have a visitor in the foyer!”

She turned back to Brad. “You know, she just got home from spending the night at her boyfriend’s frat.”

He hadn’t even thought of that. He might have caught her if he’d gone straight back to his own frat.

“Brittany, give it up. He’s off the market.” Ashley’s voice. She was walking down the stairs, smiling at him. It looked genuine. “Hey, Brad. What’s up?”

“I need your help,” he said quickly, stepping forward. “I decided I’m going to come—”

“Brad! Not here, sweetie. How about you meet me—”

“At the coffee shop? Okay. I’ll get you a coffee, light cream.”

Ashley blinked. “Um, I’ll just walk over with you, okay? I can get my own coffee.”

They didn’t talk on the way. Brad kept trying to, but Ashley kept telling him to wait. At the coffee shop, she found them a secluded corner.

“Brad, stay here,” she said. “I’m going to get a coffee. Don’t talk to
anyone
. Do you understand me?”

What was she so worked up about? “Okay.” He nodded. Because that’s what he did here: he listened to Ashley and nodded.

When she came back, she sat down and leaned across the table to him. “Okay, so you’re going to come out?” she asked, barely loud enough to hear.

Brad blinked a few times. “How did you know that?”

Ashley rolled her eyes. “Because you practically told my whole sorority by almost slipping in front of Brattany, and sweetie, that ain’t the way you need to do it. This is all about information control.”

“I thought her name was Brittany.”

“Only to her face. It’s Brattany everywhere else. Now, are you going to do this at the meeting tonight?”

“Yeah.” This wasn’t going quite the way he’d expected. “I was thinking when all the brothers are there, but before the new pledges come in.”

“Okay, good. We’ll get Kyle and Collin in on this, too, but first you and I are going to come up with a plan. It’s going to spread faster than you can run. You can’t control how people are going to find out or what they’re going to say. We need to figure out what spin we’re going to put on this and how.”

“You sound like my PR consultant.”

“Oh, sweetie, that’s what I am. Didn’t you know I’m a marketing major? I wonder if I can get extra credit for this.”

“God, I was the lamest boyfriend, ever, wasn’t I?”

Ashley shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“I was. I don’t know how you like your coffee, I didn’t know your major, I wouldn’t have sex with you. That’s only the beginning. And it wasn’t just you. All those girls deserve to hear it from me, personally.”

“That’s impossible. And certainly not all of them.”

“Okay, so which ones would deserve to hear it from me?”

“It depends, but Brad—”

“On what?”

“On how serious it was.” Ashley sighed. “Okay, I guess we’re going to talk about this?”

He nodded.

“If it was just some girl you dated once? Or only a few times? She can hear it through the grapevine. Same with some girl you just hooked up with at a party or something. Are all those rumors true?”

“No, thank God,” Brad breathed. “But some are.”

“Only the more serious ‘relationships.’” She did that air quotes thing with her fingers, making him wince.

“Shit. I wasn’t serious about
any
of them,” he admitted, but she just shrugged and made an “it is what it is” kind of face.

“All right. Do it this way: if you refer to her as your ‘ex’ in your head or to other people? You have to tell her in person.”

Shit
. Brad closed his eyes and started to compose a mental list.

“You know, they’re going to be upset. I’d be mad if I felt like some guy used me for cover or something. Led me on. I
was
mad.”

“I didn’t
know
I was leading them on.”

Ashley snorted. “You just try that line and see if it works with them better than it did with me.”

“Great,” he muttered.

Ashley lay one hand over his, startling him. “It’s going to be okay. Sebastian will help you get through this.”

Oh, God. Tears again. They just snuck up on you, didn’t they?

“Oh, no. You guys broke up?”

He bit his lip and looked at the wall. He couldn’t deal with rehashing this.

“You just have to be macho even when you’re gay, don’t you?” Ashley sighed. “You’re coming out anyway?”

“Of course I am!”

“Shhh. Sorry. That was insensitive. Of course you are. You’re still gay, after all.”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

She hushed him again. He glanced around. Okay, a few people had looked.

“We’ll just deal with the frat tonight. By tomorrow morning, I’ll have let something leak that puts a positive spin on this. Brattany has her uses. And then . . . you have a plan for getting Sebastian back?”

Brad nodded. “Not giving up.”

“Good.” She finally let go of his hand, apparently because she needed hers back. She pulled a pen out of her purse. “Now, what exact words were you planning on using when you come out tonight?”

“Uh . . .”

It didn’t really matter that Brad didn’t know. She told him what to say, how to stand, when to blink. She even told him what he was going to say to Collin and Kyle, then made suggestions for planned responses to the stupidest questions he could imagine getting. By the time they were done, she had an outline for him on her java jacket, and a stack of napkins she referred to as the PR Plan for herself.

It made Brad’s head spin.

Right before he left, Ashley leaned across the table and grabbed his forearm. “Probably lots of the girls you were with used you as much as you did them. I did.”

“You did? For what?”

“People know who you are. You’re one of the better ball players here, and you’re the kind of person people notice.”

Brad frowned.

“Just trust me, Brad, ’kay?”

“Doesn’t matter if those girls were using me, anyway. What matters is what I did.”

“Don’t talk yourself into thinking you don’t deserve happiness.” When had they started talking about happiness? “You spent a lot of years being what everyone else thought you should be. I think you did your time, sweetie, and now you get to be happy.”

Brad didn’t know what to say. “No one told me I had to be straight.”

“Someone did, obviously.”

He opened his mouth to deny it, but . . . “Maybe you’re right.”

Kyle was in their room when Brad got back to the frat. Brad walked in and shut the door firmly behind him.

Ashley seemed to have everything under control, so on the way back Brad had started focusing on Sebastian again. He sort of felt like crying. Again.

He walked over to his bed and threw himself on his back, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Kyle was staring at him, he could feel it.

“What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something’s wrong?” His voice bounced back at him from where his forearms blocked his face.

“Uh, you have tearstains on your cheeks.”

He dropped his hands and scowled at Kyle. Kyle shrugged. “I’m observant.”

Brad bit his lips together, but eventually decided on, “Sebastian and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

Kyle was silent, eyebrows crawling up his forehead. “What happened?” he finally asked.

Brad closed his eyes again. He had no intention of getting into it with Kyle. When “I love him, but he doesn’t love me” slipped out of his mouth, he felt as embarrassed as Kyle looked.

This might have been more appropriate to share with Ashley.

“Oh.” Kyle’s voice was soft. “I’m sorry, man.”

Brad shrugged, eyes still closed. “S’okay.” It wasn’t, of course. But he wasn’t going to cry all over Kyle, that was for sure.

“Is that it? The only reason?”

Brad wasn’t sure anymore. He cracked his eyes open to squint at the ceiling. “I didn’t know if I was ready to come out. Or maybe he didn’t think I was ready.”

“And he didn’t want to be with a guy who wasn’t out?”

“That’s not exactly it, either.” There was something stuck in his throat. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to come out. You know,” he cleared his throat and flicked a look at Kyle, who seemed attentive, elbows propped on his knees. “He thought I was going to come out just for him, but that’s only part of it. It’s not even a big part of it. I mean, ever since I figured out I really am gay, I figured I was going to tell people. Sebastian just maybe readjusted my timeline. Is that so bad?”

“No. I don’t think so. People do a lot of weird shit for those they love.”

Brad fidgeted a minute, and was just about to ask him more when Collin walked in. He stopped in the doorway, obviously sensing something was off, then stepped through and carefully shut the door behind him. “What’s up?”

Brad sat up. “I’m coming out to the frat tonight.”

“Tonight?” They both spoke at once.

Brad set his jaw again and nodded. “Yeah. Come with me, you guys. We need to plan.” He stood. “Oh, and Sebastian and I broke up.” He looked carefully into Collin’s eyes when he said it. Yeah, he’d told Collin they could see what happened between them, but that was before. He wasn’t up to it right now. He couldn’t actually imagine being up to it ever.

He might be acting all take-charge and maybe even unemotional, but that wasn’t how he felt inside, that was for fucking sure. Inside he felt like wild animals were feasting on his heart.

“C’mon, you two. We’ve got shit to plan. Oh wait, gotta make sure I have my outline.”

Sebastian was going to miss Brad. Really, it kind of sucked that he wasn’t in love with him. It would have been cool to continue seeing him. Those Saturday mornings when they woke up and lay around talking? Those were nice. Better than nice, actually. They made him feel . . . warm inside. Peaceful.

And the way Brad looked at him sometimes from under his brows. Vulnerable and insecure. He didn’t look at anyone else like that, Sebastian was certain. That look was just for him. Which was good, because other people might take advantage of Brad. Not protect him and nurture him, like Sebastian did. Not be careful of his feelings.

Oh. Wait. He’d crushed Brad’s feelings.