Frat Boy and Toppy (6 page)

Sophie called that night. “I think I’m in love.”

Sebastian smiled into the phone at his sister. “What’ve I told you about that love thing? It’s just a word straight guys use to get girls into bed.”

Sophie sighed. She didn’t go for her usual line, though. “You don’t really believe that.”

“Eh.” Verbal shrug. Sebastian pulled another plate out of the dish rack and started wiping it dry.

“You’re just asking for it. You know that, right?”

Screwing one’s face up in confusion made it hard to hold a phone between one’s shoulder and cheek. He needed one of those dumb headsets, because Sophie had a knack for calling when he didn’t have any free hands. “Asking for what?”

“Asking for Cupid to come and shoot you in the ass with one of his arrows.”

“Then what, I’ll fall in love with my own ass? Already happened. It’s a lovely ass. Well-formed. And you know it’s not Cupid—”

“It’s Eros,” she finished for him in a drone. Then she sighed, “Okay, so let’s get the inquisition over with.”

“What inquisition would that be, dear sister?” He asked, the epitome of surprised innocence.

Sophie snorted. “Puh-lease, just ask me about school.”

“Oh, you want to tell me about your studies? Lovely, go right ahead.”

“It’s fine. It’s the beginning of the semester. I like my classes. I took a few of the ones you
suggested
. Are we done?”

He put up with her talking about relationships, so she could put up with him talking about her education. Someone had to; Dad wasn’t. “How few of the ones I
suggested
?” he asked pointedly.

She sighed so loudly he winced. “Three, okay? History of Women in Art, Anthropology, and I continued French.” She said French as if it was a disease.

“French is a beautiful language,” Sebastian said. Then he pulled out his trump card. “Someday, you’ll have a lover who whispers French in your ear and you’ll know if he’s complimenting you or talking about food.”

“Well, there is that . . .” She sounded more interested. “On that note, maybe it’s time we started discussing relationships. Yours.”

Done with the dishes, Sebastian leaned against the counter and let her start. Sophie believed talking about guys was one of the main benefits of having a gay brother.

“So, who do you have your sights set on now?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody? Please.”

He smiled to himself but kept it out of his voice. “Nobody in particular.”

“There’s
noooo
body out there you’ve been eyeing and whose person you’ve been making designs upon.”

“Hmmm. You sound skeptical.” He drawled it. That always annoyed the shit out of her.

“Sebastian.” Sophie’s teeth were clenched. He could hear it. He smiled wider and snapped the air with the wet dish towel.

“Eyeing? Yeah. Designs on their person? No.”

“What? Why not?”

Sebastian shrugged, almost losing the phone again. He caught it and said, “He’s straight.”

Sophie was momentarily speechless.
Score
.

“Huh. That’s unlike you.” True. “Are you
sure
he’s straight?”

“Mmmm. Eighty percent sure, say.”

“All right. We can work with that twenty percent. Tell me about him.”

Sebastian shrugged again, grabbing the phone first this time. He was going to make her work for it. “He’s cute.”

“Like, fluffy-baby-animal cute or I-wouldn’t-kick-him-out-of-bed cute?” She was getting that impatient edge to her voice again. Teeth clenching would commence any second. Sebastian smiled and started twirling the towel.

“Kinda both, actually. He’s cute.”

“Shit, this is useless.” He didn’t believe her. She never gave up that easily. “But I refuse to give up. Tell me about the sexy-cute part.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Beautiful muscles, and he’s got these high, prominent cheekbones, almost Native American looking, yeah? And blue eyes. With a darker ring around the iris. Am I done now?”

Sophie heaved a sigh. “Just tell me what makes him baby-animal cute.” He hesitated too long, and she pounced. “A-ha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Talk.”

Shit
. “He’s, I don’t know. Macho, yeah? But I don’t think he really is, I think it’s an act.”

“That makes him baby-animal cute?”

“Yeah.” Sebastian had to clear his throat. “It kinda makes him seem vulnerable.”

He could hear Sophie breathing. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re in love.”

Sebastian burst out laughing, then mocked her for most of the rest of the conversation, like a good older brother should.

Little sisters were annoying. After he got off the phone with her, the “love” thing stuck in his head long after he’d finished in the kitchen and wandered into his bedroom to study. He stared at the page of Herodotus he’d been trying to read. He wasn’t so much translating from the ancient Greek as thinking about modern love.

Presumably he was capable of falling in love, right? He was twenty-eight, and he hadn’t really had a serious boyfriend. No one had ever caught his interest that way. What if the reason they hadn’t was because he could only fall in love with straight guys?

He realized he’d actually sat up straight at that thought. Jesus, he was losing it. That was just asinine.

He settled back against the headboard and shook it off.

Love. Riiiiight.

Besides, look at their father. Maybe Sebastian wasn’t capable of falling in love at all.

Or worse, maybe—again, like their father—Sebastian was only capable of falling in love once, with someone who was totally wrong. Like, destroy-his-life wrong. Like, have-kids-with-him-then-run-off-with-his-coke-dealer wrong.

Shit, he’d sat up again.
Shut up
. This was worse than telling ghost stories around a campfire. Was he going to have to sleep with the light on? Fuck, he hated the aftermath of talking to Sophie.

This wasn’t a good feeling. Brad tried to figure out what the feeling was, lying on his bed, a sick lump floating under his ribs somewhere. If it had a color, it would be pea green and light brown. A big, crawling, swirling chunk of it. It felt like fungus or something, growing on something rotten.

He’d never cheated. Okay, well, he’d never plagiarized. A whole paper. It was more than just losing his scholarship that stopped him. It was the thought of what his mom and dad would say. Especially his dad. He closed his eyes, scrunching them up. His dad would kill him. His dad was always harping on not “misrepresenting” yourself. Plagiarism probably qualified as misrepresentation.

Brad groaned out loud when he thought of what his sisters would say. Especially Val. She already rode his ass for being a “player” and acting like a “stupid jock.”

Easy for her to say. She got an academic scholarship.
Val was starting next fall at State, where Ellie had gone to school. Intelligent sisters were some kind of curse. Even Olivia, who was only ten, was smarter than him.

The feeling floated up again under his breastbone, demanding his attention. Ugh. He wished he knew something that would make it go away. Maybe if Sebastian punished him.

Brad couldn’t get his jeans open or his hand around his cock fast enough. He gripped it almost too tight and started pulling fast and hard. Imagining Sebastian watching him. Ordering him onto his knees. Reaching out and tracing his lips with a finger, then slipping it into Brad’s mouth for him to suck on.

That was as far as Brad got before he was coming in his boxers. He curled up and rolled onto his side, the muscles in his ass throbbing. His balls emptied into his hand and all over his undershorts, and he groaned it all out. Fastest orgasm on record. He kept his eyes closed, and could see Sebastian’s lips moving and hear his voice saying,
Good boy
.

By the end of winter term, Brad figured Sebastian had forgotten he was alive. At least it looked that way to Brad. He’d turned the damn paper in—his last of the term—and Sebastian had taken it with a “Hmmm, thanks. I’ll let you know if there’s a problem.” Then he’d shut his office door in Brad’s face. That was the last time Sebastian had even looked at him.

The only consolation was that Brad got a B-. Once again, Sebastian didn’t even look at him when Brad went up to get it at the end of class.

The guys at the frat were getting weirder, too. Especially Collin. No one bought his theory that Brad was gay, and they were giving Collin a raft of shit over it. But he kept hanging around Brad more and more. He used to only lift weights with them once a week or so, but now he did it all three days, and he’d started running with them the other days.

Theta Alpha Gamma wasn’t exactly the sports frat. It was the second-string sports frat. TAG was a local frat, at Calapooya College only, and they didn’t have a lot of money. But they did have one of those cool old-style frat houses, although it wasn’t in the best of shape, and they handed out scholarship money. Which was why Brad was in it. It covered his dues and living expenses, as well as some tuition. He never could have paid for the first-string sports frat.

Collin had never been much into the daily frat group workouts until the last couple weeks. Now he was always around, and he was always,
always
taking his shower when Brad did. Fucker bent over in front of him every time, too.

Brad was pretty sure Collin was trying to trap him. Wave his hot ass in Brad’s face until he sprung a boner to prove he was gay. Not that springing a boner in the shower was any kind of proof.

Shit. It was just one more thing to make Brad’s life a little more stressful. By spring break, he was
so
ready to hole up at his parents’ house.

He spent most of his break sleeping ’til noon, getting up while his parents were still at work and Max and Olivia were still at school, and spending some quality time in front of the computer with his dick in his hand. Then he’d make something for dinner so his mom wouldn’t have to cook, and let everyone rave about how good it was while they ate it.

It went a long way toward making him feel better.

Until he got up Thursday at 10:30—he was planning on making a batch of his special Bolognese sauce and putting it in the freezer—and found his dad still there. “Hey, Dad. You said you had to work every day this week.” Something about the way his dad was looking at him and not reading the paper made Brad uneasy.

Dad was sitting at the little round Formica kitchen table in the little yellow kitchen, looking at him very seriously, coffee mug cradled between his hands. “I called in sick,” he said in his uber-calm voice.

Uber-calm was bad. Brad tended to associate it with disciplinary action. He swallowed. It’d be nice if he had something on besides boxers. “What’d I do?”

“You forgot to clean out your history cache yesterday.” Dad was looking calmly at him.

Brad tried to work up some outrage. And some saliva. “You were snooping in my browsing history?”

For the first time, Dad looked uncomfortable. “Not until you threw your used towel in the hamper.”

“Dad!”

“Brad, I’ve wondered if you were gay for years.”

Brad’s jaw dropped. He had to lock his knees to keep from falling over. “No, you didn’t,” he croaked. He stared at his dad a minute longer, but no, it still made no sense.

He needed coffee for this. Brad stumbled over to the coffeemaker and the cupboard full of mugs above it. He could feel Dad watching him the whole time he was pouring out the coffee—shit, his hand was shaking—and then the milk. Brad took a deep breath, grabbed his mug in both hands, and turned around to lean against the counter. “I only figured it out last month. How could you know if I didn’t?”

“Your high school football coach called me when you were fourteen and told me to ‘keep an eye on your deviant tendencies.’ That man was a homophobic jackass. I told him you were what you were and if I found out he was giving you any shit, the least he’d have on his hands was a discrimination charge.”

Brad’s extremities went numb. He barely kept from losing his coffee mug. “So that made you think I was, uh, gay?”

“Let’s just say it was the nail in the coffin.” His dad nodded at him, arms folded across his chest, and tipped his chair back. Like they were discussing sports.