Social Skills

SOCIAL SKILLS

Sara Alva

Social Skills Copyright
©
2013 Sara Alva. All rights reserved.

Published 2013.

Cover art by Dani
Alexander

No part of this book
may be used, reproduced, or circulated in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of the author.

This book is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the author’s creation or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons
living or dead is entirely coincidental.

SO IN LOVE (from
"Kiss Me Kate")

Words and Music by
COLE PORTER

Copyright © 1948
(Renewed) by COLE PORTER

Copyright Renewed and
Assigned to JOHN F. WHARTON,

Trustee of the COLE
PORTER MUSICAL & LITERARY PROPERTY TRUSTS

Publication and
Allied Rights Assigned to CHAPPELL & CO., INC.

All Rights
Reserved
  
Used by Permission

Dedication

For my husband, who
hopefully does not regret the day he said, “Babe, you should write a novel.”

Acknowledgements

Endless gratitude
goes out to:

The wonderful people
who helped me during the writing and publishing process: Anyta, Jay, Raevyn,
Andra, Jenny, Yvette, Tim, Cole, Daniel and Dani.

The staff and readers
at GayAuthors.org, for helping me find my passion.

And to Dani (again),
for shouting encouragement from up on his soapbox and for creating the
beautiful cover.

FIRST SEMESTER

Chapter One

Connor Owens stepped onto the newly
waxed floor, and a rare moment of calm settled over him. The sweet scents of
resins and polish, the gently curving stage, the warm weight of his violin in
his hands—all of it comforting and familiar in the midst of a tumultuous
few weeks.

He tightened his bow and fished out
his rosin, smiling at the simple pleasure he took in making long, even strokes
to coat the horsehairs thoroughly.

This, he knew. This felt right.

In a college life full of unknowns, orchestra
would be his sanctuary. He could already feel it as the hum of tuning
instruments filled the air, as the winds broke into arpeggios, as the rustle of
sheet music on stands alerted him to the new piece they’d be playing: Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade.

He was itching to play it. He wouldn’t
have the solo, of course, but the entire piece was lovely, and really at that
moment it didn’t matter what he played so long as he
could
play,
surrounded by the myriad of sounds from all the other instruments. This was the
kind of group in which he could belong without having to try so hard it
literally made his head hurt. This came naturally.

“Hi!” A female voice greeted him,
and he followed a peasant skirt up to the face of a tall, willowy girl with
hair that hung to her waist. “I’m Rebecca.” She gathered the dirty-blond wisps
behind her head and tied them into a low ponytail as she sat next to him. “Looks
like I’m your stand partner. You must be Connor.”

He nodded, extending his hand for
her to shake and battling a blush when her grip was much firmer than his.

“You’re a first year, right?” she
continued.

“Yeah.”

“Must be pretty good, then, to be up
here in the first violins already. It took me two years to fight my way up
here.”

He shrugged. Praise never sat well
with him, no matter how many times his mother chastised him for not politely
accepting compliments.

“Well, when we have sectional
practice, don’t let Vidar intimidate you. He’s a bitter, bitter, Scandinavian
man. I bet he thinks he’s too good to be hired staff for a college orchestra,
but I would guess that he’s not, or else he’d have found another job.”

Connor let out a low chuckle with a
nervous glance to where the man in question sat five stands away, running
scales with a pinched expression on his face.

Rebecca followed his eyes. “You see
what I mean, right? You can totally tell he’s got a stick up his ass.”

This time Connor laughed openly, and
when Rebecca joined in it gave him an instant shot of elation. Maybe music could
be more than just the solace he was looking for. Maybe it would give him the
chance to form a new friendship as well. It shouldn’t be so hard—even for
him—to build upon the connection between stand partners, on the way they learned
to play as one, moving and bowing in complete synchronization.

“We can practice together, if you
like.” Rebecca tightened her bow. “You know, try our best not to incur his
wrath.”

Connor opened his mouth slowly. “Oh…um…”

Tap-tap-tap
from a baton
interrupted, and a hush fell over the assembled crowd. The conductor raised his
arms, and as if an invisible string tied his tiny stick to every instrument,
all rose in unison.

Rebecca smiled at Connor one more
time, and he returned it. Maybe Rebecca, older—and wiser, no doubt—could
become his liaison into the world of college…provided he could beat back his
shyness long enough to give her a chance.

It was a good thing she was a girl.

***

He headed back to his room in a
better mood than usual, letting
Scheherazade’
s
melodies play through his head. If he kept up the tempo, he’d have time to make
it through the first movement and at least part of the second by the time he
reached his building. Hereford was a lot further out than the regular
first-year dorms, but the newer construction meant air conditioning, something
his mother had uncompromisingly demanded for her asthmatic son.

Just as well. He wouldn’t have fit
in at the first-year dorms, anyway.

Of course, there really wasn’t a
practical way to avoid passing by those hubs of social interaction. He averted
his eyes from the gaggles of students lounging about the quad, laughing and
sharing food, gossip, and in quite a few cases, saliva.
Scheherazade
picked up speed with his footsteps. With any luck, he’d
look like someone who needed to be somewhere in a hurry, and not like an
outcast who simply didn’t know how to belong.

As he neared Alderman Road, a blue
and orange Frisbee with the familiar block “V” for Virginia landed by his feet.

“Hey!” An olive-skinned boy waved at
him. “Toss it here, will ya?”

Connor picked up the Frisbee and
turned it over in his palm. He contemplated throwing it, but by now a group had
formed around the boy, and he had no desire to make a public display of his
weak throwing arm.

He crossed the distance between them
and offered the disc with an outstretched hand. “Um, here you go.”

From the gathered crowd, a
familiar-looking face with a popped-collar polo shirt stepped forward. “Hey,
you went to my high school. You’re that violin player, right?”

Connor blinked rapidly. Had someone
popular actually recognized him? But then he returned to his senses and felt
the strap of his violin against his shoulder. It didn’t exactly take a
brilliant deduction to pin him as
that
violin player
.

He nodded. “Uh, yeah. Connor.”

“Tim,” the former classmate said,
though that was unnecessary because Connor already knew his name. He was good
about affixing names with faces, even if hardly anyone ever did the same for
him. “Hey, you wanna join us?”

Connor forced a smile. He didn’t,
really, but there probably wasn’t another way to go about making friends. “Um,
maybe I’ll just…watch.”

Tim and his friend exchanged bemused
glances. “Sure. Okay.”

Connor sat down on a patch of grass
by a small cherry-blossom tree, and a few other onlookers planted themselves
beside him. A girl with tight blue shorts announcing their school across her
bottom—UVA—turned to him with a friendly smile.

“So, you play the violin. What’s
that like?”

“It’s…it’s fun, I guess.”

“Cool.” The girl nodded, and continued
to stare at Connor until his pulse raced.
His
turn to speak.
He tried to open his mouth and force more words out, but
nothing happened.

Tim jogged over and tagged someone
sitting by the sidelines. “You’re in man, gonna take a break.” Then he grabbed
the UVA-bottomed girl and yanked her into a kiss.

“Get a room!” someone shouted.

“Maybe we will!” Tim shouted back,
and he and the girl took off. Connor watched them go with a knot growing in his
stomach, because with Tim went his very tentative connection to the group currently
surrounding him.

“Hey, I’m gonna go grab a snack at
the Treehouse,” another unknown person announced, and suddenly the entire mass
of people began to rise and shift away.

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“Me too.”

“I’m gonna head in, catch you guys
later.”

Connor said nothing, and within a
few seconds he found himself alone.

For all his efforts, he’d wound up
making friends with a tree.

***

His door clicked into place and he leaned
heavily against it, letting the worst of the anxiety drain from his body. He
was safe now; the world and all its strange rituals of socialization were
locked away on the other side of the wall.

Here it was only
him—
his books, his music stand, his
metronome, his bed…and the barren mattress across the room.

Life would have it he didn’t even
have
that
friendship-of-convenience
to fall back on, because his college roommate had dropped out without notice.
And despite all the meet-and-greets and the unmistakable air of camaraderie
during orientation, he still hadn’t been able to make any great strides in
socializing. How could he, when the cliques he had so detested in high school
had made their way to college after all? Maybe they weren’t as overt, but they
were still there. The pretty girls still held fast to each other, the jocks
still slapped each other’s backs and guffawed loudly at inappropriate jokes,
and the misfits had redoubled their efforts to find a way to fit in. Worse, many
of them seemed to be succeeding where he clearly was not.

As was usually the case, a hundred
options for what he
could
have said to keep the conversation with the
friendly girl alive flooded his mind.
Do you play an instrument? Have you
ever wanted to learn one? What kind of music do you listen to?

But those thoughts were never
available when he needed them.

With a sigh, he grabbed one of the
textbooks off his desk. Might as well throw himself into acquiring knowledge
instead.

***

“All right.” Rebecca flexed her
fingers and twisted around in her chair, stretching her long back. “I think we’ve
covered everything Vidar’s gonna bug us about in sectionals. When’s your next
class?”

Connor gathered his bag from the
corner of the tiny practice room. The closet-like space felt far too sterile
for music, but at least Rebecca’s presence brought life to the otherwise stale
air.

“Uh, I have my Theory and History of
Anthropology class in New Cabell at two…I should probably go finish the reading
for it. I didn’t get a chance to last night.”

Rebecca raised one of her pale
eyebrows at him. They were so fair, in fact, that if he didn’t look closely he
might have missed them against her light skin. “You do know that no one does
all of the reading for their classes, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But I took a summer
course with this professor before I started school here, and she seemed to really
like me. I kinda don’t want her to have a reason to change her impression…”
Connor trailed off. Of course he just
had
to sound like the giant geek he actually was.

Rebecca laughed, though she was good
about not mocking him with her laughter.

“A summer course before you were in
college? Wow, slow down! You’re supposed to slack off a little, while you still
can. Pretty soon you’ll
have
to think
about real-life things, like finding a job.” She groaned and tossed a
rust-colored knit scarf around her neck with a dramatic flourish. “Anyways, let’s
enjoy the freedom we have left, okay? You have an hour—let’s go grab
lunch at Newcomb. A bunch of my friends eat there around this time.”

Connor rearranged his bag at his hip
so he could slide his violin across his other shoulder, buying himself time to
consider his response. This was exactly the kind of opportunity he’d been
looking for, but it still took an extra burst of effort to put aside his nearly
automatic desire for solitude.

“Okay. Sounds good.”

Newcomb meant noise. Shouts,
laughter, rattling trays and clanking silverware. Too many people, too much
movement. And plenty of chances for Connor to make a fool of himself. He scanned
the crowded tables, some filled with students grabbing a quick bite, others whose
occupants were enjoying a more leisurely-paced meal. The clusters reminded him
of the groups that dominated the high school cafeteria, though lines were
slightly blurred and labels not quite so easy to place.

Rebecca touched his shoulder lightly
and led him to a table. A couple of blond girls already sat there with pretty
smiles and tight tank tops, chatting with a brunette who seemed to share
Rebecca’s bohemian taste in clothing. Two guys with longish hair and oversized
t-shirts joined them as Rebecca and Connor walked up.

“Hey guys,” Rebecca called out,
cheerfully interrupting their conversation. “This is Connor, my new stand
partner. Do us a favor and watch our violins while we grab some food?”

“Oh.” Connor instinctively wrapped
his arm around his instrument. “Uh, that’s okay, I’ll hold onto it.”

Rebecca waved off his protest. “I
swear to God, you can trust these guys. They’d die protecting my baby, so they’ll
do the same for yours. Isn’t that right?”

One of the t-shirted guys at the
table rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Becca.”

Connor flushed, anxiety crawling
along his skin. It wasn’t as if his violin was a Stradivarius, but he’d grown
accustomed to never letting it out of his sight. Over the past four years it
had become like a fifth limb—the substitute for the best friend he’d
never found. The thought of having to develop that level of intimate knowledge
with some other instrument made his heart skip several beats.

But this was college, after all, and
he was supposed to be going with the flow. He drew in a deep breath through his
nostrils and dropped the strap from his shoulder. “Thanks.”