“Guys!”  Matt went down the hall into the back of the house.

            Mason’s door was open and Matt could hear:

 

Many nights we prayed with no proof anyone could hear

In our hearts a hoped for song we barely understood

 

Now we are not afraid

although we know there’s much to fear

We were moving mountains long before we knew we could

 

            Swain walked out. “Hey Matt!”

            “Aren’t they—”

            “They’re watching the end of Prince of Egypt,” Swain said. “Mason lives by that movie. If you know what’s good for you you’ll let them get through it.”

            “Prince of…” Matt muttered and walked into Mason’s room where he and Tommy were singing along with Miriam and Tzipporah:

 

There can be miracles

When you believe

 Though hope is frail

It’s hard to kill

Who knows what miracles

 you can achieve?

When you believe

Somehow you will

You will when you believe

 

“Mase—!” Matt began.

            Mason wheeled around his eyes like darts and Tommy shot the remote control at the cartoon pausing the Hebrews as they prepared to leave Egypt.

            “Do NOT interrupt Prince of Egypt!”

            “We’ve got everyone in the car and—”

            “Tell them to get out of the car and in here,” Mason said. “We’re watching Prince of Egypt—”

            “It’s a cart—”

            “Are you not paying attention,” Mason waved at the screen where Israelites were walking through a devastated Egypt. Mason quoted:

 

 

Many nights we prayed with no proof anyone could hear

In our hearts a hoped for song we barely understood

 

Now we are not afraid

although we know there’s much to fear

We were moving mountains long before we knew we could

 

“That’s what the life of prayer is all about,” Mason said. “It’s about how even though the world seems so ordinary, and every good thing you do may seem to fail, even the smallest prayer is heard by God.”

            “Amen,” Tommy said solemnly.

            Matt blew out his cheeks.

            “Don’t you believe that even the smallest prayers are heard by God?” Tommy challenged.

            Matt said, “I will go out, and tell them to stop the car while you all finish your movie.”

            Tommy turned around and hit the play button while Mason murmured, “That’s all we ask,” and then Swain came down the hall with drinks in her hand singing:

 

In this time of fear

When prayers so often proved in vain

Hope seems like the subtle birds too swiftly flown away

 

But now I’m standing here

My heart so full I can’t

explained

 Seeking faith

And speaking words I never thought I’d say

 

 

“Matt, can I ask you a question?” Mason said.

            “Is it about Prince of Egypt?”

            “No.”

            “Okay, then ask?”

            “When you drive this station wagon, that’s all modern and red with the plush grey interior and shit—Do you feel like a white woman?”

            “What? Matt burst out laughing.

            “Do you feel like your mom?” Balliol leaned over the backseat and asked him.

            Tommy, beside Balliol pulled off his headset to pay attention, and in the hatchback Sully sat up and said, “This is a little soccer mommish.”

            “This,” Matt said, reaching for the McDonald’s bag on the floor, wadding it up and pushing it in Balliol’s face, “is the only car available that could fit all of us.” He adjusted the mirror, “And Sullivan, I’ll remind you that my mom wasn’t a soccer mom. I played varsity football.”

            “Your little brother played soccer.”

            “Alright,” Matt shrugged. “You got me. My mom is a soccer mom—oh, shit, there is it!”

            They had come through Genoa and come to the main road. Wal Mart had just passed them to the right, and now, to the left there sat a large brick building surrounded by trees set off from the road. Matt hit the turn signal, looked to his left and turned into the gate. Green trees shot with light stretched over them and across from the large brick building that might have been a library was a great fountain and a series of brick buildings, was a church.

            “Is Genoa Catholic?” Balliol started.

            Matt looked over and said, “I guess.”

            “Fuck!” Balliol said. “I thought we’d gotten away from that! I thought we were going some place public.”

            “Some place cheap,” Sully added.

            “Goddamn,” Balliol murmured again.

            “Well,” Mason murmured. “It’s cute. You gotta give it that.”

            “That,” Sully sat up and pointed to a little beige brick building, “is the welcome center. Looks just like it did on the brochure.”

            “This is unbelievable!” Matt bammed on the car horn and made Balliol jump up in shock. “I can’t believe we’re all going off to school together.”

            “Don’t believe it,” Mason warned him as he pulled the car into a space in front of the little building, “Until it happens.”

 

Sal was tall to the point of emaciation and Mason paid less attention to him than he did to the ferns hanging in front of the windows. Sal told them all the details that soothed everyone’s monetary and religious fears. Genoa was a Catholic town and Genoa College had been a Catholic school for a long time, but it had gone broke. Xavier had thought of buying it, but decided not to and in the end it had become a state school. However it still retained the chapel, Saint Genevieve, run by an order Sal couldn’t remember the name of and there were  a few clergy who worked at the school.

            “It’s a very free and liberal place,” Sal told Mason. Mason looked at him, He was sallow and smelled a bit like a cigarette, not very free and liberal at all. He also explained that Jared had been here earlier, but had run back to his dorm and would return shortly.

            The door of the welcome center flew in and Sully and Mason looked at each other and then Jared. What Mason saw was the life in his dark eyes, the openness in his face, his tallness. What Sully saw was all that and his clean shaven scalp, dark with the ghost of buzzed hair, his five o’clock shadow, his large arms, the tee shirt snug to his chest, the jeans that fit. Mason saw that he was wearing moccasins. Something swirled in Sullivan while Mason laughed and cried, “Moccasins!”

            Jared made a clicking notion and pointed his finger at Mason like a gun. “You’re Mason Darrow!”

            “Um hum!”

            Jared shook his hand firmly and said, “I’m Jared. Sorry, I’m late.”

            “We were late actually,” Mason apologized.

            “That’s right,” Jared said, smiling from the corner of his mouth. “You were.”

            Sully looked at Jared and realized something.

            He likes Mase. He’s hitting on Mase. Jared’s gay… Mason’s too dumb to get it.”

            “You ready?” he said to him.

            “Are you guys gonna look at all the art things?” Sully said, his voice sounded weak and when Jared looked at him, Sully felt weak.

            “Yes,” Jared said to him. Was Jared looking at him? Was Jared impressed by him?

No.

            “Could I… Would you hate it if I tagged along?”

            Jared looked back on Mason. His eyes were completely on him.

            “Sully’s a writer. A good one.”

            “Yes, then., You should come with us,” Jared said, shaking Sully’s hand. Jared’s hand was large and warm, black hairs went up and down his arm, over his hand. Sully lingered on them. He saw Balliol looking at him sharply though his glasses, and looked away.

            Mason wasn’t stupid. No, Mason was, very often, guileless and didn’t always see through things.

            Balliol, Sully reflected ruefully, managed to see through everything.  

 

 

 

Which I wish to say is this

There is no beginning to an end

But there is a beginning to an end to

Beginning.

Why yes, of course

Anyone can learn that north of course

Is not only north but north as north

Why were they worried

What I wish to say is this

Yes of course

 

Mason burst out laughing, and John, who was standing up at the head of the table in the large, sunlit library looked at him while Jared said, “Mason!” and Sully had a look on his face that said the same.

            “What the fuck is that? No more!”

            “Its Gertrude Stein,” John said shutting the book. “She was one of the prominent voices of the twentieth century.”

            “Well, thank God it’s the twenty-first,” Mason said.

            “Here,” Jared took the book from John. “You haven’t heard enough.”

            “Oh,” Mason disagreed, chuckling. “I think I’ve heard more than enough. And that, a rose is a rose is a rose crap.”

            “Mason,” Sully said. “You just don’t read poetry.”

            Mason looked sharply at him. It was a very… Balliol sort of look.

            “Are you telling me I’m too dumb to understand a poem?”

            “I’m not saying—”

            “Give me a slip of paper,” Mason demanded.

            They looked at him, Jared’s eyes filled with fascination . He leaned forward and took one of the slips of scrap next to the computer then handed it to Mason with a pencil.

            Tongue hanging out, Mason scribbled for a few moments and then read:

 

Do I dare to repair to the stair

Gone is the care and the south is not

Unless the south is

The south is the rain, is the heat of all pain

Is my marvel

My insouciance,

 The ambience of this dying generation

From the middle class street back to the plantation

I set my Black mind

 

“That’s amazing, Mason,” said Sully, and Jared was about to say the same, but Mason snapped, “That’s bullshit. Just like this!” He pointed at the worn out Gertrude Stein book. “She was probably sitting around getting high thinking, ‘Oh, they’ll love this!’ and scribbling away, cackling to herself.

            “But maybe I’m wrong,” Mason said. “I’m no writer. That’s not the art I wanted to see.”

            Jared stood up quickly and ran off. A few minutes later he handed a large book to Mason and Mason looked at the cover, at the face of the woman with the sharp V for eyebrows, the trace of a moustache on her face.

            “Just…” Jared said reverently, pushing the book into Mason’s chest, “Look.”

            And Mason opened it and cried out. For a long while Jared watched him and Sully watched Jared as Mason flipped through the pages, as a light grew in Jared’s brown eyes and Mason murmured the name of the artists:

            “Frida Kahlo,” Jared said. “And… come on. I want to show you something.”

            Mason looked up. He didn’t want to leave this book.

            “Come,” Jared said. He  took Mason’s hand in his and Mason got up following him into the stacks of art books. They’d forgotten anyone else.

            “Look,” Jared handed him a book. On the cover, red brown, were square, strong Aztecs, rich in dimension, outlined in black, building the great city of Technotitclan. Mason opened up the book and saw workers full of life, building cities, women thick and full breasted like mother goddesses stretched out in splendid nudity across the domes of great buildings.

            “Who is this?” he was breathless. “I want to… I want to be this…” Mason’s voice died into a croak.

            Jared watched Mason, his mouth a little open, his eyes shining with something that, as Sully and John followed them into the stacks, at a distance, Sully thought of as reverence. In this private moment between Jared and Mason and the art, a moment that Sully was intruding upon he wished that someone would look on him like that.

            “I’ve seen this before,” Mason tried to remember. “Seen his work… Who?”

Mason’s voice was breathless. Mason sounded like… he was coming or something. How would it be to be like that, that just living, just seeing something beautiful could make you feel the way that Sully had locked himself in broom closets with perfect strangers to feel like?

            Jared touched Mason lightly and, smiling, told him, “That’s my favorite artist. I don’t want to be him. He makes me want to be myself. That’s Diego Rivera. He was Frida Kahlo’s husband.”

            “They were,” Mason was amazed. “Two artists? Together? They did this? She did what she did. Those… nightmares. Beautiful nightmares.”

            “A nightmare can be beautiful?” Jared said

            Mason looked up at him.

            “Can’t it?”

            “Yes.”

            Mason smiled, as if in some fierce triumph, and turned the page.

            “Where’s your art?” Mason asked Jared.

            “In my apartment.”

            “You’ve got your own place?”

            “Yeah,” Jared smiled and said. “I’m all grown up and everything.”

            “Can I see it? Can I see your work?”

            Jared looked at John and Sully.

            “I’ll show Sully the rest of the school,” John volunteered, looking to Sully.

            Sully felt like he’d been shaken out of something and, perhaps, dropped on the floor.

            “Yeah,” he said, remembering himself. “Yeah, that’ll be good.”

            “And then we can meet up at the east commissary for dinner?” Jared suggested.

            John and Sully nodded and Jared said, “To my place?”

            Mason nodded.

            “To your place.”

 

“Wow,” Mason said reaching out and then pulling his hands back.

            “You can touch them,” Jared said with a light laugh.

            “Wow,” Mason said, putting his hands on the fragile hanging figures.

            “Those are called  Judases. You burn them around Easter. They’re Mexican,” Jared explained. “Well, those aren’t. Those are mine.”

            Hanging on accordion legs with fragile paper bodies, white skeletons, elongated yellow bodies, animal faced, demon limbed, human skulls they hung from the beams of the loft.

            “I’m as impressed by the fact that you live in a loft,” Mason confessed, “as by what you do in it.”

            “What I do?”

            “This,” Mason gestured. “This art, Jared.”

            “My parents came to visit,” Jared told him. “And they said, ‘Jared honey’—well, my mom said it—‘Jared honey, why don’t you make something prettier?’”

            Jared was grinning, but Mason, whose fingers were still lightly touching the Judases, was looking at a painting of a great serpent with a screaming human face.

            “She doesn’t understand,” Mason said. “No one does. Being an artist. It’s not about… making the world bearable and pretty for people who can’t stand it. That’s not what beauty is about. Art is about…” Mason cocked his head and looked into the teeth of the monster.

            “It’s not about looking at what is, making people see what’s real. It’s like making them see what’s… surreal.”

            After a moment Mason decided: “I’m babbling.”

            “No,” Jared said. “No, you aren’t. I think you’re right.”

            “I never talk about… I never have anyone around me who is an artist,” Mason said. “It’s… It’s like… Someone said it’s like making people look at the back of their heads.. I don’t know,” he shook his head and grinned. “It really is like making people see what’s surreal. Like what’s real is not enough.”

            Jared looked at him with a sharp, appreciative smile and said, “Where have you been my whole life?”

            “Oh, please!”

            “No, really. Can you really be a high schooler?”

            “No,” Mason told him. “I can’t. Cause I graduated.”

            Jared turned red, shrugged and said, “I guess I had that coming. But… I’ve never heard anyone talk like you. About art. It’s like everyone wants to be an artist but no one… I don’t know how to describe it.”

            “It’s like everyone wants to be an artist, but no one actually wants to make the art. No one really does. No one has that drive. That demon. People just want to be acceptable. Make it into art school. Be liked by all the important people—”

            Impulsively Jared grabbed his hands.

            “That’s it. That’s just it,” Jared said. “I went to an art school for a while. Really, I did, and then I left because that’s what it was like. I needed to get away from art and get back to. .. I don’t know. The source? Real life, myself. When I was there I was an artist, I was sophisticated, I was disaffected and—let’s not forget—I was gay. I was everyone else. I needed to be me. I needed to pull away. Everyone was pretending to be on the edge—”

            “And you really needed to be on the edge.”

            “Yeah,” Jared’s voice was dreamy. “Yeah, Mason. That’s exactly it. I… You have to be on that edge.”

            “That’s what Sully says about writing. It’s like going to the edge. Writing’s an art too. Of course.”

            “Of course,” Jared echoed. But he wasn’t being nice, he was actually realizing that for the first time.

            “But I used to think the edge meant going nuts,” Mason confessed. “Being crazy. Being selfish maybe. Merciless. My mother—she’s an artist. She left my dad and I to be an artist.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah.,. really. And I’ve heard of great artists being drunks and womanizers and users and… When I think about it that’s really only some great artists. I don’t believe that really great artists are going to be evil. That you can be great and be evil.

            “I used to think that being on the edge was like seeing an apocalyptic vision. I have made such strange things. From clay, on paint, sketching in pencils. Like visions of the end of time. I see them so clearly, and so… dreadfully. And yet they aren’t hopeless. They aren’t despairing. They make me… My work makes me feel light. Do you understand?”

            “I think,” Jared said.  He unrolled a great sheet and handed it to Mason. Gravely Mason stared at this thing, this great spidery thing done in charcoal with it’s human face, a woman’s face.

            “It looks… like… the Virgin Mary.”

            “The face is based on the Virgin in the chapel.,” Jared confessed. “If I was Catholic it would be blasphemy. But I’m not anything so it’s just me being an artist with serious God issues.”

            Mason looked at Jared, then at the charcoal. At the eight hairy legs, the great swollen body, the contrasting gentle face he’d seen all of his life. He smiled. He laughed a little.

            “I think that’s what I was getting at,” Mason said. “The edge that we go to… when we work. It should be a merciful edge. I think.”

 

As they where speeding back to campus in the convertible Jared had borrowed, Mason pointed to a large shortbread striped house with an old porch.

            “Oh, it is nice,” Jared said. “And it’s been for sale a long time. No one’ll buy it. It needs work and people don’t like to work on good things anymore. Now me? If I had money I would buy it.”

 

All I wanna do is have some fun

I got a feeling I'm not the only one

All I wanna do is have some fun

I got a feeling I'm not the only one

All I wanna do is have some fun

Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

 

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning

And Billy likes to peel the labels

 

Jared turned down the radio as they neared campus and said, “Listen.”

            Mason was about to say, “Listen to what—?” when he heard them. The bells were ringing very clearly, six times, and then the carillon began a hymn.

            Jared was about to speak when he saw that Mason was concentrating on something. Mason snapped his fingers in realization and began singing

 

Then will I tell to sinners round,

 What a dear Savior I have found;

 I'll point to thy redeeming blood,

 And say, "Behold the way to God."

 

             I'm on my journey home,

  To the new Jerusalem,

  So fare you well,

  I am going home!

 

Well, yes, that was the hymn the choir at Saint George had sung over the body of Balliol’s father, toward the end of his funeral mass.

“I’ve never heard that,” Jared said. “But then the only religious song I know is ‘Amazing Grace’. And I don’t think I even like that. I do like… I love, every night at six listening to the bells from Saint Genevieve.

“I’m not religious, but I feel pretty religious then. Or religious enough.

            “Sometimes,” Jared confided, “when it’s late I sneak into Saint Genevieve and I light candles. Sometimes in front of Mary. Sometimes in front of the one I think is Genevieve. Maybe both. But usually I pick one. I think they understand me. I don’t know if a priest would or an organized religion. But they do.”

            Mason hadn’t said anything and Jared said, “You’re religious, aren’t you?”

            “I guess,” said Mason. “I suppose.”

            “I won’t hold it against you.”

            When Mason looked at him,  as they parked outside of the East Commissary, Jared turned to him and broke into a laugh.

            “I’m just joking! Really.

            “Look, Mason,” he said, shutting off the car. “After today, after talking to you like I’ve never talked to anyone the only thing I’d hold against you is not coming here in the fall. That—I would not forgive.”

 

“We went to Saint Genevieve’s for Mass,” Matt said as he dug into his pecan pie. “I was really curious.”

            Mason was cutting into his roast chicken: “How was that for you?”

            “It was alright,” Balliol chose to be the one to answer. “But it was no Anglican Mass.”

            “Certainly no Saint George’s,” Matt said, rolling his eyes, and Sully chuckled slyly as he sipped from his coffee.

            “Nothing,” Sullivan Reardon declared, “is like Saint George’s. The Archbishop of Canterbury shakes his head and wonders, ‘Why can’t I have a Mass as Anglican as one at Saint George’s?”

“Oh, you laugh…” Balliol began.

“Yes,” Matt said, taking a swallow of his milk. “We do.”

Tommy was far simpler about everything.

“I liked it,” he told Mason.

 

“Okay, I liked that,” Mason said putting down the cup.

            “That was Fudge Tracks,” Jared told him.

            “What’s the difference between fudge tracks and Moose Tracks?”  Tommy asked.

            “Well,” Jared thought for a moment, “Trademark for one.”

            “And Fudge Tracks is put out by Edy’s, more expensive and,” Balliol knocked his spoon at the bottom of the cup,  frowning, “taste a lot better.”

            They were in The Guerro, the coffee shop down the street from Jared’s loft, and John was saying, “but back to our discussion.”

            “I’m still saying that Gertrude Stein is full of shit and she was probably laughing to herself the whole time she wrote that poetry. A rose is a rose, blah blah blah.”

            “What about Ezra Pound?” John leaned across the table, passionately.

            “What about him?” Mason said. “Look, I may not have read enough of him, but what I read I didn’t like.”

            “I defer to the English majors,” John turned to Balliol and Sully.

            “I’m not going to be an English major,” Balliol declared. “And I can’t say I don’t like Pound. I can only say I don’t get him.”

            “See, I don’t like him because you can’t get him,” Sully said.

            They looked at him. Sully was surprised because for one all eyes were on him. Jared’s eyes were on him.

            “It’s just… I mean, I’m no T.S. Eliot or anything, but when I write I try to… reveal. And some people try to conceal. I think you’re supposed to reveal. If people don’t get you, why bother to communicate.”

“But poetry is not communication!” John almost shouted.

“Of course it is,” Sully said back. “What the hell else is it? Words are communication. Even when it’s prophecy or poetry or whatever you are communicating. If it seems like something is hidden even the hiding is meant to… reveal something. Like the Book of Revelation. Like an Apocalypse. That’s when you have all of these visions all of these metaphors. Everything is crazy and surreal, but it’s meant to show you what you couldn’t be shown any other way. It’s meant to communicate.”

John blinked through his glasses and looked at Sully in amazement.

“What?” said Sully.

John shook his head, laughed and said, “You know what? When you started speaking I thought to myself: what can this kid know? What can any of these kids fresh out of high school tell us? And hear you come, Sully, saying something I’ve never heard before. Something I know is totally true.”

John laughed and shook his head. He steepled his fingers.

“I’ve been doing it all wrong,” he said. “All this time I’ve been doing it all wrong.”

“You’re fucking with me,” said Sully.

“No,” John shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

John was looking at Sully so intently through the rectangular black frames of his glasses that Sully had to remember himself, blink and look away.

 

It was nearly midnight when Sal and Jared took them back to campus. Because it was summer only a few lights were on in Michener Hall and none near the first floor or the lobby. Jared muttered something and Sal said, “Shit.”

“Shit?” Mason said. “Shit what?”

“Shit, I don’t have my key,” Sal elaborated. “Shit I think it’s in my room.”

“We can’t call someone?” Balliol suggested.

“We could if we could get inside,” Sal smiled ruefully. That’s where the dorm phone is.”

“Well, now that is stupid,” Balliol commented. He turned to Matt. “Just for that, we’re not coming to Genoa in the fall.”

The bells of Saint Genevieve gave their insistent chime. Tommy counted.

“Twelve,” he said. He was wearing an open shirt over his tee shirt and as a bit of a breeze kicked up, he hugged himself.

“Well, how about this, guys?” Jared suggested. “You all can stay at my place tonight? My mom gave me cushions and stuff. Lots of cushions.”

“And John should have sleeping bags.”

“John?” said Sully.

“Yeah, he and his girlfriend live downstairs.”

“He has a girlfriend?” Sully said.

“Yeah.” And then Jared knotted his head and said, “I found that odd too.”

 

 John was amenable to having guests because Laura wouldn’t be back until Sunday.

“How do you like her?” Sully asked him.

John said, “I like her enough.”

“I want to like someone more than enough,” Mason commented.

Sully wanted to say the same thing. He said nothing though.

John had the same sort of large loft that Jared did, but it was empty of art and he had worked to partition it so that there were rooms or a sort.

“There’s room in my place,” Jared offered, but John said, “I like the company,” and everyone realized that there was more than enough room.

Jared yawned, and stretching he told them he was beat.

“Totally beat?” Mason demanded. “Like, you couldn’t be       persuaded to stay up a little longer?”

“I could easily put on a pot of coffee and stay up a little longer,” Jared said. “I’m cyclical like that. If I lie down I wake right up.”

Sully wanted to invite himself, but he sensed that this was between Jared and Mason. He looked at John for a moment and reflected. John, who he had shared a brief moment with had a girlfriend. What Sully wanted now was a very brief moment.

Balliol hit him in the chest with a sleeping bag and a pillow.

“Oh,” Sully shook himself out of thinking and looked at Balliol.

A very brief moment was something he would not be getting.

           

When Sully woke up in what passed for the living room it was to Mason stepping past him to go to the bathroom. Sully heard the loft door close, and footsteps fade away.

            He was awake all at once. Jared was going upstairs. Mason was going to bed. It seemed that Mason would have just stayed with Jared. But no. Balliol was sleeping beside him. Mason was still in the bathroom. No one would see him get up. And so Sully got up. He tipped across the room, over Matt and out of the apartment.

            In the dark he could see Jared’s form, darker, heading up the steps, his shoulders wide and a little stooped. Sully was afraid for a moment and then he called out his name.

            Jared turned around, white faced, his eyes black pools, and Sully approached him.

            “Hi, Sully. What it is?”

            Sully stood there awhile and then said, “Is Mason coming back? To your place?”

            “No,” Jared said. Then, “I suppose that would have been a good idea. Maybe I’ll—”

            “Could I stay with you?” Sully jerked his thumb back in the direction of the loft. “It’s sort of crowded in there. I didn’t know it would be that crowded.”

            Jared cocked his head and looked at Sully. For just a moment his eyes weren’t dark pools. Sully could see them shine and travel someplace like streams in the night. Then Jared said, “Sure.”

            They went up the stairs. Sully following close behind. When they reached Jared’s door, Sully stood still and waited for Jared to turn around and let him in and then, suddenly, he kissed him on the mouth.

            “What—”

            “Mason’s not gay,” Sully said. “He does an admirable impression of one of us, but the boy’s straight. With a girlfriend he loves very much.”

            “Swain. I know.”

            “He’ll never be gay. You can’t seduce him. He and Swain are the real deal.”

            Jared was staring at Sully, his shaven head cocked.

            “Why are you telling me this?”

            “Sleep with me.”

            Jared blinked at him.

            “I said sleep with me.”

            “I’m twenty years old. I’m a junior—”

            “I’m almost nineteen,” Sully told him. “I’ve been looking at you all day.”

            Jared’s mouth was dry. This was all so strange. He just kept on looking at the tall, thin, fey boy. It was so late at night. The normal rules no longer applied.

            “Please,” Sully said. “I’m not myself. I don’t know that I’d say this again.”

            “Then maybe you should wait till you become yourself again and—”

            Sully put his hand on Jared’s belt. He left it there, and then be began to slip his hands in Jared’s jeans.

            “Hey!” Jared said, his voice had started out alarmed, but now it became something… Else.

            Lips parted he looked at Sully, cocking his head like he was seeing something strange for the first time, some strange chance. Jared took Sullivan Reardon’s hand and, without words, led him into the apartment.

 

The first part was when he turned off his mind, when they were holding each other’s faces, and kissing savagely on their way to the bed. The panting and struggling gave way to undressing. Jared was out of practice and out of lube. They used hand lotion, swiped in the ass like a card. For a while Sully lay under him, being battered, being opened, needing the continuous assault. Somewhere in the midst of it, between Jared’s body, feeling Jared’s arms, large, covered in silky black hairs, smelling of salt and the day gone past, and the mattress which smelled of Jared as well, Sully realized that Jared had turned off his brain for this too. He let himself get fucked, not knowing which one of them was making the noise, not knowing how loud the noise was.

            They stopped when there was a knock at the door.

            “Fuck,” Jared untangled from Sully, and they lay, sweaty, twisted in the sheets at the back of the loft, Judases hanging over them, a moon coming through the window until the faint tapping ceased. Sully suspected that it was Mason. He suspected that Jared knew it was Mason. Jared was quiet and distracted, looking at the door, and Sully was embarrassed and resentful that even fucking Jared, he didn’t hold a candle to Mason Darrow. He was vaguely afraid that Jared would get up and go find Mason.

            So he sucked his dick. He sucked him and then Jared got down and let Sully fucked him. He fucked him until he was literally out of his mind, slack jawed, and then he came with a furious explosion. There wasn’t a thing they didn’t do that night.

 

When Jared woke up the light was grey and, over him, Sully was pulling on his jeans. The boy’s hair was sticking up and Jared noted that it was a pretty color, that there was something very pretty and intense and also very scary about Sullivan Reardon. Last night made very little sense because he’d been in this person and this person had been inside of him, but he felt like he hadn’t touched him at all.

            “Are you… going?” he asked Sully who was slipping on his tee shirt.

            “Yeah,” Sully said.

            There was something in his voice, Jared picked up on. He was too tired to figure out what it was. Something like anger. He wanted to ask Sully, but decided not to.

            “By the way,” Sully told him.

            “Yeah?”

            “My name isn’t Mason,” Sully said, and left the loft, leaving Jared alone and half awake to figure out what that meant.

 

Balliol had been half awake half a sleep for some time when the door slowly opened and was shut. For a while he’d muttered back and forth with Matt before Matt had gone back to sleep. The question they’d asked each other was the question on his mind now. Balliol closed his eyes. And feigned sleep again.

            Above him, Sully pulled off jeans and tee shirt and in his boxers slipped into the sleeping bag next to him. When Sully was comfortably situated Balliol said, “Where were you?”

            “What the fuck—?” Sully started up.

            “Where were you?” Balliol murmured again, eyes still closed.

            When Sully didn’t answer, Balliol leaned up and whispered to him.

            “Where were you?”

            Sully gave a long theatrical sigh and murmured, eyes closed, “With Jared.”

            “With Jared?”

            “Yes.”

            “Doing what with Jared?”

            Sully said nothing, but he felt Balliol leaning over him.

            “God, Bailey!”

            “Are you going to tell me?”

            Sully sighed again, opened his eyes and said, “I was fucking him, Bailey.”

            And then he rolled over and went back to sleep.