Love, Hypothetically[Theta Alpha Gamma 02 ] (5 page)

“Shut up.” Paul yanked his lime off the rim of his glass and dropped it in his tonic, then proceeded to stab it repeatedly.
The damn straw bent. Felled by a slice of citrus. Paul sighed and planted his cheek on his fist.
What a crappy day.
“Okay. Hypothetically, the jock showed up ten years later—”
“Nine,” Paul said.
“Years later, the jock shows up wanting to work things out with the boyfriend?”
Paul nodded against his fist.
“And the boyfriend, what’s he want to do? Is he considering renewing the relationship?”
“He doesn’t trust him,” Paul said, shifting in his seat.
Toby looked thoughtful. “Or he’s scared of letting himself trust him. Of letting the jock earn back the trust.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the boyfriend’s personal integrity that’s stopping him from trusting the jock.”
Toby shrugged. “My money’s on fear.”
“Of course it is,” Paul snapped. “I don’t think forgiveness is in the boyfriend’s nature.”
“The jock showed up wanting to work things out with the boyfriend, and it’s got him in knots. I’m not saying I think you—the hypothetical you—should make things easy for him, but maybe a little bit of forgive and forget?”
Paul looked scornfully at Toby. “Don’t you have any useful advice for the boyfriend after all of this theoretical modeling? Something more concrete than suggesting he forgive and forget?”
“No, that’s pretty much it.” Toby nodded.
“You hypothetically suck.”

hortly before 8 a.m. the next morning, Trevor knocked on Paul’s dorm room and proceeded to kidnap him. Paul stood blinking at him in the hallway. Good thing he’d bothered to throw on lounge pants over his boxers. He forced himself not to look down to check if he was wearing a clean T-shirt.

“We need to discuss your job as tutor for my players and set up meetings with them. I thought it would be good to make plans on neutral ground, so to speak.” Trevor rocked back on his heels, both hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.

Paul eyed him narrowly. “At this time of the morning?” “Is it early?” Trevor asked blandly.
“Yes. And what exactly do you mean by neutral ground?” “I mean someplace away from campus.”
“Huh,” Paul grunted. He could claim he had to work

today, but he had a feeling Trevor already knew he didn’t. “Fine.” He shut the door in the man’s face so he could get dressed. When he opened it a few minutes later, Trevor was still there. Paul sighed.

Trevor led him silently to his car, where Paul balked at getting in. “There’s tea inside,” Trevor said.
Damned tempter.
In the console cup holders were two paper takeout cups with sleeves and lids. “You started drinking tea, too?” Paul eyed them through the window, trying to figure out which was his. Could he leap in, grab the tea, and make a break for it?
For a brief second, he felt Trevor’s hand slide across his lower back. “You have to get in; then I’ll give it to you,” he said far too close to Paul’s ear.
Befuddled, Paul climbed into the SUV when Trevor opened the door for him, that hand landing lightly on his shoulder for a few more seconds.
Before Paul could convince himself to get back out, Trevor walked around to his side and got in. He smiled, picked up a cup, and handed it over. “I drink coffee,” he said in belated answer to Paul’s question—the one Paul barely remembered asking. “I hope you still take your tea the way you did in high school, with lemon and honey.”
Paul gave in. He nodded, took the offered tea, and bit his tongue instead of asking Trevor how he remembered that after all these years. He sipped silently while they drove, ignoring the few times Trevor cleared his throat, as if he would say something should he be certain Paul was listening. Rather, Paul stared resolutely out of the window. Not that there was much to see. It was early on a Saturday in a college town during summer, and the world looked deserted.
He pretended to admire the architecture.
Then he pretended to admire the green fields and stands of oak, as well as the occasional tractor or barn. He did such a good job admiring the landscape that they were a few miles east of town before he realized Trevor was taking him somewhere.
“Where are we going?” he asked, whirling toward the driver’s side.
“You’ll like it. If you don’t, I’ll take you right back.” Trevor smiled tightly.
“How about you take me back right now?”
“Then you’ll never know where I’m taking you.”
“You can’t just tell me?”
Trevor didn’t answer.
Paul tried to stare a hole in his skull. Trevor kept glancing over at him, maybe to see if Paul would give up, but he would never give up, not until Trevor took him back or his head collapsed in on itself.
Finally, Trevor sighed and scratched his nose. “We’re going sailing.”
“There’s a body of water around here that’s navigable?” Paul blurted. It was totally not what he meant to say, of course. He meant to say, “I’m not going sailing with you.”
Trevor kept his eyes firmly on the road, but twisted his fists on the steering wheel. “The reservoir is deep enough. Not for a big boat, but I have a twenty-footer up there.”
Another surprise. “You do? How long have you been in town?” And how is this neutral ground? For some reason, that question never made it out of his mouth.
“I had it already. I towed it to this marina when I moved here.” Trevor cleared his throat. “When’s the last time you went sailing?”
Suddenly it was Paul’s turn not to make eye contact. “When I was an undergrad,” he said.
“Oh.”
Good. Maybe he thought Paul had had a boyfriend he used to sail with. That might hurt him—sailing used to be their “thing,” sort of. Hopefully that would keep him from asking.
“Did you have, uh, someone you sailed with?” Dammitall. “Yeah, my sailing class,” Paul admitted.
Trevor was silent a moment. “You took sailing? Like, as a class?”
Paul slid down in his seat, his shoulders working their way up around his ears. “I had to take a PE credit. Sailing was the one most likely to be free of jocks. I’ve developed a severe dislike of jocks.” Plus, he’d had one crazy, homesick term when sailing had seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t. It made him feel lonely. Every time he went out he felt like he was missing something.
“Is that the only reason you took it?” Trevor asked.
Paul didn’t answer.
They got to the marina, and it was awkward. Not unexpected, certainly, but still not enjoyable or pleasant in any way. If Paul hadn’t been cursed with natural curiosity, he’d have insisted on being taken back to the dorm (which he would not grace with the word “home”).
Unfortunately, he was veritably saturated with the urge to know. To know what Trevor had to say—because certainly he’d eventually say something about their previous relationship— or to know what crazy scheme Trevor had in mind, now that Paul had shot him down in his first attempt. Or possibly he wanted to know what it would feel like if Trevor tried to touch him again. What part of Paul did he miss the most? An obvious part, like his extremely sensitive nipples, or his dick or (most likely, some inner cynic scoffed) his tongue?
He was sure of what part he missed the most: Trevor’s ass. Feeling it move under his fingers as Trevor lay on him and thrust against his thigh or hip, the muscles flexing and relaxing, the light sprinkling of hair tickling his palms.
But maybe, now that he thought about it, the part of Trevor he missed the most was his mouth. Trevor could kiss like no one else Paul had ever been with. As if he kissed Paul just for the pleasure of the kissing itself, with no goal of segueing into sex.
Paul had always been the one who wanted that. From the first moment he’d figured out—on Trevor’s parents’ sailboat, no less—that Trevor might want to kiss him as desperately as he wanted to kiss Trevor, he’d wanted it to lead to more. Back then, he’d been more into the idea of a blowjob or some unimaginable queer delight, but now, as he walked down the moorage dock with a cooler full of God-knew-what, following Trevor’s tight muscles bouncing and springing in front of him, he wished for Trevor’s kisses again because he wanted them to lead to so much more than Trevor on his knees in front of Paul with his lips wrapped around Paul’s cock.
“This is it,” Trevor said, making him start. He’d been staring straight ahead, out to the water in front of him, imagining sex—real, adult sex, with spread buttocks and everything— with Trevor.
He swallowed. “Sorry, lost in thought.”
Trevor didn’t say anything, but he smiled in a way Paul wasn’t completely comfortable with.

Sailing was a complete, unmitigated seduction. They used the outboard to leave the marina, but then Trevor hoisted the mainsail while Paul was in charge of the jib, and they began to tack their way down the long reservoir, since the wind wasn’t being entirely cooperative. When they weren’t coming about, Trevor talked to him. Asked him questions about his family and what he’d done over the last nine years. Paul tried to resist, but somehow he found himself talking about his older sister’s wedding and his younger sister’s twin boyfriends and his mother’s brother, the late-blooming gay divorcee.
Trevor laughed a lot. He laughed when Paul called his older sister’s husband a banker aspiring to be a used car salesman, and when Paul described his younger sister’s serial bigamy. And he laughed extra hard along with Paul when he told Trevor about his uncle saying Paul had been an inspiration to him.
When Paul got pissed off at a speedboat cutting them off and stood up, shouting, “You kids get the hell off my lake!” Trevor yanked him down before they bounced in its wake and he got tossed overboard.
“Relax.” Trevor smiled. “It’s a beautiful day and you love sailing.”
Paul looked at the sunshine glinting off the water, nearly blinding him even though he had sunglasses, and felt the brisk wind that kept it from getting too hot, and he remembered he did love sailing.
He relaxed.
The wind on the water blew through him and hollowed him out, made him feel clean. Looking at Trevor, working in tandem with him, ducking the boom in unison, handling the lines, listening to him laugh, and watching the sun highlight the new-to-Paul lines next to Trevor’s eyes . . . that all made him yearn so much it filled up all the hollow places inside.
It turned out that he didn’t miss Trevor’s ass or his mouth or any other physical part of him the most; Paul missed Trevor the most. The way he steadily approached everything, from luffing sails to speedboat wakes to Paul’s resistance.
Not that there was anything wrong with the physical attributes.
Paul watched Trevor’s arms when he trimmed the main, and stared at his fingers when he fastened lines to cleats. When the boat heeled and Trevor braced his legs against the gunwale, straining them, Paul was transfixed by his cording calf muscles and the golden brown highlights in his leg hairs. “You aren’t as tan as you used to be,” he said absently.
“I haven’t been outside as much since I quit playing,” Trevor said. Paul looked up, and he could see in Trevor’s eyes that sense of knowing: he knew Paul had been admiring him. He didn’t appear smug, though. Instead, he had that air of hope again.
Paul took a deep breath, letting the wind blow into his lungs, and looked away. He didn’t know if it was excess oxygen or Trevor that made him dizzy.
They sailed all morning and maybe into the afternoon. Paul could feel his lips chapping, and the skin on his bare arms grew pink from either windburn or sunburn. He’d taken off his jacket. Pulling lines and climbing to the fore to mess with the jib was more work than he remembered, so he’d become overheated.
Fine. And he wanted to see if Trevor would watch him in the same way he watched Trevor.
He did.
Mid-day sometime, Trevor anchored in a little cove. The cove hid most of the lake from their view, and conversely hid them from most of the sparse water traffic. Paul put his jacket back on once they were in the shadow of an overhanging cliff face.
“Can you go below and find that cooler?” Trevor asked him while pulling some roundish metal thing from the stowage under the bench seats in the cockpit. He clamped it on the rail while Paul watched, and Paul realized it was a barbecue.
“Are you cooking me lunch?”
Trevor turned back and grinned. “Yeah, I am. Well, I will once you bring that cooler up.”
Paul didn’t know what to say, so he went below, stumbling through the curtain of darkness created by going from the bright sun to the dim interior. He blinked rapidly and stood there.
He knew what was going on here.
The question was, would he go along with it?
His thoughts refused to clear enough for a coherent answer, but slowly the cabin took form around him, shapes resolving out of the dark.
Right in front of him was the cooler resting on a v-berth. A bed—a specially shaped bed unique to sailboats as far as Paul knew, but a presumably perfectly-suitable bed. For sleeping. And possibly for other things, but Paul didn’t know that for sure, did he? Because he and Trevor, other than that first kiss, had never done anything on the sailboat in high school.
That had been a much bigger boat. Big enough that the v-berth was hidden behind the bulkhead. Paul hadn’t been able to see that bed when he’d gone below then, but he never stopped thinking about it when they sailed. Wondering if he and Trevor would ever get a chance to roll around on it, maybe make the boat rock in the water, creating their own waves.
Dammitall. He’d wanted that so much. Like Trevor’s shower fantasy, it’d been forbidden to them, or it had seemed that way. They’d never talked about it, because Paul had suspected Trevor thought about it as much as he did, and he was scared to bring it up in case they did something stupid.
We could do something stupid now. We’re both consenting adults. Out, consenting adults.
Paul grabbed the cooler and fled up onto the deck before he talked himself into something insane. Like pre-empting Trevor’s seduction with a lap dance.
Trevor had gotten the barbecue going. The coals weren’t quite glowing yet, but he had briquettes aflame. He messed with them, moving them around with a long pair of tongs.
“Is that safe on a boat?” Paul asked, setting the cooler down near him. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and stayed there just inches from Trevor. He should move back. Sit down.
“Yeah, I just need to pay attention right now.” He glanced over his shoulder at Paul and smiled. “Can you get out the chicken breasts in the freezer bag? They should be right on top.”
Paul bent to do it, wondering if Trevor had remembered his reluctance to eat red meat or if he’d just gotten lucky. He had a feeling he knew the answer to that. He found them right on top, like the man had said.
“Crap, I should have asked to make sure you eat meat at all anymore,” Trevor said suddenly.
Paul handed him the chicken, smiling for some stupid reason. “I do, it’s all right.” This time he did step back, sitting and watching Trevor cook. Occasionally, Trevor would look over his shoulder for Paul, smiling when he found him. Did he think Paul would try to escape overboard and swim to shore?
“I heard a rumor about you,” Paul said suddenly.
Trevor stiffened, his back straightening. “Did you?”
What did he have to worry about? Paul wished he could see his face. “You’re a do-gooder,” he said. “Speaking to kids about bullying. And being gay.”
Trevor froze, tongs straight up in the air. He shook his head once, then attended to the barbecue again.
“You didn’t want me to know about that?” he asked when Trevor remained silent.
Finally Trevor looked over his shoulder. “I just don’t want you to think I’m doing it only because of what happened. I would have told you about it eventually.”
Paul swallowed. “Do you do it to prove to me I can trust you?”
Trevor scrunched his eyebrows. “How would that prove anything? And you might not like what I tell them.” He turned back to the chicken, flipping it, then turned fully to face Paul, leaning against the rail, gripping the top one as if he needed something to hang on to.
“What do you tell them?”
“I tell them sometimes high school isn’t the time to come out, if you aren’t in a secure situation with people you can trust.”
He shook his head slowly. “I think that’s wise, Trev. It’s not always the best time.”
Trevor looked at the deck, kicking with the toe of his shoe. “Then I tell them that sometimes you can’t control what happens. Sometimes you think you’re in a secure situation but it turns out you aren’t. People betray you.”
Paul took a deep breath. “Thank you for being honest about it.”
“It’s the least of what I owe you,” he said, turning back to mess with the chicken some more. He covered the grill and pulled a blanket that looked suspiciously picnic-like out of the stowage. When he turned to Paul, he unfolded it on the floor of the cockpit, then dropped a flotation cushion in front of the cabin opening and one at the stern. Fumbling a little, Trevor reached back into the stowage and pulled out a green cone of paper-wrapped something and a vase.
Flowers. As Trevor unwound the green paper, daisies were revealed. He leaned over the side of the hull, far enough that Paul saw a flash of skin between his shorts and his shirt, and filled the vase, then arranged the flowers in it. He set them in the middle of the blanket and cleared his throat. “Sit,” he invited Paul, not quite looking at him.
Paul stared. Slowly, he moved from the bench to the cushion, folding his legs. “Trev?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you buy flowers, drive up here and put them on the boat, then drive back to get me this morning?”
Trevor rubbed his knee and cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“Oh my God, that’s so sweet.”
Trevor finally met his gaze and smiled. “Wait,” he said happily. “I have one more surprise.” He reached into the cooler and pulled out a half-bottle of champagne.
Paul felt almost cruel when he said, “I don’t really drink.”
Trevor’s face fell, but he forced a smile the next moment and started to put it back.
“I could have one glass, I guess.”
Trevor smiled brightly again, set it down, and scrambled through the stowage for plastic cups.