The clock ticked mercilessly on the bedside table. It had been exactly twenty-two minutes and four months since Oliver had said goodbye to his lover of one and a half years. Sometimes he still played their last argument back in his mind, in the quiet, lonely hours of the morning. It was rarely quiet in the dorm at his university in Southern California, being that the other boys often played a game of football or soccer or hockey in the corridors at all hours of the night. Three in the morning was a popular time, after the bars had closed and all the boys stumbled home, many stupid and drunk after a night of partying. It had been during one of these raucous matches that Oliver and his boyfriend Ryan had fought so long and so hard that the game stopped completely.
Oliver wasn't overly concerned. It hadn't sounded like a lover's quarrel, and he had been seen with enough girls in his room that most of the guys assumed he was straight. It was an image he didn't care to correct. Although the campus was tolerant enough in general, most of his dorm mates wouldn't have liked the idea of someone gay using their bathrooms and their showers and so on. Oliver mostly didn't care about anyone else's opinion, but he didn't want to get thrown out of the dorms. So he had been grateful of Ryan to not scream about their bedroom habits, like the way they snuck out to make love on the football field in the very early morning, before sunrise.
When the clock had reached three-thirty in the morning, Oliver rolled over and fell asleep.
---------------------------
Oliver was in a funk, Jack decided. Jack was Oliver's roommate, and had been his best friend ever since the two boys had met at the university's orientation. They liked the same music, the same style of clothes, and were in the same major, English. Usually Oliver was a pretty laidback, happy kind of guy. It had been ever since he had that major fight with Ryan that he had started acting unusual. First, he holed up on his side of the room and muttered or answered Jack with one-word answers, if he answered at all. Then, he refused to come to meals with Jack, and he wondered if Oliver ate anything at all these days. The thing that made Jack worry most of all was that Oliver stayed up very late, often until after three in the morning, and Jack was almost positive that the shuddering, shaking form on Oliver's bed had been Oliver, crying.
The one thing that puzzled Jack about Oliver's behavior was that it seemed to be the way a guy might deal with breaking up with his girlfriend. It was true that Oliver hadn't had a girlfriend since moving in, and he never spoke about his exes, but Jack just thought he was a private kind of guy. But going back over the last few months in his head, Jack began to wonder if there were other conclusions he should be drawing.
"I'm going down to the meal hall to get some dinner. Are you coming along, Oliver?" Oliver merely mumbled something from his position staring at a nearly blank computer screen without turning around. "Come on, now. You haven't come to dinner with me in three weeks! What do you eat?" Oliver jerked a shoulder, but otherwise didn't reply.
Jack strode over to Oliver, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Oliver slammed down his laptop screen and turned around angrily. "Would you please just leave me alone? I just want some privacy, is that too much to ask?"
Raising his eyebrows and his palms, Jack turned and walked out into the hallway. His brows knit together as he walked toward the meal hall. He had been quicker than Oliver realized, and he had seen what was on the computer screen. It was an email in a window reduced down to the size of the two sentence response. 'It's over, Oliver. I'm sorry for what I did, but Greg and I are a couple now. –Ryan' So it was true. Oliver hadn't had a girlfriend because Ryan had been his boyfriend. Jack mulled this over in his mind.
He considered himself an open-minded guy. Heck, hadn't he lived with Oliver for nearly a year now with no complaints? So, Oliver was lonely and had no one to talk to about it. It wasn't fair, really, for the guy to be all alone because he couldn't tell anyone.
Jack swung down to the local pizza parlor instead of the meal hall and picked up an extra-large pepperoni and a couple of Cokes. He hurried back to their room and found Oliver lying on his side in bed. Jack set the pizza down on the table and opened the box, letting the savory smell waft over to Oliver, who narrowed his eyes.
"You have to eat. It's a rule. If you live in this room, you've got to eat." Jack came and sat next to Oliver on the bed. "You've probably lost ten pounds in the last month or so, and I won't have any more of it." He touched Oliver's shoulder, not put off by the automatic jerk of it, and smiled softly. "I know you're upset. I understand you'd rather not talk about it, and I won't make you. But I want you to know that, whatever it is, I'll listen."
Yeah, right
, thought Oliver.
You have no idea what you're saying. I tell you I'm gay, and you'll start wondering if I'm watching you while you change or following you to the shower, or jerking off thinking about you sleeping.
The truth was, Oliver thought Jack was incredibly sexy. Jack was on the slender side, like himself, and 6 foot tall like himself. His hair was very dark brown, nearly black, and his eyes a deep chocolate. He had long, graceful fingers with trimmed nails that Oliver couldn't help imagining around his hard cock. Oliver often disregarded his own spun-gold hair and green eyes. He hated the few freckles that dotted his nose and his full lips, thinking they made him look feminine. But Jack had a surprising thought pop into his head at that very moment:
He looks kissable
.
In fact, Jack wanted to do just that, but the time wasn't right. Anyway, he considered himself straight, and it wouldn't be right to kiss Oliver right then, just to see what it felt like, and then leave him hanging, knowing he might expect more. But he began to think, that evening, about how to get Oliver to admit what the truth was, so they wouldn't have any secrets between them.
* * * * *
Jack knew just who to talk to about his problem. Caroline, an old friend, who was entirely too obsessed, in his opinion, with gay men. She was constantly talking his ear off about men she knew were gay but were too afraid to admit it. In fact, she'd pegged him as gay when they first met. It was the second question, behind, "So, what's your name, anyway, cutie?" The fact that he was developing a teeny tiny crush on Oliver would, he knew, amuse her so much that he almost reconsidered telling her. But she would have just what he was looking for.
"Gay porn?" Caroline, a short, slight brunette was regarding Jack critically as he cringed and stood in front of her, shifting his feet. "You wanna see a gay porno? What the hell for? I thought you were straight."'
Jack could feel his cheeks pinking and hated it. "Look, I just want to see what it looks like, okay? Can you just deal with that without asking anymore questions?"
She studied his face, snapping her bubblegum. "No. Tell me what's going on."
