-- This first part of the story is told from Rory's point of view. (And the next installment alluded to by Sebastian will be posted within two weeks.) --
I wretched over the toilet and another torrent of sick splattered into the bowl. I had a stomach bug and forty-eight hours earlier I had also been forced to get train-track braces along my bottom row of teeth. My emergent wisdom teeth had started to squeeze two of my front teeth, so apparently I'd need braces for 'only' 8-10 months to correct the problem. Which meant that the entire bottom half of the inside of my mouth was ripped open with cuts and mouth ulcers, while the rest of my body sweated and shook from the force of the stomach bug. All in all, this was not going to go down in history as one of the better weeks of my life.
I walked back into my bedroom and made a bee-line for the welcome warmth of my bed. In the depths of my discomfort, my feelings towards my student bed had swiftly transformed from one of irritable contempt to affectionate dependency. The bed no longer seemed like a lumpen mattress, but a cocoon of nurturing heat. While I burned up inside, my skin felt ice cold; my mouth was cut to ribbons and my teeth felt like they were being pulled slowly, much against their will. Which, I suppose, is precisely the intention of dental braces.
I pulled my covers up around me and contemplated calling Sebastian. Feeling this awful had weakened my defences against him. He was never really entirely off my mind, even in the first full few hectic months of starting a new life at university. There were times, like there had been ever since the start of summer, when I could believe, at least on the surface, that breaking up with him had been the right thing to do. Despite all the extenuating circumstances that could explain, logically, why he'd kissed someone else, the fact still remained that Sebastian liked to party (which he'd be doing a lot of at uni) and he had been quite prepared -- I think -- to withhold the truth from me, until Virginia and Robbie made that impossible for him. Breaking up with him had been practically necessary under those circumstances. Right?
There were times, though, when I was feeling less strident; when I missed him. His allure and the memory of his touch was particularly seductive in the twilight between sleep and awake. It was then that I would curl in bed and imagine the pillow was his chest and that he was here, next to me.
God.
How embarrassing.
I picked up the phone and scrolled down to the 'S' section, but 'Sebastian' was not there. In a fit of self-preserving wisdom, I must have deleted it, lest a moment like this should arise. I didn't know whether to proud of myself or incandescently irritated. In either case, getting up to Facebook him to say 'My mouth hurts and I'm sick. I miss you,' would be pathetic and stupid -- and given how shivery I was, particularly unappealing.
I covered my eyes and tried to get some sleep.
*
-- From Sebastian's point of view --
Over the first few months of college, Will and I continued to hook-up, with no strings attached. We did it fairly infrequently, but it was fun, safe and easy. He was great in bed and a nice guy, but the romantic spark never materialized. To both of our shared reliefs, I'm certain. There were other guys, too; two more. The first was a guy called Edward. Or Ed, as everyone called him at college. He was slim, with dark hair and blue eyes. One night, after a messy social, he gave me head in his bathroom. It was a great blowjob, but the next day, Ed was a bit awkward with me and didn't speak to me for a few weeks. It turned out that, like Michael Suzette, Ed hadn't come out yet and I had absolutely no intention of getting involved with someone like that. I don't judge anyone's situation, and I really do mean that, but I've seen too many good guys get their hearts broken, and their reputations ruined, by getting involved with a guy who's in the closet - who then blames them for everything that happens. I'd put distance between myself and Michael back in high school and for the same reason, I reciprocally began avoiding Ed once my friend, Helen, told me about his situation. I heard later, years later, actually, that he had come out, but that it had been messy and quite a few hearts were broken in the process. I dodged a bullet.