I stayed with Levi through the afternoon, mostly in bed. But it wasn’t sex after that first time. Levi said he wanted me to “sit” with it for at least a day. Instead, we talked. I laid on his arm and he dragged his fingers across my chest. I laid on his lap and pulled his head down for a kiss. He smacked me on the butt when I got up to put something on to go pee.
I never thought of the necklace.
I never thought of my parents.
I never thought of anything outside that room. And the bathroom once or twice.
When the sun set below the Flatirons, casting a pale orange-red glow that made the snow light up like fire, there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” Levi called; we were both dressed.
Emilio walked in, carrying his backpack. He nodded to both of us. And he looked at his watch, and then to me.
Levi glared at him, but I stood up. “I should, um, go back to the dorms. Finals start next week.”
Levi stood. He put out his hand just a little, and I clasped it. He pulled me in for another kiss. “Yes, you should.”
I turned to walk to the door, still open from Emilio. I looked back at Levi, and for the first time in hours, I felt tears roll down my cheeks. “I um... I.” I swallowed. “I mean, I ...”
Levi smiled. “Me, too.”
I walked quickly out and shut the door. I rushed down the hall, the stairs, past the other frat guys and out into the cold December air. The water on my cheeks froze into tiny crystals. I wanted to brush them off, but at the same time I didn’t. It made it real. At a street crossing while I paused, I did brush one cheek and the ice flew away like tiny diamonds in the night.
When I got back to my room, I was shivering. But I was smiling. Jasper looked up.
“Fuck! Dude, what the fuck?”
“I’m back.”
“No shit! Where’s your coat? You should’ve texted me or something.”
“I don’t know, I think I forgot it.”
“Where?”
“Back at ΔΚΣ.”
“You were there all day? But all your books are here.”
“Yah. I know.”
He looked at me again, and then his face broke out into a grin. “So you finally got with him. Finally. Bravo.”
Before I knew what was happening, he was up and hugging me. “Proud of you.”
I couldn’t stop smiling.
“But you’re freezing. Go take a hot shower.”
So I did.
A lot of people left right after their last final. I didn’t, nor did Jasper. My parents wanted me home soon, but I told them there was more stuff to do. That wasn’t a lie.
Finals ended on Thursday, and the next two days the frats had parties for those of us left. I want to say they were the biggest parties all semester, but it could just be they were the loudest, and maybe the most emotionally freeing. As a full member of ΔΚΣ now, we weren’t treated like pledges. Which meant very little changed, still, since these guys never made us feel like pledges. We shared setup and cleanup for our house party, and at the other frats, we were just regular guys.
The ΣΛΥΤ was the first one on Thursday. Jasper and I went over directly from our dorm, and when we walked in the guys greeted us. They were still getting ready. “I told you no one shows up on time!” Jasper jabbed me a bit in the ribs.
“Hey Jasper, can you help with the keg?” one of the ΣΛΥΤ guys asked him.
“Sure Rob.” Jasper started to follow him, and every guy he passed said, “Hey Jasper,” or “Hi Jasper,” or some variation. I didn’t realize Jasper knew the guys here so well.
I walked around for a few minutes until more guys arrived and the party got going. For a Thursday afternoon, it wasn’t bad, and two hours in someone grabbed a megaphone.
“Okay everyone, the ΣΛΥΤ house is closed, party continues at ΤΟΠ!”
The crowd of guys and a few gals filed out the door and onto the next party. Levi found me half-way through and glared at one of the guys who was talking with me about Calc II that I’d be taking next semester.
“What?” I asked, shouting a little in his ear so he could hear me.
Levi looked at the guy who was still walking away. “Trust me, the guys at ΤΟΠ only want one thing, and it’s not just found at the ΒΤΜ house.”
I looked at him, confused. He hugged me and I inhaled his pine and flannel, practically melting into his warm embrace. When he let go, we had an audience of three or four guys, and I turned bright red.
Tav pushed his way through them. “Guys, seriously? Back off!” They walked away, though one cast a glance back. Tav glared, then turned to us with a red Solo cup in his hand. He took a sip of amber liquid. “So, you good?” he asked, smiling at us.
Levi kissed me on the cheek, and I looked at Tav and just said, “Yah, I am. I really think I am.”
Levi didn’t leave my side through the next two parties at ΤΩΝΚ and ΦΥΧ. He walked me back to my dorm, holding my hand, and I didn’t care what anyone thought. I carded him into the lobby, and he kissed me, and he asked, “Have you thought about Christmas break?”
“What do you mean?”
“What you’re doing? And ... home? How to avoid what happened over Thanksgiving?”
I felt a weight in my chest and my breath grew shaky, and Levi quickly hugged me. When I’d relaxed, he let go.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I uh, I didn’t mean to bring things back. Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?”
I nodded at the same time Jasper came in the door. “Oh, hey Levi.”
Levi nodded to him. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to walk out the door.
“Aww, that means I get to escort Princess Si up the stairs! Let’s make sure there’s no pitch on them so you don’t lose your glass slipper.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
He gasped. And looked at me, eyes wide open. “Did my Si really just say a ...” he looked side to side conspiratorially, “a four-letter word?”
I turned to walk up the stairs, and Jasper caught up quickly, throwing his arm over my shoulder as we climbed the two flights to our room.
The next day there were a few more parties, and I went to them all. With the guys. We started at ΓΑΥ and the final party was at ΔΚΣ, if for no other reason than we were at the end of frat row. As I helped clean up, Darius came up to me, holding a broom and dustpan as he helped sweep the kitchen. It was just us, the rest of the guys still in town were cleaning other areas.
“Si?”
“Yah.”
“I’m proud of you.”
I stopped wiping the counter, a particularly nasty combination of sugar and dye and alcohol proving hard to remove. “I don’t understand.”
He looked at me. “At our first party, you stood in a corner. You barely talked with anyone. You were drinking carbonated water from the can.”
I turned red.
“And you were so far in the closet I was afraid you’d never come out.”
I looked down at the stain.
“But Si ... you did. I meant everything I said last week during your induction. I really am proud of you, but more than that: I’m happy for you.”
I swallowed hard.
“And tell Levi I’m happy for him, too.” He winked at me, and he went back to sweeping.
Levi found me sitting in the main room of the frat house.
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.”
I looked at him.
“What? I can’t be romantic?”
I looked down, then back at him. “I ... I guess no one has ever been romantic with me. I’m still new at this. All of this.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s been a long time ... no, that’s not true. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
I looked at him at the word, my eyes wide.
“What?”
“Did ... I mean, did you ... ?”
“What?”
I swallowed hard, and my throat barely let the words out. “Did you just call me your ‘boyfriend’?”
Levi smiled, the scruff following the contours of his face, and he held out his hand. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”
I took his hand as he pulled me off the couch, and I walked with him up the stairs.
“Milo’s gone already, so ... you can stay here tonight. If you want. With me,” he said, as he shut the door behind us.
I smiled. And I nodded. I went to sit on Emilio’s bed.
“Don’t!”
I froze.
“Sorry. Milo made me promise we wouldn’t do anything on his bed.”
I turned bright red. And I whispered, “Does everyone know we ... you know ... ?”
Levi rolled his eyes. “It’s a frat. People talk. And things are more obvious than you might think.”
I gulped and I sat down in one of the chairs. He pulled off his shirt and sat on his bed, and I admired his chest.
“You’re grinning.”
“What?”
“Si, you’re grinning.”
I tore my eyes up, looking at his face.
“Sorry.”
“Dude, it’s okay. It’s good. This is good. But yah, this is one way everyone knows that you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.”
“Okay, seriously, what’s with the lyricism?”
“Yah, that’s something I wanted to talk with you about, following up from last night. I’ve been memorizing some more Bible verses.”
“Those are not in the Bible.”
“Sure they are. Song of Solomon. Old Testament. Romantic, erotic poetry about desire and physical attraction.”
I looked at him.
“I’m not shitting you. Look it up.” He reached over, and like last week, the muscles shifting under his skin started to make me hard. He sat back up holding something, and then his hands opened like a clamshell.
Resting on his palm was a simple leather cord and a piece of metal forming two perpendicular lines. “We need to talk about Christmas break.”
I gulped.
“Si, I want you to have this back. Not because I don’t want to keep it for you. But because if you’re not wearing it, there will be more problems than I think you want to deal with.”
I looked at it.
“I want you to think about it differently though.” He put it down on the bed between us, and I stared at it, faintly gleaming in the light.
“I know you know this, but there’s a lot in the Bible that you’ve been told how to interpret, and you’ve been told what it means. That doesn’t mean they’re right. You never heard of the Song of Solomon until five minutes ago. Jesus condemned hypocrisy, pride, lack of mercy, and religious judgment infinitely more than homosexuality ... because he never condemned being gay.”
I was looking at the cross on the bed, and I saw Levi’s legs move. He stood and came to kneel in front of my chair. He hugged me, and that’s when I realized I was crying again.
After a few minutes, he let go and sat on the edge of the bed. “I just ... look. The Bible is full of a lot of things and a lot of people have used it to mean a lot of different things.” He reached next to his leg and pulled out the necklace again. “I’m just saying, I think you should wear it while you’re home, but every time you realize it’s there, don’t think of it like it’s your cross to bare.” He chuckled softly. “What I mean is, realize that it can mean all those other things, the things that are good, that accept us, the ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ and ‘he who is without sin cast the first stone’ shit.”
He paused. “His lips are lilies, his mouth is sweetness itself.” He leaned over to kiss me. I managed to smile.
“Si, look at me.” I managed to look up. He took my hand in his two, and he looked directly in my eyes. “No matter what, when you’re home for Christmas, I want you to remember whose you are.”
He pulled gently and released my hand, our lips touching as he put his arms around my back, pulling me tighter and kissed me.
We slept together that night, Levi holding me in his arms as I pressed back against his warm, hairy chest.
Then, in the morning over coffee made in a machine that cost too much, we talked.
“I can be four blocks away.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sister.”
“You have a sister?”
He nodded. “She uh ... when I ...”
I reached and held his hand. He gulped, and he looked at the table. “When I told her that I like guys, she uh, she didn’t take it well. The things she said ...” I squeezed his hand. He looked in my eyes, and his were glassy. “It took almost a year. But she said she was sorry. And that family should mean more than that, and that she loved me.” He sniffed. “So, I stay with her now when I’m home. I uh ... I can’t promise it’s a safe space for us, but I know if you need to get away, if anything happens, that she’d be there for a friend of mine. Any kind of friend.”
I nodded. And I hugged him. We spent the next hour or three packing and getting lunch on The Hill, and then there were no further excuses for delay.
I drove down I-25 mid-afternoon. I’d be home in time to sleep in my own bed, and I would go to church tomorrow morning with my parents.
I looked in my rearview mirror, and I saw Levi’s devil-red car behind me. I smiled. We pulled over at the last rest stop and I changed into plainer clothes. I reached into my pocket and pulled the leather cord.
I walked out of the bathroom stall to where Levi was washing his hands, and he smiled at me. I bowed my head and put the necklace around my neck, the cross settling across my sternum.
Levi’s face straightened, and he nodded.
We walked out of the bathroom, a few steps apart, and then I stopped him when he passed the hood of my car.
I took his hands in mine, looked into his eyes, and I said, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. I know exactly whose I am.” I kissed him on the lips as other drivers walked by, then released him. We both smiled, foreheads pressed together, and then we got in our cars to drive the last leg back to the Springs.
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