Rumor Has It (Longwood U)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

DAK BOZIK

There’s a guy on campus I can’t stop staring at every time I see him. He’s attractive with messy brown hair and a cute, self assured, and careless smile. There’s a confident aura around him. Confident—not arrogant. It’s the difference between meh and attractive.

The thing is, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I stare. By all standards, I don’t find him hot enough that I’d actually do something. Being raised by three gay dads means I’ve had plenty of opportunity to understand that there are far more sexualities and orientations than just het and monogamous.

The thing is, I’ve only ever felt straight.

I’m not sure if this guy challenges that by simply existing, or if there’s another reason entirely I can’t look away. He’s not stunningly gorgeous. Is he? Or like, sexily built. I don’t think he is, anyway. He’s usually in jeans, a tee, and an unzipped hoodie, so it’s not like I can see if he is, exactly.

I also don’t know if he’s a student or a teacher or some other employee on campus. He rarely has anything in his hands except his phone or the occasional tablet. I see him come out of various buildings ranging from the campus center to the science building, the humanities building and the sports complex.

I’ve seen him in the cafeteria, the library, the gym and at games. But I rarely see him talking to anyone—staff or students. I’m confident he belongs on campus, but I don’t know in what capacity.

While I’m mildly obsessed with the subject of this anonymous guy, I haven’t asked anyone because I’d likely get a question in return. Why do I want to know?

Good question.

Maybe if I knew, I’d stop spending so much time thinking about him. Sometimes I think the universe has dropped him onto this campus solely to challenge what I think I know about myself. To test my confidence and my courage because I’d need both to either talk to him or ask about him. Neither of which I have any intention of doing.

Someday we’ll go our separate ways and I’ll never think of him again.

But that day is not today. When I step outside, I’m barely through the door when I spot him across the quad and my feet become rooted to the ground as I stare at him. He’s on his phone, smiling and laughing at whoever he’s talking to.

My stomach flutters uncomfortably, and my heartbeat adds another beat to its rhythm. Even my damn breath catches and becomes slightly shallow. My palms feel sweaty as I absently wipe them on the legs of my pants.

But my focus is riveted. I can’t look away as he walks by.

He doesn’t see me. He never sees me. Then again, I’m never close enough for him to look my way or pay me any attention.

I’m helpless as I simply stare at him until he’s out of my sight and my entire body self-regulates once again. This whole thing used to leave me frustrated. I moved into confused and I think I’ve graduated to helpless as my current reaction. And thus, I keep telling myself it won’t matter as much in two years when I graduate.

I refuse to meet him. I won’t do it. The more I know about him, the more obsessed I think I would become. He needs to remain a stranger.

Now that he’s out of sight, I turn and head for the dorms. I live in Champlain Hall, in a two-bedroom suite with a common area, a kitchenette, and a shared bathroom. There are four of us in the suite and we each share a bedroom with one other guy.

This time of day, I’m usually the only one there. Even so, I prefer my room to the common room. Mostly because I hate Stephen. He’s a gay man with a chip on his shoulder that’s primarily directed to any and all straight men.

Actually, more accurately, toward anyone other than the correct kind of gay man. Boy, does he fucking hate that his roommate is straight. Milo is chill as fuck, and I think it pisses off Stephen that he is. He can’t get a rise out of Milo, and it really irritates him. He’s more annoyed that we ignore him and remain indifferent to his very loud and obnoxious opinions that we simply aren’t asking for.

At the beginning of the year, we used to try to make peace with him. It took us less than a month to realize that Stephen doesn’t want peace. He wants commiseration. He wants sympathy and to feel self-righteous. This became incredibly clear when, for the eighth time, Ezlo corrected Stephen on the fact that he’s not straight, he’s pan and Stephen dismissed it with a roll of his eyes and the same comment of, “You just don’t get it because you’re not gay.”

The fact I have three gay dads also doesn’t give me any insight into what it means to be gay, either. For the record. Never mind the fact that my fathers have been plastered all over every single media outlet for years because they’re gay, polyamorous professional athletes, and I’m well aware of the shit they went through. Hell, shit they still sometimes face for loving who they love.

Thus, we do not speak to Stephen if we can help it, and this is the reason I prefer my bedroom over the common area.

Stepping into our dorm, I find it blissfully empty. I grab a drink from the fridge and head for my room.

Our rooms are nice. They’re a good size and can easily fit two double beds comfortably. My roommate and I decided to invest in bunk beds, still with the double sized mattresses, to free up floor space. Not only for our desks and dressers, which we have lining one wall, but so we have space for our own living area outside of the common room. One where we’re free of Stephen.

Kicking off my shoes into the pile on our closet floor, I drop onto my bed and close my eyes. Images of the man I don’t know as he walks with a smile and talks on his phone drift behind my eyes like a rerun. I press my hand to my stomach, trying to make it stop fluttering .

I’m not alone for long. The intensity in which the front door closes tells me it’s Ezlo. If there’s anger behind the close, it’s Stephen. But the open, pause, then thud says that it’s Ezlo. I hear his steps as he heads for our room. They’re bouncy because Ezlo is bouncy. I’m confident he has ADHD. At the very least, he’s definitely hyperactive.

The bedroom door opens and as Ezlo Latham-Schneider enters, he’s got a huge smile on his face. His eyes are deep blue, always reminding me of the vast ocean. “Hey,” he greets, tossing his bag on the floor and coming inside, shutting the door behind him.

He kicks his shoes off in the same manner I did then falls onto the bed beside me. This man is rarely without a big, goofy smile. Everything about him is big.

Okay, I don’t mean that physically. Although, he’s not a small man either. He definitely has the body of someone who goes to the gym often. Someone who has trained his entire life in the gym, which isn’t a far stretch of the truth. He was put on skates as soon as he could stand upright, and played hockey right up until he graduated high school.

We’ve known each other since we were kids because our fathers played hockey together. They were friends and therefore we were friends, especially since we’re close in age. Just over a year apart. Once our parents retired, we still hung out regularly. Such is the way of the Gays Can Play family of the NHL.

I’ve always wondered why he didn’t pursue hockey. He was good, won awards. He was set to follow in his fathers’ footsteps. Or… skate marks. But he maintained for as long as I could remember that he didn’t want to be a professional hockey player. He wanted to play but only through high school.

Whenever anyone asks about it, he shrugs and says it was never his dream.

I have a feeling there’s more to it than that, but if he doesn’t want to share, I sure as hell don’t want to push. It’s not like I don’t have my own reason for not playing, I stopped when I was ten. The idea that my parents are disappointed I didn’t follow their legacy to go pro has often weighed on me, though not once have I ever had the impression they’re upset with my choice .

I’m their only kid. Nothing was stopping them from having another if it was important to them to have a child play hockey like they did. I’ve told myself this often over the years. Especially once Ezlo said it to me. His fathers chose to only have one kid and he’s made it very clear he had no intention to go pro. If they’d wanted a pro athlete, they could have had another kid and tried again.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You gonna be ready by seven?”

Sighing, I ask, “What’s at seven?”

Ezlo rolls his eyes. “Dates.” He waggles his brows.

“It’s Wednesday,” I deadpan.

“So? Who says we can’t have dates on Wednesdays?”

“You remembered to check they’re girls, yeah?”

It took me a long time to make Ezlo understand that I’m not interested in men. He wasn’t doing it on purpose. Ezlo truly doesn’t see gender in people. Like, at all. I used to test this hypothesis throughout our teenage years and randomly point someone out and ask—boy or girl?

How long this man took to tell me was comical. Granted, we were using the judgmental perceived gender because I was curious as to how Ezlo’s mind works. The man is wild. He’s crazy smart and also just plain crazy wild.

“Yes,” he says decisively. “I also emphasized that you needed a female date to Brianna just to cover my bases.”

Ezlo simply follows the pretty faces, so anyone he finds attractive is within limits. The pronouns he assigns everyone unless told otherwise are they/them. Period. Because this man truly has no sense of gender.

Even his own.

He’s inherently masculine without thought or effort, but I remember growing up when someone would ask him his pronouns or what gender he identified as, his response would range from either confusion or disinterest, depending on the conversation.

That doesn’t mean he identifies as non-binary or gender queer. He literally doesn’t care enough to identify any way.

On the one hand, I’ve always found it amusing. But most of me is in awe of him. Ezlo is so ahead of his own time .

I sigh. “Fine. You better be a good wingman tonight.”

Ezlo laughs.

Ezlo is not a good wingman. In fact, ten minutes into our double date and he’s completely lost interest. Instead, he’s blatantly flirting with the waiter and Brianna is annoyed. Not that I blame her.

I tried to explain that Ezlo doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Most of what Ezlo does isn’t conscious. I swear, his mind is in like three different places at all times. I’m not even referring to on the beach or in the air. He’s thinking of weird complex science experiments and trying to work out physics and shit in this head.

More times than I can count, he’s said something out loud enthusiastically because his mind suddenly put something together and he got excited. He’ll stop whatever we’re doing to either write it down or, if it was really big, I’ve lost him entirely for an hour or more.

Honestly, the man is incredible. To live in his mind! It must be intense.

Brianna is not impressed. She keeps trying to get his attention and I can see when he turns to face her, he’s just realizing that she’s there. There’s almost surprise in his expression. Like he expected her to have already left, or maybe he forgot where he is entirely.

And my date? I’ve been on a date with her in the past and just… no. So we’ve already been sitting there awkwardly for a while.

Sighing, I get up and excuse myself for the bathroom for maybe the sixth time. No one notices which is entirely fine.

But I don’t go to the bathroom, I step outside and take a deep breath. I could go home; Ezlo wouldn’t even notice. There’s a very good chance he could come home later and not remember that I came with him to begin with.

A man stands next to me, looking into the parking lot. He gives me a polite smile. “Waiting for your date too?” he asks.

I snort. “Hiding from my date,” I say. “Debating whether I’m rude enough to leave her and head home without going back in. ”

He chuckles. “That bad?”

“In my defense, I was dragged on a blind double date, and I’ve already been out with this girl. I doubt she’d be offended.”

He tilts his head. “I know my date. Hopefully it ends better than yours.”

I shrug. “Eh. Not a huge loss. I’d rather be doing homework.”

His grin doesn’t fade as he stares out. I know when his date arrives because his smile widens when a car pulls in.

“I’ll catch you later, man. Good luck,” he says.

“Yeah, you too.”

He starts to walk away, then pauses. He turns to face me and I can see that he’s studying me. Considering something. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a card and then flips it so I can see what I’m looking at.

My heart jumps.

He offers it to me and almost thoughtlessly, I reach for it.

“I’ll see you around,” he says, and this time, he walks away.

The card is all black. Tilting it so the lights in the parking lot catch the surface, I see them reflect off the shimmery black word. Five letters. Rumor.

Turning it over, in the same shimmery ink is a QR code.

Rumor is the school’s biggest secret. Not the staff’s or administration’s, but the students’. It shouldn’t be tempting. I shouldn’t care or even consider it.

But when I tell you that there is no way to be invited to this place or get in without a little black card that tells you its location and doubles as your entrance ticket, I mean it. They’re hard to come by.

There’s allure in that. Which is insane to me because of the rumors surrounding it. Gay chicken. Gay for pay.

Which means, only straight men are gifted these cards. Only straight men are invited to this secret society of sorts.

Only straight men are asking for this card!

I shouldn’t care or consider it and yet, the guy I’m secretly obsessing over whenever I see him flutters through my mind. Maybe I could go and just… see. If I can’t get it up for a guy, then my obsession about this random man should fade, right?

In reality, guys get hard over anything. It could be a random Thursday as they’re cooking bacon, and their dick could suddenly plump as if bacon was the sexiest thing in the world. That’s just how our bodies work.

So in reality, this might backfire.

But probably not because it’s not about getting hard. It’s about getting it on.