5. Gabe
FIVE
GABE
With the first snow of the season came the first morning of shoveling on campus.
As part of the grounds crew, when it snowed, Gabe had to wake up at four thirty to get to campus and start shoveling.
Making that work with his grocery job could be…
complicated. Brutally complicated. He’d worked the night before, then driven himself over to campus to take a nap in his car (Parker’s car) for the half hour before he had to clock in.
He would sleep when he was dead.
He woke up to his boss knocking on his window. Josh was a Gen-Xer who was used to his shit but appreciated his hard work. Gabe might have to take a quick nap before his shift, but no one could ever accuse him of not working hard.
The campus was small, but snow landed everywhere.
He and five of his coworkers grabbed shovels and got to work on the sidewalks.
They had a strong on-campus culture, so the sidewalks got a lot of action.
He put his headphones in and ignored how heavy his whole body felt as he lifted shovel after shovel of snow.
By six a.m., the campus was ready for foot traffic, and Gabe dropped off his shovel, clocked out, and headed home. He could take a two-hour nap before he had his math class, which he could already tell was going to kill him.
Wyatt, Duncan, and Mac were all in some stage of getting ready for the day, but Parker was still sleeping, so he was quiet when he went upstairs, took the world’s quickest shower, and slipped under his covers.
He could sleep on one of those cardboard Olympic village beds and still feel like he was at a five-star hotel when he was this tired.
He had a dozen notifications on his phone he’d been ignoring, and he’d have to keep ignoring them, if for no other reason than his body forcing him to fall asleep.
“Hey, man,” Parker said, gently shaking Gabe awake. Gabe rubbed his eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were bloodshot. “Your alarm keeps going off.”
Gabe looked at his phone. He was going to be late for class if he didn’t leave now .
“Fuck,” he said, scrambling to get up and pull pants on.
He hugged Parker and promised to make him dinner that night for being awesome lately, then dashed out the front door.
When he made it to math class, he realized he didn’t have his notebook, and not only would he not get the credit for the homework he’d completed, but he also had nothing to write on.
He took notes on a borrowed sheet of paper with a colored pencil he found at the bottom of his backpack.
This was the shit that got him diagnosed with ADHD when he was a kid, the memories coming right along with the wave of hot shame that accompanied them. He’d figured out strategies for managing his brain most of the time, but it was harder when he was so tired .
Thankfully, math was the only class he had that day.
His illustration class was Tuesday/Thursday, and his figure drawing class was once a week on Wednesday nights.
Since it was a beautiful glorious Friday, and he didn’t have a grocery shift that night, he got to go straight home after class, and he headed directly into Parker’s room.
Parker worked from home, and while he wasn’t a super social guy, Gabe knew he got lonely sitting in his room alone all day.
Gabe brought his sketchbook for figure drawing and sat in Parker’s big reading chair as he drew him working at his desk.
In most of Gabe’s other relationships, he was used to bringing a lot of energy, a lot of chitchat, a lot of engagement.
With Parker, the two of them could coexist so easily.
Gabe had become friends with Parker’s brother, Mac, first, when they had a drawing course together before Mac dropped out of school.
Mac was a “nontraditional student” in his mid-twenties then, but they’d bonded despite the age difference.
They’d stayed in touch, and Mac and Parker had been looking for a new roommate when Gabe was looking for a place to live.
As much as he loved Mac, he quickly learned that he and Parker existed on this similar wavelength. Gabe wasn’t a best-friend guy—he liked everyone. But Parker was probably his best friend.
“You gotta take a nap, man,” Parker said, watching as Gabe fought to keep his eyes open while he drew. “I’ll wake you up for dinner.”
“I don’t wanna,” Gabe whined.
“You can stay here,” Parker offered. Because Parker could always see into his soul. Parker wasn’t a romantic match for him, but he couldn’t wait until Parker found The One. He deserved everything.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said, dropping his sketchbook and box of conte crayons on the beat-up hardwood and sinking deeper into the plush chair.
It had an ottoman, and by now, Gabe knew the exact way to fold his body for maximum comfort.
Plus, when he was that tired, he could fall asleep balanced on the summit of a mountain or the back of a galloping horse.
It wasn’t until that night after dinner, when he was in the living room with Mac and Parker and Duncan, that he finally had the time and energy to go through his stack of notifications. It felt like he got notified of fucking everything, so none of them felt urgent.
Email, Instagram, Reddit, Dominos, eBay, photos, his credit card, his web shop. Wait. His web shop?
Gabe made roughly two sales a month on his shop. He sold prints of his art, and it only made sense after acquiring a nice printer (that Parker found him on Facebook Marketplace for cheap) so he wouldn’t have to order stock. He printed whatever got ordered and didn’t have any waste.
It looked like someone bought…a lot of his prints. Maybe all of them?
“Holy shit,” he said, sitting up straighter on their worn-in maroon couch.
“What?” Duncan asked, right before a yawn that caught on around the room. If there was a benefit to not being able to afford to live alone, it was that your roommates all understood your hustle and were also tired.
“I think someone bought all of my prints?” The notification time was the night before, when he’d been straightening Pop-Tarts on shelves.
“All of them?” Parker asked, his voice bright and sunshiny for the first time that day.
Gabe opened the app on his phone and scrolled, counting the prints as he went. He couldn’t remember exactly how many he had available on his site, but if it wasn’t one of each, it was one of most.
“I made an extra three hundred dollars today,” he said, feeling the awe in his voice as he said it out loud.
Three hundred dollars appearing out of thin air wasn’t exactly life-changing money, but it was absolutely month-changing money.
Without a miracle, he was still pretty far away from his goal of spring semester tuition for this year.
He just wanted to fucking graduate so he could get a regular full-time job for a while and make art until he could support himself with it.
Maybe get a full night’s sleep every now and then.
But he would be able to make rent without picking up an extra coffee shop shift that month.
“Just one person?” Mac asked. The bags under Gabe’s eyes were mirrored on Mac’s face.
“Yeah,” Gabe said, finally looking at the buyer’s information. Brandon Gatlin. The address was an Iowa address. “I think it’s my classmate. The hockey player.”
“Okay, the sugar daddy plan is working,” Duncan said, taking his aviator glasses off to clean them on his shirt, then reflexively fluffing his mullet. He had a different name for his haircut, but it was a fucking mullet.
“Wait,” Parker said, looking at something on his phone. “Your site has a bunch of your sexy drawings. Did he buy those too?”
Gabe nodded, deep and slow. “That he did.”
“The really fucking gay ones?” Mac asked.
“There is a variety of male/male penetration depicted, yes,” Gabe confirmed.
“Hot,” Duncan said.
“So now I have to print out a bunch of my overtly horny gay little drawings and package them up and send them off to my classmate.”
“Did you get a vibe from him?” Duncan asked.
“A vibe? A gay vibe? No, I got jock vibes. But I’ve also barely talked to him.”
“Let me know if you need help packing,” Parker said. A calm, repetitive task was catnip for him, and it was always nice to have help.
“I guess I better go turn my printer on.”
“Thanks for dinner,” Mac said, his empty bowl of pasta next to him. None of them were good at cooking, but they all did their best. Gabe threw him a salute and headed up to his room.
His desk was too small to keep his printer on it all the time, so he pulled it out from under his bed and plugged it in.
His room was chaos, but his print files were organized.
He started by printing the order list with everything Brandon ordered before switching over to the nice, heavy, acid-free paper he used for prints.
One by one, he printed each of Brandon’s selected prints, letting them dry for a moment before putting them in cellophane bags to make sure they didn’t smudge.
Parker hated the plastic, but Gabe had issues shipping them without some protection.
He spent more money on biodegradable ones now, which was a testament to how much he loved Parker.
After forty minutes of careful printing, he realized he wasn’t going to have enough paper for all the prints. He also didn’t have a fucking box that he’d need to ship this volume.
Fuck.
This was a good problem, this was a good problem , he told himself.
He ordered more paper and cellophane sleeves, which ate up a chunk of his $300, then wrote Brandon a message on Instagram.
Gabe
Hey, thanks for the order! I’m assuming that Brandon Gatlin in Iowa is you. You have cleaned me out of the acid-free paper I use and some of my packing materials, so I have to make an order. If you want, I can send you what I was able to print now. Or it can all go in one shipment.
He crossed his fingers for one shipment. He didn’t want to pay to ship out two packages.
Brandon
Ha ha, yes, that’s me. No rush. Thanks, man.
Gabe wasn’t getting any vibes off of that.
Now that Duncan had brought it up, he scoured Brandon’s Instagram with new eyes.
Duncs said there were gay hockey players now.
Plural. More than just Jackson Harper. Maybe Brandon was one of them?
Sports were too homoerotic to glean anything insightful, unfortunately.
Yes, he was touching a lot of men in these photos, but if you’re in a jersey, no homo.
Another message popped up at the top of his screen.
Brandon
If you have any other updates or anything, you can text me. I’m trying to be on Instagram less.
And then his phone number.
Hot hockey player phone number.
What was he supposed to do with it? Was it in case of emergencies? Should he text Brandon?
Brandon
And if you wanna give me yours, you know, just in case for class or whatever
Just in case for class or whatever.
They could message on Instagram. They could message on the online classroom platform they used for said class. Brandon didn’t need his number. What did or whatever mean? Duncan had him overthinking this.
He still added Brandon to his phone and sent him a text that just said Gabe :).
Brandon sent back a smiley face emoji.
What did it mean?