Chapter Ten - 10. The Reveal
CHAPTER TEN
The Reveal
The thing about having Taylor sleep in my bed three nights in a row is that it very quickly became permanent.
Not that I was complaining. I was the opposite of complaining, actually.
And it wasn’t because I was relentlessly horny either.
As the semester went on, we grew more and more busy with assignments and various commitments, and so half the time when we fell into bed, we didn’t do anything.
I liked it though, the warmth of him, the feel of his skin against mine, the steady rhythm of his breathing when he fell asleep.
“It also means,” I pointed out one morning, when breezy autumn had turned into violent winter, rain rattling against the windows, the hardwood floor cold under our feet, “that we pay less on the heating bill.” I passed him his breakfast.
The only way I could get him to stop making me overnight oats was if he let me cook breakfast on the weekends. It had been a hard argument to win.
“We live in a dorm,” Taylor pointed out. “We don’t have to pay heating bills.” He looked down at his avocado toast, topped with slices of tomato and a fried egg, generously seasoned with salt and pepper. “Thank you. This looks good.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, sitting down opposite him with my own plate. “And, okay, maybe we don’t have to pay the heating bill. But we’re saving the university money.”
“Ah yes, Halverton University, famously low on funding,” Taylor drawled.
I gave him a look. “We’re using less energy. It’s good for the environment. I don’t know why you’re complaining about it.”
“Maybe because you’re admitting to using me as your personal bed-warmer.” He picked up a slice of toast and took a bite.
“Is there anything so wrong with that?” I replied. “You’re using me for my queen size bed. We’re using each other.”
He frowned and ate the rest of his breakfast without speaking.
I hadn’t said anything cruel, right? Just teased him a bit, and pointed out the benefits of sharing a bed. That was the thing about Taylor. Sometimes he took ribbing well, and other days, it seemed to irritate him. I chalked it up to him being stressed because of the looming final exams.
CSS ball committee meetings were hectic because the cost of everything — catering, the venue, insurance — had gone up but tickets had been on sale for two weeks, and a record low had been purchased.
I perused the numbers. Next to me, Lauren was sipping an energy drink. She was in her final year and was juggling university with securing a graduate job. She had once mentioned that she slept an average of five hours a night.
“Now this is just another thing that’s stressing me the fuck out,” she said, leaning forward to look at her laptop screen.
“The issue is that most of the guests are commerce students,” I said, looking at the spreadsheet, with the names of each person who had bought a ticket, along with their student number and faculty. “We need more plus-ones.”
“Their plus-ones are other commerce students,” Isla, in charge of the ball’s marketing and communications, pointed out. “Our faculty’s pretty insular.”
“We need to somehow make people from other faculties want to come to our ball,” I said.
“Why would they?” Lauren asked, rubbing her forehead. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think our ball is great. But every other department has their own event too.”
“Do they all have a bottomless bar?” I asked.
She gave me a look. “The bar is what’s draining our budget.”
I winced because it was partly true, but also, I didn’t want to backtrack on my election promise and unlimited alcohol was a good honeytrap for uni students.
I turned to Isla. “Is there anything you can do to get the word out to other faculties?”
“I can try to get the other societies to advertise it on their social media pages,” she said.
We concluded the meeting with a promise to all bring a non-commerce plus-one and convince more people in our personal circles to purchase tickets, and hopefully word of mouth would go from there.
The next time I had soccer training, I found Matty by the sinks in the change rooms, crouching down to dry his hair under a hand dryer.
“Hey,” I said over the squeal of the machine. “What are you doing a fortnight from now?”
“Uh, I don’t know?” He massaged his head, trying to disperse hot air through the roots.
“Ever thought about coming to the Commerce ball?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Why not? It’d be fun.” I laid out all the draws. A chance to dress up, drink (beer, wine and standard spirits free, the premium stuff available for purchase, I explained in a rush) and hang out with friends.
“But I’m not a Commerce student,” he said, still looking suspicious. “Can I even buy a ticket?”
“Well, that’s the thing. You’d have to get someone to invite you as a plus one.
Just ask a girl. Commerce girls are really pretty.
” (I wasn’t actually sure if that was true.
I hadn’t paid attention to any girls in my department, which now that I thought about it…
was odd. I’d spent all of high school thinking about hot girls).
Matty scooted out from under the hand dryer. “There’s a chick who studies business in my dorm building…and she is really hot…”
“Ask her,” I said. “It’s the perfect excuse. You can hang out with her, with me, with Taylor —”
“Taylor’s going?” Matty interrupted. “Has he found a girl to bring him?”
“Oh, uh…well, actually, it’s not a hundred percent confirmed he’s coming.” I hadn’t asked him properly. “But I’ll make him. We need to boost attendance numbers,” I admitted.
“Taylor will go with you?” Matty asked.
“Yeah, as my plus-one.” I liked the word plus-one, I decided. It was far more neutral than date.
“What about Talia?” Matty asked.
“Who the heck’s Tali— oh,” I said, turning my face away, needing a few seconds to rearrange it into a neutral expression. “We, um, broke up ages ago. I guess I never had a chance to mention it.”
Matty was looking at me very closely. I tried to look like I was okay, but secretly upset, but also fine.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he said. “She did have feelings for you.”
“Huh?”
“The photo album,” he reminded me impatiently. “The stalker behaviour.”
“Oh,” I said, realisation dawning. “No, that was…I asked her about it, but she said it was just her being horny.”
Matty made a face. “What, so it was like, a collection of pics of you shirtless or something?”
“What? No. It was just us eating food together and…what?” I demanded at Matty’s expression.
“Dude, she was lying to you. She’s totally in love with you.”
I waved a hand because this was derailing the conversation. “It doesn’t matter. We stopped seeing each other ages ago. The point is,” I said loudly, because Matty had opened his mouth like he was about to interrupt, “is that I’m going to take Taylor. So we can hang out at the ball together.”
Matty looked at me for so long, I looked down because I wasn’t sure if I’d put my shirt inside out.
“Yeah, that’d be fun,” he said slowly. “Taylor’s been a bit weird, lately, though.”
That…was not what I was expecting.
“Weird in what way?”
“I ran into him at the gym a few days ago. Asked about you, you know, to be polite. He got annoyed. Seemed like he was mad at you.”
“Mad…at me?” I said. That didn’t make sense. The sudden searing pain in my gut was confusion, not hurt.
“Yeah. But he can be a moody guy sometimes.” Matty shrugged.
“Yeah. Absolutely.” Now that I thought about it, Taylor did seem a little on edge. Sometimes he’d stare at me with this distant look…
“Nothing’s going on with you two, right?” Matty continued. For someone usually so laid-back, he was looking at me with such a shrewd expression, it made me nervous.
“What?” I asked, voice higher than usual.
I cleared my throat. “Nah. Not at all. I mean, maybe something’s going on with him.
I don’t know. We’re not that close. We’re just roommates.
I’m only going to take him to the ball to boost our numbers.
‘Cause I’m on the committee…” I was rambling now.
I looked at my phone, barely registered the lock screen.
“I’m gonna have to run, but let me know how it goes with the business girl, okay? ”
I hurried out of the change rooms, feeling Matty’s eyes on me the entire time.
A few days later, I returned from back-to-back classes all afternoon, to find Taylor and Emery studying in the living room.
Taylor was handwriting a response to a practice exam question, while Emery paced in front of the TV, headphones in, mouthing words to himself.
He tugged the headphones off at the sight of me. “Archie, hi.”
“Hey, Emery. How’s the exam prep going?”
“It’s going. Taylor’s been keeping me on track.”
Taylor waved a hand in lieu of a hello, keeping his eyes on the paper before him.
“Oh, by the way,” I said, echoing the same line I’d said thirty times in the past few days, “are you interested in going to the Commerce ball?” I gave him the pitch, knowing the words off my heart now.
“And you two will be there?” Emery confirmed, gesturing between Taylor and I.
Taylor didn’t look up. He seemed very absorbed in his studying.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’ll be fun,” I promised. “I’d like to see you there.”
Emery flashed one of his big, almost too-vulnerable smiles. “Okay, sure. I have a friend studying management. Maybe I can pay him to invite me.”
“If he accepts your money, he’s not a real friend,” Taylor said.
Emery waved his words off. “There’s nothing wrong with a little encouragement.” He checked the time on his watch. “Actually, I should leave now, I’m having dinner with people on my floor.” He gathered up his study materials into his leather satchel, said goodbye, then hurried out the door.
“I’m coming to the ball, am I?” Taylor said, looking up for the first time. He’d set his pen down on the sheet of paper. His tiny, tight scrawl had filled up all the lines. A probably 10/10 essay response.