Chapter Seven
It had seemed like a good idea at the time—a mixer for Boston University’s LGBTQIA+ grad students at Fuller’s, the pub on
the ground floor of the alumni center. I was twenty-one, new in town, and trying to adjust to life in graduate housing, which
felt a lot like life in a dorm, except I didn’t have a roommate, the room was slightly bigger, and the shared bathroom and
kitchen were marginally nicer. I’d made it through the first few weeks of the semester, gradually getting my academic feet
under me, but I’d barely met anyone. The history department was small, and half the PhD candidates had been undergrads at
BU and already knew each other, and they didn’t seem inclined to expand their social circle, especially to someone who had
skipped a grade and was still barely old enough to drink alcohol.
So I put on a nice pair of jeans and a blazer that I felt made me look decently smart and relatively grown up and I went to
the mixer.
I don’t know what I expected. Indiana University wasn’t exactly a small school and it had a decent queer scene, but Fuller’s
was packed. Everyone was dressed smartly. Blazers. Chinos. Loafers everywhere, along with the occasional splash of pink hair
or an unusual piercing or a slightly exposed tattoo.
I didn’t see anyone else from my department. Or from any of the departments that History shared a floor with.
I stuck it out for as long as I could. I got a beer. I had a few awkward conversations. But I felt like I was lurking on the
edge the whole time—the outsider from Indiana who had no idea what he wanted to write his thesis on, who knew nothing about
Boston, who seemed so unimpressive next to people who could throw around institution names like Princeton, Yale, and Wesleyan.
So I left, feeling young and underprepared and out of my depth, and as soon as I walked back outside, I discovered it was
raining. The kind of thin, cold, persistent rain that never looked all that bad and still somehow always soaked through clothes
in a matter of minutes. And I had a ten-minute walk back to graduate housing. And I hadn’t brought an umbrella.
I stood there for a few minutes, hoping the rain would let up. And then a few minutes more, trying to decide if anyone would
notice if I slunk back to the mixer.
And then Jackson walked out of the alumni center with a big black umbrella and said, “Hey, you want to share?”
I didn’t know who he was then. He was just this tall, beautiful man I was pretty sure I’d seen at the mixer, with close-cropped
dark hair and thick dark eyelashes, wearing a navy blazer and a silver stud in one ear that he’d take out later when he started
going to conferences and getting interviews.
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m just heading home.”
He looked out at the rain, glistening in the glow of the streetlights, and then looked back at me with a small smile. “Yeah,
I figured. I can walk you. You’re in grad housing on Bay State Road, right?”
I stared at him. “Yeah. How did you . . . ?”
“My apartment’s just up the road from there. I’ve seen you.”
“Oh.”
He ducked his head, glancing down at his shoes. “Sorry, I don’t mean that in a creepy way. I just noticed you, and then I saw you at the mixer tonight, so . . . I figured we’re both heading in the same direction. I’m Jackson.” He held out his hand.
So I held out mine. “Harlowe.”
We shook hands. His was warm, even in the cold and the damp, and the way he looked at me, I couldn’t look anywhere else.
I wasn’t someone who was noticed. Not by men with beautiful cheekbones who offered me their umbrella on rainy evenings.
“What do you say?” Jackson tilted his head in the direction of the rainy sidewalk.
A smile crept over my face. “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”