Tighe Flatley
The Bed
Move-in day, freshman year. Kevin noticed Bryan’s wide shoulders; Bryan noticed Kevin’s acne, but forgave him for it, because under all of those bumps, his face was handsome with the kindest, deepest green eyes he had ever encountered.
Neither of them shared these observations out loud. They let it flood the private chambers of each of their hearts, and held it there.
“Which side of the room do you want?” Bryan asked. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
Kevin pointed to the left, knowing he slept on his right side and could face the wall, ensuring it was the first thing he saw each morning.
The first weeks of fall floated by, the Georgia sun still hot on the green campus. Bryan darted between ultimate frisbee, parties and class, while Kevin stayed in the room, priding himself on not missing an assignment.
“You’re always studying,” Bryan said one morning, as Kevin pulled out the chair from his desk and turned on the lamp. Bryan had just come back from the showers, a wet towel wrapped around his waist.
“Don’t you ever have any fun?”
“Studying is fun,” Kevin said, feeling his ears burn red. He tried to look Bryan in the eye, but his dark, flat stomach was right there, the hairs from the center of his chest climbing straight down into the fold of the towel. Kevin dug through his bag for a book to put on his desk and mime reading. He grabbed one blindly, not caring if it were for Calculus, Quantitative Analysis, Physics – anything but Anatomy.
“If you want to come to this party my friend is having tonight, you can,” Bryan said. “Think about it.”
It wasn’t until Bryan left a few minutes later that Kevin realized the book on his desk was still closed, light shining on the cover.
~
It was raining that night when Kevin agreed to join. The two talked the whole night by the keg, under the awning of the house, warm beer in red cups.
“These are my people,” Bryan said. “I’d never fit in before, not until college.”
I’m not sure there’s anything for me to fit into, Kevin thought, as he watched Bryan gleam a bright smile toward anyone who approached them.
They a shared cab home after midnight, after standing in the rain to hail it down. In the room, they both threw their water-soaked shirts in the hamper.
“You have a great body you know,” Bryan said.
“Thanks.”
He reached out to put his hands on Kevin’s shoulders, first the left and then, when he didn’t react, his right. Kevin leaned forward, close enough to share a secret.
“Can I?” Bryan whispered. Kevin was still nodding when Bryan’s lips touched his.
They woke up the next morning in Kevin’s bed, Bryan laughing, teetering on the edge. They stayed in the room all weekend, ordering pizza, playing video games, swapping between Kevin’s bed and Bryan’s.
“What does this all mean?” Kevin asked before classes started Monday.
“What do you want it to mean?”
“I don’t know, but I like it.”
“Me too.”
“What will my parents think?” Kevin asked.
“Who cares,” Bryan said. “They don’t need to know to think anything. This is your life now.”
Kevin blushed.
By the start of spring semester, Bryan suggested moving the beds together.
“It just makes sense,” he said, holding Kevin from falling off the edge.
“What will we tell people?” Kevin asked.
“We don’t have to tell them anything.”
It took Kevin longer to think about it and agree than to rearrange the room. No one in the building batted an eye. Even the RA said, oh, cool, and moved on. It wasn’t long before friends would come over to visit. They’d see the beds put together and put it all together themselves. By the first frisbee game in spring, when the blossoms were popping out of the trees, Bryan and Kevin left the field hand in hand.
~
Bryan and Kevin signed up as roommates for sophomore year. They were in the next building over, and on the first day, they wedded another two bed frames to each other, this time in the center of the room, a desk on each side.
They didn’t tell their parents until the end of the academic year, when they decided to move into a one bedroom off-campus the upcoming fall.
“As long as you’re happy,” Kevin’s father had said.
Bryan’s parents simply hung up the phone. It’s not natural, they told him.
Kevin burned. As if there were an engineering formula that could explain love in the first place.
Bryan barely slept that night, knowing he couldn’t afford the rent on his own. Early the next morning, still lying in bed before the sun rose, Bryan whispered to Kevin he was prepared to call the whole thing off. He could live at the frisbee house; Kevin could do his own thing.
“Why?” Kevin asked.
“I need my parents.”
Kevin reached over and put his hand on Bryan’s chest.
“No you don’t,” Kevin said. “This is your life now. We’ll figure it out.”
That’s how Bryan fell asleep, Kevin’s hand blanketing his heart.
~
Two years passed in that house, with a full sized bed covered in cotton sheets the color of mud. Junior year, Bryan quit frisbee for an on-campus job at the library, stacking books in the back shelves to make the rent without asking his parents for help. They split the rent evenly, each paying $350 a month. By the last week of the month, they ate bread and cheese for dinner, climbing into bed early with no beer money, but they would always make it work.
It was the spring of senior year when Kevin got the call for the job offer. A twelve-month international rotation for an engineering firm, with a salary higher than his father’s.
“You have to take it,” Bryan said.
“But what will you do? Where will you be?”
They had been here before. An ocean had separated them once already, a dark, swirling depth. Kevin still remembered the continental groan of the four posts against the tile floor as they dragged his frame toward Bryan’s bed, two lands, rich with loam, crashing into one another with a final, settling hush. It sounded like relief; it sounded like love.
Tighe Flatley spends his days directing marketing campaigns, his early mornings writing and his late evenings editing. He lives in San Francisco where he is a founding member of the Page Street Writers. If you need him, he's usually by the snack table.
