Free Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) by Amy Lane Page B

didn’t make it any easier, it just made it less hopeless. And the idea that I was going somewhere else—somewhere where all the kids weren’t all freakin’ geniuses—made it easier for me to face the fact that I might fail.
    And the fact that Oliver would love me even if I did— that made all the difference in the world.
    So by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was excited.
    Rex grew up in Seattle, so he was saving all of his traveling time for Christmas. He said his moms were both climbing the walls to see him, and it had still taken me almost two months to figure out why he was okay with the gay thing and the bi thing. He said they weren’t exactly excited about the “fuck everything that moves” thing, but still, I was highly aware I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the socket.
    I confessed this to Rex, and he’d laughed but looked troubled too.
    “What?”
    He shook his head. “I’m just sorry we’re not going to be roommates next semester, that’s all.”
    Shock to me. “Are you kidding? This semester? I’m pretty sure you could have had a garden slug as a roommate, and he would have been more interesting than me.”
    Rex was sitting on his bed, watching me pack. His moms had sent him a homemade quilt when they’d realized Thanksgiving was probably right out, and it was there, in blue and brown, and it reminded me of sea and sand.
    “You’re funny,” he said seriously. “And you’re kind. And I’ve never seen someone try so hard to get things right. Don’t sell yourself short, Rusty. I’m looking forward to the whole three weeks after Thanksgiving, so I can take you out after finals. Do you realize you’ve never been to the beach? Or even downtown? Your entire impression of Berkeley is the dorm room and the lecture halls. It’s like flying to Paris and never seeing the Eiffel Tower.”
    I felt a sudden pang. He was right. This was my big college experience for the moment, and it was over.
    I winked at him, though. “Well, yeah, that would suck. But not if you were flying to London right afterward, and you got to spend the evening having tea with the Queen.”
    He laughed then and hugged me, and I had a worry about this larger-than-life, beautiful guy who fucked everything that moved because he loved everything in the world.
    “I don’t want to leave you here,” I said. “Promise me you’ll call on Thanksgiving, okay?”
    He grinned. “I promise.”
    “And when you’re lonely, call your moms, and tell them they did a good job for me, okay? You turned out really well.”

    The only reason I didn’t go eighty all the way home is that it was wall-to-wall Thanksgiving holiday traffic. I went thirty most places, and what was normally a two-hour drive on the outside was suddenly a four-hour drive, and I was almost crying with the itch between my shoulder blades pushing me to get home.
    Oliver was on the other side of all these cars. He was waiting for me.
    I made a pit stop, though, right after I pulled off on Iron Point Road. There were a bunch of outlet stores there, a nice bathroom, and a McDonald’s, and I was starving beyond all reason, and I had to pee, and I felt mussed and like my breath smelled from all the coffee I’d been drinking to keep me sharp.
    So I stopped to pee and brushed my teeth in the bathroom sink and combed my hair and splashed some water on my face when I was done. I tentatively looked in the mirror, remembering that a year ago I’d looked dumb and happy. And healthier. I mean, I’d been a jock— girls had wanted me, that was for damned sure!
    Now? In the washed-out lights of the gas station, with pale skin and bags under my eyes and my arms thinner and a little blue because I’d come in without a sweater and it was cold in the foothills?
    I looked . . . faded. Would Oliver want me faded? Had he fallen in love with the jock? Silly, right? Because I’d looked way worse after he’d kicked me out of bed that day—I’d avoided mirrors for the last three