Chapter Two
Dirty Little Secret
Stiles eyed the girl sitting beside him. This was it. This was his chance. He had to prove himself or face humiliation. He glanced at the clock: 10:58; class would start in twelve minutes. Dr. Anderson, the fat middle-aged balding professor, stood behind his podium daring anyone to be late. Stiles shook his gaze from the clock and the professor back to the piece of paper in front of him.
"We Found Love," Stiles eyed the brown-eyed girl awaiting his response, "Rihanna."
"Damn!" she exclaimed in a rushed whisper.
"Funny," Stiles smiled at her, "you think you're so smart."
"It's true right?" she pinches his leg and leans closer to him, "I mean, you kind of are."
Stiles jerked back and looked around them, casually, but obviously, "Loud much?"
"Not yet," she smiled, "but I can be."
"Allison, seriously?" Stiles shook his head and poked her in the ribs.
Allison playfully slaps him on the cheek. As if on cue, Lydia plops down in the seat beside Stiles.
"Hey baby," she smiles at Stiles and kisses him on the cheek that Allison just slapped. She eyed Allison and nodded to her, "Allison."
"Lydia," Allison responded, grinning at Stiles when he cocked his eyes at her.
Lydia did not hide her distaste for Allison. Since before she and Stiles started dating, Lydia regarded Allison as competition and had revealed that to Stiles more than once.
"Did I interrupt anything?" Lydia asked, knowing that she did.
"Just hangman," Stiles replied, "which I won."
"This time," Allison interrupted, "but this has been going on for the past two years, and I'm usually on top."
Lydia nodded and faked a smile.
Stiles never was one for awkward situations, and any time Lydia and Allison were in the same room was that kind of situation. Neither of them was to blame, there was one thing that meant the two girls would never be close: how close they were to Stiles. Lydia, the girlfriend, had only known Stiles for couple of semesters but held an extremely passionate bond with him. Allison, the best friend, had known Stiles since his first weekend at UGA and generally knew what he was thinking before he thought it.
It was a fraternity rush party where they met, the first college party Stiles and Allison experienced. It was their first weekend at UGA and Stiles decided prove his manhood by winning at every drinking game he played. As Allison tells the story, "like most idiots" he got way too drunk and she ended up scratching his back and playing in his hair while he got rid of all the alcohol he took in through the night. It was a gross bonding session that resulted in a solid friendship. To everyone's surprise their relationship was never sexual, they just kept growing closer. Their friendship reached a new level over the summer just before their junior year began: a new level marked by Stiles coming out to Allison.
It was a very long, very complicated, and very slurred drunken confession that he had planned to have with her for a long while. Needless to say, the two had a chemistry that could not be matched, and that bothered Lydia. Allison understood Lydia's concern, but she refused to go out of her way to make a girl happy who would never like her. Whenever Stiles and Allison had a truly private conversation she would end up riding him to break up with Lydia. She had ever since she found out he was gay. Stiles could not bring himself to do it, claiming that the nice guy in him kept him from doing it until he had a good reason, or until the right time.
"There's never going to be a right time!" Allison protested over Chik-fil-A chicken nuggets and a diet coke. Their Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule was nearly identical, which meant frequent lunch dates.
"You don't know that! It could come tomorrow, or at the Auburn game this weekend." Stiles took a bite of his pizza, "If we lose I can blame her and dump her." His last words squeezed through a mouthful of pizza.
"That's attractive," Allison rolls her eyes, "I thought gay guys were supposed to be more…gay."
Stiles gives her a dumbfounded look as he chews.
"You're eating pizza, which isn't healthy and you're freaking out about the Auburn game this weekend. Oh yeah, and you've got a girlfriend."
"She thinks I'm doing just fine." Stiles grins.
"Does she know you like penis?"
"I don't know. At least that gives us something in common." Stiles laughs, "She likes it, a lot."
"Ew," Allison puts down the chicken nugget she was going to eat, "I never want to hear about Lydia's affinity for penis again, ever."
Stiles laughs, "Sorry, I keep forgetting you don't like to talk about the sex."
Allison grabs her tote bag and her tray, "Speaking of which I have to go talk to our Human Sexuality professor about the sexual positions and which one implies female dominance. I bombed that on our last test."
"What made you, the sex-o-phobe, think you could take human sexuality and actually study it?"
"Its coitophobia, which I don't have, and I don't know," she stands and looks down to him, "you wanted to take it and I love you just that much to tag along." She leans down and kisses his cheek, "Love ya babe."
"You too," Stiles takes another bite of pizza. He barely has time to swallow before Daniel, a.k.a. Wall, sits down opposite him.
"I'll tell ya man," Wall said as he watched Allison walk away, "you're a hardcore pimp."
Wall, one of Stiles's fraternity brothers, got his name because he, for lack of a better word, was a wall. He towered over most people at 6'4, had a large built frame with a beer belly to match. He also had a thing for Allison. Stiles couldn't blame him. She came off as sweet and innocent. She was also insanely attractive and was utterly clueless to that fact.
"And I'll tell you," Stiles said as he began to pack up, "I'm with Lydia."
"Still, you've got the hotties crawling around ya."
Stiles laughs, "I guess that's better for y'all. I've got help out the frat's lame game somehow."
Wall laughs as he and Stiles rise from their seats. The two walk out together, Wall talking mostly about Allison and Stiles cringing at the thought of Wall being interested in her.
-X-X-X-X-
"Look at them," Laura said to Rico, the sexy Latin bartender, motioning towards the line of surgically enhanced housewives sitting at the bar, "how does it feel to know all those botoxed faces and liposuctioned hips are here to just to watch you sweat trying to keep up with their drink orders?"
"Jealous?" Rico replied with his thick Spanish accent.
"You wish."
Rico pinched Laura's butt just as he walked down to take more orders from the desperate housewives.
"I saw that," Stiles said as he grabbed 5 Miller Lite pitchers from under the bar.
Laura grinned, "You shouldn't be paying so much attention to my ass."
Stiles took a moment-long glance at Rico, who was arguably the most attractive guy at the restaurant. Stiles then began filling up the pitchers.
"It's not your ass I'm paying attention to," Stiles eyed Laura and caught the odd glance she gave him, "or anyone who works here. Lydia for me."
Laura leans close to Stiles, "You say the weirdest junk sometimes."
Stiles grins, "It's why you love me." He finished filling the pitchers and loaded them onto a large tray.
"Who's the alcoholic?" Laura asked noting the huge quantity of beer.
"My brothers," Stiles sighed, "about 10 of them decided to pile in and get drunk tonight. I feel sorry for the pledge that has to drive them back."
"I feel sorry for you," Laura patted his back, "I hear your brothers are lousy tippers."
"Only to me, and only when their drunk," Stiles looked out of the large windows opposite the bar out onto the patio where his brothers were laughing talking, "which is always." He shrugged and walked off.
"LAURA!" a large Mexican man emerged out of swinging double doors leading to the back kitchen, "¡Acelérelo! Tu ha conseguido dos órdenes retrocedieron!"
"No hablo español, fat ass!" Laura yelled as she headed to the kitchen.
"He said that you—" Rico began to explain.
"—I know what he said; get back to your 40 year old whores."
Rico turned and smiled at the "40 year old whore" in front of him, who heard Laura clearly and looked more than pissed. He could only smile wider.
-X-X-X-X-
hale_yes: i thought i sketched you out or something the other night.
Stiles grinned. He had a little extra time between his shift ending at work and his and Scott's workout time. What better way to spend a few extra minutes than to chat with random Athens gay guys? Hale_yes had found him again, and Stiles was curious about him.
southerdawg0102: no. if you were 53 and asked me for a hook-up then maybe. i just had to log off, my roommate came in.
It was true. The gay crowd in Athens generally tended to be kind of elderly, and deeply freaky. It made being closeted and trying to meet gay guys even harder.
Stiles always found himself questioning his motives for meeting gay guys. He knew he wouldn't cheat on Lydia, but talking to guys who, generally speaking, were only interested in one thing seemed like cheating. Somehow knowing that he had no sexual interest in his girlfriend didn't bother him as much as knowing that he was sexually interested in men. It was an odd mix of guilt, shame, carelessness, and curiosity that he felt horrible for feeling.
As Stiles got lost in his thoughts, his phone rang, it was Scott.
"Hello?" Stiles answered.
"Hey faggot," Scott replied, "Ramsey in fifteen?"
hale_yes: so what's ur name?
"Here we go…" Stiles sighed.
"What?" Scott asked.
southerndawg0102: …Scott, urs?
"Nothing," Stiles replied, "Ramsey in fifteen, gotcha." Stiles then hung up the phone. It was time to play the game
hale_yes: derek, nice to meet you.
southerndawg0102: u 2, but I g2g, add me on aim – southerndawg09
Stiles shut his computer. And so the game began: the lies, the constant dodging of identifying information. He'd had to play it before, many times. It was a lesson he learned his freshman year of college, thanks to a guy named Kent. It could be called fear, and that would not be entirely wrong. Needless to say, Stiles did what he had to do. Or at least what he thought he had to do.
Stiles shook the thoughts from his head and changed into his gym clothes.
-X-X-X-X-
"Should I feel bad?" Stiles said as he played with his own fingers.
Allison sat across the table from him. Her eyes were fixated on the book and papers in front of her. She did not respond. Stiles looked up from his intertwined fingers and scoffed.
"Um, hello, ranting here. Attention must be paid."
Allison looked up, "I'm cold."
Stiles eyed her, "And I'm talking."
"Give me your hoodie."
Stiles shook his head, "You have to listen to me to get it."
"You have to give it to me for me to listen," Allison grinned and held out her hand.
Stiles grunted and took off the solid white Georgia Bulldog hoodie. He passed it to Allison, who put it on immediately. It was much too big for her, but she wrapped up in it and leaned forward.
"You have my attention."
Stiles nodded, "So I told this guy last night that my name was Scott."
Allison rolled her eyes, "And why?"
Stiles shrugged, "Because I didn't want to risk him finding me."
"By knowing your first name?"
"Facebook is a deadly weapon."
"How many times have you talked to him?"
"Twice."
"You're stupid," Allison grinned and looked back down at her books, "there's no reason to lie to a guy you haven't really talked to."
"I've been doing this for a lot longer than you," Stiles said, "people find ways to find you. Kent found me!"
Allison took in a sharp breath, "Baby, you talked to Kent for three months before he found you, and that's because you let him. Not every guy online is an asocial crazy person who thinks that all gay guys owe him a courtesy f—"
"Rant much?" Stiles interrupted. Allison had been growing a bit loud. They were sitting together at a table in the middle of the Student Learning Center, a four-floor study room/class room/computer lab where most students went to study.
"All I'm saying is that every guy isn't gonna be like Kent," Allison said. She reached across the table and grabbed Stiles's hands, "You need to either lighten up or find a new way to meet guys. This pathological lying isn't healthy."
"Am I a liar though?"
"You lied to a guy you barely know about your first name, that counts as a lie." Allison shrugged, "But at least you feel bad about it."
"Yeah, I just wish I had a better way to meet—"
"Hola papi!" exclaimed Maria as she sat her laptop down next to Stiles.
"—study partners! Meet study partners is what I do, or need to…" Stiles tried to smile to cover up his word jumble. Maria just shook her head.
"Que pasa?" She asked. Her expression quickly turned awkward when she saw that Allison was holding Stiles' hands.
Allison jerked her hand away from Stiles' and tucked them into the hoodie pockets.
"Mind if I sit here?" asked a medium-height boy standing by Allison.
"Oh," Maria shook her head, "this is a friend of mine, I'm tutoring him in Spanish."
Allison replied, "Yeah, I was actually just leaving. I have an 8 am in the morning."
Maria's friend sat down and nodded, "Good luck with that. I haven't had an 8 am since I was a freshman."
Stiles' phone, which had been sitting silent on the table, began to vibrate. He picked it up and glanced at everyone else, "It's Lydia." He grabbed his book and car keys, "it was nice to meet you." He said to Maria's friend.
"Hey babe," he said into the phone as he began to walk off.
"Stiles," Allison whispered, "your hoodie?"
"Give it to me tomorrow," Stiles replied as he rushed away.
"Okay, thanks," she said and then whispered to herself, "for leaving me alone to enjoy the awkward moment." Allison knew Maria and Laura through Stiles, and both of them knew he was dating Lydia. She was not close with Maria by any means, which meant Maria could easily jump to conclusions about her and Stiles' relationship: especially after seeing them holding hands.
"Speaking of meeting people," Allison said, "I never got your name."
She looked at the boy. He was far beyond cute, the most appropriate word would be gorgeous. He had dark hair, facial stubble, perfect teeth, and a nice body. Allison considered asking for his number.
"I'm Derek," he smiled, "nice to meet you—"
"—Allison," she nodded and looked to Maria, "I could use a little help with Spanish too if you have the time. Can I Facebook you?"
"Definitely," Maria nodded, "you can join us anytime."
"Thanks!" Allison grabbed her things, "Sorry I have to run. Ya'll have a good night!"
As soon as Allison walked off Maria leaned over the table toward Derek, "So you saw the hand-holding right? Did that seem weird to you? Did they have a spark?"
Derek opened his Spanish book and smiled, "Si, si, y si." Jordan shrugged, "Maybe they're dating."
"Oh, no," Maria whipped out her cell phone, "he has a girlfriend and that's not her. I have to call Laura."
"What about studying?"
"Gossip is more important," Maria insisted, a bit too seriously, "I'll only be a second."
"I doubt it," Derek grinned to himself as he began reading.