“Psychology is the science of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As a social science, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups…”
“Is this going to get exciting?” Nehru whispered, sitting low in his seat.
“Well, this is the very first class,” Rob said. “Let’s give it a try.”
The professor continued,
“A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as social, behavioral, or cognitive scientists. Some psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior. Others explore the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors…”
“I don’t know,” Nehru sighed, stretching his blue jean encased thighs in front of him. “I’ve given a lot of my time to being bored in classes, and I vowed I’d never be bored again.”
“Hell of a vow,” Rob smirked.
“Psychologists are involved in research on perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, subjective
experiences, motivation, brain functioning, and personality.
Psychologists' interests extend to interpersonal
relationships, psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas within social psychology. …”
“I feel,” Nehru stopped drawing spirals in his notebook, “like I might want to take actual notes this semester.”
Rob looked outside. The early evening was going from grey to grey blue and he whispered, “Should we get burgers after this?”
“Would yawl please—” Anigel hissed, “shut the fuck up?”
“Thank you,” the professor said, “thank you for that spirited request for quiet.”
Anigel blinked.
“I am so…”
“Enthusiastic,” her new professor said, “Your name is?”
“Anigel. Anigel Reyes.”
“Anigel Reyes. Welcome to my class. I look forward to getting to know you.”
“And you slept with this Jason again?” Chayne said.
“Yes,” Russell said. “Only, I thought I was seeing Flipper. I mean, I am seeing Flipper.”
“The boy from Ross’s college.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Chayne said, exhaling cigarette smoke.
“Well is right.”
“So, we’re talking about you with this Jason or you with this twenty year old.”
“When you put it that way…”
“The way I wish,” Chayne said, “is that it was no way.”
“I kind of side with that myself. But Flipper feels real. And Flupper feels sensible.”
“Only Flipper doesn’t live here.”
“Right?”
“How often can you see him?” Chayne asked.
“If I’m lucky, once a month.”
“And Jason’s right down the street.”
Russell echoed, “And Jason’s right down the street.”
“Do you….” Chayne thought, “have any clarification with Flipper about the nature of your relationship?”
“We didn’t really call it anything. That’s just it. I don’t even know if I’m assuming anything.”
“You’ve decided to be a grown up now, so let’s be real. If you’re with Jason it’s highly unlikely that a twenty something year old living at college who has a sexual history is sleeping alone either.”
“Should we talk about it.”
“You should be a teenager and live your life and not be tangled in relationships like a fly in a spiderweb.”
“But I am.”
“Well, in that case, you should do the thing that makes you feel the most honest, and whatever you think is the most helpful.”
“Chayne, can I tell you the truth and you not judge?”
“Probably not, but I’ll wear a poker face so it will seem like I’m impartial.”
“Good enough,” Russell decided, then said, “Jason will never be a proper boyfriend, and I’ll never be properly in love with him, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep sleeping with him.”
Russell sipped from his coffee, then said, “Isn’t that the most fucked up thing you’ve ever heard?”
“Nehru, Brad and Cody have a three way relationship and they’re all sleeping together,” Chayne said.
Russell sprayed coffee across the kitchen table. His mouth hung open.
“See,” Chayne said. “You’re not the only one with secrets. Now, get a wet cloth and wipe off my table.”
“Ani, it’s for you,” Chayne said when she walked through the door.
Anigel walked to the phone while Nehru and Rob put down their bags.
“Hello?”
“Ani?”
“Cameron?”
Cameron let out an angry scream, and Anigel held the phone away from her ear.
“What the fuck?”
“Do you know who was at my father’s house? Our house?”
“The car that was waiting when I got there?”
“Yes.”
“A LYNN.”
“What the fuck is a Lynn?”
“A Lynn,” Cameron began, “is the twenty-three year old slut my father has been fucking for months. He tried to make it sounds like it just miraculously started after Mom ended things, but a LYNN—”
“Hold on,” Anigel said.
“Chayne?”
“Um hum?”
“Did you know that Bill Dwyer was having an affair?”
“Oh, you mean the health spa he was going to all the time—”
“The health spa!” Cameron shrieked on the other end of the phone. “The goddamn health spa! I knew it.
“And that’s not all. He asked if maybe Lynn could move into the house!”
“Oh.”
“There must have been something in my face,” Cameron said, darkly, “that told them that was a definite no go.”
Anigel heard an intake of breath and said, “Please don’t scream.”
“Sorry, I’ll do it away from the phone.”
Cameron gave a long and thankfully muffled scream, and then said, “Thank you.”
“Cam, would you like to come over here?”
“Do you see how crowded this house is?” Chayne began.
“No,” Cameron said. “This is my home, and I have to live in it. This is my fucking family, so…. All sorts of goodies are supposed to be happening this week. I’m going to talk to Mom and Niall’s going to talk to Dad and we’re going to have some sort of coming together.”
“That could be…” Anigel searched for the lie, “healing?”
“No,” Cameron said, “it couldn’t.”
“You pick me up from class, whisk me away in your car and bring me here,” Nehru said, looking around the restaurant. “It’s like a date or something.”
“It is a date,” Brad told him as he unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “And we’re going to be doing a lot more of this a lot more often.”
The waitress arrived and asked what they would have to drink.
“I’ll just have water,” Nehru said.
“Could you just bring us a pitcher?” Brad asked, and the waitress said she could. “And I’ll take a Heineken and I’m going to get a strawberry margarita for my friend here.”
The woman nodded, and as she left Brad said, “I told you, this is a date.”
“You don’t have a lot of money.”
“I have enough money to take you to a medium class restaurant,” Brad said.
“Accepted,” Nehru said.
“Out of all the things you can fight me on, don’t fight me about wanting to be good to you.”
“I won’t. But you will help me eat the tandoori chicken?”
“Agreed. Now what else looks good?”
“Butter chicken. It’s been a long time. Chicken korma looks good too.”
“I was actually getting that. Why don’t we just split our plates?
“Fair.”
“And lamb biryani?”
“I was afraid of lamb,” Nehru said. “But I like it now. “Lamb biryani it is. Garlic naan.”
“Garlic naan, yes.”
The server returned with the water pitcher, and when he had poured two glasses and left after promsing drinks were on the way, Brad said, “I have a surprise, and I hope you liked it?”
“Oh?”
“Cause it’s paid for.”
Nehru raised a cautious eyebrow and said, “Well, then I love it.”
“You know that semi fancy B and B by the lake?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going tonight. I already got an overnight bag packed for you.”
“Does Cody know?”
“Cody suggested it. I told him how I needed to treat you special, and he said before I could that we needed time together, and this was a good place to be.”
“Well… yes,” Nehru said “It is.”
“It seems like this whole relationship has been uncommon. Thank you—” Brad said at the server brought his beer and Nehru’s margarita. “But at the end of the day you’re mine, and I want you to know that. Know how I feel. I want us to have the time together we need.”
“And on the lake?”
“I know how much you love Lake Michigan in March.”
Nehru laughed. “You’re joking, but I do. I’ll walk it this evening after dinner. You’ll walk it with me?”
Not caring what anyone thought—it was the year 2000 after all, Brad Long reached across the table and squeezed Nehru’s hand.
“Sir,” he said, “I will walk anywhere with you.”
It was not nearly as cold as Nehru thought it would be, and he wouldn’t have been able to stay away from the lake even if it was. The sun was staying up longer, and the water was a deep grey blue reflecting the sky. The sand was flat and hard packed after the winter and he and Brad stepped around piles of seaweed. He remembered a day only last summer when they had walked Silver Beach and Brad had talked about Debbie and how that relationship wasn’t working out, and now that all seemed so far away. When he stepped into a dibbit, Brad caught his hand and helped him out Nehru laughed. They walked along the shore, watching, and watched the white thumbprint of a young moon come up where the sun had disappeared.
“We should write a song about this,” Brad said.
“I don’t know if I have a song in me at this moment. I don’t want to think about lyrics. I just want us to be right here.”
The small waves washed the sand then fell back, lazy. There was no wind tonight, no sound really, and Brad thought how the moon would be full in a few days and he felt full already, incredibly happy to be with the person he cared for most in this world. He had never felt so much himself, and he loved their life over the Noble Red, and he loved everyone in that life, but just to be here with Nehru was:
“Not a dream come true?”
“Huh?”
“I was thinking of how being with you isn’t a dream come true, because I didn’t really have the courage or the imagination to dream it.”
That heated Nehru all over and moved him in a place between his heart and his loins. Brad was his best friend, and here they were, watching the moon rise and the night become itself, the first stars slowly prick the night sky. When Brad stood behind him now and wrapped his arms around him now, pressed his chin on his shoulder, Nehru knew they would go back to the car soon, touching hands, and soon they would be in their room again.
His love for Nehru was solid and firm, literally. Thinking about how much he loved him, how tender he felt for him, made him swell in his pants. Often his dick hurt he cared so much for him, and this had never been the way he’d felt for anyone.
Brad tries to keep his foot from pounding the gas while they drive back to the bed and breakfast where they will enter the common room that used to be a living room and wave politely to the people there. They will say nice things to the old woman at the desk, and if someone is sitting in the reading room, they might say hello as well. While Brad is driving, his mind is already to them walking upstairs, slowly, to the third floor where there are no neighbors at this time of year. He isn’t made of money, but in March, with few visitors, he takes the suite with two adjoining rooms, not, of course because they will need two rooms, which is probably what those old people two floors below think, but because of the space, and because of the privacy.
While the moon rises to their right over the trees that are between them and the lake, Brad is already in the hotel room with the curtains open to see the moon making a silver path on the water. He’s already with Nehru who lay across the bed, but has risen to arch his back, and by the light of one lamp, the gentle entry becomes slow pushing in and pushing out, becomes the frantic, then slow, then quick, and them timeless rhythm of sex.
They lay naked together, Nehru on his side and Brad, worn out from the intensity of their sudden sex, and comfortable in their love, lay face down while Nehru ran a hand over his shoulders, his back, caressed his ass, stretched to brush his long thighs. He still throbbed with the feeling of Brad inside of him, a feeling which he never got over. Brad was so tender to him, so loving, Nehru marveled over those moments when they had both let go and Brad became the piston, the two hundred pound engine slamming into him, when he could feel the surrender to desire in Brad and it was his surrender too.
They didn’t speak. There was no need. They had been talking for years. They relished the freedom of being in a place where they didn’t even need to close the curtains on the black night. Nehru got up to smoke, and he handed Brad his pack. Before long they would fuck again. At three in the morning, Nehru would lay on his side and think of how beautiful Brad looked, perched naked on the edge of the bed, cigarette dangling from his lip while he scribbled notes to a new song. At three-thirty, Brad would lay flat on his stomach and groan in contentment while Nehru fucked him. They would sleep. At five-thirty Brad would sit on the side of the bed while, on his knees, Nehru sucked his cock, always marveling at how it seemed to grow and fill his mouth more and more. They would do this all night. Each time would take them to something new. The thoughts that moved through them were not forbidden, would come out by morning. That it was good to be alone together. That it was wonderful when Cody was here, and despite all things they didn’t want to get rid of him, that Cody still loved Russell and was still touched by loneliness. That a baby was coming, and that more than fear, Brad was filled with joy and wanted Nehru to be as well. That they would be a family, and what a strange family.
In the blackness of six a.m., when they had finally turned off the light, and they both throbbed with the penetration of the other, when they were like lazy spiders stretched out on the great rumpled bed smelling of men, they traced circles and shapes on each others’ skin and Nehru murmured: “What a family we will be. What a family indeed.”
