Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,6
on his face told her where she could stick the idea.
But he loved his parents. They were good parents. They just wanted him to be happy, and Avery was, in general, an easy person to please.
He got into a state school with ease because he didn’t graduate at the bottom of his class. Grants and some scholarship for being gay and Jewish came easy, and while they haven’t covered the cost of living in the dorms, they pay for most of his books with a little extra left over so he can get double toppings on his pizza for a few weeks.
He takes both Latin and Greek and ignores people saying that a doctorate in Classics means he’s going to be earning minimum wage teaching Roman History 101 at the community college for the rest of his life. He works at the Taco Stand to pay his share of the shithole three-bedroom apartment he found listed by a couple of stoners on craigslist. On weekends he does fundraisers because he wants the Classics Club to afford their senior trip to Crete.
And that’s life for the first three years of college.
It’s simple. He’s simple. He’s gay, he’s attractive, he hooks up on occasion. He got decent sex ed so he always uses a condom and he never skips his PrEP. He’s had his dick swabbed enough times that the pinch of cotton up his pee-hole doesn’t bother him much anymore, and he was even on first-name basis with the clinic staff for his sophomore year, during what he liked to think of as his college sexual peak.
He wants to fall in love someday, though, and do all that hetero-normative shit like buy a house and have a job and dress their dog up for Pride. But he’s barely twenty, and he doesn’t need that shit for a long, long while.
What he wants is maybe a promotion to shift manager and to be able to afford more than ramen and Kraft mac and cheese. He wants an apartment with a functional water heater and to not have to trudge downtown in the winter to wash his clothes at the Coin-Op. What he wants is hope that he’s not going to have to give up his dreams because he wasn’t some asshole rich kid born with a silver spoon lodged so far up his ass he can eat with it.
And as though the universe or Hashem or something is answering his prayers… he gets Alejandro.
It’s hindsight that tells him he probably should have looked this gift-horse in the mouth—he’s a classical historian after all, he knows better. He knows that with power comes a price, but the man and his offer are so impossible to resist that he decides to put both heart and dignity on the line.
He meets him as fall is creeping into winter when the Classics Club is hosting a car wash in the KFC parking lot. His co-president Shanice was the one who came up with the idea because even in the dead of winter, people still wanted fried chicken, and they might be willing to kick a few bucks to some pathetic looking students standing out there with a bucket and a hose.
The entire club balks at the idea, but Shanice is also his friend so he backs her and tells the club if they want even a prayer of being able to bask in the warm waters of the Mediterranean and get their hands in some sweet, sweet artifacts, they have to pull their weight. So they do, grudgingly, and to make sure it doesn’t look like he’s taking advantage, he’s right out there with them.
It’s freezing outside, and he’s soaking wet, and his shirt is see-through and the tips of his fingers are blue. They’re washing with Dawn because no one had the cash for anything else, but the three people so far who stopped in don’t seem to give a shit that it’s not actual soap for cars.
He’s busy trying figure out a way to make the water from the hose come out a little warmer when a car screeches to a halt so close to him he feels the wind swish by. He stands up, indignant, ready to tear this guy a new asshole, but the words die on his tongue because the man is possibly the best-looking stranger Avery has ever seen in his life.
He’s tall—God, he’s so tall. He’s broad with big shoulders and grey at his temples, though the rest of