"So, as long as we keep it quiet, everything will be okay?"

"They don't care as long as we don't make an issue of it. We make an issue of it, they'll drum us out on honor code. Period."

I sighed. "I suppose." I stood up. "I'm glad we talked."

"So am I." he looked over at me. "You want to come down later and-um." He hesitated.

"I can think of nothing I would rather do." I walked over and kissed the top of his head. "I've missed you, too."

"Are we good now?"

I nodded.

"You don't have to go, if you don't want to." He cleared his throat. "I'd like it if you stayed ..."

I got up and walked over to where he was sitting, and knelt down in between his legs. I leaned into him and pressed my mouth against his, and he let out that low moan I'd missed hearing from down in his throat. I slid my tongue into his mouth and he started sucking on it as his hands went down and undid my jeans. He slid a hand inside my pants and started gently rubbing the head of my cock. I slid my mouth down to his right nipple and started teasing it with my lips and my tongue, and his head went back. With my righ hand I grabbed hold of his hard-on through his sweat pants.

"Oh, God, Jeff, I've missed you so much..." he whispered. He pushed me away, and stood up, sliding his sweatpants down and stepping out of them. I smiled and pulled my shirt up over my head. Immediately he put his mouth on my nipples as I slid my pants down, and began nibbling first on the right one, before moving over to the left. My cock was ready to explode. He pushed me back down on the bed and took my cock in his mouth, sliding his mouth up and down on me. It felt so amazing. I just tilted my head back and gave in to the sensation of his warm wet mouth on my cock. He nibbled on the head a bit, teasing it with his teeth and then licking it until I thought I was going to explode. My entire body began to arch up-and then he put his hands on my stomach and smiled at me. "Oh no, not yet, my love." He slid a condom on over me, straddling me. I reached up and started playing with his nipples. His breath started coming in gasps as he lowered himself down on me, and began riding me.

I'd missed being inside him. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have my cock in his ass, and I started bucking my hips up. I loved him so much, I wanted us to be joined, I wanted my cock to go as far inside of him as I could get it. I always felt so much closer to him when we were fucking ... and he was smiling at me until his eyes closed in pleasure and the moans started coming from deep inside his chest.

After we both came, he lay down beside me on the bed, our arms around each other. I could hear him breathing, could hear his heartbeat, and it was almost as though our hearts were beating in sync with one another.

This is love, and there's no way this could be wrong, I told myself before I finally closed my eyes and went to sleep.

So, we patched up our problems and fell back into our old routine-spending a lot of time together, furtively making love whenever we got the chance.

And what he said finally started making some sense to me. I went over to my parents' house a couple of times for dinner, steeling myself on the drive over to have The Talk, and found that when I was looking at them across the dinner table I couldn't do it. There's a lot you don't know about beinggay, I thought to myself one night as I headed back to the house after chickening out again, and outside of Blair, you really don't have anyone you can talk to about it. Obviously, I couldn't join the Gay Student Group on campus-maybe after I outed myself to the Brotherhood, but surely not until then. So, I made up a new email address, and started posting questions about being gay on groups all over the Internet. I wanted to know what other people thought about the situation I found myself in, and wasn't prepared for the responses I got to my posts.

Some were angry:

By staying in the closet, you're telling your fraternity brothers they're right to discriminate against other gay people and it's okay to be homophobic. By staying in the closet and not being yourself you're harming other openly gay college students. People like your fraternity brothers think it's okay to hate gay people because they think they don't know any-but they really do.

Are you proud of yourself? Does it feel good to live a lie? Why would you want to befriends with people who wouldn't like you if they knew who you really were?

And others were supportive:

Don't listen to people who want to insult you or berate you for living your life the way you chose to. They don't know what your life is like or anything about who you are or what you're going through unless they've been in the same exact situation. Coming out of the closet is difficult for anyone, no matter who they are, and it sounds to me like you're getting to the point where you are going to be ready to-but you aren't there yet, otherwise you wouldn't be questioning the decision. When you're ready, it will feel right and you will know it. Don't be bullied into something you aren't ready for yet.

Hang in there!

It wasn't much help, frankly.

So I pretty much just focused on studying, spending time with Blair, and being a good big brother to Mike. I still was incredibly attracted to him-who wouldn't be? But it was pretty apparent that Mike was a straight boy, and not one of those who was a little on the frisky side after a six pack or so. I also didn't feel right about trying to take advantage of him when he was drunk-he was such a sweet guy. He never had anything bad to say about anyone, and even when he was hanging out with me and Blair, smoking pot and drinking beer, and we'd say shit about other brothers, he could always find something nice to say about them. And after he would go back to his apartment, Blair would just look at me and say, "He's almost too nice to be real, isn't he?"

I would just laugh, and then we'd start kissing, and forget all about him.

Life was good, I guess, but I still wasn't comfortable lying to the Brotherhood.

But I was pretty sure the right time would come.

The semester seemed to fly by, much quicker than I would have ever thought possible. Blair wanted me to come spend the summer with him in Los Angeles-his father was going to be in southeast Asia somewhere making a movie, and his mother was doing a play in London. "I am not spending the summer in London," he said after he got off the phone with her. He gave me a crooked grin. "I am not going all summer without seeing you."

He got a big kiss for that.

And I felt a lot better about everything. My grades were high, I actually liked my classes-especially my Fiction Writing class, and for Spring Break, Blair and I planned on going down to Palm Springs to stay at his dad's again. "I'm not making another movie," I said with a laugh when he first suggested the trip.

"As if I would let you!" He grinned back at me. "I'm not going to go through that again."

On the Friday morning before spring break started, there was a knock on my door. "It's open!" I called out from my desk. I was trying to finish writing a short story that was due to my creative writing class the Monday after spring break. I wanted to have it finished so I wouldn't have to worry about it over the break. I looked up. "Oh, hey, Marc."

Marc Kearney came in and shut the door behind. "Are you busy?"

I had maybe another five hundred words to add to the story, but that probably wouldn't take a lot of time to do. "Nothing that can't keep for a bit. What's going on?"