Good morning friends and readers! Today I have a special post for you- the second episode of my new Story Orgy story! There'll be 2 more "catch up" posts this week, then I'll be on track next Monday. Yesterday we got to see a lot of Izzy- now let's take a look at him from his roommate's perspective.
Mum's the Word
Chapter Two
Aug 10: He yearned for it.
“Hey, Izzy?” Wiping damp palms down the sides of his beige Dockers, Owen paused in the middle of Warburton Hall, the history wing of Mid-State U. The building smelled like history… and floor wax. Built in the twenties, back when it was a “normal school” whose sole purpose was turning out black teachers, it had been the one of six original campus buildings. Now that segregation was a thing of the past, and all black or all white colleges with it, the campus had grown to over twenty buildings spread over a nearly mile square campus. The newer buildings housed colleges of business, political science, medicine, and computer science. Fusty old fashioned subjects like history, archeology and literature were relegated to the old buildings with their plaster walls and marble floors and narrow, high ceilinged corridors. Owen kind of liked them better than the huge generic classrooms where his freshman classes… like civics and biology, had been housed.
“Ahem.”
He realized that Izzy had stopped walking and was staring at him, one thick black brow raised in demand. He was looking particularly geeky in a navy blue suit with one of those fancy designer brands. Not like Owen, who considered his own button down oxford and dockers to be “extra-effort” clothes.
Swallowing and wiping his hands again, Owen quashed the unaccustomed trepidation that had made him stall right outside their new boss’s office. “What do you call a mummy who wins the lottery?” He threw out the corny joke and the black brow dropped.
Izzy gave a patient sigh, shrugged his thin shoulders, flipped a lock of black hair over his shoulder… he really should have gotten it cut before the meeting, but Owen was kind of glad he hadn’t because he liked Izzy with long hair. It softened … no, more like outlined his features, framing his eyes and cheekbones, making his pale skin dramatic and more than pretty. Like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park… intelligent and sexy only without the big nose and curly hair… and maybe not so much like Jeff Goldblum at all. Except that smart turned Owen on, and--
“I don’t know, Owen.”
“A lucky stiff.”
“Ha ha.” Izzy snorted with laughter, the laugh that had turned them from suspicious new roommates into friends for life back in their freshman year.
Owen felt a pang of regret over that. They could have been so much more. In hindsight he saw that clearly, but Owen Nichols at seventeen had a chip on his shoulder the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and Izzy at nineteen had screamed over-privileged youth with his four hundred dollar jeans and three hundred dollar shoes. At times, Owen yearned for the opportunity to start things over between them, but too much time had passed for that.
The pig-snort laughter had broken that ice, but it had taken years for Owen to see past the rest. And moments like these, when Izzy looked dashing and scholarly in a fine suit and Owen felt like a cheap knock-off, they made him realize that chip wasn’t any smaller than it had been, he had just learned to bear its weight better with Izzy at his side. “I don’t feel adequately dressed.” He confessed in a mumble.
“I told you so.” Izzy’s eyes narrowed as they looked Owen over critically from head to toe. “You should have let me buy you that suit last spring.”
“And wear a winter suit in the fall?” It had been a clearance sale at Brooks Brothers. Izzy had gloated over the forty percent off offer, and his mother had obligingly ordered three suits for her son, pleased that he was “living up to the standard expected in the Waters household”.
“It was forty percent and we’ll need suits for interviews when we get our doctorates. No one is going to hire a professor in dockers.” The words stung, but Izzy’s hands were gentle as he brushed Owen’s hair back from his brow. “Okay. This is what we’re gonna do.”
Izzy stripped off his jacket, revealing a crisp white dress shirt. He held out the jacket to Owen who shook his head.
“I can’t wear that.” Izzy was narrow of shoulder and hip, a long lean line of a man whereas Owen was broad shouldered and thick, muscled, not fat. He’d earned his way into college playing sports and it showed.
Blue eyes rolled in mockery as Izzy loosened his tie, making himself look more casual. “I know that. You’d bust out the seams. Just drape it over your shoulder like you took it off because it’s too hot. No one will get a good enough look at it to tell that it’s not yours.”
“Oh… Yeah. Okay. I can do that.” Owen hooked the jacket with one finger and tossed it over his shoulder. He still felt like an idiot who was dressed for an interview at a sporting goods store instead of a professional position on a college campus, but Izzy was on his side and he wasn’t going in there alone, so …
“Let’s do this.” He rapped sharply on the door, stiffening his spine when an accented voice called out in response.
“Enter.”
Only it sounded more like eenter, or something. Dragging in a last, calming breath, heart beating, Owen glanced over at Izzy, who was mouthing the word silently, an intrigued expression knit his brows together. Izzy always had liked accents. Half his boyfriends in the time Owen had known him had accents. Nigel, the British boy from freshman year who wrote truly awful poetry; Ricky the Australian swimmer who screamed during intimate moments, Li-Yeun the Vietnamese physics student a quiet cypher of a boy who’d never once met Owen’s eyes during the time he’d been sleeping with Izzy, a red -headed Irishman whose name Owen never could remember who was only around on weekends, and most recently the video game obsessed Mitch, whose deep south drawl had intrigued Owen too.
Great. Now he’d get to work for the man and watch Izzy flirt with him too?
If you enjoyed my post, click on over to the rest of the Orgiasts and read more!
Interesting contrast between Owen and Izzy. I hope they can find a way back to their physical intimacies from the first chapter, I think they're made for each other.
ReplyDelete