Turned By His Roommate

Kyle Bennett is straight.

He's eighteen, six foot, four-three forty time, hands like glue, and a freshman scholarship to one of the biggest football programmes in the country. He has a mother in Knoxville who cried when she dropped him off, three high school girlfriends in the rear-view, a future that stretches out like a highway, and a quiet, certain knowledge of who he is.

Kyle Bennett is straight. He knows this the way he knows his own name.

He's also, as of this afternoon, sharing a two-bedroom suite with Dwayne Mathis.

Senior. Linebacker. Six foot five, two hundred and sixty pounds. Three-year starter, projected first round pick, the sort of player ESPN flies in to do features on. The mentor program paired them up. Show the freshman the ropes. Keep him out of trouble.

Dwayne Mathis is on the couch when Kyle walks in. Stretched out. SportsCenter on low. Grey cotton shorts, no shirt, no socks, a body that looks carved rather than built, and a smile like a man who has been expecting him.

You must be Kyle. Come in, kid. Drop your shit.

By Tuesday, Dwayne is naked on the couch eating eggs at ten in the morning. By Wednesday, he's naked at the kitchen island. By Friday he's naked everywhere, all the time, ten inches soft and unhurried, walking past Kyle in the kitchen like it's nothing because for him it is nothing. Bodies are bodies. The apartment is his apartment. And Kyle, fully clothed and very straight and very, very careful about where his eyes go, is finding the careful where his eyes go to be a full-time job.

Through the wall at night, the women come and go. Volleyball coaches. Phone calls. A girl Kyle never sees but whose noises he will hear in his sleep for the rest of the semester. Dwayne's voice underneath all of it, low and patient and unhurried, calling them good girl through plasterboard so thin Kyle might as well be in the room.

And the hand on the back of Kyle's neck after practice, firm and warm and brief. The locker room glance that lasts a second too long. The two words that follow him out the door on the morning of his first home game like a brand pressed into his sternum.

Good boy.

Kyle Bennett is straight. He knows this.

He also knows the quarterback was Dwayne's roommate last year. He knows what he walked in on in the living room on a Wednesday afternoon. He knows what Dwayne said afterwards, calm and patient and certain, sipping his protein shake.

You're on month one, kid. And you're ahead of schedule.

Turned By His Roommate is a slow, smoky, devastating story about a boy who knows exactly who he is, a man who has all the time in the world, and the thin wall between them that was never going to hold.