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Never had Joseph felt as lonely as the afternoon that he arrived in Cambridge. The months of therapy had resigned him to the fact that he might never reconcile with Max. He found his way to the Harvard campus, checked in, located his dorm, unloaded his stuff into his room and then parked his car in the off-campus lot designated for freshman.

He forced himself to feel more upbeat as he strolled back across the campus. It was difficult. He'd been so excited a few months ago when he and Max were planning on living together off campus… but one drug befogged fuck had ruined all those dreams. He thought it ironic that he had no memory of what it had been like fucking Allen, but the memory of seeing the stricken look on Max's face was forever burned into his brain. The emotional anguish he'd experienced in that moment, he'd forever feel.

Reliving it had thoroughly depressed him by the time he'd reached his room. As he opened his door he decided to throw himself on his unmade bed and just vegetate for a while, but that decision flew when he opened the door and knocked his new roommate on his butt.

"Didn't you ever hear of knocking before entering someone's room?" his roommate growled, getting to his feet.

Joseph backed up and looked at the fellow that was berating him. He faced a young man built like a football jock, as tall as himself, and just as muscular. A couple of strands of his longish dusty blonde hair hung over his forehead touching his left eyebrow. His deep blue eyes glinted with anger at the indignity of having to pick himself up off the floor. The anger accented the angularity of his features. Joseph fleetingly thought him handsome, in a swashbuckling way.

Joseph couldn't help but chuckle, even though he was still half into his melancholy mood and resented the intrusion, as he replied, "I didn't know that was the custom here on entering one's own room. I'm sorry. Next time I'll knock." He pushed past the fellow and flopped on the bed he'd chosen.

"That's my bed."

Joseph's anger flared as he rose up supporting himself on his elbows. "Wrong... I arrived first. I picked this bed," he snapped, and then sweetly said, "if you're planning on sleeping in it, it will have to be with me, but you'll have to drop the attitude." He wondered at himself. It had been months since he'd verbally jousted with anyone except Dr. Chestnut his psychiatrist.

"Damned freshman faggot," the fellow muttered and started to turn away.

Joseph leaped off the bed, grabbed him by the front of his blue chambray dress shirt and pulled him up to his chest so they were nose to nose. "I don't know what your problem is, but if you want to live, you'll never use that word in my presence again." He suddenly realized he was enjoying feeling angry, instead of feeling sorry and apologetic.

"Touchy, are we?" his new roommate asked, attempting to pull away from him.

"Did you understand what I said?" Joseph yanked him back.

"What's not to understand? You don't like being called a damned freshman."

Joseph found that funny. Laughing, he let go of the guy, his anger gone as quickly as it had appeared. "I think I'm going to like you, smart ass. I'm Joseph Darcy."

He held out his hand to the nonplussed fellow who, for a moment, looked at it like it was a snake, and then grinned as he grasped it. "I'm William Waverley Weber. My jock buddies call me Dot. My other friends call me Com. You can call me Will."

Joseph took a second to catch the play on his initials and grinned. "Nah, in keeping with the rest, I'll just call you Web."

Web grinned back. "Hey, I like that. You're not just a pretty boy, you're really quick-witted."

Bobbing his head once with a raised eyebrow, Joseph thanked him. "Now to settle the matter of the beds... since all your junk is piled on the bed I really chose...."

"I'll get it off." Web started transferring the stuff to the other bed while Joseph laughed.

"Oh, never mind," Joseph said, "I think I still want this one."

Web looked at Joseph with mayhem in his eyes. "Make up your mind. You can't have both of them, and I'm not sleeping with you."

"Well, in that case, I guess you have to sleep in that bed," he said, pointing at the one still piled with Web's stuff.

"Why? I thought you wanted it."

"No, no, I want this one." He patted the bed he lay on.

"But I want that one."

"Sorry, I already told you the conditions."

"Look, Joe..."

"My name is Joseph."

They belligerently stared at each other a moment, and then Web said, "As I was saying, Joe..." Joseph closed his eyes and counted to ten. He opened them to Web's victorious grin. "As I was saying, I'm not gay."

"Are you intimating that I am?" Joseph asked.

"Well, you are the one that invited me into your bed."

"You pompous ass. I did not. I said that the only way you're sleeping in this bed is with me in it, because this is where I'll be sleeping."

Web shrugged and turned back to putting his stuff away. Joseph lay back and watched him. Working as if he were the only one in the room, he opened a suitcase, laid the top layer of clothes to the side and picked up two framed photos. Kissing one of them, he placed them side by side on his desk. Joseph sat up to look at them. One, a close up of a beautiful girl with blonde hair, the other, a handsome dark haired Adonis in a swimsuit poised on a diving board. Joseph could have sworn it was the photo of the diver that Web kissed. He lay back, wondering if he could have been wrong.

His thoughts, as they always did, strayed to the situation with Max. 'School starts in a couple of days. I'm going to have to start concentrating on my classes and put Max in the back of my mind. Besides, I am through groveling. He knows I love him. He's going to have to decide if he wants me. I hope Tim and Dave are right, that Max will rethink his attitudes. I wonder if I'm going to spend the rest of my life regretting those few minutes. I wonder if Allen regrets it as much as I do. It sure changed the course of his life. I hope it was for the better, even if he was the.....' His thought was interrupted by Web shaking his shoulder.

"Joe... Joe... Man, do you space out like that often? You looked like you were asleep, but your eyes were open."

Joseph blinked. "I'm sorry, were you saying something?"

"I asked if you wanted to go out and get some lunch with me."

"Uh, sure. Do you know of someplace nearby? I've already parked my car in the off-campus lot."

"Mine's still downstairs. I figured we could eat somewhere, then park it with yours and walk back after."

"Sounds like a plan." Joseph said, stretching and then getting up. "Man, I could use a nap."

"Where'd you drive in from? You're definitely not a Yankee."

"I spent four days in New York City. Mom and Dad flew out and met me there. We went to a Broadway play every night. I left there this morning around four."

"You made good time. What do you drive?" Web asked, as he pulled the door open and motioned for Joseph to precede him.

"I had a little 1998 Bimmer. I gave it to my little brother when my uncles gave me a Miata for graduation."

"Uncles?"

Joseph shrugged. "Well, Joe is actually my uncle, but I consider Dave as much my uncle as if they were married."

"Gay uncles?"

Joseph shrugged and said, "Yeah," as if it were no big deal. He pushed the outside door open and motioned for Web to go through.

"Okay." Web said, and headed for the parking lot. The conversation stalled until they were both strapped into Web's little 1998 BMW.

"This is in a lot better condition than mine was."

"Well, Dad told me when he gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday that my next car I have to pay for myself, so I've taken really good care of it."

"Do you have younger siblings?"

"Siblings?" Web asked derisively. "You mean brothers and sisters?"

"Geez, it's only a seven letter word."

Web laughed.

"So, do you?"

"I've got two older sibling ettes." Web said with a straight face, and then burst out laughing again.

Joseph shook his head and stared in exasperation.

Still grinning, Web glanced at him. "What?"

"You're a chauvinist moron," Joseph stated.

"I was just yanking your chain."

In a New Orleans drawl that he'd picked up listening to his grandmother, Joseph said, "Y'all may've been trying to bust my balls, but you see no chain round this here neck." He could just see his dad cringing.

"Now, that is the most incongruous, ridiculous sounding bunch of words I've heard yet from you." Web shook his head in disbelief.

"Ooooh, the boy can use big words. My grandmother is from New Orleans, so I can talk like that if I want," Joseph answered.

"Proper folks from New Orleans don't talk like that," Web scornfully said.

"You're right," Joseph laughed. "And it would kink my grandmother's hair to hear me talk like that."

Web was quiet for several blocks. When he stopped at a red light, he turned his head and studied Joseph. "Are you black?" he asked.

Joseph held up his arm and looked at it. "No, I'd say I'm mocha."

Web's lips tightened. "You know what I mean."

"My mother is northern Italian."

"And your dad?"

"Are you prejudice, Web?"

"You didn't answer my question."

Joseph unsnapped his seatbelt, opened the door and got out. The light turned green as he slammed it closed and stuck his head through the open window. "I grew up in a prejudice free environment. I came to this school because it's supposed to be the same. I'll take a Taxi back and find someplace else to room."

The cars behind started impatiently honking as Joseph headed for the curb. Web turned the corner and sped around the block. Joseph was still at the corner with his cell phone to his ear when Web pulled to the curb and jumped out. "Joe, come on, get back in the car." He grabbed Joseph's arm.

Joseph pulled away from him and tucked his phone back into his pocket ready to fight. "Fuck you, Weber."

"Listen to me. I'm not prejudice."

"So why didn't you say so before?"

"You didn't even give me a chance."

"You had a chance... and didn't say anything."

"Please, get back in the car and I'll explain."

Joseph relented and allowed Web to lead him back to the car. He let him open the door for him and let him close it once he was seated. He watched him run around the car and get in, then he stared at him, waiting for an explanation.

Web stared out the windshield. "I never thought I was ashamed of my heritage until you asked me if I was prejudice. I've never told anyone before."

When Web said nothing else, Joseph asked, "What does a New England white Anglo Saxon have to be ashamed of?"

Web looked at him for a moment before uttering, "My family doesn't openly admit it, but my great grandmother was half black."

"So, you, too, come from good old American slave stock."

Web turned a dark red and stared straight ahead, his expression inscrutable. Joseph wondered if his comment had angered or embarrassed him. He waited for him to respond. Finally, Web dropped his head to his chest. "I never thought of it that way."

"I heard someone say that if your family has been in this country for more than four generations, there is a good chance that you've got a bit of tinge in your blood. Personally, I feel it's something to be proud of."

Preoccupied, Web thought about it the rest of the afternoon, and when they were walking back to the dorm from the off-campus freshman car lot, he finally said, "Your right, Joe. From now on, I shall be proud of my heritage."

Joseph just smiled.

That evening after Joseph and Web had hooked up their computers. Joseph pulled out a framed close up of Max and set it next to his monitor.

"Who is that?" Web asked.

"Max Brown."

"Alright, smart ass, why do you have his photo on your desk?"

"Because he is my mate."

"Mate? As in the way the Aussies use the word?"

"Yeah." Joseph agreed, just to get him off the subject.

"God! Talking to you is like pulling teeth."

Joseph grinned. "You've done that then... pulled teeth?"

"And you are a smart ass on top of it all. Just forget it. Extracting information from you is not worth the effort."

"I noticed that you volunteered all the goods on both of your photos."

Web looked chagrined. "Touché."

Joseph waited.

"Oh, alright. This is my twin. She's going to Dartmouth."

Joseph nodded and grinned. Web hesitated and then picked up the other framed photo and looked at it. A shadow passed over his countenance. "And this is my best buddy since first grade, Andrew."

"What did he do to hurt you?"

Web looked up at him, his expression for a moment was vulnerable, and then it hid behind a hard mask. "I don't know what you're talking about," he snapped.

"Okay, just forget that I asked." Joseph started to get up from his desk.

"Joe?" Web's voice had gone soft. Joseph paused in his rise and looked across at his roommate. "Why did you ask that?"

Joseph sat back down and faced him. "You can't let your guard down if you don't want me to see what you're feeling."

"I'm that transparent?"

Joseph shook his head in wonder. "Web, think about it. When you removed the photo from your suitcase, you kissed it."

"I kissed my sister's picture."

"And when you picked it up just now," Joseph said, as if Web hadn't said anything, "you let your mask slip. I momentarily saw your pain."

"The corner of the frame poked a sore spot on my palm."

Joseph grimaced and shook his head.

"So, are you psychic or something?" Web asked.

"No, I just know what to look for."

Web managed to change the subject by asking about Joseph's curriculum and they talked until they were both yawning.

After they were in their bed with the lights out, Joseph said, "Hey Web, you still didn't tell me about your diver boy."

All he heard in response was a light snore.