Fever Pitch

  Sometimes you have to play love by ear.

  Love Lessons, Book 2

  Aaron Seavers is a pathetic mess, and he knows it. He lives in terror of incurring his father’s wrath and disappointing his mother, and he can’t stop dithering about where to go to college—with fall term only weeks away.

  Ditched by a friend at a miserable summer farewell party, all he can do is get drunk in the laundry room and regret he was ever born. Until a geeky-cute classmate lifts his spirits, leaving him confident of two things: his sexual orientation, and where he’s headed to school.

  Giles Mulder can’t wait to get the hell out of Oak Grove, Minnesota, and off to college, where he plans to play his violin and figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. But when Aaron appears on campus, memories of hometown hazing threaten what he’d hoped would be his haven.

  As the semester wears on, their attraction crescendos from double-cautious to a rich, swelling chord. But if more than one set of controlling parents have their way, the music of their love could come to a shattering end.

  Warning: Contains showmances, bad parenting, Walter Lucas, and a cappella.

  Fever Pitch

  Heidi Cullinan

  Dedication

  For S.N., because even when I worried maybe this was too cheesy to dedicate to you, I thought of you the whole time. Now that it’s over, I get it. I hope when you read it, you know why too—as well as who (all of them) and what in this story made you the only person it could be for.

  Love all your parts and selves, the art you create, the loyalty you inspire, the joy you give, the mayhem you invite. You’re a gift to my life I’ll never forget.

  Yours always, Heidi

  Acknowledgments

  My books are often possible because of villages, but this one has a major metropolitan area.

  Thanks first to my daughter, Anna, who taught me Minecraft and violin in addition to listening to (and loving) a cappella music with me for ten months. I hope when you’re old enough to read this someday, you appreciate the French horn solo. Thanks to Dan Cullinan for being excited to read this almost since I started and for never waning in interest or support.

  Thanks to the Wartburg College Choir and Dr. Paul Torkelson and Dr. Suzanne Torkelson for pretty much every choir and piano aspect of this tale. Thanks to the 3 Penny Chorus and Orchestra for giving me one hell of an idea.

  Thanks to Sasha Knight and Samhain Publishing for being excited for the sequel. Me too. Let’s do it again, and again.

  Thanks to Twitter and Facebook for all the random help with research bits. Thanks especially to Twitter for putting up with my play-by-plays as I wound to the finish and not reporting me to the loony bin for all the pictures of my sticky notes.

  Thanks to Leigh Ann Logan for being my lighthouse for this book and many things.

  Thanks to K. A. Mitchell who, when at the eleventh hour I realized I’d subconsciously patterned her Elijah in mine, not only insisted I keep the name but enthusiastically let me wink at her series. Speaking of which, you should really go read the Bad in Baltimore books and everything she writes, because she’s amazing.

  Thanks to Walter Lucas, who gives Randy Jansen a run for his money on inserting himself into WIPs he has no business being in…and making himself indispensable to those stories.

  And most of all, thank you to you, my readers, fans and friends, who got excited about this series and still email me asking if there will ever be a sequel to Love Lessons. The answer is yes. To save you some time: the answer is yes to this one too.

  Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

  —Lao Tzu

  Chapter One

  On his eighteenth birthday, Aaron Seavers navigated the sea of college brochures scattered across his comforter, searching for a future capable of pleasing his father without crushing his own soul. He was pretty sure he’d have better luck if he trekked out to the state park and hunted a unicorn.

  It was June twenty-first. He’d graduated over a month ago. There were only eight weeks until most universities opened their doors to freshmen, and Aaron still hadn’t picked a school. His father was furious with him, which wasn’t anything new, but this time Aaron couldn’t blame him.

  In twenty-four hours, Aaron would be at his dad’s condo in Eden Prairie for the rest of the summer. That was when Jim Seavers would find out Aaron still hadn’t picked a school, and he’d follow through on his threat from the week before to pick it himself. Which would mean Aaron would attend the most elite, prestigious university to be had at the last minute—somewhere far from Minnesota.

  Aaron wrenched himself out of melancholy and returned to his task, but futility washed over him immediately. How was he supposed to choose when they were all the same? Each flyer used strong, pleasing colors and elegant fonts. Each advertisement boasted photos of clean-cut, smiling, racially balanced students happy with their secondary-education choices. They held up sports equipment and musical instruments and other symbols of the school’s extracurricular activities. All the brochures touted the same lures of happiness and success—using different buzzwords, but they were all variations on a theme.

  Come to our school. We can give you the perfect future.

  If Aaron could believe for a minute their promises were true, he’d have signed up six months ago. The same problem he’d faced then, however, haunted him now. How was he supposed to pick a school when he didn’t know what it was he wanted to do with his life? How could he take a stand against the future his father wanted for him if he couldn’t think of an alternative?

  How was he supposed to be happy if he couldn’t figure out what would make him love his life?

  Beside him on the bed his phone buzzed. Funny how that made his heart leap, though it had been a year since getting a text had meant anything. Apparently his heart was a sappy idiot.

  The text was from Colton. You up to par-tay for your birthday?

  Colton remembered it was Aaron’s birthday, which was more than Aaron expected. Aaron ran his thumb down the smooth side of the smartphone’s case, trying to decide how to reply. He didn’t exactly like Colton, and he was busy—but it was his birthday. His eighteenth birthday.

  Another text came through. Catherine invited half the school. We’ll be neck-deep in geeks, but lotsa chicks. Let’s get laid.

  Rolling his eyes, Aaron tossed the phone onto his pillow. That was why Colton invited him out. Girls swarmed them when they went out together, but since Aaron never wanted anything to do with them, Colton got, as he put it, his pick of the litter. Usually Aaron glommed on to the quietest female and simply chatted, but sometimes he had to make out, which always made him nervous. Colton disappeared first chance he got with the hottest girl in the herd. Sometimes more than one girl.

  Yeah, totally how Aaron wanted to spend his birthday.

  Of course, Colton could get him alcohol.

  A knock on the door sounded as Aaron’s mom stuck her head in. “Hi, sweetie.”

  Aaron tossed the phone away from him. “Hey, Mom.”

  Pushing the door open wider, Beth Seavers nodded at the mess on her son’s bed. “Back at it, I see.”

  “Yeah.” Selecting a flyer at random, Aaron began to flip through the pages. “I wish I knew which ones will still let me in this late.”

  “Your father will take care of it.” She leaned on the doorframe, pulling her cardigan closer to her body. It was fluffy pink cashmere, but she huddled as if she was cold, her expression hollow as she spoke of her ex-husband. “Do what he says, and everything will be fine.”

  Aaron pursed his lips and tossed the brochure into the mess. “I wish I could thi
nk of something to major in that he’d say was okay. There’s got to be something I’ll like at least a little.”

  “You’ll think of a major once you’re there.” Beth’s expression turned wistful. “Maybe you should play some piano to clear your head. You always told me it helped you think.”

  Yeah, it used to. Glancing at his dusty keyboard in the corner of the room, Aaron swallowed the lump in his throat. “Piano isn’t part of a future Dad would accept.”

  “Of course not. But even he would say you should take time to relax and unwind.”

  Aaron’s gaze slid to his phone. The home screen was lit up, displaying teasers of more texts from Colton. “There’s a party tonight, but I figured I should get this college thing sorted out instead.”

  “You should go. Be with your friends. It is your birthday.”

  Friends. That was funny. Still, Aaron picked up the phone and thumbed through the most recent texts. He didn’t know this Catherine girl, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d moved to Oak Grove from Eden Prairie less than a year ago—his dad had taken a long-term case in California, and his mom insisted she couldn’t wait any longer to move near her sister. Given the social disaster at his old school after Tanner, Aaron hadn’t put up a fight over switching at the start of his senior year…but the consequence was he knew next to no one. Colton and the people he hung out with were all Aaron had. Football players and cheerleaders—so outside Aaron’s life in Eden Prairie. He’d been eager to be part of the in-crowd for once, but the result was far different than he’d anticipated. Who knew popular people were this lonely?

  Aaron tossed the phone down. “I can’t let him show up tomorrow without making a choice.”

  “Then make one. They all look nice. Pick one and call it a night.”

  “It’s not so simple. He’ll want to know why I picked it, what I want to major in, and I don’t know.”

  She huddled deeper into her sweater, forehead creasing and marring her pretty features. “I need to lie down, honey. I’m getting a migraine.” She forced a smile. “Let me know if you decide to go out, okay?”

  Aaron watched her go, buttoning down his hurt. Why should he expect her to help him? She never did.

  Fool him, he never stopped hoping.

  On the bed beside him, his phone buzzed, this time in the steady pattern indicating it was ringing. Stifling a sigh, Aaron answered. “Hey, Colton.”

  “Why don’t you answer your texts, buttfuck?” Colton laughed like he’d made a funny joke instead of calling Aaron a name. “I’m coming over in a half hour, and we’ll head over to Catherine’s.”

  “Sure.” Aaron flicked a nearby brochure with his finger. “Can we eat first, though?”

  “I could eat. Where do you want to go, pizza? How about Lenny’s?”

  Aaron pulled a face. “God no. Let’s go to Zebra’s.”

  “All the way to Anoka?”

  It was fifteen minutes away, twenty with traffic. Aaron thought about caving, but he really hated Lenny’s, and anyway, it was his birthday. “Yes. If gas is a problem, I’ll pay.”

  “Hell no, I’m just lazy. I’ll be by in a bit.”

  Aaron made no effort to hurry getting himself together—half an hour in Colton time meant forty minutes. He’d call saying he’d gotten caught up in something at that point and would be by in fifteen, which would stretch into another hour before Colton appeared at the door. Aaron wrestled with the brochures some more, thinking he’d pick one and get it done before going off to get smashed, but he was no more able to make a choice now than ever.

  Giving up, he pushed off the bed and headed for his shower.

  A Keane song wormed into his head, soothing his nerves, and by the time he got out, he was humming the chorus to “Bend and Break”. Maybe he’d have fun at the party. Maybe he could make a friend here, finally. He was about to be gone for the summer, but all he needed was someone for the night, someone he could feel good with on his birthday. That was all he asked for. One good night.

  Aaron smiled to himself as he rooted through his closet to find a shirt, singing now, his chest warm and buzzing from the reverberations of his vocal cords. He might meet someone. Anything could happen at a party.

  He saw the T-shirt he wanted at the back of his closet and tugged it free of a hanger. A box on the shelf behind it got caught in the struggle and tumbled out onto the floor of the closet, spilling papers and photos into the bedroom. As Aaron bent to put it to rights, he saw the half-finished score full of Tanner’s notes mingled with a photo of the two of them pressed together and laughing amid other band members.

  Aaron’s bubble of happiness burst, ushering the sludgy, cold feelings back in.

  Shoving the box out of sight, Aaron tugged the shirt over his head and stepped into a random pair of jeans. No more memories. Tanner was done. Music was done. He had to think of the future now. He’d pick a school, any school, and he’d make a new start somewhere. Any-fucking-where.

  He’d pull a college at random out of a hat and call it good. Go out with Colton and drink until the pain stopped.

  By the time Colton called to say he was running late, Aaron had removed two northern Iowa colleges. When he returned from getting some groceries for his mom, though, he saw them on his desk and put them back in the pile. After spying one he’d forgotten about under the bed, he put it up with the others. He found two new ones in the mail.

  Instead of making a choice, he’d added three more options.

  Aaron curled up on his bed, not needing his father to tell him he was a failure.

  When Colton arrived an hour and a half late, Aaron was in a foul, bitter mood. Colton, of course, didn’t notice.

  “Sorry, man, lost track of time. Probably too late to go to Zebra’s now.”

  “Whatever.” Aaron sank into the passenger seat and leaned his elbow on the door so he could press his fingertips to his temple. “Take me to the fucking alcohol.”

  Colton laughed and put the car into gear. “That’s my boy.”

  Aaron stared out the window, letting his vision go out of focus so the landscape could blur, wishing the chaos inside him could do the same.

  “Happy birthday, idiot,” he whispered to himself, and shut down everything in his head except the promise of getting rip-roaring, fantastically drunk.

  Giles Mulder couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Oak Grove, Minnesota.

  The Alvis-Henning school district had, quite literally, tried to kill him. Giles had been beaten up four times, two episodes requiring trips to the emergency room, and one of those occurrences had been in middle school. Giles knew not one but two of the infamous gay bullying and suicide victims who had put A-H in the national consciousness for two and a half minutes. He could have watered the football field with the tears of rage and hurt he’d shed until he’d learned how to claim the space in his own head.

  “This will make you stronger,” his mother told him. “Anything that doesn’t beat you only teaches you the world has to work harder to destroy you.” Vanessa Mulder’s words were sage and she repeated them often, but usually with gritted teeth and a countenance belying the truth of what she really wanted—to get a baseball bat and beat heads. She did what she could to mitigate Giles’s hazing, and after the second emergency room trip, she visited the Alvis-Henning school board with a lawyer, at which point Giles received a fat settlement check. After that, the physical attacks had ratcheted down to scrapes and bruises on their worst days.

  Of course the emotional digs and derogatory comments only increased.

  Dr. Tim Mulder, ever the mild-mannered pediatrician, took a subtler approach than his wife. While Vanessa swallowed her rage, Dr. Mulder held his son’s hands and spoke quiet reassurances. “The people bullying you don’t define you, Giles. Only you get to do that. You can’t stop them from making negative comments, but you get to decide what you let affect you and
how you reply. So long as you don’t let their words and actions infect how you see yourself, you win. If you can hold on, I promise you someday you’ll look back on these dark days and be proud of how you didn’t let them tear you down from the beautiful, wonderful life you deserve.”

  Giles knew his father hadn’t meant to emphasize someday, that his intention hadn’t been to make Giles wait to fully live his life, but the only way Giles found peace was by accepting that truth. His life sucked rancid ass right now, but someday he would not go to A-Hell. Someday he would not live in fear of being beaten up and stuffed in the garbage can in the locker room. Someday he wouldn’t trick closet cases and sexually fucked-up young men only to have them haze him in the hallways afterward, desperate for no one ever to find out what they’d done with Giles. Someday Giles would have a real boyfriend and a real life.

  Someday was so fucking close Giles got hard thinking about it.

  In fifty-five days he would leave Oak Grove and descend into the sanitized liberal, Lutheran cocoon of Saint Timothy College. He would spend each one of the 1,320 hours between himself and freedom holed up in his bedroom playing Xbox. He would shop for school supplies and Facebook message his roommate-to-be. He would drool all over the looming face of someday until he could hold it in his arms and call it his right fucking now.

  Giles did all this—except somehow, on the second-to-last weekend in June, he ended up back in the belly of the high school beast. All because he couldn’t say no to Mina.

  She twitched in eagerness, the flip-flop-whish of her shiny, board-straight black hair swishing against the passenger seat punctuated by high-pitched squeals as Giles drove them to Catherine Croix’s why can’t we all just get along goodbye party.

  “Ohmygod.” Mina held up her phone. “Lisa texted me, and Eric Campf is totally going to be there. With God as my witness, I’m getting him drunk and sticking my hand down his pants.”

  Giles thought about the last time he’d seen Eric Campf—on his knees in the back of the church basement, enthusiastically blowing Giles. As usual, though, Giles swallowed the truth and let Mina have her delusions. She never did anything about her crushes anyway—no way was her hand going anywhere near Eric’s waistband. “I hope you’re ready to leave early, because I fully expect to blow this Popsicle stand within the hour.”