The marsh was gray in winter, and at high tide, flat as paper under the cold sun. Ethan had stopped counting how many days he’d been home. The momentum of the holiday made the first two weeks home pass in blur. Though he felt different, Ethan appreciated the traditions: he and his sister decorating the Christmas tree, the two of them still waking the whole house up to see if Santa had come. It was good to see the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, everyone wanting to know what school was like.
Now that the decorations were put away, the annual New Year trip to their place at Kiawah Island complete, is mother started back to asking if he was eating, if he was seeing anyone, had he chosen a major. His father, unable to sit still retreated to the National Forest with his dogs, and the silence in between filled the house like fog.
The break was supposed to feel like a reset. Instead it felt like someone had hit pause.
He was halfway through a lukewarm cup of Christmas Blend coffee (the only time of the year he enjoyed it) when the kitchen phone rang. He let it ring twice before answering. His family had a “secret ring” to signal whether or not to answer. Two back to back meant a stranger. Some excitement, Ethan thought as he picked up the receiver.
“You alive?” Tyler’s voice, low and steady.
“Barely.”
“Good enough. A few of us are heading back early. House’ll be quiet—heat barely works, but it beats another week with the fam.”
“Who’s going?” Ethan asked, already feeling the pull.
“Me, Jason… maybe Eli. There’ll probably be some other guys from our class too.” He hesitated, then added, “You should come.”
“You sure that’s allowed?”
“Allowed?” Tyler’s laugh was soft. “We survived Hell Week. I think we can handle early check-in.”
The line went quiet except for the faint hum of static.
“Alright,” Ethan said finally. “I’ll pack.”
He left before dawn the next day.
The road north was empty, the sky a pale watercolor of blue and frost. The Jeep’s heater barely worked, and the only sound was the rattle of loose coins in the cup holder and the same Beck CD that skipped every time he hit a bump.
By the time he crossed into Virginia, the sun had flattened into a dull disc. He’d smoked two more cigarettes and drained the last of his coffee before Westmore came into view—red brick, white trim, and that familiar ache between belonging and exile.
The campus was nearly deserted.
The quad stretched silent under a dusting of snow, only a few footprints marking paths between dorms. The Delta Chi house stood at the end of the row, porch lights off, the lawn brittle with frost. Ethan parked beside a gray Volvo he recognized as Jason’s and a beat-up Honda with Tyler’s swim team sticker fading on the bumper.
Inside, the air was colder than outside.
Tyler met him at the door in a sweatshirt and socks, holding a mug of instant coffee.
“You made it,” he said simply.
“Barely.”
“Same.”
Jason appeared from the kitchen, hair damp, holding a half-empty bottle of Rolling Rock.
“Welcome back to the asylum,” he said. “You look tan. That’ll fade.”
They laughed, and the house felt warmer for it.
For two days, the three of them fell into an easy rhythm.
They took turns making coffee, played half-hearted pool games, and aired out the house that still smelled faintly of sweat and beer. Jason put on an old Widespread Panic CD that seemed to run on a loop. By night, they sat by the fire with cheap beer and old stories. The quiet was companionable, unforced.
On the second night, Tyler mentioned it casually while rolling a joint at the kitchen table.
“There’s something happening in town tomorrow. A get-together. Off-campus house — couple of university kids host it every month.”
“A party?” Ethan asked.
“Sort of,” Tyler said. “More like a gathering of like-minded people.”
“Do what?”
“You’ll see.”
Jason looked up from his beer.
“He means the Underground,” he said. “They’ve been around for years. Old farmhouse near the river. Mostly university students and a few locals, but some of our guys drift in.”
He caught Ethan’s uncertain look.
“It’s not a secret cult or anything,” Jason added, smirking. “Just people who got tired of watching their backs.”
Eli arrived the next afternoon — hair longer, tan deepened by the Carolina sun, still wearing the same jacket that smelled faintly of salt and smoke. He tossed his duffel by the stairs like he’d never left.
“Couldn’t take another day of my mom’s questions,” he said, smirking. “So what’s this I hear about a reunion?”
Jason raised his beer. “You’re just in time for the field trip.”
Eli grinned. “Figures. Leave it to Delta Chi to turn a secret society into a social hour.”
He looked good, maybe too good — refreshed, newly confident. He’d already lined up interviews in Atlanta and Richmond, the way older brothers did when they were half-gone from campus but still walked its halls like ghosts. Catherine had sent him a Christmas card, he said, one with an embossed crest from her father’s law firm. “Her parents think I’m house-broken now,” he joked.
Ethan smiled politely but felt the distance like a wall. The last night he spent in Eli’s room had become a closed book no one mentioned. Eli was planning his future. Ethan was still deciding if he had one.
They drove into town just after dark — Jason at the wheel, Tyler riding shotgun, Ethan and Eli in the back. The heater only half-worked, and the windows fogged easily, turning the headlights outside into a watercolor blur. The house sat at the end of a narrow street, porch sagging under leftover Christmas lights. Someone had tied a single balloon around the mailbox like a flag half-hidden in plain sight.
Inside, the air was thick with warmth and the faint smell of patchouli and clove cigarettes. Music drifted from the stereo—Mazzy Star fading into The Sundays—and the floor creaked under too many boots.
Ethan froze a little in the doorway. The room was full but not loud, alive in a way that didn’t need volume. He expected glitter, theatrics, some exaggerated version of what people whispered about in dorm rooms. Instead he saw jeans, wool sweaters, thrift-store coats. A girl in a black beanie arguing about a film class. A guy in corduroys leaning against the doorframe, laughing with another who wore a floral scarf and combat boots. Two men slow-dancing near the kitchen doorway, unbothered by the crowd.
It wasn’t spectacle. It was just living.
What struck him most was the ease. No one scanned the room for permission to exist. The weight he’d grown used to—the constant measuring of posture, tone, and distance—didn’t seem to apply here.
Jason moved easily among them, greeting people with a kind of quiet familiarity. Tyler slipped into conversation with someone from the university, their laughter low, unforced. Eli hung back at first, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes alert. It was strange to see him off balance—his confidence had always come from control, from knowing exactly what role to play. Here, no one needed his performance.
Ethan accepted a mug of mulled wine from a woman wearing a faded “ACT UP” shirt under an open cardigan. She smiled. “You’re one of Jason’s Westmore boys, right? Don’t worry, no one’s keeping score here.”
He smiled back, unsure what she meant but comforted by the tone.
Later, standing near the record player, he found himself talking to a student from the University—soft-spoken, lanky, wearing wire-rim glasses and a Henley that looked stolen from someone older. They talked about music, about being from small towns that demanded straight lines. The guy admitted he played soccer and didn’t come out until his junior year. “Everyone assumes gay means one thing,” he said. “Turns out it means whatever you wake up as that day.”
Ethan laughed quietly. “That would blow a few minds at Westmore.”
“Good,” the guy said. “They could use the exercise.”
When the song changed, the two men who’d been dancing near the kitchen switched partners. One of them winked at Ethan as he passed, not flirtatious—just friendly, like an invitation to breathe.
Across the room, Eli had found his rhythm again, trading jokes with a grad student in a faded UVA hoodie. Tyler leaned in the doorway watching, half-smile tugging at his mouth. For once, none of it felt like a competition.
Ethan realized that he’d never been in a room where he didn’t know who he was supposed to be. It was disorienting, and freeing.
Jason drifted over, handing him another drink.
“You’re seeing it, huh?”
Ethan nodded. “I didn’t know it could look like this.”
“That’s the point,” Jason said. “Nobody here did either. Until they saw it.”
Outside, the cold air cut clean after the heat inside. Snow had started again, light and slow. Jason stood by the railing, cigarette ember glowing against the dark.
“So this is the big secret,” Ethan said.
“Pretty underwhelming, huh?”
“Not really.” Ethan leaned beside him. “They look… happy.”
“They are. At least for a few hours. We build what we can.”
Jason exhaled smoke through his nose, watching it dissolve.
“How did you get Eli to come tonight?”
Jason’s mouth twitched.
“This isn’t his first time. He’s just not ready to admit he likes it.”
Through the window, Eli’s laughter carried — louder now, polished again. He looked like the version of himself Westmore believed in: the future banker, the legacy boyfriend, the son who never misstepped.
“He’s good at pretending,” Ethan said quietly.
“We all are,” Jason said. “You just have to decide what you’re pretending for. Eli’s had his life planned out since junior high, Ethan—but I don’t think he ever expected to meet someone like you.”
Feigning surprise, Ethan looked at Jason. “Please, you aren’t fooling anyone.”
The house creaked back into silence, the way old houses do when everyone’s pretending to sleep. Rather than return to their dorms, Ethan and Tyler “borrowed” two rooms upstairs. The rest of the brothers would not be back until Sunday. Ethan lay in bed staring at the ceiling, still hearing fragments of music from the farmhouse—the guitar, the laughter, the quiet way people looked at one another without fear.
He turned on his side and caught a slice of light under the door across the hall. Tyler’s room.
He should’ve ignored it. He told himself he would. Instead, he pulled on a sweatshirt and padded barefoot down the corridor, floorboards whispering beneath him.
He knocked once, lightly.
“Yeah?”
“You still up?”
Tyler was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing a t-shirt and flannel pants, reading a paperback that looked like it belonged to Jason. The lamp threw a warm cone of light across the room, the rest in shadow.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“Guess not.”
Tyler marked his page and set the book down. “You keep thinking about him.”
“Eli?” Ethan said, though it wasn’t really a question.
Tyler shrugged. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
Ethan sat down at the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. “I don’t even know what I’m thinking. He’s just… already living some future version of himself, and I’m still trying to figure out who I was yesterday.”
“You’re figuring it out faster than you think.”
Ethan smiled faintly. “You always sound like you know the answer.”
“No,” Tyler said, voice low. “I just stopped asking the wrong questions.”
They sat there a while, the air thick with quiet. The heat clicked on somewhere in the walls, a thin hum beneath the silence.
“That party tonight,” Ethan said finally, “it didn’t feel like hiding.”
“It’s not supposed to,” Tyler said. “It’s just people being themselves for a few hours. It’s a start.”
Ethan turned toward him. “You go there often?”
“Now and then.”
“With someone?”
Tyler smiled, not smug, just honest. “Sometimes.”
Ethan looked down at his hands. “It didn’t look like I thought it would. Any of it.”
“That’s the best part,” Tyler said.
The silence between them shifted — not tense, just alive. Tyler leaned back against the headboard, eyes on Ethan, measuring the space that was quickly disappearing.
“You don’t have to overthink it,” Tyler said softly.
Ethan met his gaze. “I’m not.”
Tyler reached out and brushed his thumb along Ethan’s jaw — light, almost accidental. Ethan didn’t move away. The touch turned into a line along his neck, then a slow draw of breath between them that felt like gravity giving up.
When they kissed, it wasn’t sudden or cinematic. It was slow, a steady unspooling of the week’s quiet tension. Tyler’s hand cupped the back of his neck, thumb tracing the pulse there. Ethan closed his eyes and let the rest of the world fall away.
The air smelled faintly of cedar and dust and whatever detergent Tyler used. His skin was warm, steady, real. When they broke apart, both were breathing softly, like they’d climbed something without realizing it.
“That okay?” Tyler asked.
Ethan nodded, still catching his breath. “Yeah. More than okay.”
They didn’t rush it. No fevered undoing of clothes, no cinematic fade. Just two people closing distance until there was none. They lay back side by side, shoulders touching, hands finding each other naturally. Tyler turned off the lamp, and in the dark their breathing matched — slow, quiet, the rhythm of two people who’d stopped pretending.
When Ethan woke, the window was rimed with frost. Tyler’s side of the bed was empty except for the faint warmth left in the sheets. He found him in the kitchen, barefoot, frying eggs in a pan that had seen better days. Jason sat at the counter with coffee, the morning paper folded open to the classifieds.
“Morning,” Jason said without looking up. “You two look like you actually slept.”
Ethan hesitated. Tyler didn’t. “We did,” he said easily, sliding eggs onto a plate.
Jason’s smirk was small but knowing. “Good. You’ll need the rest. Semester’s coming.”
He closed the paper and gestured toward the chair across from him. “Sit down, Harris.”
Ethan did. Jason poured another cup of coffee. The kitchen light caught the beginnings of his hairline’s retreat from his forehead — barely noticeable, but it made him seem older, almost paternal.
“You know what I like about you, Harris?” Jason asked.
“That I haven’t broken anything yet?”
Jason chuckled. “That you still believe people can be saved.”
Ethan frowned. “You mean Eli.”
Jason nodded. “You’ve been circling him since September. Don’t think I haven’t seen it. And I get it — he’s magnetic. He’s also stuck. You can’t fix that for him.”
Ethan stared into his cup. “I know.”
“Then stop waiting for him to become the version you need,” Jason said. “He’s already chosen who he has to be. Let him have it.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“What you’re already doing,” Jason said. “Find people who don’t make you smaller just so you’ll feel safe. Build your own circle. That’s what the Underground really is — not rebellion, just survival.”
He took a sip of coffee, eyes softening. “I saw you last night with Tyler. You were just… there. That’s what peace looks like. Don’t talk yourself out of it.”
The words landed like a hand on the shoulder — grounding, not heavy.
Tyler slid Ethan a plate. “He’s right, you know.”
Jason stood, stretching. “Of course I am. I’m old.”
“You’re twenty-two,” Tyler said.
“Ancient,” Jason replied. “Now eat. And then maybe help me take down all these lights before the rest of the clowns get back.”
He left the room humming, the sound fading down the hall.
Ethan looked across the table at Tyler. The morning light fell across his face, soft and uncomplicated.
“You okay?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah,” Ethan said quietly. “I think so.”
He meant it.
Outside, the day was pale and cold, sunlight spilling across the frost-covered lawn. The quad was still empty, but it wouldn’t be for long. By next week the noise would return — doors slamming, music from open windows, the same old rhythm of Westmore life.
But this morning was theirs: the quiet before it all began again, the space where something real had finally taken root.
Stay Connected
📖 Subscribe to Caleb Reed for weekly chapters and essays.
📸 Follow along on Instagram: @caleb_writes
🧵 Join me on Threads: Caleb_Writes
📘 Facebook: Caleb Reed
🦋 Bluesky: @thecalebreed.bsky.social
I wish I could go back and relive my college years. I would've enjoyed myself so much more now that I'm out.
Great! Always love more Ethan-Tyler interactions :)