finn #2
I didn’t have the energy. Jesse was being funny and easy and good with my friends, which was all I’d asked for, and they were eating it up, which was the opposite of what I’d asked for, and somewhere between those two things, I’d stopped tracking the movie entirely.
Kong was on the building. The biplanes came.
Jesse went quiet for the ending, actually quiet, watching the ape fall, and I watched the light move across his face, and I thought, with no particular alarm, that it was nice to have him here. That was all. It was nice.
Then the credits rolled, and someone said it was getting late, and that was when the rain started.
It didn’t ease into it. One second, it was simply dark outside, and the next, the whole house was full of the sound of it, a flat roar on the roof and the gutters already overwhelmed, water sheeting down the glass like the sky had been holding it all day and finally let go.
Jason got up and looked out. “That’s not letting up.”
“It’s a ten-minute walk to my dorm,” Jesse said, half rising.
“You’ll drown,” Taylor said, with an enthusiasm that was frankly suspicious. “Stay. We’ve got room. We’ve always got room.”
Jesse scratched the back of his head, bicep curling in a way that made my breath hitch. “I don’t want to put anyone out.”
“You’re not putting anyone out,” Taylor said. “Tell him, Finn.”
They all looked at me. Four faces, plus a dog, plus Jesse, who was looking at me too now, waiting, with his hand already half in his pocket.
“Stay,” I said, mouth dry, and the image of his swelling bicep still burned into my mind. “It’s stupid to walk in that.”
Jesse sat back down reluctantly, and Taylor, behind him, gave Harrison a look so loaded I was surprised it didn’t set the house on fire.
In pairs, my friends retired, and I sat with Jesse on the sofa, bathed in the warm yellow light of the lamps, listening to the raging storm outside. Thunder rumbled across the sky.
“Are you still scared of it?” Jesse asked.
I snort-chuckled with a bit too much bravado. “No,” I said. “Scared is an exceptionally strong word. I’m not very keen on literal death-atoms picking you out of a crowd and frying you to a crisp is what I am.”
“Of course,” Jesse said sagely.
Lightning lit up the entire downstairs, and thunder split the sky. I jumped off the sofa, muscles tense and body ready to fight or run.
Jesse laughed softly. “Not keen at all, I see.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But what animal doesn’t jump when something explodes right above its head?”
I yawned and stretched my arms high above my head, then glanced at Jesse.
Until now, it hadn’t crossed my mind what the situation was going to look like.
I couldn’t very well leave him on these sofas downstairs.
I’d passed out on one of them once in my freshman year when a taste of beer was enough to put me to sleep, and the experience had nearly broken me in half.
The cushions were too worn out, the gaps between them too wide.
I looked at the window where the haze of splashing rain was so thick that not even lightning helped the visibility. This was one of those great grandmothers of a storm.
“Let me show you my room,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. This could be just like it had been all those years ago. We’d done sleepovers all the time, so why did I have to act like this was any different?
“Sure,” Jesse said, his voice a little tight, the word spoken a bit too fast.
I got up and led the way upstairs to my room.
It wasn’t anything grand, but we had the luxury of single beds, private bathrooms, and keys in our locks.
The room had an old, dark blue wallpaper along the upper half of the walls, and brown wooden paneling along the bottom half, which gave it both a vintage feel of a time gone by and a sense of unique polish.
The bed was a narrow one with a wrought-iron frame and a thick, hard mattress I’d bought in order to replace the old wooden frame and the worn-out mattress that had been there.
Well, my parents did upon hearing my never-ending complaints.
When Jesse stepped inside, he moved deeper into the room, and I shut the door.
It clicked softly, but Jesse’s shoulders tensed.
He let out a soft laugh. “This is nice.” Acting all casual, he looked around, but I was beginning to sense a great deal of discomfort.
His hands were balled into fists as he turned around on his heels and looked all over the walls, but never once at me. “Much nicer than sharing a dorm room.”
“I can imagine.”
He chuckled, but it felt like he was pushing it through his teeth. “Nah, Malcolm’s a good guy, but you’re never alone. Like, ever.”
“All I had to do was sign my life over to a secret society,” I joked.
Jesse glanced at me, eyes glimmering with humor. “Right. I’m starting to rethink my opposition to Greek Life. It’s not all so bad.”
“We have a flat structure,” I explained. “Technically, Greg’s the president, but all that means is he’ll grumble if the music’s too loud. The KGB house, however…” I let that linger.
“Did you just say KGB?” Jesse asked, laughing out loud.
“Kappa Gamma Beta, but KGB’s more appropriate.
They have the whole ritual of initiations, elections, a treasury, a secretary, and a president.
I’m pretty sure they do some occult stuff at night.
Not to mention, I’ll bet my ass they have huge secret orgies.
” I whistled low, as if it was something unspeakable, but Jesse saw through it all and just laughed.
“I’m sensing some rivalry there,” he said.
“They’re all jocks, so we can’t be rivals.
It wouldn’t be fair to them,” I said pompously.
“Now, the Thinkers, they’re a whole different beast. I wouldn’t want to do a spelling bee against those guys.
” I winced, just imagining the carnage. In my mind, it looked something like a battlefield, smoke rising from various little craters, mud and trenches all around me, and the distant battle cries of “Can you use it in a sentence?”
I yawned again, unable to fight it anymore.
“Were beds bigger when we were kids?” I asked as I moved around Jesse and pulled the comforter away.
I reached for my T-shirt, tugged it over my head, and tossed it onto the small pile of laundry that was still clean enough to occupy the honorary place on the chair.
“Nah,” Jesse said, turning away from me. “We were smaller.”
“You think we’re gonna fit?” I teased. He was to blame.
I’d done a lot of work to give my body some definition, but Jesse was compact, muscles rippling all over him, arms larger than mine, chest broader, legs thicker.
If he fell off the bed due to a lack of space, it was entirely his fault for outgrowing the bed.