Chapter 4
Tilian
Football wasn’t really my thing. Sports in general weren’t, actually, much to the dismay of my father. He was a bit of a pious fucker who was all about outdated tenets of masculinity, although he’d gotten better over the years.
Contrarily, I was a rebellious little shit who ran in the opposite direction of everything he stood for.
He said I should join a team in middle school. I joined team stoner. He asked when I was going to find a girlfriend. I brought a boyfriend home. He handed me a nice suit to wear at his wedding when I was sixteen. I fucked my future stepbrother at the reception.
Yeah, that wasn’t my best moment.
I wasn’t sure why I ended up this way and I was past questioning it. Objectively, I was pretty smart and could get along with people well enough, even though I was a little awkward. I just liked to do my own thing and if someone told me to do something, I had a tendency to choose opposition. I’d probably be yelling ‘anarchy’ while I did it.
Maybe that was why I’d taken to smoking in the stands while the football team practiced. Some of them seemed to think it was funny and the coach just didn’t give enough fucks to bitch about it.
Leaning forward, I picked up my pen and started taking notes. It was kind of a pain with my joint in one hand, but I managed. What was I going to do? Put it down? No. It legitimately helped my anxiety- not like a bunch of other people claimed. Any prescription doctors had tried to put me on only made things worse. And hell, I was twenty-one in Washington, so it was legal, even if it wasn’t technically allowed on campus.
Movement below drew my attention away from my notes. There were two guys sitting a few rows from the bottom, laughing like old pals. Two more joined them from the field, looking behind them a few times as if they expected to get yelled at.
It was easy to recognize one of the quarterbacks. He was super tall with crazy blue eyes and dark hair. The other player came up to a blonde guy who I remembered from a party last quarter. His boyfriend had turned into a rabid dog because I’d hit on him.
The last one was vaguely familiar. Were we in the same class? It was possible, but it was only the third day of the semester. That one was on Tuesday and Thursday, so I’d only been once, plus I didn’t pay attention to lectures or the other students. I could pass a test with flying colors and it wasn’t due to the professor’s teaching skills. I read the material on my own and studied in a way that worked for me. All the lectures in the world couldn’t make me retain the information and that was if I even managed to stay focused on them.
Spoiler alert: I couldn’t.
I distinctly remembered discussing learning styles in high school. Apparently, higher education didn’t care. If in-class participation didn’t count as part of my grade, I’d fuck right off and stay in my dorm.
I continued to watch the guy that I thought was in my class. He had his dark hair in a large bun, but a few strands stuck out enough to show how curly it was. The dark olive skin on the back of his neck peeked out the top of his hoodie where some shorter curls had escaped the rest.
When he suddenly turned to look behind him, I dropped my gaze to my textbook. The last thing I wanted was to be perceived in any way. I didn’t exist. Look away. Pay attention to the hot football players, not me.
“Sharing is caring, you know.”
Ah, beans.
He was only a couple of steps below me now and there was a smile on his face. It was hard to tell if it was kind or mischievous. Maybe both.
Now that I could see his face better, I was seventy-five percent sure he sat next to me in Professor Pritchard’s class. The only reason I thought that was because he was someone who raised his hand immediately when a question was asked. Seriously, who volunteered for that? The only sane thing to do was avoid the professor’s eyes and pray to god that he called on somebody else.
His psychopathic ways were a direct contradiction to his face. He had brown eyes, but they were far from bland. They were like dark chocolate. Was it weird to think about licking someone’s eyeballs? Definitely. It was probably because I hadn’t eaten today.
With his hair pulled back, his high cheekbones were prominent. They made his face more angular, along with the curve of his jaw. Add in his full lips and he was a recipe for a broken heart.
He raised a brow. “Are you mute?”
“No.”
I definitely sounded like an idiot. After clearing my throat, I held the joint out to him. His smile returned and even when he sealed his lips around the paper, I could see it. He climbed the last two steps, then dropped into a crouch beside me.
“Tilian, right?”
I swallowed hard, cursing myself for not drinking water before this interaction. My mouth was so dry.
“Uh, yeah. How’d you know?”
“We’re in the same class.”
“Do you know the name of everyone in class?”
He shrugged. “I have a good memory. I’m guessing you don’t know my name.”
My nose scrunched up. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m Brooks.”
“That’s a cool name.”
“You think so? My friends say I’m named after a shoe.”
I laughed, then ducked my head. “Yeah, well, there are worse things to be called. Bob, for example.”
“That’s my middle name.”
“Oh, shit. I’m-”
“Kidding,” he interrupted. He chuckled as he passed the joint to me. “So, you studying law?” He nodded toward my criminal justice textbook.
“I guess so.”
“What does that mean?”
Shifting in my seat, I angled my arm away from him and tapped the ash off the joint. “I’m not studying to be a lawyer. Uh, my degree is in social work and criminal justice.”
“Huh. That’s cool. What year?”
“Junior. You?”
“First year here, but I’m technically a junior. I went through a program to get my two-year degree while I was in high school.”
“So, you’re a genius.”
“No,” he laughed. “Just dedicated. Gotta make the parents proud, right?”
“Sounds like we’re polar opposites. If my dad is proud of me, I’m doing something wrong.”
He ran his tongue across the bottom of his top teeth. The longer he was silent, the more I worried that what I’d said was dumb. It probably made me seem just like the stoner I was. That was what everyone thought, at least.
Yeah, I smoked- a lot- but it wasn’t my entire personality and it was for a reason. Sometimes. Either way, it shouldn’t matter and it wasn’t anyone’s business.
When he stood from his crouch, I felt a twinge of disappointment. I offered him the joint, but he shook his head.
“I have a chapter to finish and if I hit that too hard, it’ll never get done.”
It was the opposite for me, but I didn’t feel the need to say that. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled at him before he turned around.
Brooks returned to his place beside his friends and immediately struck up a conversation. They looked content together, like their relationship was easy, not shallow. At first glance, they were a bit of an odd group, but I didn’t like to judge a book by its cover.
Someone below howled like a wolf. I wrinkled my nose as I watched the overly boisterous quarterback sprint back to the field. He vaulted over the railing and basically tackled another guy. The blonde guy’s boyfriend gripped his hair and tipped his head back to kiss him, then joined his friend in a slightly less insane manner.
Awkward. That was my cue to dip, so I shoved my book and notepad back into my messenger bag, then made my way across to the other side so I could bypass them on the way down.
I wondered what it was like to be that free in your own skin. I wasn’t ashamed of who I was in any way. I was just all too aware of the eyes around me. Who the hell wanted to draw that much attention to themselves?
Not me.
*****
“Tilian!”
I literally just walked out of my dorm, for fuck’s sake.
With a deep breath, I turned to look at Dean. He was jogging down the hall with a bright smile. It made my own lips tug upward a little.
He was a football player, which generally wouldn’t be my crowd, but he didn’t make it his life. I didn’t even hear him talk about it often and there was a lot more to him than people actually thought. We’d been smoking together for a couple of years and he was the type who got to talking.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You got anything I can buy?”
I pursed my lips and looked around. “I’m not a dealer, Dean.”
“Yeah, but you can go to the dispensary and I can’t.”
“Half the people on campus can.”
He huffed. “Maybe I can get Linc to do it. If I can ever catch him outside of his apartment.”
“Good luck with that.”
When I turned to leave, he grabbed onto my arm. “You were talking to Brooks during practice.”
I raised a brow. “And?”
“Nothing. He’s just a dick and I wouldn’t want you to get caught up in whatever his deal is.”
“Why’s he a dick?” I ventured, trying not to betray how interested I was in the answer.
Dean released me and scowled. “He slept with my girlfriend last semester. Well, more than slept with her. It went on for, like, a month or something. He said he didn’t know we were together, but I just don’t know if I believe that.”
I couldn’t see Brooks doing that if he knew, but then again, I’d only talked to the guy once. Plenty of people seemed nice when in reality, they were assholes. Or they kept bodies in their basement.
“Well, we’re not friends,” I said. “We just sit next to each other in Pritchard’s class.”
“Oh, right. Forgot he was in there.”
“You hate the guy that much, but you forgot he’s in a class with you?”
“Guess so. I’ll see you around, okay?” He started walking backward and pointed at me. “We should hang out soon.”
I nodded noncommittally. Dean was pretty cool and he was one of the few people I talked to on campus. I did have friends, but most of them graduated last year, one transferred, and another just sort of ghosted. It made things quiet this year, which had its perks and its downfalls.
It was probably a good idea to lean into a friendship if one was being dangled in front of me, even if he ran in a crowd I’d never approach on my own. Since he approached me most of the time, I couldn’t really maintain my reclusive lifestyle anyway.
God, I was hopeless. I didn’t even like attention on me, but I also didn’t like being alone. I guess I was a contradiction. Add it to the list of weird things about me.