Chapter 3
Connor
I’m running late for my orientation day.
Why?
Dane Calvo.
The guy is a total bathroom hog. Normally, I’m chill about it, even when it pushes the limits of my bladder to worrying degrees, but today is important.
Call me lame, but I want to make a good impression the first time I meet my professors and classmates.
I picked my outfit out last night, left it neat and folded on my bedside table, and I set my alarm to give me enough time for a thorough shower and breakfast.
It’s now been an hour since I woke up and realized Dane was in the bathroom with all the doors locked. I tried knocking, and every time, he’d holler back, “Out in a jiffy!” in one of those smug tones that suggests he will not be out in a jiffy.
What is with this dude and that bathroom?
I spend part of this standoff having my pre-planned breakfast at the kitchen island, but that only worsens my need to piss.
At this point, I’m not sure I’ll have time for any sort of shower, but brushing my teeth and putting deodorant on is a must.
I march up to the hall door and give it a hard knock. “For real, Dane, you better open this door right now!”
“Or what?!” His deep, arrogant voice carries through the wood. “Gonna break it down?! Your new pal Artie’s not gonna like that!”
In what world does being cordial to a dude’s father make me the enemy?
Dane was the one who told me not to defend him again with Artie.
He was also the one who dismissed the idea of being friends.
It’s not like I really want to be friends with him anyway, but it would be nice if we were friendly enough that he’d let me in the damn bathroom.
If Thalia hadn’t left the house at the crack of dawn, I’d have her do something about this, even if it would make me look like a weenie. Pride always takes a backseat to health, and I consider my bladder exploding inside my body to be a health emergency.
“Dane, please!”
Just as I’m about to give up and pee in a coffee mug, the door clicks and swings inward. Dane’s long body fills the doorway, wearing only a pair of flimsy boxers and a fiendish smirk. A salacious hum rumbles from his throat. “I like it when you say please.”
I shove past him and hurry to the toilet. I don’t care if he’s watching or even if he shuts the door. The euphoria of an emptying bladder is the next best thing to an orgasm.
“Damn, dude. You really had to go,” Dane teases.
The door clicks shut before the sink faucet turns on, and I hear Dane fiddle with things on the counter.
“What the hell have you been doing in here?” I ask.
“Shaving my legs.”
“What?” I peek over my shoulder and find Dane’s legs as taut and bone-smooth as Thalia’s are after one of her twenty-minute showers. It doesn’t look bad on him, just weird. Really fucking weird. “Wh—why would you shave your legs?”
“Honestly, I was just gonna shave my ass, but things got a little out of hand, and one thing led to another…”
I snort out an unexpected laugh, shake my dick and tuck it back into my shorts.
The sink is still running warm water when I come up to the counter, like Dane had left it going just for me.
While I wash up, he pumps his palm full of Aveeno lotion, and I try not to wonder how a man would go about shaving his ass.
I grab my toothbrush next. “Why were you shaving your ass?”
“Maybe I wanted to look pretty for you.”
I really should’ve seen that coming. “I used to share a bathroom with two other dudes, so I’ve seen some shit. Next time you’re doing something weird in here and I’m about to piss myself, just let me in, okay?”
“Open-door bathroom policy? Sounds dangerous.”
“Not open-door. Just be courteous, bro.”
He laughs. “Sure thing, bro.”
While analyzing Dane for any sign of honesty, I wind up watching him moisturize himself into an even shine from ankle to groin.
So fucking weird.
Halfway through Dane’s first match of the season, I walk into the living room to find the Smart TV turned to a livestream of San Diego State versus Fullerton.
Artie sits on the sectional, elbows on his knees, eyes on the screen, and tapping the remote to his chin as SD’s head coach subs Dane in from the bench.
It’s only a few minutes later that Fullerton scores off a corner kick to take the lead.
“You didn’t wanna watch in person?” I ask.
“Had he wanted me there, he would play like someone who wants his father there.”
Artie grows more and more agitated with every minute Dane is on the field. He gets up from the sofa and paces the living room, vibrating. He pours himself a tumbler of Scotch and gulps it down like water.
“That boy can’t run worth a damn,” he mutters. “Giraffe legs, but he can’t run.”
Meanwhile, I’m glued to the screen. It’s true, Dane’s form leaves something to be desired, but he’s fast and tenacious. He’s not afraid to get up in someone’s face and risk a foul call.
“What is he doing?! Kid doesn’t even know what side of the field he’s supposed to be on.”
It’s also true that Dane’s instincts on the field aren’t top-notch, but it’s the first match of the season, and he’s barely a junior.
When I researched his player info, there wasn’t much data on him due to how little playing time he got as a sophomore.
To go from bench warmer to playing twenty-plus minutes in the season opener means he must have improved tremendously since last year.
Dane had warned me not to defend him to Artie again, but soccer is soccer, and I know soccer. So, I speak my mind, and Artie shrugs it off. Says the coach is a moron and that the team is so abysmal Dane is only decent by comparison.
Even when Dane makes a killer assist that nearly earns the Aztecs a goal in stoppage time, Artie chalks their loss up to Dane’s shortcomings.
I wasn’t always a good player, and I wasn’t always on a winning team, but my dad showed up to every match he could and cheered me on the whole while like I was competing for Olympic gold.
By the end of Dane’s match, I can’t stand to be in the same room as Artie Calvo. Whatever beef is between them, Dane is still his son.
I leave the house with my backpack, and on the drive to my campus, I call my own dad from the Bluetooth just to hear his voice.
I count myself lucky when the first words out of his mouth are, “Hey, buddy! Your mom and I were just about to call to say we’re thinking about you. Sacramento isn’t the same without you.”
I’m not sure where Thalia is. The quarter hasn’t even begun yet, but already law school is demanding her every waking moment. Even on a Saturday, she’s off somewhere with a cohort of study buddies she’d met at her orientation, book-clubbing her summer reading list.
While she’s doing that, I take my memory cards to the photography studio on campus.
Unbridled access to the college’s computer lab is a perk of being a graduate student.
I pick a portal and stick my SanDisk card into the chip reader and open my drive of photos, where hundreds of images from this summer are waiting for a second look.
The lab door clicks and opens, and a girl I recognize from orientation day saunters in with pitch-black hair and red eyeliner. I think her name is Margot. We exchange polite smiles and head nods before she settles at a computer in the row behind me.
I click on a thumbnail and enlarge the photos of Dane’s pickup match I took on my first morning in San Diego.
I’ve stayed away from that beach ever since.
Dane’s not interested in a friendship, and I’m not interested in kicking a hive just to see what flies out.
I’m not sure Dane’s sting is as dangerous as Thalia thinks, but one person’s benign wound is another person’s anaphylactic shock, and I don’t think my EpiPen will save me if I get on Dane’s bad side.
“That’s gorgeous.” Margot’s voice suddenly fills the silence in the lab.
Taking my hand off the mouse, I swivel a fraction in my desk chair and glance over my shoulder. She’s studying my screen from between two monitors on the long desk behind me.
“Yeah?” I check my screen and Dane stares back.
Cropped to eliminate the context of the match and his buddies, all that’s left is a portrait of a young man who seems to feel every emotion in one moment in time.
Normally, I don’t like it when my subjects look into the lens, but I like the power behind this one, as if Dane willed the photo to be captured through my body.
“It’s intense,” Margot says. “Your model is very expressive. Where’d you find him?”
Funny, since my first thought when I captured the image was of Dane’s hollowness. Now that I’m studying his face more closely, I see his expression is full to bursting.
“He’s my girlfriend’s brother.”
“He’s cute. He single?”
I chuckle, looking between her and my screen and realizing that, out of context, Dane looks like the all-American boy.
Soft features juxtapose his intense gaze and broad shoulders, and the symmetry of his face makes him naturally handsome.
Guys or girls, I can imagine Dane gets looks wherever he goes, and it makes me wonder what he saw in me that day on the beach.
At this point, I’m confident that his flirting is all a game, so it doesn’t bother me the way it probably should.
But game or not, he wanted me on that beach. I still have no idea why.
“I’m not sure, actually. He doesn’t seem like the relationship type, if you know what I mean.”
“Fuckboy. Gotcha.”
Actually, I’m not even sure how sexually active he is, since he never brings anyone around the house. He is out often, though, sometimes until the early morning hours, so it’d make sense if he has a…boyfriend?
“I dunno,” I say. “He’s just a chaotic personality. Sort of a wildcard.”
“Chaotic personality? That’s my type.”
“He’s also gay,” I say before remembering I’m not supposed to out people.