Chapter 2
TWO
Seth
“That’s the last of the boxes,” Nick said after dropping it on the floor. He’d barely broken a sweat. Years of conditioning and clashing on the ice had made him into something superhuman, and you could trust him to point that out in all the ways.
“Good. Thanks. Um…” I shrugged, practically tilting my head to the door.
“Hungry?” he asked, not getting the message.
“We ate two hours ago,” I said. “I don’t burn calories the way you do.”
Nick scratched the back of his head. “How often do we get to hang out?”
Not often, I thought to myself. The reason for that wasn’t a great mystery either.
My big brother was a controlling know-it-all, and hanging out with him for more than fifteen minutes at a time involved all the usual repertoire of lectures, criticisms, and unsolicited advice, often based on his musings rather than experience.
“We’re practically neighbors, Nick. We’ll hang out. ”
“We could have been neighbors,” Nick said, pulling the chair from the desk and sitting down, surrounded by a sea of boxes.
He’d had me in the passenger seat of his car for the last three hours, but he’d behaved nicer than I’d expected.
He almost fooled me into thinking there wouldn’t be the talk today.
“I don’t get why you didn’t transfer to my college. ”
I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. “Northwood has the best biology lab in the tristate area,” I said, reciting the same speech I’d given him a million times. “If I wanted to study just anywhere with a decent lab, I would have stayed in Chicago.”
“Sure,” Nick said, folding his arms on his broad chest. “But Northwood?” His contempt dripped from the word. “I mean, is it really that great?”
“Yeah, Nick,” I said, sitting on the edge of my new bed for the first time. “If it weren’t that great, I wouldn’t have spent a year making sure they would accept my transfer application.”
Nick smiled apologetically. “You’re right. Of course.” But the things he wasn’t saying were the real issue. He drew a deep breath and relaxed a little, tilting his head to examine me more closely. “Damon studies here. Did you know that?”
“Your bestie?” I shrugged. “I think someone mentioned it to me.”
Nick’s eyes went cold. I hated it when he did that. “I don’t talk about him all the time, Seth.”
“Didn’t say you do,” I pointed out.
He scoffed and slapped his knees. “Right. I’d better go. Give you some time to settle in. Dinner tomorrow?”
“Sure thing,” I said. I had no better plans, so I might as well spend time with my kin, my flesh and blood, my only family in the state. Oh well.
He made his way through the boxes and to the door, where he lingered, looking at me. “I know you don’t get it, Seth. At this point, I gave up on making you understand.”
I folded my lips, swallowing a thin, high-pitched scream of frustration that seemed to be cutting its way through my body.
“Just…” Nick looked at me intensely. “Trust me. He’s trouble.”
I nodded. “Got it. And you trust me. Your old friend isn’t doing lab work at Northwood. He’s chasing a puck, just like you, and I couldn’t imagine a place where we could ever cross paths.”
Nick hesitated, then nodded. “See you tomorrow.”
When he was finally gone, I released a deep breath of air that had been slowly suffocating me. For all that he was to me, Nick was a pain in my ass. A pain I loved dearly, of course, but a pain nevertheless.
I lay down on the bed, testing the mattress. It was a marginal improvement for last year’s dormitory, but I wasn’t here for comforts and nicely furnished rooms. I was here on a mission, and I wasn’t letting my focus waver under the pressure of my brother and his silly rivalry.
The room was functional. Two desks, two chairs, two beds, nightstands, dressers, closets, and a private bathroom attached to one side, a kitchen and dining room for the entire floor were just down the hallway, and the lab was five minutes away.
There was a massive library in the neo-colonial style at the heart of campus and a student center with bars, cafés, restaurants, and an elaborate gym.
I could have a good life here for a while.
So long as I didn’t let Nick get too controlling about every move I made.
He had always had a way of telling me what to do and what to avoid, but it was often based on the things only he cared about.
Had it been up to him, I would have steered clear of biology and pursued a career as an athlete, even if I’d never had much of a passion for the sports.
I did the bare minimum at the gym for my own good, but it was the biology conferences that played in my headphones, discussions about new forms of cancer treatments, discoveries in the depths of the ocean, and the theories about the origin of life on our planet.
I could run miles on a treadmill to the stories of eventually growing carrots on Mars.
A tornado of bracelets, trinkets, and rags stormed the room a moment after my thoughts had drifted off planet.
“You’re the guy, right?” he said, all big eyes and bleached hair with dark roots, like chaos in baggy clothes.
“The roommate, I mean.” The door had barely swung open before he’d buried me under the questions.
“They said you were coming today. I’m Silas.
Fuck, sorry.” He tripped over a box on the floor. “Hope that wasn’t priceless.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Seth.” I eyed him for a moment and felt anxiety slowly lift.
I hadn’t even realized that I’d been worried about this moment.
My last roommate was a quiet guy who seemed to perpetually exist on the verge of a tantrum.
He grunted, ground his teeth, and pursed his lips instead of saying that something bothered him.
I didn’t think Silas would be that type.
“I just arrived,” I explained. “Didn’t get a chance to unpack yet.”
“Well, I’m just passing through,” he said. “Wanna join me at the sauna? We might see a hot guy or ten.”
A laugh broke out of me without control. “Why do you think I’d want to spy on hot guys?”
Silas touched his heart and gasped silently. “Are you denying it?”
We looked at each other, and I shook my head. “I’m just curious if it’s that obvious.”
He laughed aloud. “I have an excellent gaydar. Basically, I assume everyone is gay until I’m proven otherwise.”
“How often are you proven otherwise?” I asked.
He looked at me with mild bewilderment. “Never happened.”
It provoked a laugh from me, even as I shook my head at the low-effort joke. “Right. Well. I think I’ll skip the sauna.”
Silas nodded agreeably. “Yeah, you probably need to unpack. Hot guys will be hot tomorrow, too.”
“They always are,” I mused.
He clicked his fingers and agreed. Rummaging through his wardrobe, he packed a duffel with clean clothes and a towel.
“Sauna is also just a healthy place to be. Happy people live longer, and nothing makes me as happy as being around sweaty men. Don’t mind me.
I yap a lot, but it’s part of my charm. What about you?
I get along well with good listeners and other yappers. ”
I laughed at the sheer honesty. “I guess I’m more of a listener.”
“Perfect,” he said. “We’ll be besties in no time, then.”
He tossed his duffel over his shoulder and hopped over a box. “Make yourself at home, Seth. I’m not territorial. You’re welcome to use whatever’s lying around. And don’t wait up.” He winked devilishly and dashed.
That was a refreshing thirty seconds of my life. I tried to go over Silas’ words, to find the hidden meaning, but they didn’t have any. He was exactly what he was advertising, and loudly so. After three hours with Nick, circling around the topic, this was a breath of fresh air.
I sat up and looked around the boxes. Textbooks, supplies, my microscope, my collections of preserved bugs, they all needed to be sorted and housed.
Without dragging it out much further, I began to look through my things.
My clothes were the easiest part. I shoved them into the closet and drawers.
Posters of human anatomy went up on the wall by the bed, and old books on the shelf.
It all had its place. And after two hours of weighing things, measuring how important they were, and replacing them to make sure they fit well together, I was almost done.
I unzipped my backpack and set my current literature on the nightstand, tossed the pens into a cup on the desk, put up the framed photo of me with my family next to it, and placed the brass compass without a needle next to all that.
My gaze lingered on the compass, and a laugh bubbled deep in my chest. I’d wandered far and wide and couldn’t say I’d ever found my way. Then again, I’d never had somewhere I wanted to go. My comfort was in the books and research.
Except for those few glorious moments that disrupted the neatly structured life I’d always led. Damon sprawling in the grass, skin kissed by the rays of sunlight, arm easily wrapping around me and pulling me close. Ah, the good old times long gone.
It had been way too good to last. I’d moved to Chicago after a devastating rejection from Northwood. Damon had gone back to hockey. And Nick had towered over us both like a storm-bringing cloud. We had been lucky enough not to get caught. And not to catch the feels, too.
Well, he didn’t catch them, at least. It didn’t really matter if I’d gone soft for Damon or not. He was hardly a desirable partner. The guy screwed everyone who glanced at him if only they gave him a chance. I was almost one of those people, even if I thought ours was a different thing.
No. It was time to put Damon Moore out of my mind. First thing he’d done on his return to Northwood last year was to go out on a date with a girl, so I’d gotten my message loud and clear. I was expendable like the rest of them.
My gaze wandered over the broken compass, tickling me just enough to make me smile.
The door of my room flew open again, admitting the tornado of my roommate. “Right,” Silas said, clapping his hands. His hair was still damp. “There were these frat jocks at the sauna.”
“Do I want to know how this story ends?” I asked, holding back a laugh.
Silas nodded eagerly. “You absolutely do because you’re part of it.”
“You don’t even know me,” I said, the laugh breaking through at last.
“’Course I do. You’re Seth. Anyway, there’s a welcome-back party at their house tonight. We’d better arrive fashionably late, or we’ll look too eager. Which gives you a good two hours to get ready.”
“Get ready for what?” I asked.
Silas shot me a devious grin. “Whatever you want to get ready for.”
My mouth opened, the frown erasing itself from my face as embarrassment replaced it. “I…uh…”
But my new roommate was turning away, sparing me the scrutiny. “You’ll want to have a signal in case you want to bring someone back to our room. That’s absolutely allowed and strongly encouraged, by the way, but let me know so I don’t do the same.”
“How about I pinky promise I won’t bring anyone over tonight?” I asked. “I’ve barely moved in. I’m not in the mood for…that.”
Silas shrugged, rummaging through his wardrobe like a very happy raccoon.
Even the clothes he was examining looked like shredded scraps someone threw away.
There was a thing that resembled a T-shirt that was basically just a black net.
There was a pair of underwear with no ass at all—yeah, I know what a jockstrap is, but you get the gist.
“Suit yourself. I’ve done it on top of moving boxes. Wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Why not on a bed?” I asked.
“It was inside a moving box. Long story. But you’re coming with me. You don’t have to stay long, but I can’t show up on my own.” He pulled out a tank top with holes poked all over the chest. “What do you think?”
I looked at it for a moment and decided that honesty was the only right way to start a friendship. “If you go to a frat party in that, they’ll rip you apart.”
Silas smiled happily. “That’s the plan.” He unhung the top from a hanger and tossed it on the bed.
There was no point in arguing.
Apparently, I was going to a frat party.