Chapter 2
Well, Jacob thought as Felix gaped at him. At least I finally made him speechless.
Not just speechless—Felix was blushing. Jacob couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t seen Felix blush since they were kids. But here he was, standing in the small crack of the door he’d had time to open before Jacob started on his spiel, his cheeks flushed.
“Like…” Felix said finally. “Like… find you someone? Or… me?”
“You,” Jacob said, his face twisting as he considered the alternative.
“I don’t want you to find me some stranger, man.
Gross. I want… you know. You’re experienced, and I…
I know you. You’d…” He trailed off, too embarrassed to continue.
You’d make it nice. He sounded like a teenage girl.
It took all his willpower not to take it all back and sprint off down the hall.
He had class soon. And Felix would never catch up to him.
Even if Jacob hadn’t run track in high school, Felix had little legs.
“Wow,” Felix said faintly. “That’s… wow.”
“Wow,” echoed a voice behind him.
Jacob looked up. There, in the small sliver of background he could see behind Felix, stood Shane Turner, staring at Jacob awkwardly.
A tidal wave of mortification washed over him. “Fuck,” Jacob said. “Shane. Hey. Didn’t think you’d be here. I’m gonna go.”
He turned and started down the hallway, cringing.
What was he thinking? This was stupid. Who asked their best friend to deflower them at twenty?
Felix should have laughed in his face. He was actually shocked he didn’t, this seemed exactly the sort of thing Felix would laugh at.
He’d apologize later, but only after he’d finished laughing.
“Hey!” Felix called. “Jacob, wait up!”
Rushed footsteps. Felix was chasing him, just like Jacob knew he would.
Jacob ran faster.
“Oh, come on,” Felix yelled. “You know I can’t catch up, dickhead! Quit it with your long legs!”
Jacob ignored him. He barreled around the corner, almost running into a couple of freshmen who looked so hungover they were almost green.
“Sorry,” he called back as he ran out the door and into the chilly winter air.
He was glad for the cold, for his pumping limbs—it was harder to think like this.
It was why he took up running track in high school.
He always enjoyed not being able to think.
He never enjoyed being in his own head. If he just ran fast enough, maybe he could escape the embarrassment threatening to overwhelm him.
There was a moment when he arrived at class, sweating and panting, when he thought he’d done it. No more embarrassment. All he needed to do was sit in his usual seat and think about sums for the next hour, and he would have escaped it.
Then he reached into his jeans pocket for his notebook and pen and realized something crucial: he didn’t have The List.
He fumbled desperately in his pockets, pulling everything out. Phone, lip balm, mints—and no list. It was in his pocket when he left his dorm, which meant he must have dropped it when he was running around campus.
He sat back in his chair, sweating for reasons that were only half related to exertion. It was fine. Nobody could track that list back to him unless they knew his handwriting. Nobody knew his handwriting well enough. Well, nobody except—
“Hello,” said a gravelly, measured voice next to him.
“Shit!” Jacob jumped, and turned to see David Stanton sliding into the seat he always took next to Jacob. “David. Sorry. Hi.”
“Hello,” David repeated, surprised. He looked Jacob up and down. “Are you alright?”
“What? I’m fine. Just… didn’t want to be late.” Jacob tried in vain to stop panting, but it was impossible. He wiped at his sweaty forehead, grimacing as he had to dry his hand on his shirt. “Thank you,” he added, never one to forget his manners. Unless it was with Felix, of course.
David paused. Jacob wondered if he would keep asking.
They weren’t friends, he and David—they were just guys who sat next to each other in class.
Jacob got the feeling that David appreciated Jacob’s maturity.
David was older than the rest of the class.
Not much—maybe five years. But he acted even older.
It was refreshing. It was also a little boring, which was one of the many reasons why Jacob had never tried to be actual friends with him.
The main reason being, of course, that Jacob had never put much effort into making friends.
He had Felix. That had always been enough.
David started setting out his class supplies: binder, pencil case, and highlighters, lined up neatly on the desk in a way that made Jacob annoyed that he didn’t bring his own binder today.
“So,” David said as the rest of the class filed in. “Have you been considering my offer?”
“Your offer? Oh, right.” Jacob rubbed his face.
He must be really out of it if he’d forgotten the offer that could fix his living situation for the rest of the year, at least. “Yeah. I think I’m in.
I’d have to see your place first, but it sounds like a good idea. You had a list of requirements, right?”
“I can send them to you,” David said, taking out his phone. “I prefer having these things in writing so we can refer back to them later. It is not an extensive list—like we talked about, I simply want someone who is quiet, clean, and polite.”
“Right,” Jacob said. “Great. Thank you so much.”
“What is your phone number?”
Jacob’s heart rate was already calming as he recited the numbers. David might be boring, but maybe boring was what he wanted in a roommate. A roommate who owned his own house, no less. And seemed genuinely interested in being quiet and clean. Two things he would never find with Felix.
Thinking of Felix made Jacob wince. He rubbed his sweaty forehead, wishing he was the kind of guy who carried deodorant. He already carried Chap Stick, why not deodorant? Why hadn’t he considered that he would have to sprint away from what was surely going to be a mortifying situation?
“I have texted you,” David said, because sometimes the guy talked like Spock for no reason. “So you have my number. Are you feeling sick?”
“No,” Jacob said sharply. Then he winced. “Sorry. No. Ignore me, I’m just tired.”
David nodded and turned back to his binder. Jacob watched as the rest of the class took their seats, the teacher trailing in after them with a cup of coffee, looking almost as hungover as the freshmen Jacob almost knocked over earlier.
“Okay,” the teacher said as he plugged in his laptop. “Anybody do the homework? Come on. Raise your hands if you did the homework.”
Jacob raised his hand. David did the same.
“At least I can count on you two,” the teacher said, already sounding bored. He paused to take a long sip of coffee from the shittiest on-campus café, then started tapping away on his computer. “Give me a second to get the PowerPoint up.”
A familiar voice rang out through the class. “I’ll give you more than that!”
Jacob’s heart fell into his ass. Felix was in the doorway, panting, holding something over his head that looked suspiciously like the list Jacob had dropped. He stared at Jacob pointedly, jerking his head out the door.
Jacob shook his head, heart pounding. Oh, god. It was The List. What the hell was Felix doing?
“Uh,” said the teacher. “Are you in this class?”
Felix ignored him and lowered the paper, clearing his throat. “Hello! My friend Jacob—that really tall guy sitting in the front like a nerd—has a list he wants me to read out. Number one—”
Jacob shot out of his chair so fast he knocked David’s highlighters to the floor. He didn’t even stop to pick them up, he just ran down the line of chairs and toward the doorway like his life depended on it.
“Sorry,” he yelled back to David. But he didn’t take his eyes off Felix, grabbing his arm and hauling him into the bustling hallway until they were out of earshot of the classroom where Felix had almost aired Jacob’s secret desires.
“What are you doing?” Jacob hissed. “Were you really going to read that shit out?”
He grabbed for the crinkled list. Felix smacked Jacob’s hand away, then twisted around the paper protectively when Jacob tried again.
“I tried to get you to leave and you ignored me,” Felix hissed as they wrestled. “You can’t just show up at your best friend’s dorm, tell them you want them to take your special flower—”
“Fuck you, don’t call it that,” Jacob barked.
“—and then bounce,” Felix finished. He elbowed Jacob in the stomach and ran to the other side of the hallway when he doubled over. “What is this, man?”
“Nothing,” Jacob wheezed, clutching his stomach. He waddled over, grabbing weakly for the paper.
Felix stepped easily out of the way. “Really? Because it looks like a list of shit you wanna try. Ahem. Fisting—”
“Don’t read it out,” Jacob hissed, staring at the students passing by. Luckily they were late to class, so they didn’t take much notice of the boys tussling like schoolchildren in the hall.
“And it’s not even all sexual,” Felix continued. “You were serious about reinventing yourself! You want to go to parties! You do want to get a motorcycle!”
“I want to ride a motorcycle,” Jacob corrected. “Obviously I’m not going to get one.”
He grabbed for the list. This time Felix let him, a thoughtful look on his face. “You know this is kind of how Shane and Nate got together?”
Jacob frowned, stuffing his list back in his pocket. “What?”
“Shane wrote this thing,” Felix started. Then he shook his head, his blond hair bouncing distractingly. “Anyway. I’m in.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, seriously.” Felix hesitated, and Jacob realized with no small sense of shock that his best friend was nervous. It was the only time Felix ever avoided his eyes. Felix looked at everything head-on until he couldn’t. Which was weird, considering the stuff he was saying.
“Come on, man,” Felix muttered, grinning in a way that Jacob would call shy if it was anyone else. “I would’ve messed around with you whenever you wanted. I thought you weren’t interested.”