CHAPTER NINE #2
That was the joke everyone made to him. Outside of lecture, one almost never saw James and Elliott apart.
Even then, when Elliott had no lectures, he did his homework outside of James’s lectures, waiting for him to come out.
When Elliott was in the shower, James stepped in with him to wash himself beside him.
Her feline aura was mesmerizing, emphasized with her costume of a sphinx. “Every other month I hear that you’re single.”
Elliott fell in love rapidly. He could never bottle his feelings. Embarrassed, he scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Yeah, Hazel and I ended things.”
Her lithe, black manicured nails traced over his arm.
“Perfect. My friend wants to know if James is open to heading upstairs with her. If you’re open to it, I’d like to head upstairs with you.
” Her eyes were dark and sultry as she spoke, lingering on him like a drug, swirling inside his neurons.
Sophisticated, she sucked down a martini, instead of beer and rum like everyone else.
“Her room and my room are right beside each other, you wouldn’t be far from him. ”
“What do you want to talk about?” Elliott asked sincerely, and for some reason, the senior laughed on his shoulder. Sinking her lips into his skin.
“Anything you want I suppose.”
“We don’t need to talk about the hibernal, if it’s too heavy.
We can discuss anything else you want.” Elliott imagined that every senior needed someone to talk to near the winter solstice.
That was probably why she approached him.
That morning alone, seven victims had their heads scalded with a fiery metal brand.
Elliott wanted to be there for the older students, if he could.
She skimmed her kittenish finger over his ear. “There’s plenty for us to talk about then.”
Most girls asked him to talk or dance, and right then, he was slightly embarrassed all over again.
“I’m a horrible dancer, in case you wanted to dance with me.
” He was frightened he’d step on her pedicure.
He didn’t want to ruin the potential last dance for her.
Elliott loosened the cowboy bandana knotted at his throat. “I still haven’t figured it out.”
“You’re very sweet, Elliott. I don’t think I want that kind of dance with you.”
“Are we studying then?” Now his brow raised.
“We can study afterward.” She gently placed Elliott’s palm in her lap and ran her fingers over the ridges of his bandages. “I’m a professor assistant for the undergraduate art department. I’ve seen you everywhere, you could use mentorship, I think.”
Elliott suffered nervous breakdowns in front of an easel. He treated art practicums like it was his public execution. A mentorship might save him.
No one understood his anxiety around art.
Not many people knew for certain what happened that tragic, rainy night.
Right then, Elliott tried not to pick at his scars and wounds, he didn’t want to bleed all over himself at a party.
Especially not in front of a girl, and to keep his bandages dry, he placed his least-damaged hand over hers.
“Found someone?” James’s voice came behind him and the girl in black.
James gazed down at their intertwined hands, and there was an unreadable expression on his features.
He gave Elliott the same gaze whenever Elliott was alone with someone else, anyone else, it could be a tennis club member or a librarian, it didn’t matter.
James never saw the other person, it always took him a second to realize they were there beside Elliott. He smiled.
Elliott stood and whispered over the slow, romantic music. “Her and her friend want to study upstairs with us. She wants to mentor me.”
James chuckled into his single malt drink. “Misty doesn’t want to mentor you.”
“She’s an undergraduate art PA.”
“They don’t want to study with us, Elliott.”
“She mentioned the mentorship herself; I’m behind on a few lectures.
” Elliott reached for the rum and coke, but James wouldn’t let him make the decision without being stone-cold sober first. There was a sudden hockey shot and the pack of centaurs leapt off the couch to cheer, howling and spilling beer all over themselves, tackling each other in ferocious embraces.
Another delivery of fresh, hot pizza boxes sailed through the doorway that Heather T?n manned with a silver helmet and a hunting spear.
Her quiver of hard-metal arrows threatened to slice across students’ hands and elbows whenever they stood too close to her money.
James glanced at the senior next to Elliott. His voice intensified slightly. “Is she your type?”
She had curly hair, smoldering eyes, and an Amazonian height.
She was Elliott’s favorite type. Girls with bouncy, curly hair, dark brown skin, and gapped teeth were Elliott’s weakness.
It reminded him of his Halle. He melted for her.
Except, she wasn’t thinking of that. The hibernal was in only two months. Why couldn’t James understand that?
“Never mind, the hockey game is almost over anyway.” James pointed to the beer-drenched television screen. Pepperoni slices were scattered on the floor from the raucous excitement. James slid his eyes back to Elliott. “If you prefer their bedrooms, I’ll do whatever you want to do.”
Elliott spoke over the sports chants rising in the room as the timer counted down. “No, if you came for the game, let’s stay. It might be a win.”
“There’s another hockey game on Tuesday, the Carnivores are going to lose this one. My last year of hockey games will hopefully be a win.” James finished his Scotch in one last swallow. “Let’s get blitzed and head upstairs, it’s fine.”
“Don’t say that it’s your last.” Elliott hated when James talked that way. His eyes stung. The upperclassman grinned at the concept of death. He swung his arms around Elliott. “Do you need to borrow a condom?”
“That’s not what they want.”
“It’s exactly why they’re interested in you, Elliott.”
Her tiny lip bite confirmed it. “It’ll be the best nightcap you ever had.”
Now Elliott flushed pink. The mentorship was a pickup line. Elliott didn’t know why people stopped saying what they wanted outright anymore in college. There was a strange artifice of innuendos and insinuations for him to decipher like a surreptitious language he couldn’t understand.
Elliott offered the sphinx his rum and coke as recompense. He stammered an apology, since Misty was more beautiful than anyone in the dormitory, but he figured she wanted her last intimate nights to be with someone she loved. Elliott was clumsy, adoring, and heartfelt in bed. Passionate.
He was easily smitten.
However, girlfriend after girlfriend broke up with him because he’d eventually confess he was still helplessly in love with Halle Mercer.
She graciously kissed his cheek, accepting the beverage. “Another time then.”
James purchased another set of drinks for the game.
Crowned with a pharaoh’s nemes, Huey Powell switched the stereo to a new hip-hop beat and the room pulsed as the clock ran out.
Huey never buzzed his afro for good luck.
It infrequently worked. Last season, the Connecticut Carnivores won the division title for the first time in five years.
However, in the end, the Saturday night score was 3-2 in favor of the Pittsburgh Penguins which still exploded the Common Room, everyone rabidly whistling, stomping, and pounding their chests.
King Arthur back-flipped off the oaken tables.
The Headless Horseman shotgunned a beer.
It was a good omen that the Penguins won.
They’d learned to treat every loss as a victory. Delusion was the cure to sorrow.
Elliott found Heather. He slammed down more rum and cokes, three then four, as the Common Room celebrated the loss.
My last year of NHL games will hopefully be a win.
Elliott couldn’t get the words out of his head.
James wouldn’t be dead. He lost his balance by the time there were body shots and Jell-O shots passed around.
James had to keep him upright as they sang along to Bruce Springsteen and Lionel Richie at midnight when it became Sunday morning. Elliott tripped over his feet.
Fifteen sophomores snuck into the rambunctious party, beer keg stands and cheap burger sliders offered as bribery.
A half-asleep Robin Hood fled the dorms with a textbook as a body shield, chased out into the freezing snow by a furious Hera who wanted him to return dressed as crowned Zeus of olive leaves and thunderbolts.
James and Elliott ate their weight in pizza and sliders, then reenacted the first score by Nils Eriksson. Their imaginary hockey sticks clacked together as random freshmen went around, blundering through the crowds with na?ve eyes, asking, “What would you do if you were chosen?”
“Exactly this.” James grinned like a boy. Happy, drunk, and fed.
Elliott threw his arms around James, and in a single glance James interpreted exactly what Elliott’s passionate gaze meant, and James’s eyes widened in alarm. “Don’t do it. Not here.”
“Why not?”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“No one is looking.” Elliott grinned back, knowing exactly what he would do if this was his last weekend alive.
The room had gone quiet since the new start of slow, tender songs.
Elliott didn’t bother to listen to James, and perhaps it was all of the rum, and the invincibility of drunkenness, and the camaraderie of the upperclassmen that encouraged him. “She’s one of your favorites.”
“Yes, but I don’t need all of Winterthur Hall to know that—”