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 threehours, but he’d behaved nicer than I’d expected. He almost fooled me into thinking there wouldn’t bethe talktoday. “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 himallthe 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 runmiles 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.