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We’ve been down here for hours, and we’re starving, so we walk straight from the athletic building to the chicken place off the quad in our sweaty clothes. Mathers comes too, because nobody tells him not to, and he doesn’t ask. We take the back booth. Koda orders two meals. Rafe orders two meals and gives Koda a look like it’s a competition. Mathers eats his fries one at a time and licks his fingers after every one, which I cannot stand.
Koda’s phone lights up on the table, then again, then again. He picks it up and grins at the screen like an idiot. “She sent me something.”
“Nobody cares,” Rafe says.
“Don’t care,” I say.
He turns the phone around anyway. It’s a raccoon in a trash can with a crown drawn on it. He laughs at it for ten full seconds by himself and then types back with both thumbs, and Rafe watches the whole thing with total disgust.
“You’re pathetic,” Rafe says.
Koda points at him. “Somebody get this guy laid.”
Mathers eats another fry. My phone is in my pocket, and it doesn’t buzz. I finish my sandwich, and I don’t lick my fucking fingers.
I shower when I get back to Corvin and stand under it until the water goes lukewarm, with the raw spot on my hand stinging the whole time. Then I put on sweats and a clean T-shirt and sit down at my desk with the econ reading. Rafe leaves around nine without saying where, just puts his hoodie on and takes his keys and goes. I read. The room is quiet except for the occasional noise from the hall or upstairs.
Around ten, the team chat lights up with the equipment manager asking who hasn’t turned in their sizes, and when I open it to answer, Kylie’s thread is right under it: strawberries, I know what a strawberry is, the apple selfie, so proud. I answer the equipment manager and go back to the reading. I get through nine more pages, underlining in pencil, while the clock on the desk goes from 10:02 to 10:31, and I don’t get up.
At 10:38, my phone buzzes.
Kylie: You awake?
Me: Yeah.
Kylie: Open your door.
I hesitate. Then I get up and open it, and she’s standing in the hallway in gray sweatpants and a black hoodie I haven’t seen before with the sleeves pushed up, her hair down and still a little wavy from this morning’s braid, slides on over her socks, nothing on her face. She looks like she was in bed and got out of it.
“Hey, you,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Busy?”
There’s a textbook open on my desk behind me with a pencil in the crease. “No.”
She walks in past me without waiting for me to move, her shoulder brushing my chest, and turns around and shuts the door behind her. And locks it. I hear the lock go. Then she pulls my face down and kisses me hard.
My hands go into her hair, and I walk her back into the door. She laughs into my mouth and plants both hands flat on my chest and pushes. I go back a step. She follows and pushes again, and I go back again, and the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.
“Sit,” she says.
I sit. She stands between my knees looking down at me, breathing fast, her lips already red, and grabs the bottom of my hoodie and drags it over my head. My arms get stuck. She yanks. It comes off, and she throws it behind her without looking. The T-shirt stays. She doesn’t touch it, doesn’t say a word about it.
She climbs into my lap with a knee on either side of my hips and pushes me flat on my back and follows me down. “You were reading,” she says against my jaw.
“Yeah.”
“On a Monday.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so sad.”
She sits up on me, reaches into the front pocket of that black hoodie, pulls out a condom, drops it on my chest, and just looks at me. She brought one, because she decided she wanted this. Everything in me goes hot and tight at once. My hands are on her thighs, and I squeeze.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice comes out wrecked.
