“I have a no refund policy.” Coop took the money and put it on his nightstand. Not in a hooker sort of way, although that would make sense for a gigolo of any rating. “I’ll give it a try, but I can’t promise anything.”
“If his grades start to come down, there’ll be more of that.” Kelvin nodded at the money.
Coop didn’t like that this guy could throw around money so easily, but there were plenty of him at a school like Browerton. It was Coop’s duty to profit off his kind.
“Thank you for your help.” Kelvin put his hand on the doorknob. “And good luck. You’ll need it.”
Chapter 4
Matty
In the ghosttown that was the fourth floor stacks of the library, Matty leafed through his robotics textbook in peace, taking ample notes. In one photo, two men worked on the ENIAC, one of the world’s first computers, which took up an entire room.Those men weren’t lonely. They were busy creating the most important invention of modern history. They didn’t spend time fretting about making friends.
Matty was barely a paragraph into page 183 when a giant slam almost knocked him out of his chair. A stack of dusty, discolored books from the stacks sat on his table. He looked up, and a kid who seemed like he didn’t frequent libraries often smiled back at him.
“Hey there. Mind if I share this table with you?”
“Really?” Matty pointed at the empty tables behind them. “There’s space over there.”
“I know, but this is the best table in the library. You’re directly under the air conditioning vent. It’s stuffy in here.” The guy took off his askew baseball hat and stripped off the light sweater he had on, leaving him in a tank top that exposed the hard curves of his hefty muscles. Matty had to catch his breath for a second and stop staring at the tattoos etched on said muscles.
“There are probably empty tables available under the vent in another wing,” Matty said politely.
“I checked. It’s a full house tonight.”
“Really? It only gets full during finals.”
The guy shrugged. His eyes had a perpetual squint to them, like they were flashlights surveying a crime scene. He removed his notebook from his back pocket, and a pen from behind his ear.
“There’s a little coffee shop off the periodicals wing on the ground floor.”
“Full.”
“Are you sure?”
The guy held up his coffee cup in his free hand. “I was just there.”
“In the time since you came up here, there might be an empty seat.”
“It’s a free country. You can’t claim a table that has three unused chairs all to yourself.” The guy pressed his palms on the table, making his triceps flex. Matty didn’t know if that was supposed to be an intimidation tactic or just a regular stance for him. Either way, it sent a clear message. “Don’t worry. I’ll be quiet.”
It was a losing battle. The guy sat across from Matty.
“I’m Coop, by the way.”
“Matty,” he chirped out with a non-committal wave.
He figured this counted as hanging out with someone.See, Aditi, I’m making friends.Matty returned to page 183 of his textbook. He read a paragraph on natural language processing, but had to reread it. He didn’t know what was confusing him, but when he glanced up, there was Coop, looking right at him.
“What are you studying?”
Matty stopped reading mid-sentence. He craned his head up at Coop, who awaited an answer.
“Engineering.”
“Cool.” Coop leaned back on the hind legs of his chair. “Is that like working on trains?”
“No.”Because I’ve never heardthatone before.“Not the type of engineer who works on trains. My interest is more computer science engineering.”
