“Cool. Cool cool.” That was one too many cools. Another one would threaten to tip things back to awkward again. “We’ll text to figure out our next lesson.”
Brennan mimed texting with his thumbs in case the word texting wasn’t clear enough. He had to get out of here before he made a complete ass of himself.
“Sounds good.” Cliff flashed him a polite smile caked in awkwardness.
Brennan gave him a pilot salute, because things weren’t cringeworthy enough.
“Good luck with your game.” He stepped backward toward the door.
Cliff didn’t move from his position. He could be as rigid as a statue when he wanted to be. “The season doesn’t start until next month.”
Brennan palmed the doorknob. “I’m early then.”
He was mid-twist of the knob when something caught his eye. The bright block letters of the Twenty-One Pilots logo on a wrinkled T-shirt peeked out from under the bed, just beyond Cliff’s feet. A logo from a T-shirt that he thought had gotten lost in the wash.
Cliff stepped in front of his line of sight. “I don’t want to be rude. I, uh, have a paper to write.”
“I thought I saw something.”
“Huh?” Cliff asked coolly, though his eyes told a different story.
“Is that my Twenty-One Pilots shirt?”
“No. I have one, too.”
“This was from their tour three years ago.” Brennan pointed, but Cliff kept looking ahead, pretending to be making eye contact but being just a hair off. Brennan’s mental polygraph was wilding out.
“Alex gave me his.”
“Alex didn’t go. He hates them.”
He remembered Cliff’s sage advice from their paper basketball game: you wanted your opponent to be looking at your eyes, not your feet.
Brennan surged to his left and pivoted around Cliff before the guy knew what was happening. He flopped on the bed and reached underneath, pulling out what he instantly recognized beyond a shadow of a doubt as his shirt. Cliff tried to grab at it, but Brennan rolled away from his reach. On the back were the list of tour dates with the one from Milwaukee circled in Sharpee. But that wasn’t the only surprise.
Tucked into the crack between the bed and the wall was his Florida School of the Arts T-shirt, jammed into a tight mash of fabric.
Both shirts reeked from days of unwashed sweat seeping into the fibers.
“Why do you have these?” Brennan got off the bed and held up the evidence. “Why did you take my shirts?”
“I’m sorry,” Cliff choked out. “I was going to wash them and put them back.”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for them.” Brennan held them away from his face because the odor was too much. It was stale sweat mixed with something else he couldn’t figure out. “I thought I was going crazy. I thought one of my neighbors stole them from the laundry room.”
Cliff stared at the floor, his whole body flushing with color.
“If you like these shirts, I’m sure we can find them online, so you can have your own.”
“I’m sorry. Please don’t tell Alex.” Cliff sounded desperate and terrified, which didn’t seem to fit the crime. And Alex probably wouldn’t care that much if he found out Cliff was a klepto.
“I wiped my balls on this one, man.” Brennan held up the shirt, smelled the rankness it emanated. He detected another smell, one familiar to any boy who masturbated. When he rubbed his finger over a particular dirty spot, he felt a crustiness that he recognized instantly.
“You jerked off with my shirts?”
Brennan knew he wasn’t supposed to say that part out loud. The way Cliff wanted to shrivel into a ball told him that. This realization was to be understood, not verbalized. He should have been weirded out and confused. And he was. But he also found it hot.
“You like to smell my shirts while you jerk off?”
