“I’m fine,” I said, though my pulse was hammering.“He wasn’t entirely wrong.I am a tutor.”
“You’re the MVP of Round 3,” Ryan declared, slamming his drink down.“To Austen!”
“To Austen!”the table roared.
Luke raised his glass, clinking it against my soda.“To constants,” he murmured, for me alone.
I looked at him—the way the bar lights caught his eyes, the set of his jaw, the protective weight of his hand resting on my thigh.
We won second place—a twenty-dollar gift card and a pitcher of lukewarm beer that Ryan claimed as a “moral victory.”The team that won first place was a group of graduate students, so they had the deck stacked in their favor.
Returning to the dorms, the group dwindled to just Luke and me.The wind had died down, leaving the campus silent and frozen.
“Thanks,” I said after we crossed the quad.
“For what?”
“For sticking up for me when that Kyle asshole came to the table.”
Luke shrugged, hands deep in his pockets.“Defensemen protect the goalie.Goalies protect the house.You’re in the house, Austen.”
You’re in the house.
It was a hockey metaphor.It meant territory.It meant team.
But the way he said it made it sound like something else.
“I had fun,” I admitted.“Javier is… a lot.But fun.And Ryan seems like a genuinely nice person.”
“Both of them like you.Ryan agreed that you’re a highly underutilized ‘weapon.’”Luke chuckled.“High praise.”
We reached the door of Stony Creek Hall.Luke held it open, and as I brushed past him, the smell of cold air and him filled my lungs.
“We iterate,” I said softly.
Luke smiled, tired but easy.“Yeah.We iterate.”
We walked up the stairs to the third floor, shoulder to shoulder.
Chapter 14
Empty Net
Austen
The acoustic properties of an empty dormitory are haunting.Without the dampening effect of five hundred bodies, music, and slamming doors, Stony Creek Hall echoed like a tomb.
It was eleven a.m.on Thanksgiving Thursday.Campus was a ghost town.The cafeteria was closed.The library was locked.Even the EDM guy next door had packed up his bass and gone home to Long Island.
As far as I could tell, I was the only person left in the building.I know the complex director was around somewhere, since I couldn’t be in the building without some official university presence, but I wouldn’t know how to find them if there was an emergency.I sat at my desk, staring at a blank terminal window.My original plan for the day had been to spend the it refactoring a neural network for my thesis, but the silence was distracting.Sure, I love quiet, but this was unnerving.It pressed against the windows like the gray November sky outside.Every creak of the building settling felt like a gunshot.
Technically, I had options.Maya had invited me to her aunt’s house in Vermont (“There will be wine and arguments, come shield me!”).My former foster family in New Jersey had sent a generic text:Thinking of you, hope school is good.Not an invitation to come visit.
But holidays in the system are performative.You sit at tables where you don’t quite fit, eat food you didn’t help cook, wait for the polite timeline to expire so you can leave, and hope desperately to avoid small talk that involves politics, religion, or your sexual orientation.You are a guest in a family portrait, blurring the edges.
I preferred the dorm.Here, the loneliness was a variable I controlled.
I stood up, stretching my back, and decided to execute Plan B: The Vending Machine Feast.I had twelve dollars in quarters and a hunger for anything that wasn’t a blueberry oat bar.
