“What?” I asked, flustered enough that I dropped the pencil.
He rolled his eyes as I quickly snatched it back up before it could roll onto the floor and annoy the girl in front of us again, or, worse, draw the professor’s attention. Arnie and I were sitting all the way in the back of the lecture hall, but still, the last thing I needed was for the professor to call on me with some question that I’d have no idea how to answer given that my attention, as per always, had been slightly less than focused during his lecture today.
Not my fault, technically, since my brain had been busy distracting me with tangents.
Arnie looked down at my open textbook and smirked. “Never mind,” he said while I slumped down in my seat and tried to look like someone who wasn’t there and yet had definitely been paying attention anyway... but whom no one would possibly want to ask to participate in a class discussion. “You haven’t been taking any, have you?”
“Taking any what?” I asked, tearing my eyes off the (super boring, if I was being honest, which made it evenharderto pay attention to him) professor and trying to remember what Arnie had asked me. Oh. “Notes? Um…”
I glanced down at the chapter I had the textbook open to. It looked a lot like the one we’d been required to read a few weeks ago… which meant I probably had it open to the wrong page. But on the plus side, Ihadmanaged to doodle a massive penis in the corner, and that was kind of like a note, right? Or at least it was note-adjacent, since I’d written (drawn) it in class, and it had been made with pencil lead, which was very academic-ish, and—
Wait, no. Lead was totally old school. Like, they’d stopped using it because it caused cancer or made your balls shrivel into raisins or forced you to speak in tongues or whatnot? Something like that, I was pretty sure.
I scrunched up my eyebrows, staring at the tip of my pencil as I rolled it back and forth between my fingers.
So whatdidthey make the insides of pencils out of now?
“If you’re going to pass this class, dude, you’d better start paying attention,” Arnie said, distracting me from the deep and meaningful contemplation of the evolution of writing utensils as he rolled his eyes at me.
He whipped a laptop out of his bag and clicked a bunch of stuff until his screen was filled with super academic-looking notes and slides and whatnot, and my stomach cramped.
Arnie was right. Ihadto get my grades up, and even though Gage hadn’t actually told me what the plan to do that was yet, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t involve me doodling penises while I zoned out in class dreaming about his cock… or pondering the aftereffects of Colonialism… or even contemplating the documented dangers of pencil lead, which, in my defense, did seem kind of scholastic or whatever since pencils were basically invented for school.
Well, maybe elementary school.
I really needed to start remembering to bring my laptop to class.
Ugh. It had been less than a week since my mom and dad had dropped their bombshell, and here I was, already screwing it up. Well, I mean, not “already,” more like “still,” but mypointwas that I had to stop letting my brain go off on so many tangents… and I definitely had to stop thinking about sex stuff in class, because neither of those things was going to convince my parents not to force me to move back home at the end of the semester.
“Arnie,” I whispered, sitting up straight the way I imagined a model student would. I was going to do better, starting right now. “We should be study partners for this class.”
He snorted, then sent a pointed glance at the dick pic I’d drawn. “Really?”
Ugh, right. I didn’t really have anything to bring to the table for that kind of partnership, did I?
I slumped back in my seat.
“Okay, maybe not,” I said with a sigh, reaching up to touch the rough outline of my collar under my sweatshirt for comfort. “Never mind.”
He shoulder-bumped me again. “Hey, we totally can, I’m just giving you shit.” Then he winked, adding, “But youdohave to pay attention to something besides dicks if you want me to share my notes.”
Dicks?
I gasped.
Then choked.
Then coughed when all that gasping and choking made me swallow my own spit… andthenI started to get a hard-on, because that made me think of Gage, um, doing that. Spitting, I mean. The first time he’d played with my butt.
But then,finally, since Arnie was staring at me like he might start the Heimlich or something if I didn’t hurry up and start breathing like a normal person again, I somehow managed to wheeze out a shocked, “W-W-What?”
He rolled his eyes again. “Isaid—”
“I know what you said,” I whispered urgently, interrupting him before he could say the D-word out loud again. “But why did you think I would be thinking about—”
“Gage?” Arnie cut in, finishing my sentence for me with a knowing smirk. “You mean you weren’t? Oops. My bad.”
I could feel my face heating up.
