In my dreams, Ryan is there.
31
RYAN
Who was the genius who installed fluorescent lights in the hallway?
The unforgiving glow illuminates every wrinkle, grass smudge, and—most critically—the dark, unmistakable patch of cum spread across the front of my shorts.
I’d almost convinced myself it had dried enough to be invisible, or at least ambiguous. That I could pass it off as spilled sparkling water.
The hallway light disagrees.
I fumble with my key, hands still trembling from the evening’s events—from Oliver’s weight on top of me, his breath against my ear, the way my entire body had unraveled beneath him in ways I didn’t know were possible. My fingers are clumsy, operating on a two-second delay, and the key scrapes against the lock plate twice before finding the slot.
The door swings open, and Jackson Monroe is sitting cross-legged on his bed in basketball shorts and a faded BSU Athletics shirt, a mystery novel open on his lap and a bag of trail mix balanced on his knee. His brand-new reading glasses—the ones he refuses to wear in public because he thinks they make him looklike a “nerdy quarterback,” which is exactly what he is—are perched on his nose.
“Hey!” His face lights up the way it always does when I come home, as though my return is an event worth celebrating. “How was the picnic? Did you guys see cool stars? Did Oliver try to name a constellation after you? Because Gerard texted me saying Oliver was going to try to name a constellation after you, and I told him that’s not how astronomy works, but?—”
He stops.
His eyes drop.
The trail mix bag crinkles as his hand goes still inside it.
I brace for impact. The teasing. The howling laughter. The inevitable group text to Drew and Gerard that will ensure I never live this down for as long as I draw breath.
Instead, Jackson’s face does something I don’t expect.
He smiles. Not the mischievous, I’m-about-to-roast-you grin I’ve come to know over three years of cohabitation. A real smile. Warm and genuine and almost proud, the kind a parent might wear at a graduation ceremony.
“Ryan,” he says softly. “Did you have a good time tonight?”
My face is on fire. I can feel the heat radiating from my cheeks, to my ears, to the back of my neck. I’m standing in the doorway of my dorm room, wearing the physical evidence of my first sexual experience on my pants, and my roommate is looking at me with the tenderness of a golden retriever.
“I—yes. It was. The picnic was—yes.”
“Good.” Jackson nods, his smile widening. “That’s really good, Ryan. I’m happy for you.”
“You’re not going to make fun of me?”
“Why would I make fun of you?”
I gesture at my shorts with both hands, the universal signal forlook at the catastrophe happening in my crotch region.
Jackson waves a dismissive hand. “Dude. That’s nothing. That’s a badge of honor. You went out there, you had an experience,and you came home with proof.” He pauses. “Phrasing aside.”
“Jackson, I can’t walk to the laundry room looking like this. If anyone sees me—the RA, another student, a janitor with functioning eyes?—”
“Give them to me.”
I blink. “What?”
Jackson swings his legs off the bed, setting aside his book and trail mix. “Give me your shorts. And whatever else needs washing. I’ll take them down.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“Ryan.” He holds up a hand. “If anyone sees me carrying stained shorts to the laundry room, they’ll think, ‘Oh, there goes Jackson Monroe, that rascal, probably had a great Tuesday with his boyfriend hockey player.’ My reputation can absorb the hit. Yours can’t. Not because there’s anything wrong with what happened, but because I know you. You’ll catastrophize it for three days.”
