“Whoa.” Jackson, sprawled across his unmade bed like a starfish, gapes at me. “Did your laptop insult your telescope?”
“No.” The word snaps out of me. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh.” Jackson sits up and runs a hand through his messy hair. “And I’m secretly a figure skater. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Ryan, your jaw is doing that clenchy thing.”
I swing my desk chair around to face Jackson. “I made the mistake of reading the Ice Queen’s new blog post.”
Jackson’s eyebrows lift, and his head tilts slightly to the side as he exhales through his nose. “Ah. The one about Oliver’s triumphant return to the land of the sexually active?”
“Must you phrase it like that?”
“I’m just quoting the source material.” The mattress dips as he swings his socked feet onto the floor with a soft thud. “Look, I know you and Oliver have history?—”
“We don’t have history.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. “We were neighbors back in the day. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Jackson repeats flatly. “Which is why you turn into a startled deer every time he glances in your general direction.”
“I do not?—”
“You sprinted away from him last week. Inloafers.”
I have no defense for that. The loafers were a poor choice for a hasty retreat—I nearly twisted my ankle on the sidewalk. But Oliver had been strolling toward me with that smile that used to do things to me below the belt, and my fight-or-flight response chose flight with embarrassing enthusiasm.
“The point is, Oliver’s personal life is none of my concern. He can sleep with whomever he wants, where anyone could hear.”
Jackson’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline. “You’re spiraling.”
“I’m simply stating facts. He was heard getting ‘the ride of his life.’ I guess he’s unable to resist the power of the penis.”
Jackson’s eyes bug out of his head. “The power of the…Jesus, Ryan. Since when are those words even in your vocabulary?”
“I’m multi-faceted.”
Jackson unfolds himself from the bed and reaches toward the ceiling, arms extended. His BSU Football shirt creeps upward, exposing a thin line of skin above his waistband. “You know what you need?”
“To delete my browser history and never think about this again?”
“Twister.”
I blink at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Twister.” Jackson ransacks his closet, tossing out athletic gear and questionable fashion choices. “The game with the colored dots and spinner. It’s a scientifically proven method for getting out of your head.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He flashes the battered box with a triumphant grin. “My teammates back in high school would play it all the time when one of us was stressed.”
“I’m sure you did,” I mutter, thinking of the very different context in which Jackson and his teammates probably played Twister.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Abrams. This is gonna be therapeutic. I’ll even let you ‘accidentally’ elbow me in the balls, if it’ll twist your frown upside down.”
He unfolds the plastic mat with its cheerful array of colored circles, smoothing out the wrinkles with more care than he’s ever shown his bedsheets. “Come on. Left foot, red.”
“We haven’t even spun yet.”
