“I’msosorry.”
“This is my fault,” he sputters. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, I do. Look, I don’t know you, but you seem like a nice guy and I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.” Chris’ head shoots up at the mention of trouble. “I’m the one who swiped on you knowing your age—”
“I messaged you back,” he counters. “I sent you a photo of my ass—shit.” He covers his eyes.
I keep my tone casual. “It doesn’t matter. No one is going to find out about this, so it doesn’t matter.”
His hand slides off his face. He glances up at me, timid like he’s not sure if he should believe me.
I join him on the couch. His shoulders hunch, making it easier to talk to him directly. “We’re both adults. Nothing illegal happened, just nothing I want to have to explain to the Dean. Or Terrence.”
His large ear twitches, like its shaking off a fly “Terrence is your roommate?”
“Yes—he doesn’t know I’m here. Just that I have plans.”
“What sort of plans exactly?”
“I kept it vague!” I say forcefully. “Obviously.”
“Sorry—” he rubs the back of his neck. “Still wrapping my head around this whole situation.”
“Right. Of course. I found out there are 250 tiles in the shower today, so I get it.”
Now I really feel bad. I ambushed this guy on his couch. Maybe we should have handled this over messages, but I didn’t want to leave a paper trail. Plus, it’s hard to be sincere over text. “I’m cool with forgetting this ever happened. Really.”
He huffs out a humorless chuckle. “Isn’t that my line?”
I lift a brow. “Why are you taking the brunt of responsibility here? It’s pretty obvious which one of us instigated.”
“But I’m older–”
“AndI’mthe one that’s into that.”
Chris sits up a little straighter.
“Don’t make this weird.” I roll my eyes. “I’m not the victim here just because there’s a decade between us. Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Roderick, Terrence’s roommate.” I extend a hand. “Good luck with the Dingbats, our mascot is the best thing about us.”
Chris lets out another breathy chuckle, but a small smile accompanies it. He shakes my hand. “Christos.”
The handshake was a bad idea, because his name does something to me—and the fact that we’re touching does not help. In an instant his name is on my tongue. “Christos,” I whisper, because it feels like a secret.
He shrugs. “Well, I’m not your coach.” He blinks like he’s waking up from a dream. “But, uh, on campus you should probably call me Coach Chris. Not that we’ll be seeing each other off campus—”
“There is one grocery store in this town. We’ll see each other.” I pat his shoulder. “But students run into staff all the time. I call my advisor by her first name. No one thinks it’s weird.”
“Right, okay, cool…” His eyes fall to my hand on his shoulder. I pull away, mindful not to be too jumpy. “It’s just—you’ve seen my dick.”
“And you’ve seen mine. I’ve seen a lot of dicks. You do hockey. With all your hours in the locker room you’ve seen more dicks than me.”
He nods, seeming to find this fact palatable in a locker room context. Though, I’m left with one big question. “You don’t have to answer this, but are you out?”
“People know. But the team? Not yet. What about you?”
“Everyone knows, including the Dingbats hockey team. There were a few assholes, but they’ve all graduated.”
Terrence might not be Team Captain, but he’s a seniorplayer, and everyone on the team respects him enough to respect me by proxy. Leroy also doesn’t put up with that shit. He gets more worked up about any kind of phobic comments than I do.
