Page 71 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 1

“Oh, right. Yes.” I dug through my duffel and found what we needed. Dog-eared and ever so slightly carrying my after-practice scents, the stuff was in a pretty good condition, I thought.

“Okay. Let’s dive in.” And, as he moved to the wooden chair next to the soft desk chair I had occupied, I found myself checking him out. Noah, however much that kept surprising me, was seriously a piece of eye candy. My gaze followed his tucked shirt and found the irresistible bulge that made my mouth water. Except, as my heart sped, I noticed his bulge had grown bigger.

Right. Maybe don’t throw your dirty jockstrap at a guy you’re coaching on how to score a guy, I told myself as I found some energy to look away. Oh, but it was hard. Both the object of my desire and the act of looking aside. It was hard as fuck.

For the next hour, we had our heads together, and Noah doodled on a piece of paper while explaining how dimensions worked. Something about adding time into a bowl of soup and different planes of reality. He soon became so engrossed in the likelihood of us living in a simulation and I had no idea how we’d gotten here. I figured I must have been thinking about something else in the meantime, but I had no memory of what. Instead, I was staring at the expressive way his lips moved and the confident, heated tone of his voice. “So when you think about it, it’s almost certain that a technologically advanced civilization would run a simulation. Need I tell you about The Sims? And if we can agree on that, then we agree on the fact that the simulated reality will also evolve enough to run a simulation of its own. In theory, this spirals into millions of levels of simulation. You stack them one on top of the other, deeper and deeper and deeper. But there’s still only a single reality, the one that started it all. So, when you think about it, the odds that you and I exist in that single, real reality, could be one in a million. Or one in a billion. Or however many levels of simulation you can imagine. And that’s the problem with theory, Sawyer.” He looked into my eyes with blazing passion. “When there’s something you can’t prove or disprove, you better stay away from it. It’s sort of like God. Are you religious?”

I blinked, way too absorbed in the mossy greenness of his eyes to follow his tangent. “I mean, I have sex with guys as often as I do with girls and it’s all pre-marital, so go figure.”

He snorted. “Right. It would be like a deer worshiping the Church of the Crocodile.”

I liked the way he said it. It made me laugh.

Noah, too, laughed, albeit softly. “I could give you a million arguments that we’re trapped in a simulation, even though it won’t change the fact you need to pass your physics test anyway. And you can never disprove it. Whatever you say, I’ll have an explanation. That’s the trouble with the ineffable concepts that explain themselves. It’s better not to go down that rabbit hole.”

“Hm, good that we dodged that one,” I said reassuringly.

He picked up on my sarcasm. Progress. “Right, well, I’m just making a larger point that physics explains everything around us. If you know how to listen, you’ll realize that it rhymes.”

Our heads were so close to one another, like two conspirators plotting. He looked at me and I waited. There were stars in his eyes, glimmering, bursting with energy. This guy was in love with science. He was so deeply into it that no guy ever stood a chance. I was doing this whole thing wrong. I was teaching him how to attract a guy. But what I should have been doing was holding mass lectures on how to get Noah Foster to like you. He was so much more than what he presented. All these guys I was about to unleash Noah on had no idea what was coming. They weren’t ready. There was no way they could ever make him happy. Hell, I doubted they’d be able to satisfy him.

I licked my lips as my stomach hollowed and tingling filled it. Nervousness I couldn’t explain itched at my fingertips.

He sigh-laughed and pulled away from me, looking at the notebook in front of us.

Though I didn’t have many coherent thoughts in my head and I hardly knew what I wanted to do or if I wanted to do anything at all, the moment Noah pulled away, my chest was filled with frustration and sadness. I felt like I’d just missed an opportunity to…do something. My ears rang and my face heated up.

Noah turned the session around and focused on the test materials from my textbook. We had two weeks to cover these or I was doomed. I didn’t regret the time we lost in the heat of his lecture. It was the most fun I had learning anything.

We lived in a simulation, apparently. Even though nothing changed, it made me look at the world a little differently. Maybe it gave me a small amount of extra courage. Or a flicker of hope. Maybe something unattainable and unlikely could happen thanks to a glitch in the system. Maybe that was what we called miracles. Maybe there was a chance for me to… What? Pass physics, of course. But it suddenly seemed a little less important. I just didn’t know what I was comparing it to.

When I left Noah’s room later that night, the wild post-game hormones had faded away, and walking on the slippery path between his dormitory and my house felt more like walking on a really thick featherbed. My heart thumped faster and I felt like some progress was made. Bit by bit, meeting him three times a week, I would make it. I was sure of that.

The other thing I knew for certain was that I really looked forward to Thursday night. I’d visit Noah after practice, intruding on his private time, but I had a hard time feeling sorry. Listening to him was the closest thing to the thrill of skating that I’d ever felt. That had to mean it was worth it.

Chapter Six

NOAH

On Saturday, just a little after midday, I saw one of my regular students out of my room, and startled when someone loudly banged on my door right after. I’d been expecting him, but not yet. It spared me the pacing when I opened the door and found the ever-sullen Sawyer Price leaning against the door frame. “Ready?” he asked.

“Not even a little,” I huffed, rolled my eyes, and walked out. “Let’s go.”

He swaggered shoulder to shoulder with me, the contrasts almost ridiculous. My walk was steady, back straight, head held high. His was that of a cartoon character with way too much confidence. “Busy morning?” he asked.

“You can say that again.” A yawn stretched my mouth open and I hurried to cover it. I’d had tutoring sessions since seven with only a breakfast break in between. Had Sawyer not insisted, I would have continued as planned. I would have had a lunch break on my own, then more students, until Sawyer came by in the evening for his session.

Over the last two weeks, I had grown fond of those sessions because they were the last in my day. In my head, Sawyer was equal to resting, even if we still did all the learning and the awkward conversations about my dating tactics, of which I had none.

Sawyer, for his part, was getting the hang of the basics fairly quickly. Whether it was the notes I kept leaving in his textbook or Feynman's technique or the fact that we droned on and on about the same concepts session after session, it hardly mattered. He understood all he needed for the first round of tests next week.

I glanced at him from out of the corner of my eye. He was normally slightly taller, but the way his torso leaned back when he walked evened out our heights. His eyes were always a little narrow as he observed the world around him with a heavy dose of skepticism, as if it might not be real. Perhaps it was because I’d convinced him we lived in a simulation, although that hadn’t been my exact goal with that topic.

He wore a bomber jacket over a black hoodie and black cargo pants that seemed baggy but actually fit him to perfection. His entire wardrobe was like that, as far as I could tell. Dark, seemingly ill-fitting, but all his pants hugged his ass for the best possible outcome. It was always big and firm. I figured that being an athlete had something to do with it. My own gym membership off campus was barely worth the money I was paying with how often I showed up. And even that was thanks to Matt, who practically dragged my ass there with him. “Nobody knows you there. Nobody’s gonna look at you. It’s good for your health. It’ll make you look hotter.” And so he went on and on and on until my will broke and I joined him.

Sawyer had his duffel hanging on the small of his back, the long strap crossing his torso from the right shoulder to the left hip. “You had practice?” I asked.

“All morning,” he said in his broody, husky tone.