Page 95 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 1

I sighed. “That’s great. Really. Great. But I’d prefer to keep my plans intact.” They involved a truckload of unseemly and unholy activities from now until the first light of a new day. I most definitely wasn’t going to change them.

“Are you sure about that?” She made a joke out of it with her light tone. In another set of circumstances, I would have wished I’d scored it with her that first time. Right now, though, it was a huge relief she and Zach had gotten into a fight over me.

“Isn’t your brother around?” I asked. “It’s weird talking to you without his jealous stare.”

She snorted. “He doesn’t need to know.”

I sighed again, louder. “There’s really nothing to know. I…gotta go. See you around.” I pushed past her, feeling her seething for a moment or two before she melted out of my consciousness.

Noah stood idly, watching the stars that dotted the night sky as if nobody else was around. The lights of the campus grounds faded the starry sky, and Noah broke his focus when I reached him. He looked at me and shared a lopsided grin. “Everybody wants a piece of you, huh?”

“Not a piece, I’m afraid. Everyone wants the same one.” The moment those words were out of me, I regretted being so crass, but Noah laughed out loud and wiggled his shoulders.

“Lucky me,” he said softly, and the piece everyone wanted stirred until my underwear grew tight. The drive I felt after battling on the ice was through the roof and I wanted to tackle Noah to the ground this instant and then kiss every inch of him. Again, I had to calm myself down and let things go slowly. “Straight to my place?” he asked.

“Uh, actually, we could go to my place,” I said. The house was going to be empty for a long time now. And Noah had never been there. We could use a change in surroundings, I figured.

We made our way quietly but quickly across campus, through the student center, and to the other side, where the residential blocks were. Music pounded from the frat house where we’d been two weeks ago and its quality changed as we passed it.

“Fun fact,” Noah said, then proceeded to tell me about the sound waves and how they traveled in different directions, so things like music or a speeding motorcycle sounded different when they approached you versus moving away from you. I struggled to keep up, but he boiled it down in his Feynman technique for me like I was a toddler, and I fucking loved it. It made me laugh.

“You should pursue teaching,” I said.

Noah snorted. “And stab my dear parents in the back one last time,” he said.

My blood curdled. “Do they know you’re gay?” My worst fear was that he hid from them because it would be perceived as another stab in the back.

Noah chuckled dryly. “Oh, they know. I gotta give them credit where it’s due. They don’t care who I’m with. Straight, gay, bi, trans. That’s not the condition of their love. Success is.”

I struggled to understand that. My dad nearly wept when I told him about the physics exam, and, by right, nobody should have been that happy. Hell, I hadn’t been that happy. But that was the way with my parents. Always had been.

Noah needed someone who would look into his eyes and tell him: “You’re amazing just the way you are. You’re everything I could have wished for and more. The day you change, the stars will go out.”

I blinked twice, quickly, and then cleared my throat. “That sucks,” I said. It wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped to say, but the words that had crossed my mind were suddenly far too large to leave my mouth.

“I’m ruining the good mood,” Noah said, then clapped his hands. “Let’s stop talking about my parents. I’d much rather see your room.”

That tugged on the corners of my lips. It wasn’t my room’s interior design he wanted to see. I’d already described it to him once before. It’s a pretty lifeless place without much charm—nothing like the room he had made his own just a few blocks away.

I marched us into the team house to Noah’s pleased sighs. “This is sweet,” he said, looking around the ground floor.

“You think?” I asked. “We’re never here. Only for breakfast, I think. The real deal is down here.” I extended my arm until he put his hand in mine and pulled him gently to follow me. The secret den beneath the house was dotted with arcade games, couches, a large soccer table, a gaming console, bookshelves nobody went near, and a kitchenette with a mini-fridge that packed enough beer to keep a hockey team satiated on a Saturday night.

“Holy shit,” Noah blurted.

It made my heart dance when he cursed. It was a small rebellion of his own. Living his life under his parents’ scrutiny, he had to vent somehow, and Noah’s sailor-like language rounded him in my eyes.

When I shut the basement door and let the silence fall, Noah was still looking around. He made a few steps ahead, his back turned to me and nodded. “This is so cool. Is that the original Flipper? Can I?”

I nodded, and Noah grinned, then went to the arcade game against the far wall on the right side of the basement. The orange glow of lamplights and the dim bulbs in the ceiling set the atmosphere just like I wanted it, and I made my way to the fridge to fetch a couple of beers for us. By the time I hooked up the surround system with my phone and found the most recent playlist — one of Noah’s Atompunk oddities that made my heart skip and throb — Noah was immersed in the game.

He was so focused on the game that he wasn’t even looking around. I knew there were several things in here that Noah couldn’t care less about. The soccer table, team flags, old jerseys hanging on the wall, and even the mini-fridge full of beer. But it thrilled me that he found one to his liking.

I leaned against another arcade game, just next to the Flipper he was playing, and watched him as he failed to keep the little marble-like ball from falling through the gap at the bottom. The sci-fi noises pinged from the worn-out speaker, and the lights flashed below the protective glass. Noah made frustrated grunts when the Game Over sound played.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” I said. “It takes a bit to get used to it.”

“You’ve played it a lot?” he asked.