After that day, something unusual happened. I thought everything between Tristan and I would go back to normal. The new normal that we had established at school. The normal that basically consisted of us avoiding each other. Making small talk, but never delving deeper. Never getting closer. But it didn’t. Instead, that coldness that existed between us seemed to have vanished.

Tristan stayed with me in my bed the whole day as I drifted in and out of sleep. And that evening, we ordered Chinese and watched Archer on Netflix. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. He laughed along with me.

The following morning, I think that things between us are going to go back to being cold and distant. But, again, they don’t. I see Tristan in the kitchen and he complains about his Econ professor, calling him a know-it-all.

“He’s supposed to know it all; he’s your teacher,” I say.

“But not like this. He’s just a dick about it. He may know it all about Econ 101, but he doesn’t know it all about everything. And he acts like he does. I just hate his fucking arrogance.”

I smile and watch Tristan finish his cup of impossibly black coffee. I’ve never seen him take his coffee with sugar or milk, and his ability to down so much hot caffeine so quickly has always given me pause.

“I’ll see you tonight?” Tristan says on his way out.

“Yeah, sure.” I shrug, trying to act like he hasn’t caught me off-guard.

“Okay, see you then,” he says.

Of course we are going to see each other again. We’re roommates. But the way he said that, it sounded almost like he was looking forward to it. We haven’t spoken like that since we’ve been in New York. All of this is just too weird, I decide. It’s bound to go away by tonight.

* * *

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I come home that afternoon, steaming. How could I let this happen? This was a good paper. I took a whole week to write it. I didn’t procrastinate. I re-read it three times and fixed all typos and errors. It has a clear thesis and great supporting arguments. I actually read the book, unlike some people in my class.

I throw my bag on the chair and open the refrigerator, mindlessly. I’m not hungry. I don’t know what I’m looking for. So I just stare into it as if it holds all the answers to the mysteries of the world, instead of just a packet of moldy mozzarella and a carton of expired milk.

“You okay?” Tristan asks, startling me. I nearly jump out of my shoes.

“Oh my God, you scared me,” I say. “I didn’t see you there.”

He apologizes and asks me if I’m okay, again.

“I’m fine.” I shrug. I don’t want to go into it, but then I do. “I just got a C on my first English paper.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That sucks.”

“Yeah, especially since I was certain that it was good. I am certain.”

“Maybe it was some kind of a mistake,” Tristan offers. I shrug.

“No, really, I heard of that happening,” he says.

“I don’t think so.” I toss him the paper. “All the mistakes are in red.”

I watch him leaf through my paper. It’s got so much red ink on it, it looks like it’s bleeding.

“The thing that makes me really upset is that now I’m not so sure if I should even be pursuing English. I mean, maybe I’m not so good at it, after all. Maybe I have no business doing it if I can’t do better than a C on some freshman English class.”

It feels good to say that to Tristan. He had been my friend for a long time, way before we ever dated, and we could always talk to each other about things that were going on in our lives.

“Listen, if you think that you should give up on your passion just because of one stupid grade, then you’re insane. You’ve loved English and wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. And now, you’re, what, just going to give that up because of one grade?”

I shrug. When he puts it that way, it does sound stupid.

“It just makes me wonder if I’m any good at it. I mean, what if I’m not? What’s the point? It’s such a hard thing to do, it’s so hard to actually make money at it, then shouldn’t I be, like, extraordinary to even pursue it? And if I can’t get better than a C in my first college class then maybe I’m not so good at all.”

Tristan rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“What?” I ask. I know that look. He has a lot to say, he’s just holding back.

“Nothing.” He shrugs. “If that’s what you think, then that’s what you think.”

“Okay, okay. What?” I know he wants me to pry it from him.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here.” I nod.

“Well, I think it’s unfair.”

“What’s unfair?”

“That artists are measured on this ridiculous standard of success. The kind of standard that no one else is measured on.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, you are considering giving up becoming a writer because of one class, right?”

I nod.

“Well, I bet you that there are thousands of future accountants and economics majors, for that matter, who would never consider giving up their majors just because they got a C one of their first projects in their first college class. What’s unfair is that the whole world has this tendency to think that just because they haven’t heard of some actor, painter, or writer that the person pursing that profession is somehow a failure. The rest of us aren’t compared the same way. What I mean is that people think that if you’re not Hemingway or Picasso or Elizabeth Taylor then you’re a failure as an artist. But there are no such comparisons in accounting.”

“So what you’re really saying is that I should stick it out?” I say.

“Yes! Of course you should stick it out. It’s just one grade or one class. Who the hell cares?”

“And what makes you so sure?” I ask.

“Because I believe in you. I’ve read your stories, remember? I know how good they are. So who cares what some professor thinks of your paper on the Catcher in the Rye?”

“It was actually on The Invisible Man,” I say with a smile.