Jamie had missed Bellamy. He'd spent the summer in Linfield, working three different jobs, and he hadn't had time for much else beyond working and sleeping. Seeing the number in his savings account grow had been almost worth it.

It was Saturday, and the campus was coming back to life after the muddled hibernation of summer. The grass of the quad was still emerald and pristine, though soon it would be yellowed and beaten down by the sneakers of thousands of students cutting across between paths as they shuffled to class.

"Kit, what are you even making?" he asked. Kit, as usual, was in a dumpster, and Jamie could just see the top of their head—their hair shaved close and bleached this week—as they rummaged through.

"I don't know yet," Kit said. "There's always bizarre stuff after they clean it out over the summer, though."

Jamie snorted and shimmied up onto the low brick wall by the dumpster. He held his camera up to his face, looking around at the alleyway behind the art building through the lens. He'd had this camera for a year now and it was still his prized possession—he'd saved up for it for months, after all, and he wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for it.

"See?" Kit said, one long arm emerging from the trash heap, fist clenched around what appeared to be several yards of some sort of turquoise chiffon fabric. "Perfectly useable." Kit tossed it over the edge and Jamie snapped a picture as the fabric fluttered to the ground, shimmering in the summer sun.

"So," Jamie said, kicking his feet against the wall. "I kind of met someone."

Kit's head suddenly popped up, peering over the edge of the dumpster like a gopher, and yet still somehow managing to look elegant.

"What? When? Who?" Kit said.

"At Milo's reading thing last night," Jamie said. He could feel himself blushing just talking about Bennett. Jamie had been looking at his phone all morning, hoping Bennett would text him about meeting up—hoping Bennett hadn't changed his mind.

"I didn't even see you talking to anyone," Kit said. "Then again, I was running around most of the time."

"I went out on the back patio for a little while," Jamie said. "To take some pictures of the city—by the way, I still need to send you the pictures from last night; there's some great ones—and he kind of… walked right into me."

"Tell me about him."

"He's, uh, older… Early thirties maybe?"

"Look at you," Kit said, making a lascivious face. "Grave robber. Also, for the record, early thirties is not old." Kit had just turned thirty that summer.

"I said older," Jamie protested. "I just meant, he's not a student here or anything. I don't actually know what he does. But—oh my god, Kit, he's the most beautiful person I've ever seen. I kind of couldn't believe he was talking to me."

"Jamie, you're adorable," Kit said. "Of course he wanted to talk to you."

"This is so creepy but… I have a picture of him, if you wanna see."

"Yes I want to see," said Kit, vaulting out of the dumpster and brushing off their clothes primly. "Not that I want to encourage you stalking people—"

"I asked," Jamie said, pulling up the picture from last night on the camera's display and handing it to Kit. He wasn't even ashamed to admit he practically had the photo memorized now.

Jamie wasn't exaggerating about how gorgeous Bennett was. He had a rugged, real sort of beauty. Bennett wasn't the overly-polished, manufactured movie star kind of handsome—he looked like the kind of person who perpetually seemed like he'd just come back from scaling a mountain, who would look equally at home hacking through the foliage of a jungle or climbing out of a luxury sports car.

And his eyes—gray-gold and glorious, Jamie had felt like they lit him up from the inside out, like Bennett's gaze had ignited a little flame in him that had smoldered all through the night, into Jamie's dreams until he woke up aching hard and full of want.

"He is quite handsome," Kit said evenly, handing the camera back. "Good photo, too. When are you seeing him?"

Jamie looked at the photo one last time. He loved the expression on Bennett's face that he'd managed to catch somehow—a mix of surprise and delight, like he'd just thought of a joke he hadn't yet shared with the room.

"I'm… not sure," Jamie said, checking his phone again. "We exchanged numbers but he hasn't texted me yet."

Kit bundled up the yards of fabric, gesturing for Jamie to hop down from the wall.

"Why don't you text him then?" Kit said as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. Kit handed the fabric to Jamie. It was soft and cool against the skin of his bare arms.

Jamie bit his lip.

"I don't want to—push it, you know?"

Kit, who'd stooped to collect the other items they'd rescued from the dumpster, stood up sharply and turned to Jamie, focusing the full force of their very intimidating gaze on him.

"Is this about the Finn thing?" Kit said in a very parental, I'm disappointed in you tone.

Jamie looked down at his shoes.

"No—"

Kit cleared their throat.

"Okay, maybe a little bit."

Jamie was over it now, but he'd spent the previous school year developing a very strong, very unrequited crush on his friend Finn. And while those feelings for Finn had long since shifted to friendship alone, the experience had left him feeling even less confident about approaching guys than he had been before.

"Jamie," Kit said impatiently. "Sweetheart, you can't take that too personally—"

"I'm not—I just—what if—I'd rather wait for him to—"

"Jamie," Kit said again. "Get out your phone." Kit looked at him pointedly, and sighing, Jamie pulled his phone out.

"Good," Kit said. "Now text him. Invite him to do something."

"Kit—"

There was no arguing with that look, though.

"Fine," Jamie grumbled. He thought for a moment and then typed out a message, which took forever on the tiny, shitty T9 keyboard of his tiny, shitty phone. He sent it and held his phone up to Kit. "Happy?"

"Very," Kit said, beaming.

* * *

Sunday was a busy day for Jamie. He had his last catering gig of the summer—some brunch event where the average age was north of seventy and all the women wore elaborate hats. He was glad to be done with this job—his co-workers were awful and his boss even worse, but it paid well and he wasn't in any place to turn down money like that.

Then, a quick meeting with Professor Marlowe, who he'd be working with that semester, and after that—

Bennett.

Jamie had practically skipped to work that morning, feeling energized and ebullient, just the thought of seeing Bennett again filling him up like champagne bubbles.

"You on drugs or something?" his boss had grunted.

The brunch had gone late, and one of his co-workers had smashed an entire box of mugs, and his boss had demanded Jamie stay late even though Jamie shown up early and said he needed to leave by two-thirty.

As a result, Jamie had to bike to campus in record time, and he was panting and sweaty by the time he got to Rice Hall to meet his professor. He sprinted up the stairs, the squeak of his sneakers echoing loudly down the hall, and flung the door to Professor Marlowe's office open.

"I'm so sorry I'm late," Jamie said. "I—oh my god—"

He stopped short, his brain tumbling over itself in an effort to process.

Sitting there behind a big oak desk, looking just as handsome in the light of day, was Bennett, those unmistakable gray-gold eyes wide and confused.

"Jamie?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Holy goddamn shit," Jamie said.

It had seemed like an awfully strange coincidence that the professor he'd been assigned to had the same name as the cute guy he'd just met.

"Professor Marlowe?" Jamie said.

Bennett's face was a whole kaleidoscope of emotions, shifting between happiness and confusion and surprise.

He still didn't realize.

Jamie clapped a hand over his mouth. He had a tendency to giggle when he got nervous, and he could feel the hysterical laughter bubbling up under the surface like some sulfurous hot spring.

"How did you find me?" Bennett said. "Not that I mind but—this is a little—I have a meeting—"

"I know," Jamie said, his mind still reeling.

Of all the goddamn luck, he thought.

"I—" Bennett's gaze was bouncing between his computer screen and Jamie like he was watching a tennis match.

"Jamie is short for James," Jamie offered. "As in James Larsson, your TA."

Bennett's face went white.

"Oh my god," he said, pushing back from his desk like he was about to stand up and stride out of the office. His fingers were clutching the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles paled. "No."

"Yes, apparently."

Jamie dropped down into the chair in front of Bennett's desk and scrubbed a hand over his face.

Bennett stared at him in panic.

Bennett's mouth opened and closed several times and Jamie's heart sank. After a moment, Bennett seemed to have collected his thoughts, and when he spoke, his tone was measured. He grabbed a stack of papers from his desk and shuffled them.

"Now, I believe Dr. Archer sent you a copy of the rubric for the class," Bennett said, and his face was unfamiliar, closed and distant. "Have you had a chance to look over it?"

"Wait a minute," Jamie said, leaning forward in his seat. "We're not going to talk about this?"

Bennett flinched like Jamie's voice was hot metal on his skin. He looked up, down, anywhere but at Jamie.

"No," Bennett said. "I think it's best to move forward and—"

"Oh, come on," Jamie said. "We're both adults; I don't think it's that hard to just acknowledge that, yeah, this is an awkward situation. We don't need to pretend it didn't happen—"

Bennett's eyes snapped to Jamie, his gaze hard and searing.

"What would be the point of that, Jamie?" Bennett said, and it was Jamie's turn to flinch. He hated the look on Bennett's face, like Jamie was something moldy that had climbed up from the shower drain. "Do you think something's going to happen now between us? You're my teaching assistant and a student, I'm a professor. That is the entirety of our relationship."

Jamie felt like he'd been slapped. This Bennett was completely different than the beautiful, sad, almost shy stranger he'd met the other night.

This Bennett was kind of a dick.

Jamie looked down at the desk for a long moment.

"Yeah, I read the rubric," he said finally in a small voice.

Bennett seemed satisfied, and he began going over the minutiae of Jamie's duties as a TA in a terse, business-like tone, as if they hadn't spent the other night watching the lights of the city sparkle, the air between them crackling with want and desire.

Logically, Jamie knew it was unrealistic to think that anything more might happen between them. To continue would be inappropriate, a conflict of interest, just generally a bad idea.

But still—there was no reason for Bennett to react so harshly, like Jamie had some rare and highly contagious disease that Bennett would contract if he acknowledged the spark of attraction between them.

And Jamie still felt that spark—even with Bennett like this, brusque and distant and mean, Jamie felt it.

And he knew Bennett felt it too.

Over the course of the meeting, Jamie's emotions tangled and mutated, from shock to disappointment to anger. Jamie didn't like anger, didn't like the dark pull of it like a black, sucking mud inside him. Anger was transformative in the worst way, and it frightened him.

It wasn't really anger, though, Jamie knew—it was hurt. Hurt and sadness.

"That about covers it," Bennett said finally, setting the papers he'd been looking at down on the desk with a definitive air. He hadn't made eye contact with Jamie the entire time they'd talked, which was impressive.

Jamie was stewing now, hurt and annoyed and betrayed, in a way. He knew he wore his emotions on the surface—it had made him an easy target growing up, to be so transparent and reactive, an insect without a carapace. Bennett, on the other hand, was about as open and expressive as a glacier at the moment.

"Class starts at nine," Bennett said, in a patronizing tone. "Please take care to show up on time."

Jamie bristled.

"I apologized for being late," he said. "My boss let me out of work late."

Bennett made a non-committal noise as he turned to his computer. His body language was clear—Jamie was being dismissed.

Jamie's whole body felt cramped and raw with frustration. Bennett was treating him like a child, shutting him out—and while Bennett didn't owe anything to Jamie, Jamie couldn't fathom how Bennett could possibly seem so disaffected.

Hadn't he felt the connection too?

Jamie was desperate suddenly for any response, anything other than the stony distance Bennett was giving him.

"So," Jamie said as he stood up, collecting his bag. "I guess we won't be going on that date now, will we?"

Bennett's head snapped up, eyes wild and alarmed and terrified.

Yes, a dark little voice in Jamie's head cheered. It was something, at least. Something to cling to, to prove that Jamie hadn't completely hallucinated the current that ran between them the other night.

And then the look was gone, as quickly as it had appeared.

"Jamie," Bennett said sharply—a reprimand.

"Yeah, yeah," Jamie grumbled, slamming the door behind him.

He checked his phone as he left the building. He had one new text message from Kit.

>>KIT: good luck on your date!

Jamie sighed and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

This fucking sucks, he thought.

* * *

Jamie lived three miles from campus, in a neighborhood that hadn't been gentrified yet but was next on the list. His first year, he'd lived in campus housing, and while the freshman dorm experience had been amazing, campus housing was appallingly expensive. Jamie's scholarship covered most of his tuition expenses, but it still had made sense for him to move off campus after his first year.

Unfortunately, all the housing within a reasonable radius of Bellamy was just as expensive, the rent prices driven up by students whose parents could afford to pay for their child to have the convenience of a short walk to class and by landlords who were eager to take advantage of this.

Jamie liked where he lived, though. Sure, in the winter, the bike ride was a pain in the ass, and yeah, he had to plan out his schedule carefully, but he got to see different parts of the city and it kept him in shape. And the rent was less than two hundred dollars a month.

That was a big perk.

After his meeting with Professor Marlowe, Jamie had gone to the exhibit in the Natural History Museum by himself, gripping his camera like he was trying to crush it and frowning at the fossils. He'd been waiting to see the exhibit for a while and this was the only way he could afford it.

So what if he'd thought he'd be visiting the museum with a hot older guy? So what if he'd pictured their hands brushing up against one another's, imagined Bennett stealing a kiss in the dim light of the displays when they were alone?

It wasn't very much fun by himself.

He was irritated at himself for not being able to enjoy it—as a child, he'd been intensely fascinated by the ocean after finding a book about sea turtles in the library, and he'd spent months reading about all things aquatic, drawing pictures of it, pretending the scummy little pond near his house was the vast span of the Pacific or the Atlantic.

Eventually he gave up, and by the time he biked home he felt a little better—there was nothing like peddling up Linfield's many steep hills to burn off a bad mood.

Jamie lived in the attic of a big, ramshackle house owned by a woman named Gladys. The house was more stairs than actual building, and had at one time been a beautiful mansion. Now, though, it was just old and weird and charming in its own way. He hauled his bike up the steps to the porch and chained it to the splintered railing.

The front door was always unlocked—there were so many people living in the house that inevitably someone left it open. He followed the tinny sound of a game show announcer's voice down the narrow entry hall

"Hi Gladys," Jamie said, sticking his head into the TV room, where Gladys was in her usual chair, which had molded to the shape of her body decades ago. The TV was probably older than Jamie was, the kind with rabbit ear antennae and a monitor big enough to house a small child.

"Merry Christmas, dear," she called cheerily. Jamie smiled to himself.

Jamie climbed a flight of stairs, then another, and then another. One of the reasons his rent was absurdly cheap was because no one else wanted to live in his room—it was tiny, it was a pain in the ass to get to, and he could hear the chainsaw snores of Mr. Li, who lived in the room below, as clearly as if they were sharing a bed.

It was his space, though—he'd gotten prints of his favorite photographs made and tacked them up around the walls, and through the tiny window, the glass wavy with age, he could see across the city to the proud, blinking skyscrapers of downtown Linfield. When it rained, the raindrops beating against the roof drowned out the sound of Mr. Li and reminded him of summer storms back in Georgia.

Speaking of Georgia—

Jamie sat cross-legged on his bed, pulling his computer—his other prized possession—into his lap and plugging in his camera. He tucked his phone between his ear and his shoulder and listened to it ring once, twice, three times.

Jamie frowned as the answering machine picked up.

"Hi Grandma," he said after the tone. "It's Jamie. I was just calling to say hi—give me a call when you get this; I'll be free all evening."

Jamie absently watched the photos flick across the screen as they uploaded. He always called his grandma on Sunday evenings, around this time, and it was odd that she hadn't picked up.

He tried not to be nervous. His grandma was, in her own words, "a tough old bird." She'd scold Jamie if she knew he were borrowing trouble. Still, he didn't like the idea of her living by herself. His freshman year, she'd banned him from calling more than once every other day after he'd run through his phone credit checking up on her. But now that his mom wasn't around anymore, if something happened—

Jamie shook himself and tried calling again. This time, she picked up on the second ring.

"Is that my Jaybird?" she said, and relief washed over him like cool water at the sound of her voice.

"No, this is the Linfield police," Jamie said, dropping his voice as low as it could go. "We've apprehending one James Larsson for crimes against humanity."

His grandma laughed.

"It's about time you got him," she said. "He's been raising hell down here for twenty years now."

"How are you doing?" Jamie asked. His computer chimed, letting him know the upload was complete, and he set about flipping through them, deleting the embarrassingly bad ones and setting aside the ones that had promise.

"I'm wonderful," she said, as she always did. She could be bleeding out on the side of a deserted highway and still—"Oh, just wonderful."

"I tried calling a few minutes ago—" Jamie started, feeling silly.

"You're worrying again," she said sternly. "Just was a little slow getting to the phone. Old bones."

"Right," Jamie said. "Sorry. You know how I get."

"Jaybird," she said, her tone suddenly as warm and comforting as chicken noodle soup. "There's only so much you can control."

"Yeah," Jamie said, unconvinced. He shifted on the bed, uncrossing his legs.

"So, tell me about your meeting with your professor," she said.

Jamie paused.

"It'll be an interesting semester, that's for sure," he said.