I couldn’t believe it was already the final semester of senior year. Only a few more months of classes on the Hilltop, grilling burgers out on the lawn on Friday afternoons, wearing jeans and Georgetown gear almost exclusively for months on end. As I half-listened to the syllabus lectures in my classes Monday morning, I found my brain whirring down the same old path of anxious worrying: what the hell was I going to do after graduation? Would I even be able to get a job? What job did I even want? Did I really have to leave school?

I wished I were the type of kid who’d need extra time—a whole extra year even, imagine that—to get the credits I needed to graduate. But I was much too type-A high-strung for that. I still freaked out over getting an A-. I loved the sight of my near perfect GPA. I’d even picked the hardest major the School of Foreign Service had to offer, the overly wordy and pretentious sounding Bachelor of Science in International Political Economy. Try saying that three times fast.

On campus interviews for the types of high-paying consulting and investment banking jobs that most kids here craved would start in only a month or so, but I still hadn’t decided whether or not I’d be “selling out” and joining in with the pack. I couldn’t truthfully say that the promise of making a hundred thousand dollars my first year out of undergrad, and making a dent in my student loans, wasn’t appealing. I just wasn’t sure I was up for the high-paced and egomaniacal field I’d heard so many kids burned out of so quickly. It was a problem I kept putting off to worry about another day.

For now, I made sure to ace all my classes and rack up work experience and extracurriculars, doing just enough of everything to keep my career options open. I was hoping the combination of working in the public and private sector during internships in college and studying politics and economics would be a broad enough bet to land me where I wanted to be. Now I just had to figure out where that was.

As I was walking home across the quad after class the first afternoon of the new semester, I ran into my frazzled-looking Spanish professor from a couple years ago. She was a middle-aged motherly woman with big glasses and thick, curly hair whose class I had adored. She’d taken us on “field trips” to see Spanish movies downtown and eat at her favorite tapas restaurant, which I revisited with friends almost every weekend since. She’d even introduced me to churros, their warm cinnamon sugar was the closest I’d come to heaven on earth. It wasn’t a favor I’d soon forget.

“¡Buenos días, Jack!” the professor greeted me, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and grinning hugely.

“¡Buenos días, profesora!” I responded. It always felt weird to speak Spanish outside of class, but weirder still to respond in English given her greeting.

The professor’s phone started to buzz and she cursed, then switched to English. “Jack, I wonder if you might be willing to tutor one of my students.” She looked at the phone’s screen and hesitated, her finger ready to unlock the glowing screen. “I have to take this,” she continued, “it’s my boy. But I would really love your help. I’ll email you the details, okay?”

“Sounds good,” I said, curious about who the student might be and why the professor would be the one looking for a tutor for him or her. “I’ll look for your email.” After all, I could use some extra cash, and I was always happy to have something else to add to my resume.

Professor Martinez smiled, thanked me, and strode away, answering her phone and chattering away as she walked.

Later that night, her email appeared in my inbox.

Hola Jack,

Good to see you today. My student, Peter Wick, cc’d here, is looking for a tutor for Spanish II. I told him I’d reach out to you to gauge your interest. I’ll leave it to the two of you to discuss rates and decide if you’d like to work together.

Saludos,

LM

I noticed that John Taylor, the coach of the basketball team, was also cc’d on the message. Ah, I thought suddenly, that explains it. Professor Martinez’s student was an untouchable basketball player. She must have stood up to the Coach’s efforts to sway her to simply pass Peter so that he could play, as all the basketball players’ professors were expected to do. So she’d decided to reach out to me instead—trying to fix things the old fashioned way. I respected the crap out of it. I just hoped Peter wouldn’t resent me because of it.

Mom called that night to ask about my first day back and I gave her the rundown on all my classes. “It should be a pretty light semester,” I told her. “I’m only taking four classes, so that should leave plenty of time for interviewing and work.”

Mom sighed. “Doesn’t sound light to me, honey. That’s a lot of work. You always have overloaded yourself, especially these past few years.”

It was true, not that I’d ever admit that to her. Mom does her best to help out with tuition as much as she can but there’s only so much she can do. Neither of us was expecting to have to fund college without Dad’s salary or support. 

“It’s no big deal, Mom, really,” I told her. She has enough to worry about keeping up with her own bills. I wonder for the thousandth time how Dad could’ve left her so unprepared for the unexpected—no savings, no life insurance, nada. Making it through these past few years without him was hard enough without us both having to scrape together what we could to make ends meet.

Dad’s brother had reached out after the accident to try to help out but, with two young kids of his own and a mediocre desk job, he was hardly in a position to spread himself any thinner. The insurance claim from the driver who’d raced through the red light and hit Dad had kept us afloat for a while but it certainly wasn’t enough to pay for Georgetown.

I cursed myself again for not going to a cheaper school. My college counselor had urged me to stick with Georgetown, saying I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to go to such a prestigious school. She’d reminded me that the degree would help me get a higher paying job after graduation, that people paid for the Georgetown name. I just wish I would have known then that the people paying for the degree would be investment banks and consulting firms that kids described as soul-sucking and exhausting. I wish I’d known what I was signing up for. I wish I’d been able to think at all through that fog of grief.

I chatted a little bit longer with Mom, making sure she’s doing alright and not working too hard. She’d gone back to school to study nursing with a chunk of the settlement money we’d received and now she worked as a labor and delivery nurse in the hospital where I’d been born.

“Don’t you worry about me, honey,” Mom said. “You know how much I love working with the babies and those brand-new moms.” It’s true, Mom had clearly found her calling at the hospital. She loved to hold and care for the newborns and to counsel anxious parents, helping families settle in and start their lives with the new additions. 

I would always be grateful for the assurance I had that Mom would be okay as long as she was nursing. Her job gave her fulfillment, which was more than I could hope for in the job I’d need to take to start paying back my massive loans. And the other nurses were like mom’s second family. They hosted weekly dinners and went out to karaoke and trivia nights at a couple different bars a few times a month. If I was being honest, my mom’s social life probably rivaled my own. I was glad to not have to worry about her in that respect.

“What about you honey?” Mom asked. “Have you been looking into any other job options?” 

“I’m meeting with career counseling soon,” I told her, avoiding the question. Mom knew I had no interest in consulting or investment banking and she hated the idea of me taking a job just for the paycheck. “I’m sure they’ll have some ideas for me.”

I didn’t tell her that the meeting was exclusively to sign up for on campus interviews with the big consulting and banking firms. If I ended up going through with it, I’d wait until I’d already accepted a position to break the news. Maybe by then I could muster some fake enthusiasm for my high-paying, soul-crushing career. 

After Mom had reminded me, again, to take it easy and not work myself so hard, she said she had to go get ready for her shift. She was working nights this week to cover for another nurse on vacation. I wished her luck staying awake through the long night and said goodbye.

* * *

A few days passed and I still hadn’t heard anything from Peter. I decided to just reach out myself and sent him a quick email.

Hey Peter,

Let me know what you’re thinking—if you want to meet regularly and how often—and how much you’re offering. I’m just off campus so we can meet wherever.

Jack

I fell into the steady routine of class and my student job at the library over the next few weeks. My thesis seminar was going to be a real pain in the ass and I was absolutely dreading all the coding and data cleaning I’d have to do before I could even start writing the thirty-plus page monster of a paper. I nearly broke out in hives when all the research and draft deadlines were presented in the first class and I spent the rest of the night making anxious notations on my calendar of when every little piece of the project was due.

But the first month or so was always relatively light on deadlines in all my classes and I fell into the trap I always did. Instead of getting ahead so I wouldn’t be so swamped during midterms, I met up with my buddies for Frisbee on the lawn or went out for too many trivia nights at the student bar nearby. I spent lazy Sundays reading the novels I’d gotten for Christmas, losing myself in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and then staying up all night trying to figure out whodunit in a riveting Gillian Flynn thriller. Three weeks after I’d emailed Peter, I still hadn’t heard from him and I’d nearly forgotten about the whole thing all together. Then his name popped into my inbox.

Hey dude,

First test did not go well. Could use some help before the next one. What’s your number

A little while after I sent him my number, my phone dinged with a text.

Meet at Lau Sunday noon? Pete

Sure. I typed back.

On Sunday morning, I texted my two closest friends, Sean and Liam, to meet me at the dining hall for breakfast. I took a quick shower and then headed to the dining hall and swiped in. I loaded my plate with powdery scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. After grabbing a cup of burnt-smelling coffee, I found Sean and Liam at a nearby table and went to join them.

“Rough night?” I asked Sean as I sat down next to him, taking in his yellowish-green face and forgotten plate of toast.

Across from me, Liam began to chuckle, “You could say that, eh Sean?”

Sean groaned and shot a glare at Liam. “One too many rounds of flip cup,” Sean said.

“One too many attempts to impress Lisa,” Liam countered.

Sean put his head down on the table and flipped him off. Lisa was a fellow senior in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and Sean’s latest obsession. They’d met at a party the first week of school and bonded over their shared interest in Middle Eastern politics. Sean had been trying to get her to notice his existence ever since.

“So, I take it you didn’t win her over with your charms?” I asked. I’d been out with them after dinner but had gone home instead of going to the party they’d been off to close to midnight, wanting nothing more than to catch up on the latest season of Stranger Things in my own bed.

Sean just groaned again and, when Liam laughed, I asked him, “What about you, Liam? Any progress with your mystery man?”

Liam’s smile faded and he shook his head. “Still playing hard to get. Or, just completely uninterested, or he’s in love with me. I can’t tell.”

I laughed as I built a sandwich with my bacon, toast, and eggs, piling the eggs into a neat layer with my fork. “How are those things confusable?”

Liam just shrugged. “Beats me. He usually works out Sunday mornings, so I’m hoping to catch him there after breakfast. You wanna come work out with us?”

I shook my head. “Nah, I’m tutoring that kid today.”

“Oh, right, the struggling athlete,” Liam said, rolling his eyes. “Wonder if he’s one of those charmers over there,” he said, gesturing to the loud group of giants gathered near the omelet station, cracking raunchy jokes and calling out to girls well across the cafeteria.

I glanced over too, then realized I actually had no idea. “Fuck,” I said. “I guess I should, like, look him up on Facebook so I know how to find him.”

“Where’re you meeting him?” Liam asked.

“Lau.”

Liam chuckled. “I don’t know, might not be so hard to pick out the only seven-foot athlete in the library.”

I took a sip of coffee and considered this. “Let’s hope so.” I looked over at Sean, who hadn’t lifted his head from the table. “Is he passed out?”

Liam glanced over, which is when we both noted the puddle slowly forming below Sean’s head on the table.

“Oh god, he’s drooling,” I said, at the same time that Liam began to cackle. I shook Sean awake and he stuttered out a “Wha—?” before wiping at his mouth and grimacing.

“I’m going back to bed,” he said, gathering his stuff and stealing a banana from Liam’s plate. “Fuck the gym; I’ll work out later.”

I left soon after, walking up the hill to the library and hoping Peter would be easy to spot.

Liam was right. As soon as I walked onto the library’s second floor, the “loud floor” reserved for meetings and group projects, it was easy to spot the hulking form of Peter. Even sitting down at a desk, I could tell he must’ve stood six-foot-five at least. His long legs were muscular but lean in dark sweats, his shoulders and arms rippling from the sleeves of his grey Georgetown t-shirt. His dark hair was a little wet, as if he’d come straight from the shower, curls reaching just below his ears. I cursed myself for not having watched the team more closely all these years. Clearly, I was missing out. He was easily the hottest guy I’d ever seen up close.

I was glad for the moment I had to gather myself before he looked up and saw me staring at him from across the room. I waved awkwardly and approached his table with my backpack. “Peter, right?” I asked him, and he nodded, standing up to shake my hand. “Jack,” I offered.

“Thanks for meeting me, dude,” he said quietly, his eyes meeting mine briefly. I was surprised at his bashfulness. I’d never seen a Georgetown basketball player act humble. It only made him even more attractive.

“No problem,” I said. “So, you’ve got another test coming up?”

Peter nodded and pulled a sheet of paper from a folder nearby. “She gave us this list of topics that’ll be on it. The vocab from two chapters in the book and the grammar for past tense, plus some other grammar stuff.”

I nodded and glanced over the list, noting as he handed it over that Peter smelled outdoorsy, like wood and honeysuckle. I did my best not to get caught breathing him in. “So how do you usually study for these?”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could see Peter blush. “I, uh…usually see if someone can help me learn the words. My brain just doesn’t like languages, I don’t know. It just won’t stick. And the conjugation crap makes no sense to me at all.”

I pressed forward. “Okay, that’s fine. I usually like to make flashcards for vocab, so maybe that’s a good place to start. We can go through the grammar, too. There are some easy tricks for remembering how to do past tense.”

A half-hour or so later, Peter had written out flashcards for all the vocab words as I’d stolen glances at him, watching as he bit down on his lower lip in concentration while I struggled to control the hard-on pressing painfully against my jeans. When he glanced up suddenly, caught me staring, and flashed his grin, dimples creasing at the corners of his mouth, I could feel myself grow impossibly harder even as I flushed bright red with embarrassment and looked away.

“All done with these,” Peter said, still smiling, his eyes now assessing me. I was glad to be sitting down, glad to have the evidence of my urgent lust for him hidden from view. “What’s next, Coach?” Peter teased, and I suddenly visualized a fantasy I hadn’t known I had. Peter and I, naked except for the whistle looped around my neck, Peter following my every command…

“Uhh, Jack?” Peter said, and I blushed again, realizing I had taken too long to respond.

“Yeah, sorry, uh…let’s go through these conjugations.”

We worked through the grammar he’d need to know, going over the rules first before I began to quiz him, testing his understanding. He seemed to be getting the hang of it and I felt weirdly proud of him as he started to correctly conjugate one verb after the other. I wanted to high-five or hug him, take any excuse I could to touch him. I was, I thought dryly, hardly acting professional. I shook my head to clear it.

“So, it’s been about an hour. We could break now and you can study the vocab on your own, then we can meet up again before the test if you want.”

Peter’s eyebrows furrowed and I felt like perhaps I’d cut our session too short, just as he’d been getting his confidence up. But we still hadn’t worked out our fee and I figured we’d be working on an hourly basis, so I wasn’t sure what else to do.

“I’ll text you,” Peter said. “We’re going out of town for a game tomorrow, and then practice when we get back. I might not have time to meet up again.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.” I waited, hoping he’d pay me before I needed to ask, and made a big show of packing up my laptop and zipping up my backpack.

It worked. Peter watched me preparing to leave and reached into his pocket, pulling out a battered wallet that actually had a Velcro closure. I suppressed a laugh as he pulled out two twenties and handed them over.

$40 for an hour of sitting next to the hottest guy I’d ever seen? Not bad, I thought.

“Thanks, man,” I said, and he nodded.

“De nada,” he said, with a quiet, boyish grin.

I couldn’t help but grin back. “You’re basically fluent already,” I told him. “Good luck at the game,” I said before walking away.

A couple of nights later, I watched the first basketball game I’d seen since freshman year, when I’d gone to the Verizon Center to watch live during orientation week. I still thought it was so cool that the Georgetown team had its games at the same arena as the Wizards and the Capitols but having to trek all the way downtown had kept me from going to any other games since then. Now I golf-clapped and whisper-cheered as I watched Peter down threes throughout the second half, conscious of my roommate asleep in the other room but unable to completely suppress the excitement I felt bubbling up through my toes and out through my fingers.

I tried not to drool as I watched Peter dribble down the court, his expression fierce, his muscles glistening with sweat as he ran back and forth and called out to his teammates. I jumped up and down as he scored another basket, feeling triumphant. He was so freaking sexy. I was so screwed. I watched in awe as Peter sunk a long three-point shot with a defender right in his face, the ball swishing cleanly through the net. The camera zoomed in on Peter’s face as his sexy grin spread across his face, his dimples winking at me. He pumped his fist once in the air in victory and nodded his head, proud of his own accomplishment.

When the final buzzer sounded, the team filed out of the arena to hit the showers. I hopped into the shower myself, picturing Peter sudsing himself up and rinsing off all that sweat as I soaped my own body. I took my throbbing cock in hand and imaged Peter grasping me instead, his big warm hands tugging me steadily and driving me wild. I felt him cup and pull at my balls with one hand as his other rubbed me roughly, pulling me closer and closer to release. I pictured him wearing that smug, dazzling grin as he took hold of me, his muscled arms holding me close as he massaged my cock in his hand. I came in a warm spurt as the water seared against my skin, images of Peter’s sexy grin and strong, sweaty body playing over and over in my mind.