Ethan

Seething with fury, I stalk from one end of the room to the other like a caged cat. It's a good thing I have the place to myself. It would be embarrassing and awkward to do this in front of a roommate.

I keep sniffing the shirt. His scent fills my lungs, like incense in a temple. Fury sings in my veins, mixing in a strange cocktail with lust and loss.

Deep down I know that, in a way, he's right. This could be as bad for me as it is for him. Doubly so, because whatever happened to him would happen to me too; it would be my fault. I could have left any time. I initiated. I jumped on his lap, cock-crazy and thinking of nothing but getting slammed hard and fast by that meat monster he slings in his jeans.

Damn it, I'm getting hard again just thinking about him. I haven't been like this since I was a teenager…not that long ago, but still. I feel young again, not something I was expecting. Some part of me, the historian part, I think, has always wanted to be old. Seasoned. Maybe even a literal ethereal.

Now I feel vital and alive.

I don't know where to go, or who to talk to. My brothers are all off doing their own thing, and one of them doesn't even talk to the rest of us. Same for my sister, she's busy, starting up a business with one of our brothers. I'm pretty much alone on this one.

Alone and lost.

I sit on the bed, aching. Physically and mentally. After an experience like that, I need to be held, to smell him, to cool down and come down from the high. I can do none of those things here, and I feel his absence sharply, a perpetual un-presence nagging at my brain.

Then I start laughing.

I thought I hated—or at least resented—this guy. At the end of the day, I guess it really is true that hate and love aren't opposites. Maybe we are, but love and hate, no way. I wonder how I'm going to face him.

What I'm going to do to keep him from sending me away.

I snort derisively at myself. Maybe…Maybe I should let him. I'll find excuses. He'll come around. Maybe he'll see the light if we don't have such a close professional relationship. A sacrifice so I can feel what I felt tonight, again.

Gah. How am I supposed to do this?

I surge up from the bed, glad I don't have a top bunk to bash my head into. (Wouldn't be the first time) Then I stalk some more, and stalk some more. Hell, it's not even that late and I haven't eaten.

Carefully, I take off his shirt, hang it in my armoire, and hope the chemically not-cedar smell won't eat his scent from the fabric. Then I grab a towel and hurry to the bathroom.

When I get back, I dry off, throw on some clothes, and grab my keys and ID. I get free meals, owing to being an RA.

The cafeteria food here is horrible, but where isn't it? I balked a little when I realized that the same contractor that delivers food to the cafeteria also services the state prison twenty miles north of here. I guess it's convenient. They can stop on the way, right?

Tonight the main entree is alleged meatloaf. I skip that and pile up some veggies, then plop in the cafeteria to sit glumly and eat. The food is soggy and mushy, but it's nutrition, and my head is pounding.

I keep glancing around the room. How can you people just sit here while my heart is splitting in two?

Jennifer spots me and saunters over, taking a seat at my table. She has a book with her and props it open with a little weight she uses to hold the pages apart before she actually talks to me.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” she says, concerned.

I blink a few times and prod a mushed up blop of former broccoli with my plastic spork.

Jennifer holds hers up and examines the “tines” thoughtfully.

“Think these are prison issue, too?”

I shrug.

“You know, we pay enough for this meal plan to eat out every night.”

“I get it for free. You could skip it.”

She shrugs. “I could, but food is food. I require nutrients.”

Jennifer eats some of the attempted meatloaf, actually swirling it around a bit in the sludgy gravy as if she's enjoying it.

“Seriously, what's up your ass?”

I give her a wry look.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Okay, that was a little unfortunate of me. Guy troubles?”

“Guy troubles,” I sigh.

“Tell me all about it,” she says, turning to face me with exaggerated concern.

“Well,” I say, trying to think of how to put this in terms that won't make it too obvious. “Do you think a hate crush is a thing?”

“Like, hating so much you want to fuck them? Duh,” she snorts. “Nothing like a good hate fuck.”

I stare into space for a moment.

That wasn't a hate fuck, right? I'm pretty sure there was no hate there. At least not from my end. Voracious animal energy, yes. Hate, no.

“I don't think it was a hate fuck,” I say.

“Oh,” she sighs, then brightens. “So you got laid?” she asks, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Who was it? Do I know him?”

“You know him,” I groan.

Great. I shouldn't have said that. I can't have her playing twenty questions with me. She's too damned smart.

“Oh my,” she says. “Oh, my. Sounds interesting. So I know him, but you're not volunteering who he is, so it must be on the down low. Did some straight guy try to experiment and brush you off? Wham-bam, thank you man?”

“I…maybe?” I say. “I'm not sure if he was experimenting.”

“If he was, was the experiment a success?”

I curl a smile.

“Yeah,” she says, “that's a success.” Then she continues, “so, you have your hooks in him. Think he'll come back?”

“I don't know,” I sigh.

“So he's playing hard to get,” she says, nodding slowly. “I think we can work with this. You have to be alluring and shit.”

I blink a few times. “Really?”

She shrugs.

“Alluring and shit?” I say.

She snorts. “Dude, I'm an English major. If I want to get some action all I have to do is walk into the literary magazine club meeting and yell WHO WANTS SOME FUCK?”

I look around, catching a few shocked or annoyed glances at her.

“We're with people,” I say.

“English majors shag like rabbits,” she says, shrugging. “It is known.”

I watch her chew one of the standard-issue tuna clubs that come wrapped up in plastic and are available every night. I tried one once and threw it away. At first, I thought there was some plastic inside the sandwich, too. Then I realized I was tasting the lettuce.

Jennifer doesn't seem to notice, or maybe she eats so fast so that she won't. The sandwich vanishes, the speed of her eating at odds with her diminutive frame, and she turns to the two slices of chocolate cake that she's placed on one plate and stacked on top of each other to make a cake cube.

“Maybe I should just let it go,” I say.

She looks at me and swipes a crumb from the corner of her mouth with the tine of her spork.

“What does your heart want?”

I give her a flat look.

“Well, what am I supposed to say? Is it worth pursuing? You're young, Ethan, and if you deign to socialize you make friends easy, and you're pretty hot, if I may safely hit on my gay friend.”

I frown at her, but she seems too amused with herself to notice.

“What I'm trying to say is that there's other fish in the sea. You're on a college campus, my friend. This is a world of sex.”

I frown. Maybe it is for her, but this school boasts an undergraduate population of less than five thousand—my dating pool isn't that wide. Huffing, I push my plate of alleged food away and rest my chin on my hands.

“I don't know what to do,” I say. “I really don't.”

Jennifer studies me, slowly eating cake, sensually cleaning bite-sized chunks from her spork with her tongue.

“Is that really that good?”

“I'm not doing it for the cake.”

I glance across the room, following her gaze as she repetitively licks her spork, her eyes locked on a guy.

“You're awful,” I tell her.

“I'm confident,” she says. “You should try it sometime.”

“I did,” I mumble.

“Well, try harder.” She turns to look at me, jabbing her cake spork at me as if it were a knife. “You're responsible for yourself. Let me ask you a question.”

“Fine,” I sigh.

“What is the riddle of steel?”

I blink a few times. “The what?”

“Should I tell you what it is? It's the least I can do.”

I sigh, knowing better than to stop her when she's quoting a movie I haven't seen.

She points at the guy she was eyeing. “You see that boy over there? I'm going to have sex with him tonight. That is strength, boy. That is power. The strength and power of flesh. What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?”

I poke the tines of her spork with my finger.

“This isn't steel. I'm not even sure it's plastic?”

She flips it around to read the back of the handle. “Made in Bulgaria.”

I have to check mine to see if she's joking or not. There's no “made in” note molded on the back.

“What's wrong with Bulgaria?”

She shrugs. “Nothing. It struck me as funny.”

Without another word, she picks up her tray and heads over to where sits her new prey. I snicker at my little internal rhyme. I was almost an English major—I seriously considered it when I first changed my field of study. When I enrolled, I was a K-8 education major, but a less-than-stellar experience at a couple of field assignments working with kids left me not really feeling that. I decided I'd specialize, get a cert, and teach high school instead.

My academic advisor talked me out of that and into continuing in academia. I guess the benefit of having no possessions and no deep ties to my family is complete freedom when it comes to selecting grad schools. If I can get in.

That's what I should be thinking about. Backup plans if I'm not accepted, getting my ducks all in a row. There's time for love and romance and all that later. Jennifer is right; if I want to I can probably find a hookup on campus. It'd be more than a little sad if I couldn't.

Staring at my uneaten food, I feel a soft, cold jerk in my chest. I felt a sense of rightness earlier that I haven't had since I lived at home, since before Mom…since before it all went to shit and my family all went our separate ways, some more bitterly than others.

Makes me wonder where they all are now. Lucas joined the Marines and blew us all off; Ash moved to Philadelphia and last I heard he was living in an illegal artist commune in a warehouse, Julian is in Seattle with a friend of his, and Aiden and Larissa are in south Philly together, trying to get the bakery off the ground, the one Mom always wanted to open but couldn't afford if she kept the house.

Since we enjoyed living indoors, that never happened.

Groaning, I dump my wasted food in one of the big trash cans and drop my tray on a little conveyer belt that carries it off I know not where. It wouldn't surprise me if they get blasted with water, roll back out, and go right back on the stack.

Head down, hands thrust in pockets, I walk back out of the dining hall and over to my room, avoiding eye contact with anyone. I have RA stuff to do, and class stuff to do, and readings to do. I have other stuff to focus on.

How can I, though, when I can't stop thinking about the next time I report to McDonough's office?