Chapter Two

CODY, Wyoming, was a nice enough town. Sometimes the cowboy theme got a little kitschy, especially in the summer with all the rodeos and reenactments, but the Old West storefronts and the mountains in the distance were a far cry from the concrete-and-brick landscape that made up Chicago. The Windy City was a fine place—top-of-the-line medical facilities, five-star dining, easy access to anything and everything a person could want—but when the time came to break away from my parents’ smothering concern, I wanted to get as far away as I could. Not just distance, but attitude and environment. And believe me, after the hustle and bustle of the city, the slower pace and old-world atmosphere was a welcome change.

I adjusted the strap of my messenger bag, wishing I’d brought a baseball cap. I didn’t know if it was a result of the higher elevation and the thinner air, but the sun blinded me today. It didn’t help when the twitchy, skin-too-tight feeling was worse than it had been, and a mild headache lurked behind my eyes, crouching, waiting to pounce and explode in my brain.

“Hey, Yusuf!” Footsteps pounded behind me, though it took a minute for me to realize the voice was calling for me. It wasn’t just the voice—that deep, smoky voice—that told me who rushed behind me. Nobody, not even my mother, called me Yusuf except Owen.

He barreled toward me, halting less than an arm’s length away from me. “Whew!” He swiped his hand across his forehead, pushing back his ash-blond bangs along with the slight sheen of sweat on his brow. “I’m glad I caught you. A few of the guys from my afternoon psych class are meeting for lunch. You got plans?”

I stared at him—probably dumbly—for a moment while the words registered. I was twenty-one years old, and no one had ever invited me to lunch before. If that’s what it was. Owen didn’t actually ask if I wanted to join them. It was more of a statement of his own plans. And, for crap’s sake, why was I spinning on this? “Ah… I was on my way to the library.”

“Can it wait? Want to come with?”

“Sure.” Even as I agreed, my brain screeched at me that I was making a bigger deal out of this than it needed to be. Sure, I was drawn to him in a way I couldn’t quite define, so I tried really hard not to make this into more than it was. It was lunch, damn it, not a proposal. A lunch with the guys, even. I’d never done lunch with the guys before.

“Cool!”

Over the last several nighttime wanderings, I’d discovered Owen was a cheerful, easygoing kind of guy. Affable, I thought the word was. He was affable. I’d seen him almost every night since our first meeting. Chess matches had become a routine. It had gotten to the point that I didn’t wait for the jittery, skin-too-tight feeling to hit before making my way to Matthison Hall’s main lobby during Owen’s shifts. I finished my homework, took my shower, and headed to the lobby for our now nightly chess games.

Despite the litany of questions he claimed to have at our first meeting, he didn’t ask them. He seemed perfectly content to let me sit and play in silence. Not that he was silent, not by a long shot. He told stories, chatted about friends and family, regaled me with tales of campus shenanigans. It was… nice.

It must have been what having a friend was like.

I gripped the strap of my bag as though it were a lifeline as we headed to the Union Center, the all-purpose building that housed the dining hall, the campus bookstore, a small convenience store, and organizational meeting rooms. I hadn’t spent much time near the Union Center because, even during the summer semester, it was the one place on campus guaranteed to be full of people. Even after being there a few weeks, I wasn’t altogether comfortable in big crowds. I started to relax after a couple of minutes, mostly because it was impossible to stay uptight around Owen. He distracted me with an anecdote about his morning class.

“Then Professor Aaronson throws up her hands and stalks out. Harry and Brendan just stand there, white foam dripping off them like they’d walked through a car wash.” Owen gestured from his forehead to his knees before clutching his gut as he dissolved into paroxysms of hilarity.

My lips twitched in an automatic, if unusual for me, smile. “Isn’t that your creative writing class? How did they—”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my question because a swarm of students, at least ten of them, surrounded us. And despite his use of the word “guys,” there were at least four girls in the bunch. Within seconds I was buried in the center of a mass of chatting, laughing, bumping humans. The protective bubble of personal space I usually surrounded myself with—a minimum of two feet—was decimated. Shoulders brushed mine and elbows knocked into me. All light and casual touches, the result of so many people in a limited space, but they set my nerves on edge. Blood rushed in my ears; my breathing sped up. Why were they so close? We were on the sidewalk, for crying out loud; there was no need for everyone to be touching everyone else. It reminded me of a pack of puppies playing together, always needing to be in constant contact with their littermates.

I tripped over a break in the sidewalk while I struggled to get my bearings in such a group. I stumbled forward, but a strong arm—Owen’s arm—wrapped around my waist and kept me on my feet. And that touch, that contact, didn’t overwhelm me like the others. In fact, it grounded me. The static-filled buzzing in my head receded, and the beat of my heart slowed.

I looked at Owen, and there was a question in his wide amber eyes. Was I okay, they asked. Was this okay? And, I realized, it was. After the initial shock of being amalgamated in a boisterous crowd had passed, I actually liked it. The energy of the group, the enthusiasm, was contagious. I smiled at him, letting him know I’d be fine. That I was fine. And in that moment, I really was.

We burst through the dual doors of the Union Center, and we must have looked like a back-to-school advertisement. A dozen smiling, laughing students erupting into the marble corridor.

When we reached the dining hall, our writhing, undulating throng thinned and split as everyone decided which lunch option appealed—the sandwich shop, the salad bar, or the burger joint. It was chaos, the sound and the scents and the people crossing back and forth. It took a moment for my brain to see past the disorder and confusion. I focused my attention on Owen, and like the moment outside, he grounded me.

I stayed close to Owen’s side as he made his way to the sandwich shop. He ordered some kind of Italian combo sandwich piled high with onions, hot peppers, and olives. Remembering my heartburn-inducing pizza experiment, I played it safe with a turkey and American cheese sub with no extras. Owen snorted at my selection. “Pretty boring. Is that all you’re getting? To be frank, dude, you could use a little more meat on your bones.”

I tugged at the hem of the red polo shirt I wore. Yeah, I’d been losing weight lately, not that I had any to spare. But now I probably looked like an eating disorder cautionary tale. Rather than explain about my sensitive stomach, I deflected by sneering at his lunch. “Better than that gastric nightmare. Why don’t you throw on the kitchen sink while you’re at it?” The minute I said it, I bit my lip. What the hell had gotten into me? I barely ever said more than a couple of words at a time. I certainly didn’t snark. Not out loud, at least. And I was still in the process of feeling out this whole friendship thing. I didn’t want to offend my first almost-friend.

Rather than act offended, Owen snickered. “Don’t knock it until you try it. And the best part is yet to come.”

“Yeah?”

He grabbed a bag of potato chips off the display near the register and shook it at me.

“Potato chips are the best part?”

“First, potato chips are always a good choice. But in this instance, the potato chips are going on top of my sandwich. It adds a nice crunchy texture.”

I tried to imagine it. It wasn’t the worst combination I’d ever heard of. I nodded. “I’d buy that.”

We paid for our food and headed to the center of the dining hall where some of Owen’s “guys” were pushing two tables together. When the tables and chairs were situated to everyone’s satisfaction, Owen dropped into one of the faux-wood-backed seats. Hooking his ankle around one leg, he pulled the chair next to him out and motioned for me to sit.

“Try this.”

I blinked at the portion of sandwich that was not my own.

“Huh?” Great response, Joey.

“Have a bite and tell me this isn’t the best sandwich ever.” Owen brought the absurd sandwich combo closer to my mouth.

Not only was he offering me a taste of his sandwich, he was going to feed it to me from his own hand? I blushed. It seemed too intimate, too close. I pulled my head back, and my eyes crossed trying to keep the morsel of food in focus. I caught a whiff of vinaigrette and Italian seasoning. My stomach rumbled; my mouth watered. Then I sneezed. Because of course I did. He jerked back, dropped the sample, and snorted out a laugh. I slapped my hands over my mouth, both in horror and in a knee-jerk cover-your-mouth-when-you-sneeze habit. Then I ducked my head in mortification.

Snickering, Owen wrapped the bits of discarded toppings—casualties in what I feared would be my never-ending battle to not look like an idiot—into a napkin. “Let’s try again,” he said, grabbing a plastic knife and cutting another slice off his sandwich.

My stomach rumbled again at the sound of plastic cutting through chips and lettuce. Despite that, I held up a hand to stop him. “You don’t need to. At this rate you won’t have any lunch left. And,” I said with an uninspired look at my own sub, “I don’t think you’d get the same enjoyment out of turkey and American cheese.”

“It’s fine. Seriously, you need to see what you’re missing.” He offered the second sample.

Giving in to the tantalizing scent and an uncomfortable desire to not disappoint Owen, I took it. The flavors exploded in my mouth, and I decided then and there that no matter how bad the heartburn later, I would definitely trust Owen in all things foodie. I groaned at the savory, salty, crispy, and crunchy combination.

“Told you so.” With a satisfied smirk, he took a bite.

I looked at my boring sandwich and mourned a little bit. I was hungry enough I could have eaten my sub, Owen’s sandwich, and probably every entrée at the table. Lately my appetite had been out of control. I was always starving, and nothing I ate seemed to fill the hole. Too bad so much of what I consumed had been leading to heartburn and stomach cramps. Boring sandwich or not, I didn’t waste any time digging in to my less-exciting lunch.

The guy on my right turned to me. “Hi, I’m Jonah.” Jonah was a burly guy, probably as tall as I was but bulkier. He had shaggy coffee-colored hair tipped with platinum, as though he’d bleached it at some point and it had mostly grown out.

I swallowed the bite I’d just taken. “Oh, ah, hey. I’m Joey.”

“Nice to meetcha.” Jonah took a swig from the soda in front of him. “What classes are you taking this summer?” he asked.

“Intro to Wildlife Conservation.” There was no lack of good universities in or around Chicago, so I had my choice of schools, but none had a wildlife conservation program like Cody College. My whole life I’d been fascinated by animals and nature. I’d spend hours and hours binging on the Discovery Channel and devouring decades’ worth of National Geographics. Cody College, despite being a tiny school in the middle of nowhere, was known for its excellent biology and wildlife programs. The small student population meant my discomfort with crowds was less of an issue too. I really couldn’t have picked a better-for-me place to go to school.

One of the four females in the group leaned forward. “Ooh. Is that the one taught by Dr. Coleman?”

“Yeah. I read some of his articles about raptors. I had no idea he’d be so young.” Because, seriously, the man didn’t look old enough to vote, let alone be as accomplished as he was.

“You should have been here last semester,” the girl said. “That’s when he started. And Ford! It was a huge scandal.”

“Scandal?” Dr. Coleman didn’t seem like the type to be part of anything scandalous. Seemed a bit too naïve and geek-like to for anything salacious. I looked at Owen.

“Scandal,” he confirmed.

The girl glanced around, then whispered, “He hooked up with his TA.”

It was my turn to lean forward. “No. Really? Like, they had an affair?”

She nodded. Owen shook his head. “It wasn’t—isn’t—like that. They’re totally in love. It’s almost sickening. As soon as they started dating, they got Ford assigned to a different advisor, both for his thesis work and his TA duties. But it was pretty hot gossip for a while.”

“Ford… that’s a guy, right? So this Ford and Dr. Coleman are gay?”

“Or bi. I don’t know specifically. Is it a problem?” Something in Owen’s voice told me it had better not be a problem.

“Not for me,” I said honestly. I hadn’t had much time to explore my own sexuality in any real way—being hospitalized for the lion’s share of one’s life made dating and sex difficult—but I was pretty sure I fell somewhere under the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, especially after spending time with Owen.

“Owen’s gay,” Jonah announced.

I shot a look Owen’s way. I’m not sure what the right response would have been, and since it didn’t seem appropriate to mention the little thrill shooting through me, evidence of my place under the rainbow umbrella, I went with the very insipid “Um, okay.”

Owen reached behind me and smacked Jonah upside the head. “Smooth, dude.”

Jonah ducked away. “Hey, just putting it out there. I know you’re digging hi—”

Owen reached behind me—again—and smacked Jonah upside the head—again—color blooming across his neck and face.

I was pretty sure there was some kind of subtext there I should have picked up on. But subtext wasn’t really my strong suit. Things were quiet, uncomfortably so, for a couple of minutes. Then one of the guys at the other end of the table asked a question about one of the readings they had to do for their psych class.