Chapter 04: Letters and numbers ! 

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Upon the blackboard universe a nebula of hasty chalk existed, derived from letters and numbers cramped together; the aftermath of equations and decoded answers.

But amidst the logistics of thereoms and graphs, numbers were what mattered most. They were the potential; the spark that kindled the flame, the breath that doused the candle.

People were numbers too, contrived from fixed figures of cells and neurons and veins and arteries, their hearts palpitating with a rhythm that could be counted.

Some would say Jonathan Westham was the perfect one hundred, or bigger than that, the highest, the furthest you could go.

Infinity. 

A word that summed up an undefinable concept—a number, a multitude as large as you could think it to be. But didn't that dwindle the essence of the notion then? Didn't tainting an idea with your own perspective make it yours—something that belonged to you?

If that was the case then somewhere, somehow, Johnny was my infinity.

"—et sunshine," he breathed into my ear and I jerked away from him, startled, as the ravenous lilt of his voice dragged me back to the maths room.

Almost as if he'd burst a dam in my mind, reality flooded my senses — sitting between him and Ryder; Mr. Monroe explaining complex trigonometric shit; sunlight dispersing into shattered rainbows.

"What?"

"I said," he repeated, a faint smile widening his mouth like a zip being yanked opened. "Get sunshine for me."

Ryder, or sunshine, was already starting towards us. Elbow leaning hazardously on my copy, head lowered at an angle, he hissed, "FUCK—WHAT?"

Johnny raised his hands as discreetly as he could. (It wasn't discreet at all). "Jesus, relax. I just wanted to ask where Chase and Vincent are."

Ryder swept a fleeting glance at the two vacant seats to his right. I could have sworn I heard him mutter Dear God, give me strength. "Jonathan. How. The fuck. Am I meant to know?"

Johnny shrugged. He looked unbearably indifferent in only his white shirt and red tie. His sleeves were pushed up to the crook of his elbow where I knew narrow rivers of moss and lilac veins flowed beneath translucent skin. It was part of the image, I guess; the ideal, aloof Golden Boy veneer.

"Just thought you would," he muttered and knocked his knee against mine beneath the table. After a tempestuous three years of knowing him, I recognised tout de suite that this was his way of saying: 

I'm in this situation where I don't feel great. Help me.

Despite everything, despite every fucking thing, I still wanted to comfort him. But his hypocrisy was so hard to overlook that I slid away from all the warmth and bones that he had to offer until I was tapering off the edge of my seat.

He cleared his throat but I didn't dare glance in his direction.

Don't care about him. Don't care about him. Don't fucking care about him. 

I focused on Mr. Monroe's voice which was low and gravelly and akin to thunder rolling between static skies. More than that it was familiar and soothing. The kind I'd imagine every granddad to have when reading preposterous fairytales to their grandkids.

Only Johnny snatched that from me as well. "What do you think Vincent wanted to talk to Chase about on Friday?" he mused.

I dug the tips of my fingers into my temples and ground out, "Don't know, don't care."

Ryder snickered as he scribbled workings into his copy. "Fuck yes, Eli. You tell him."

Johnny remained unfazed by that, however, and slyly added, "Looks like Vincent's got a new favorite now, Ryder."

Ryder stiffened. "Looks like it."

"Jealous?"

"You're a dick," I cut in. He knew. He knew that before it had been anyone, before it had been the five Golden Boys, it had been Vincent and Ryder.

He pressed his thigh against mine and I whipped my head around to look at him before I could stop myself . . . and then instantly regretted it. A tint of pink glowed at the tips of his ears and that, along with the warm autumnal hue of his hair, threatened to drown my lungs in oceans of yearning. Yearning for past times, for unnoticed summers where the endless roads of our skin had intersected, for fingerprints marring each other until we were mere maps of bruises and bites.

"It's an honest question," he mumbled, a hurt furrow to his brows. "I just want to know." He frowned at Ryder. "Are you jealous, Ry?"

Ryder leisurely traced his tongue over the top row of his teeth, making a noisy squelch sound as he did so.

"Absolutely devastated," he replied flatly, and then proceeded to stare hard at Johnny for a few more seconds before adding, "Don't call me Ry ever again, pervert."

"Seriou—"

"Mister Westham? Would you like to tell me the answer to question twenty-four?"

"Uh. No, not really, sir."

Chuckles broke out around the class, droning out the hum of the air-conditioner for once. Johnny, who was laughing himself, waved an amiable hand. "Just kidding, sir. The answer is"—he swiped my copy before I could stop him—"ten square root two."

Mr. Monroe slowly tipped his head up and down and then gave it a firm shake. "God knows what'd happen to you if you weren't smart, Jonathan. Shut up now, you hear me?"

"Yes sir."

Monroe's butcher smile carved deep grooves into the flaccid flesh around his mouth. He twisted round to the blackboard again and I snatched my copy off Johnny.

"Asshole," I hissed. "If Monroe could actually see, god knows what would hap—"

The heel of his palm dug into my knee and derailed the rest of my sentence. His skin was warm through my trousers, too feverish for my feeble resolve to handle. Warily, I snuck my hand under the table with the intent of shoving him away.

But the second our skin brushed, it was like a live wire touching a neutral one. Slowly, his fingers encircled my wrist.

"Please don't," he breathed, voice so low that I wasn't sure if he'd actually said it.

I wanted to respond, to pull away, but his words were like an anaesthetic to my limbs. Was he—?

He ducked his head before I could say anything, leaving me more hollow and perplexed than before. He said, "We doing anything tonight, Ryder?"

"I don't know about tonight, but currently I'm doing my best to ignore you."

"You aren't doing a very good job."

"I try."

Johnny made a sound of discontent at the back of his throat. "Why don't we take Stella somewhere?"

"No."

"Please?" he insisted, as if the reality beneath the desk was non-existent. "It's Sunday for God's sake. It's been so long since we've done something fun. And even longer since we've ridden Stella."

Ryder scoffed. "Stella needs a real man to ride her, not little bitches like you."

Johnny's entire body quivered as he bounced his leg up and down.

"And whose the real man?" I wondered quietly. When I stared at Johnny, his features were soft and boyish, not rigid and serrated like Ryder's. He stared back, his throat bobbing as I admired the curve and dip of his cheekbones, the upward flick of his retroussé nose (it never failed to remind me of an exponential graph), the sensual arch of his lips.

"The name's Ryder. Because I know just how to ride her."

I tried not to smile. "He does have a point."

"Alright, fine," Johnny relented, but his cheek was twitching too. "Ryder can drive. But can we still go somewhere? Come on, sunshine, you know you want to take us."

"Johnny, I wouldn't take you lot anywhere with me if my life depended on it," Ryder sneered. "And it seems like you had enough fun Friday night."

I unwillingly caught a glimpse of the stamp of another's ardour on Johnny's neck.

Instead of feeling hurt, I felt oddly nostalgic. I remembered being introduced to algebra in seventh grade, remembered thinking how ugly the letters made the numbers look, remembered realising that every coin had two sides even if you didn't flip it over.

The pretty boy next to me, forged from millions of numbers, was composed of letters too—letters that made words; words that defined him.

Around campus, Jonathan Westham was a Casanova and a fuckboy, a stud and a sleazy fucker. 

But something stupid inside me wanted to believe that Johnny was different to that. He was a boy with stardust smiles and inferno hair.

My infinity.

He squeezed my wrist, bittersweet, and looked at me sideways. "You know, Eli, sometimes my sixth sense tells me Ryder doesn't like us."

"Trust that sense," Ryder muttered. "It's right."

Johnny laughed but the sound was off.

"He's kidding," I said in a terrible attempt at reassurance. The slant of his brows was unconvinced.

We turned to Ryder but his face was empty, no sliver of emotion betraying his thoughts. He looked away from us, though one corner of his mouth turned up and then quickly down again.

It wasn't much, but at least it was something.

Johnny's grip on me loosened. Slowly, his thumb traced the outline of mine.

Part of me wondered if he thought he was forgiven. The other part wondered if he was.

That thought caused a dull ache to unfurl in my chest, right where his cheek used to rest during solemn nights. The vague sense of pride, sitting between him and Ryder at the back of the room, at the table reserved for the Golden Boys, was still overwhelming however.

Though Chase and Vincent were bizarrely absent, the basic concept of things persisted.

You could break us apart and slice us open, prod the wires of wealth and luxury, tear the mechanics of good looks, but after that you'd realize there was nothing left to us.

We were only prototypes of the same idea; echoes of aspirations.

When I first met Vincent, he told me in that enigmatic way of his that we were something as five, opposed to nothing as one.

I still wondered if it always had to be like that. Could there ever be a possibility of obtaining something more by making something less?

I guess in the end it came down to fractions. I could either be one half of a whole or one fifth. I was already certain what I'd choose if I had to. I just knew he wouldn't do the same.