Adam

When I woke up, my roommate was still passed out, so I went to breakfast alone, stuffing my face and ignoring most of the cliques that’d formed in the dining hall.

Our first classes started in an hour, so when I got back to my room, I found it hard to believe that Jack was still asleep, his glasses perched on the nightstand. What had he been doing up so late last night, anyway?

I took a pillow off my bed and chucked it at him.

“Mm, one more minute...” he mumbled, rolling over in his sleep.

Without his glasses on, I could see his freckles more clearly, and his mouth was parted just a little bit. He was clearly in dreamland.

“Jack, wake up,” I said, hurling another pillow at him.

He sat up halfway, holding the pillow to his chest. “Mm tired,” he said, eyes still closed, and then flopped back onto his bed like a dead fish.

Part of me wondered why I was even trying, and why I even cared whether or not he woke up on time.

“C’mon. You can’t sleep in,” I said, taking another pillow and hitting him in the arm.

“But ‘m sleepy. Wait… un’more minute…”

He rolled over, completely unbothered, his right leg sticking out of the covers—which made me notice that he’d painted his toenails, too.

I threw my last pillow at him, hitting him right in the face. “You’re going to miss breakfast. You have to get up.”

Finally, he shot straight up, his blue eyes wide open and delirious. “Crap!”

He pushed the mountain of pillows off of himself and felt around the nightstand for his glasses. He knocked them off on accident, so I went to pick them up for him at the same time he did, our heads hitting each other.

“Ouch,” I deadpanned, rubbing my forehead and holding out his glasses.

“I’m sorry!” He took them out of my hand and put them on, rubbing his own forehead and checking the time. “Crap, crap, crap!”

He was wearing a white t-shirt and dinosaur boxer briefs. I tried not to think about how cute that was as I turned to my bed, pretending to fix my sheets.

The once-silent room was now filled with Jack’s apologies. “Sorry! I’m sorry, I must’ve slept through my alarm. I stayed up too late in the library.”

He was throwing on a pair of slacks and a school sweater vest, fumbling with the navy tie that indicated he was a scholarship student.

Was that what he was doing all night? Jack seemed to read more than anyone I’d met. And why did he keep apologizing? It was not that big of a deal—we’d all slept through alarms before.

“It’s fine, you’re fine,” I reassured him, trying to act nonchalant. What’d gotten into me? This boy moved in, and now… now…

He was hopping on one foot, jamming on his socks, tornadoing through the room, applying deodorant, then messing with his hair, which he gave up on almost immediately.

“You’ll need your tie,” I pointed out.

“Right!”

He frantically looked around the room, finally noticing the piece of fabric that had fallen to the ground in his haste to get ready.

In the corner of my eye, I spotted Cloudy finally resurfacing from under the sand in his tank, his white scales glimmering in the overhead light. Even he could sense that there was a commotion going on.

“Ugh, I’m so terrible at this, I’ve never been able to tie my own tie,” Jack said, so I turned to look at him.

His pinky was stuck in a terrible knot of fabric at his throat. When his big blue eyes looked up at me, something within me melted, thawing ice in my chest that I hadn’t even known was there.

God damnit.

“Come here,” I said, pulling him towards me without thinking, my hand on his arm.

He let me touch him, gazing up at me like I’d done something magic. I tried to ignore it to focus on the task at hand. How had he made these knots so tight so quickly?

I gently freed his hand from the tie, untangling it. Our fingers touched, sending a rush down my spine.

I tried not to look at his face while I worked on the tie, but I could feel his breath near my chin. Although his brown curls were messy from sleep, they still framed his face perfectly. How could someone look so good right after they woke up? When I’d looked at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning, I could see the dark bags under my eyes.

After Jack had fallen on top of me last night, I’d gone for a drive to clear my head. At first, I’d blasted music to get away from my thoughts, but then it became too much, so I turned it off and drove in silence for a few hours.

I didn’t understand why I was getting so worked up over this new roommate, but I couldn’t get him out of my head, even when I was so desperate to leave the room.

There were new feelings forming inside of me, and I didn’t know what to make of them.

Everything I knew about Jack so far intrigued me—his distracting personality, the trinkets on his desk, the constant apologizing. I’d never met someone so nice before.

It freaked me out.

But I also… liked it.

When I’d come back to the room, I found myself a little disappointed that he wasn’t there, so I went to sleep, leaving the night light on for him to come back to. My dream after that had been weird, involving my dad’s disapproving face and my mom’s nails turning into knives.

Coming back to the present, I finished the tie and took a step back, admiring my work.

Jack’s cheeks were pink; I caught myself staring for a moment too long at his face. His skin looked like it could be soft, and there were still pieces of sleep in the corners of his eyes.

“There. You should head to breakfast,” I blurted out, then started packing my bag as he got his shoes on.

“A snake!” Jack suddenly exclaimed when he noticed Cloudy, who was out of hiding for the first time. He leaned over the tank cautiously, watching the snake’s slow movements on top of the fancy rock I’d placed in there when I was eleven. “What’s its name?”

Oh, boy. Was he going to judge me for something so simple-minded? This guy was clearly smarter than he let on, since he spent his free time in the library.

“Cloudy. You know… because he’s white. I named him when I was a kid.”

Jack just looked at me in amazement, and I could feel heat rising in my cheeks.

Wait, am I blushing? This is already too much. I’m… really confused.

“That’s perfect! I love him,” Jack said, and my confusion turned to a soft and gooey feeling in my chest.

Why was he so kind? How could he love something so fast, without hesitation? Most people flinched at my snake, my dad having been very opposed to me getting him in the first place.

I thought snakes were misunderstood creatures, so it surprised me that Jack was so quick to understand him.

I decided that we needed to leave right now, especially if he wanted to make it to the cafeteria before breakfast stopped being served. My first class was chemistry, and I wanted to get there early to snag a seat in the back, where no one could bother me.

When I reached for the doorknob, I felt a tug on my sleeve. I turned to see those big, oceanic, expectant eyes.

A flash of electricity shot through my abdomen. Why did he have to look at me like that?

“Can you lead the way to breakfast?” he asked.

I just stared at him. Had he not eaten dinner last night?

The dining hall was just on the ground floor of the dorms. How could someone miss the ground floor? Did he even know where the common room was?

He stared back at me, waiting expectantly. I couldn’t believe the effect that look had on me, because I eventually sighed and conceded to leading him to breakfast, even though I’d already eaten.

On the way down, I told him, “There’s a map on the school app so that you don’t get lost. Have you downloaded it yet?”

“Yeah, I know. And I have, my phone’s just super old and it takes forever to function right. It’s just easier this way.”

He had a spring to his step, making his hair dance all over the place. I followed him down the stairs, my steps quiet behind him.

When we reached the ground floor and I led him to the cafeteria, he stopped like a statue at the entrance, his eyes turning into saucers.

“This place is massive!” he said. I wondered if it was always this easy to impress him.

“Yeah, I guess it’s alright,” I responded, not really knowing what to say, but also not wanting to ruin his enthusiasm.

I was used to grand hallways and large dining halls. We had a private chef at home, so I was also accustomed to eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

Talk about spoiled.

“C’mon, let’s see what they have! I’m starving!” Jack said, pulling on my shirt sleeve. I let him drag me to the cafeteria line without protest.

We passed a couple of guys who watched us, mumbling under their breath as we went by, smirks on their faces.

I recognized one of them as Bruce Jenson. My father and his father were currently business partners, so my father had encouraged me to befriend him.

He came off as a rat to me, sniveling and conniving with the wrong kind of people. His buddies seemed to have about four brain cells combined. I doubted that he knew who I was since we’d never actually met before; we just knew each other’s last names and titles.

Also, his eyes were following Jack like a predator stalking his prey, and that made me inexplicably angry.

I wondered if Jack knew he stuck out like a sore thumb with his tie. The rest of the kids in the cafeteria had the same gold tie that I did, which meant that our parents had paid enough for us to be here.

Either way, I glared at Bruce and his pals, and they all shut up real quick, meeting my gaze with a touch of fear.

My father often told me I had a stoic demeanor, and that I should use that to my advantage in a business setting. I think that was his nice way of saying I could be scary when I wanted to be. I didn’t know if I should be proud of that, but it was helpful in this situation. Bruce could screw off.

Jack was bouncing up and down, looking at the array of food options. “Oh, my god, they have hashbrowns and little cooked tomatoes! Adam, are you seeing this?”

Those blue eyes hit me again, and the light in the cafeteria made them look almost a silvery gray. How did they transform like that? Did he know the effect that had on people?

I just looked back at him for a moment, stuck still, before one of the kitchen attendants approached.

“Know what you want, sugar?” the elderly woman asked, and Jack started pointing to one of everything to stack onto his plate.

When we approached the end of the row of food, he looked at me quizzically. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

Crap. Should I tell him that I’d already eaten? Would it be weird if I just sat down and watched my roommate eat?

Before I could respond, Jack started asking for a second plate, piling it with everything from eggs to toast to bacon to hashbrowns.

When he pressed the plate into my hands, I knew my moment to speak up had passed. How could I say no to those eyes?

“Thank you!” Jack said to the woman, then zoomed his way over to a circular table by the windows.

I followed, wondering how exactly I’d gotten wrapped up into a second breakfast.