“What class?”
“Physics.”
He makes a face. “Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t leave either. I can feel him there even when I’m not looking. There’s just something about him. He has a presence. He’s always making some sort of noise. And he looks at you, even when it’s weird.
He doesn’t seem to care.
After a brutal amount of time where neither of us speaks and I pretend to do my paper while he stares at me with those eyes, he reaches over and picks up the acoustic guitar leaning against the side of the couch.
I don’t mean to watch him, but he settles it across his lap easy as breathing, the way I used to, and starts strumming a quiet tune, humming along.
I close my laptop.
“I’m gonna work upstairs,” I say, already standing.
Mike looks up, his fingers going still on the strings as he watches me gather my stuff with a little frown. “Oh. Okay.”
I don’t hear him play again that night.
I eat dinner in my room most nights, even though when I moved in, I was looking forward to having a real kitchen. Making actual food.
But Mike is in the kitchen, so I eat a bowl of cereal in my room.
Around seven, I started to hear voices downstairs that I don’t recognize. More than one. I tell myself it’s not my business and put my earbuds in. And it’s working, I’m thoroughly unbothered by Mike and whoever he has downstairs with him.
For about thirty minutes.
Until there’s a knock at my door.
I pull out an earbud. “Yeah?”
The door opens a crack, and Mike leans in, blowing a strand of hair from his face before he talks. “Hey. Some of my friends are over. You should come down, hang out. They’ve been dying to meet my new roomie.”
I look at my screen. “Oh. Um. I think I’ll stay up here.”
“Come onnn, it’s only a couple of people. My besties. Nothing crazy.” He pauses. “They’ll be nice, I promise.”
“Can’t. I’ve got work to do.”
He looks at my screen, showing a YouTube video I put on to drown out the sound of his friends, and looks back at me. He doesn’t call me out, a small blessing. “Okay, well,” he says. “If you change your mind, you know where we are.”
Downstairs, I hear a loud burst of laughter. A girl. And a lower one too. And of course, Mike’s, somewhere in the middle of them.
I turn my video up.
They’re still here at ten when I go down to get a water bottle. I tried to time it right, assuming that they left after a lull inconversation.
But no such luck.
Mike is on the floor against the couch, his guitar in his lap again. There’s a heavy-set guy next to him, with dark skin and a buzz cut. He seems friendly enough, laughing at something with his whole body. A girl is cross-legged on the couch above them, with pink braids and glasses, gesturing with a beer can while she talks a mile a minute.
Both of them are dressed the same way as Mike. Jewelry, band tees, rips everywhere.
They look like the kind of people I would have wanted to know once.
