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“He the fuck was doing what?” Lincoln’s chair slams back down to all fours.

People at the table next to us glance over, and I want to disappear into the floor.

“It was a trade,” I whisper. “I tutor him. He—it was an experiment. I asked him to do it. He didn’t—it isn’t like you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking a hockey player used my naive best friend as a practice dummy to get off.”

“I’m not a child, Linc. Just inexperienced,” I say.

He looks at me, jaw tight, and I can see him rewriting every special moment I spent with Daniel in our dorm room. This is why it was supposed to be a secret. I stare at the bread ball next to my sandwich. I’m not hungry, and I know I won’t eat it now. It will taste like sawdust. I guess I’m not a rule follower after all, because I’ve just broken the last one.

“I liked it,” I say, even quieter. “That’s the part that’s my fault.”

Christine’s hand tightens on mine. Lincoln swears under his breath and looks ready to murder someone in my honor.

“Was it your roommate?”

I shake my head wordlessly. He already knows I’m lying. They both do. But I don’t want him to go to the rink, because then it will really be over.

“It fucking was.” He pushes to his feet. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll just have to have a conversation with him.”

“Linc—”

“Lincoln,” Christine repeats. “Do you think that will make things better? What are you going to do? Go use your fists to talk to him? Jesus. Sit down.”

He stands there vibrating from head to toe. I look at his hands. They are clinched into fists.

“Please don’t,” I whisper. “If you go there, I have to live with him after. I still have to sleep in the same room as him.”

That gets through to him more than Christine’s command. Lincoln drops back into the chair with a scowl.

“This isn’t over,” he mutters.

“It is for today,” Christine says. “Eat. Both of you.”

I pick up my sandwich and take a small bite. I chew it forever, until it loses what little flavor it originally had, and then force it down. If this is what falling in love with someone feels like, I don’t want to feel it ever again.

THIRTY-FIVE

DANIEL

December

I miss Quinn.

He sleeps six feet from my bed, and I still miss him. He doesn’t smile at me anymore. Even in class, I don’t get much out of him that isn’t part of the assignment. He put a stop to our lessons before I could.

And the worst part is that I’m doing good in our class now, so I don’t even have the excuse of needing his help learning the stuff.

The room is spotless on his side and looks as though a tornado went through mine. He is the perfect roommate. He makes his bed. He’s quiet at night. Sometimes he’s gone before I wake up in the morning. And sometimes he’s already in bed with his headphones on when I come in after my internship. He’ll say hey without taking them off. Friendly. I guess. But it’s the kind of politeness you use on a lab partner you don’t want to sit with.

I tried to talk to him, once, a few weeks after he called things off. “You want to go over chapter twelve?”

“You don’t need me for chapter twelve,” he said without looking up from his book. He turned a page dismissing me.

He was right. It was stuff I already learned in another class. I just wanted to be close to him, like before.

I stood there feeling like an idiot with my book and felt the box I’d built around my feelings close from the inside.