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“Someone on Wikipedia has written, ‘the tunnels beneath Paris are almost catacombic,’ which number one, is not a word, but even if it were, what would that ‘b’ be doing exactly—I mean, would it be said like cata-comic? Because that’s strangely the opposite. But mostly, they’re not catacombic. They are catacombs.”
Charles was a near-compulsive Wikipedia editor. His expertise was vast and shallow.
“Would you ever say ‘honeycombic’?”
“I wouldn’t, no.” He sounded disgusted.
“Well, how would you… adjectivize it or whatever? Honeycombish? Honeycombesque?”
“They just are catacombs. No adjectivizing required.”
Sometimes Charles was also super literal.
MILTON PUSHED our door open without knocking, took one look at me, and rolled his eyes, tapping his watch. We had Intro Psych lecture together, and he always came by to collect me because I sometimes fell back asleep after my alarm went off.
Charles ignored Milton in the passive way he mostly ignored everyone—as if they hadn’t quite intruded into his headspace yet—and Milton clapped him on the shoulder like he always did, and then left him alone.
Milton was good like that. He didn’t take shit personally. Lucky for me, because he was basically the best friend I’d ever had even though I’d acted like a total lunatic after we’d hooked up the first night here.
I had been all, Oh my god, Milton, that was amazing, but I can’t be your boyfriend because my heart belongs to another, and he’d been all, Omigod, Leo, I don’t want to be your boyfriend, I was just horny as fuck and wanted to jerk off with you on a roof under the stars and now we can be friends because we barely even have chemistry really, okay?
Well, maybe it hadn’t been in those exact words, but that was basically what had happened.
We’d tried an experiment of kissing once more a few weeks later in the library, and both started laughing. I didn’t really get it, because that night on the roof, I had been legit into him, and it was super hot, but now… I just didn’t think of him that way, I guess. He said that was normal, and I believed him because if I’d learned anything about Milton over the past month, it was that he was like a Sex + Love Genius. He just completely got it.
I dragged on yesterday’s jeans and a not-too-dirty T-shirt and jammed my feet into my Vans in about fifteen seconds, as Milton looked on, half amused and half silently judging me. He didn’t say anything, though, because my total lack of fashion meant we were on time for Psych and even had time to stop in at his preferred coffee shop.
I texted Daniel, like I did almost every time I was in a coffee shop, and told him I was ordering The Daniel, which is what the coffee shop in Holiday christened the drink he always ordered: three shots of espresso in a large coffee. He texted back a string of random letters that culminated in an emoji of a grimacing head making a thumbs-up sign. I suppose that meant he’d finally gotten a smartphone.
I saw the green ellipsis that meant he was trying to write something else, but after it stuttered a few times, it finally went away. I could practically see him, messing with the new phone to try and explain what he meant to type, making more nonsense, and finally giving up in frustration, most likely throwing the phone down on whatever surface was nearest.
He’d probably forget where he tossed it and wander around later looking for it and pulling his hair out. Rex would ask him when he’d used it last, and he’d remember that it was texting with me and that he’d gotten pissed. Rex would go to wherever he was and pull it out of the couch cushions or the stack of books or wherever he’d thrown it and hand it back to him with that soft look he gets only for Daniel. That look that says I love all these small things about you that are just you but mean something to me. Maybe he’d slide the phone into Daniel’s pocket and kiss him.
Fuck, I missed them.
WE ROLLED into Psych just as Marin, the TA, was setting the professor’s notes on the lectern and adjusting the PowerPoint presentation. I was a little bit obsessed with her because she never smiled. Professor Ginsberg was pretty amusing and joked around, and Marin was just stone. I mean, maybe she’d heard all the jokes before, but still. Not even a polite, indulgent yes-I-acknowledge-humor quirk of the lips. She was totally nice in discussion section—even cracked jokes herself, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have a sense of humor. But still, no smiles, even when we laughed. It was like she was playing some kind of secret game and if she smiled it meant she lost.
