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“No hanky-panky,” I warn him. “I don’t want you to get any ideas.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he reassures me as I crawl into bed and assume the position of the little spoon.
He curls around me immediately, caging my body inside his bigger body. It’s a delicious feeling of safety and warmth. Sleep comes to me almost immediately, drowning me in warmth and surrender.
“Besides,” he yawns into my hair, murmuring sweetly, “it will have to be all four of us. We are a team.”
I almost want to ask him what he’s talking about, but do I? Or do I just want to let the dreams carry me away?
Chapter 13
SPENCER
Living in the same room with three other guys has its drawbacks. It is loud, it is pungent, and it is intense.
I am more or less used to it, though. Growing up with five younger brothers and two younger sisters prepared me for college life much more than anybody could have predicted.
I understand never having any privacy. The trick is to try to carve out personal space in stolen moments and by having a personality that clearly communicates when I need to be left alone.
I also understand being constantly assaulted with an ever-changing menu of smells and sounds. Why did my parents have eight kids? Who even knows. Maybe once they saw how much I enjoyed taking care of my younger brother, they realized they could just keep having them and I would just keep taking care of them.
And kids are… gross. I mean, they are just disgusting. No matter how cute and cuddly they are, every kid is gross at one point or another.
I am the oldest of eight. I have always been the team leader. It has always been critical for life to be managed and contained, optimized for everybody’s happiness.
That’s why I like football so much. It makes sense to me. Everybody working together to accomplish a goal—that’s the pinnacle of life as far as I am concerned. That’s the best you can really hope for.
And that is why I don’t mind living with these big, smelly animals.
I would never tell them this, but they feel like my brothers. Sometimes they even feel more like my brothers than Gerald, my actual ten-year-old brother, who I never really clicked with, to be honest. And then there is Sammy, who passed away suddenly after a swim meet when he was sixteen.
That was the worst thing I have ever felt. I knew it, somehow, as soon as the phone rang. He placed second in the meet, emerged from the water smiling as he squinted at the scoreboard.
He went and sat on the bench with his teammates to watch the other races. When he stood up, he came right back down. An aneurysm, some hidden defect deep in the circulatory system of his brain. There was no way we could have known. It had always been there, a ticking clock since the day he was born. And nobody knew, or could have done anything to prevent it.
But somehow, I knew when the phone rang. Something had gone terribly wrong. They told me Sammy had died on the concrete by the side of the high school swimming pool.
I could imagine it so vividly; it was as though I could hear my mother’s voice bouncing off the high, cavernous walls of the pool, echoing forever. I can still hear it now.
Thinking about him is something I avoid. It’s like there is a vessel of grief inside my chest, too big for me to drink in all at once. I just take little sips. I know that it is there. One day, I will make it all the way through and finish the cup.
Diego probably reminds me the most of Sammy, though Zeke and certainly Trevor have a little bit of him in them too. Diego for his cocky smile, his confidence that he is the most handsome man in the room at any time.
Zeke for his intelligence, his dedication to his studies, and his stubborn belief that there is some good to be done for people in general. In my experience, people in general don’t want whatever good it is that you think you can do for them. You have to try, but they’re going to fight you every step of the way.
And, of course, Trevor, with his never-ending good mood, his loyalty, his eagerness to please. Everybody has a little piece of Sammy in them.
That is why I guess I don’t really mind living in this glorified locker room on the top floor of a fraternity house. I could have gotten my own apartment last year. In fact, this fraternity isn’t really famous for its long-term networking benefits or anything like that. It is just a decent place to live.
And it is where my team is. That’s the most important thing.
But this morning, something is different.
Is that what woke me up? I’m not sure. Maybe I am just feeling vigilant. Before my alarm even goes off, I disable it and just lie here, listening.
Diego, Zeke, and Trevor snore in a complicated rhythm, but there is another sound, a new sound, threading through. A new voice. Not a snore, exactly. Just breathing. Maybe even a sigh every few minutes.
It is a sweet sound. Not like I ever thought we were missing more noise from the room or anything, but it is sweet nonetheless. I realize that I am eager to hear it, that I am waiting nervously to hear it again.
