It was a Thursday night. Which meant exactly one thing on the third floor of Highland’s oldest, thinnest-walled residential building:
Game Night.
Tyler, Diego, and Sam — my three favorite disasters, all seniors, all one hallway down from me — had claimed Room 216 every Thursday since September. I live in 209. The rules were simple: no girls, no studying, no feelings. Just FIFA, pizza, and enough Monster to make Diego emotional about his abuela.
I was not invited.
This was, in my professional opinion, a mistake.
I knew it was Game Night because I could hear them. The bass from the TV vibrated through the floor. Someone — probably Tyler — was trash-talking in a volume that suggested he believed he was in a stadium. Diego was laughing in that way that means he was losing. Sam was making the concentrated “I am calculating” noises he always made when he was one goal away from victory.
It was 10:47 PM. Quiet hours started at 11.
I had approximately thirteen minutes.
I was in my room, having just come back from practice, still in my soccer kit — jersey, shorts, socks, the full uniform. My hair was damp. My skin still smelled like the locker room. I looked in the mirror and thought: this is the look.
Not the “I’m going to seduce three guys” look. Just the “I exist confidently and it’s everyone else’s problem” look. There’s a difference. The first is try-hard. The second is art.
I walked to Room 216.
The door was open. Of course it was open. It was always open during Game Night because Tyler believed that closing doors was “energy-blocking” and Diego believed that fresh air was “good for the vibes” and Sam didn’t have an opinion because Sam never had opinions until after the fact.
I stopped in the doorway.
Inside: Tyler was sprawled on the couch in nothing but basketball shorts, controller in hand, twists tied back, entirely focused on the screen. Diego was on the floor against the couch, also shirtless, also in shorts, holding a slice of pizza in one hand and a controller in the other, cheese dangling precariously. Sam was in the gaming chair, glasses on, Naruto t-shirt — wait, no, he’d taken the shirt off at some point, because Sam had a rule that shirts were “restrictive during competitive play” — and he was leaning forward with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb.
Three shirtless guys. One pizza. Three controllers. Zero awareness.
I leaned against the doorframe.
“Hey boys,” I said.
Three heads turned. Three pairs of eyes went wide. Three brains, in three different skulls, simultaneously short-circuited.
Tyler’s character on screen got scored on. He didn’t notice.
Diego’s pizza slice fell. He didn’t notice.
Sam’s controller slipped from his hand and hit the floor. He didn’t notice.
“Hey,” Tyler said. His voice was approximately two octaves higher than normal.
“Hey,” Diego said. He was staring at my midriff. Not in a creepy way. In a my brain has stopped processing language way.
“Hey,” Sam said. He pushed his glasses up his nose. They were fogged. He pushed them up again. They were still fogged. He gave up.
“You guys don’t mind if I hang out, do you?” I asked, walking in without waiting for an answer.
“No,” Tyler said.
“We don’t,” Diego said.
“Please,” Sam said.
I paused. Looked at Sam. He was blushing so hard his ears were glowing.
“Please what, Sam.”
“Please hang out.” He swallowed. “With us.”
I smiled. The kind of smile that says I know exactly what I’m doing and I’m going to do it and you’re all going to let me because you can’t help it.
“Cool,” I said.
I walked over to the couch. Tyler scooted over without being asked. I sat between Tyler and the armrest, close enough that my shoulder touched his. I could feel him tense up. I could feel the exact moment he realized that my shoulder was touching his bare shoulder and that he was not going to move away.
Diego was watching me from the floor. I looked down at him. He looked up at me. We made eye contact. He looked away first.
Score: me.
Sam was still in the gaming chair, frozen, controller forgotten on the floor. I looked at him. He looked at me. I tilted my head.
“You gonna play, Sam?”
“I—uh—I was—I—”
“Pause the game,” Tyler said suddenly.
“What?”
“Pause the game, Diego.”
Diego fumbled for the controller. Hit pause. The TV screen froze mid-play, a FIFA player trapped mid-kick.
“Why did we pause the game,” Sam asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Tyler looked at me. I looked at Tyler. Tyler looked back at the TV.
“Because,” Tyler said carefully, “we have a guest.”
I leaned back on the couch. Stretched. My jersey rode up just a little. All three pairs of eyes tracked the movement like they were watching a tennis match.
“So,” I said. “What were we talking about?”
“We weren’t talking about anything,” Tyler said.
“We were playing FIFA,” Diego said.
“We were having a good time,” Sam said, and there was something almost sad in his voice, like he was mourning the FIFA game that would never be completed.
“You can still have a good time,” I said.
Silence.
Three guys. One couch. Zero good ideas.
I reached over and picked up Diego’s abandoned pizza slice from the coffee table. Took a bite. Diego watched me eat his pizza like I had just committed a crime against humanity and he was the arresting officer.
“This is good,” I said.
“It’s—yeah—it’s—”
“Diego, you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You look flushed.”
“I’m fine.”
Tyler cleared his throat. “You want a Monster?”
“I’d love a Monster.”
Tyler stood up. Too fast. He wobbled. He caught himself on the coffee table. He went to the mini-fridge. He came back with a Monster. He handed it to me. Our fingers touched. He pulled his hand back like he’d been shocked.
I popped the tab. Took a sip. Looked at all three of them.
“What,” I said.
“Nothing,” Tyler said.
“Nothing,” Diego said.
“Nothing,” Sam said.
They were all staring at me. Not in a creepy way. In a we are three grown men who have never been this close to a pretty boy in a soccer jersey and we don’t know what to do with our hands way.
I took another sip of Monster. Set it on the table. Stood up.
Three pairs of eyes tracked me like I was a sunset.
“I’m gonna use your bathroom,” I said.
“Okay,” Tyler said.
“The—yeah—go ahead—” Diego said.
“It’s down the hall on the left,” Sam said helpfully, as if I didn’t live thirty feet away.
“Thanks, Sam.”
I walked past them. Close enough that my arm brushed Tyler’s shoulder. Close enough that Diego had to tilt his head back to follow me. Close enough that Sam’s glasses fogged up again and he had to take them off and clean them on his shorts and put them back on and they were still fogged.
I made it to the bathroom. Closed the door.
Leaned against it.
Laughed.
I gave them exactly four minutes.
Four minutes to say what just happened to each other. To try and restart the FIFA game and fail because none of them could focus.
Then I came back.
They were in the same positions. Tyler on the couch. Diego on the floor. Sam in the chair. But the room was tighter. Like a rubber band pulled back.
“Back so soon,” Tyler said.
It was 10:58. Quiet hours in two minutes.
I didn’t sit down. I turned around, put my hand on the door that had been open every Thursday since September because Tyler thinks closed doors block energy, and I shut it. From the inside. I turned the lock.
Click.
All three of them heard it. I watched it land on three faces.
“Quiet hours,” I said. “So everybody has to be quiet.”
“Oh my God,” Sam said.
“That’s not quiet, Sam.”
I want to be really clear that I asked. I stood with my back to the locked door and said, “I’m going to stay. If anybody wants me to leave, say so and I’ll go back to 209 and it never happened.” I looked at each of them. Tyler said stay. Diego said please stay, and then looked mortified that he’d said please. Sam just nodded, so I made him say it, and he said “stay” in a voice like he was confessing to a crime.
So I went to Sam first. Because he’d said please earlier, and because his glasses were in his hand and his ears were on fire and I wanted to see what happened.
I knelt in front of the gaming chair. Put my hands on his knees. He made a sound like a kettle.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” Sam whispered.
I pulled his basketball shorts down and he was already hard, which I appreciated, because it saved us both a lot of time. I licked him once from base to tip and the gaming chair, which reclines, reclined. All the way. On its own. Sam went with it, staring at the ceiling.
Behind me Diego said, very quietly, “Bro.”
I sucked Sam’s cock with the paused FIFA game glowing over my shoulder. He tasted like soap and salt and he was so careful with me, his hand hovering over my hair, not touching, until I reached up and put it there myself. Then he held on. He didn’t last long. Nobody expected him to. He came with his hand over his own mouth and his toes curling into the carpet and a noise that I will be hearing in my head for the rest of my life, and I swallowed and sat back and wiped my mouth with the hem of my jersey.
“One,” I said.
Tyler made a sound that was half laugh, half something else.
Tyler is the loudest person on the third floor. Tyler, with me in his lap on the couch, was so quiet I could hear the minifridge.
“You good?” I said, against his mouth.
“I’m—yeah. Yeah. I’ve never done this with a guy.”
“Do you want to?”
He looked at me for a long second. His hand was already under my jersey, on my bare back, spread wide. “Yeah,” he said. “I really want to.”
“Condoms?”
“Diego,” Tyler said, without looking away from me. “Diego, the box. The one you said was ‘for emergencies.’”
“This is an emergency,” Diego agreed, and crawled across the floor to his desk.
There was lube in the same drawer, because of course there was. Diego, it turned out, had been preparing for emergencies very optimistically.
I got on my knees on the couch, facing the back of it, and pushed my soccer shorts down to my thighs. I heard all three of them stop breathing. Tyler knelt behind me, rolled the condom on with hands that shook a little, and worked me open with two slick fingers, slower and gentler than I would ever have guessed from a man who screams at FIFA.
“Is this—”
“It’s good. Keep going. More.”
When he pushed into me I gripped the back of the couch and said a word that was definitely a quiet-hours violation. He held still. Big hands on my hips. Breathing hard into my shoulder.
“Okay?”
“Move, Tyler.”
He moved. Slow, then not slow. The couch was older than all of us and it creaked in a rhythm that I’m sure the room below could hear. Every jolt pressed my cheek against the couch armrest.
Diego was standing next to the couch. Shorts around his ankles. Hand around his cock, stroking slowly, just watching, eyes huge.
“Come here,” I said.
He came here.
I took him in my mouth while Tyler fucked me from behind, and that was the moment the whole night stopped being a joke. Diego put both his hands in my hair and said something in Spanish that sounded like a prayer and probably wasn’t. Tyler’s thrusts pushed me forward onto Diego’s cock and Diego’s hips pushed me back onto Tyler’s, and I was just held there between them, full at both ends, my jersey shoved up to my armpits and my socks still on and the frozen FIFA player on the TV still mid-kick.
Sam, from the reclined chair, glasses back on now, said, “This is the best Game Night ever,” with total sincerity.
Tyler laughed so hard he lost his rhythm.
Diego came first, pulling out at the last second and finishing on my cheek and jersey with a groan he tried to swallow and couldn’t. Tyler reached around and wrapped his hand around my cock and stroked me in time with his hips, rough and clumsy and perfect, and I came all over his couch cushion with my face pressed into the armrest. He followed a few strokes later, buried deep, his forehead dropping between my shoulder blades, saying my name like a question.
Nobody moved for a while.
The minifridge hummed. Someone’s phone buzzed on the carpet. Down the hall, the RA’s door opened and closed.
“We have to flip that cushion,” I said eventually.
“We’re burning that cushion,” Tyler said.
Diego handed me a roll of paper towels and a Monster, unopened, which is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me after sex. Sam got up, went to his closet, and came back with a clean t-shirt for me, because my jersey was a crime scene.
It was his Naruto shirt. I put it on.
At 12:04, an hour and seventeen minutes after I’d locked it, Tyler finally opened the door. He stuck his head into the hallway, looked both ways, and said, “Clear,” like we’d robbed a bank.
I walked back to 209 in Sam’s shirt and my soccer shorts with my jersey balled up in my hand.
Behind me I heard Diego say, “So is he coming next Thursday,” and Tyler say, “Diego, he lives here,” and Sam say, “Can we keep the door closed now.”
They did. Every Thursday. Tyler says it’s for the energy.
