There are rules to having a study group.
Rule One: someone has to bring snacks. (That’s always Devon. Devon is the snack guy. It is his entire identity.)
Rule Two: no one is allowed to talk about the study material for the first twenty minutes. (This is Tyler’s rule. Tyler believes in “vibes-based learning.”)
Rule Three: Marcus has to stop apologizing for existing. (This is my rule. Marcus apologizes when he breathes too loudly. It had to be addressed.)
Rule Four: nobody gets distracted.
I broke Rule Four approximately eleven minutes in.
We were on my couch. All four of us — me, Tyler, Marcus, Devon — with our laptops open and our textbooks spread out and Devon’s contribution of Goldfish crackers sitting in the middle of the coffee table like a peace offering.
Tyler was “explaining” organic chemistry in the way that someone explains something they don’t understand to people who also don’t understand it — with confidence and hand gestures.
Marcus was nodding along with the expression of a man watching a magic trick he knows is fake but can’t figure out.
Devon was eating Goldfish and staring at his phone.
And I was watching Marcus.
Specifically, I was watching the way his brow furrowed when he was concentrating. The way he chewed on the end of his pen when he was stuck. The way his shirt had ridden up just a little bit when he leaned forward, exposing a strip of skin at his waist that I had, on multiple occasions, kissed.
Privately.
In this exact room.
On this exact couch.
While Tyler and Devon were in the bathroom and thought we were “just talking.”
“Are you even listening?” Tyler asked me.
I blinked. “Yep.”
“What did I just say?”
I had no idea.
“Something about… carbon?” I tried.
Tyler looked at me suspiciously. “I was talking about nitrogen.”
“Close enough.”
Marcus was looking at me now. He knew that look. He knew that look, because he had seen that look approximately forty-seven times in the past month, always right before I dragged him into his room and closed the door and made him forget what nitrogen was.
He shifted on the couch. Crossed his legs. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again.
“You good?” Devon asked, mouth full of Goldfish.
“Fine,” Marcus said, too fast.
“You’re doing the thing,” I said.
“What thing.”
“The thing where you sit like you’re hiding something.”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“You’re hiding everything.”
Tyler looked between us. Devon looked between us. Marcus looked at me with eyes that were saying please stop talking and please don’t stop talking and please take me to my room right now all at once.
“You two are weird,” Tyler said.
“We’re not weird,” I said.
“You’re weird,” Devon agreed. “You’re like… weird-flirty. You’ve always been weird-flirty.”
“We’re not flirty.”
Marcus made a small noise in the back of his throat that sounded like someone trying to swallow a laugh and a scream at the same time.
Tyler narrowed his eyes. “Are you guys—”
“No,” I said.
“—dating?” Marcus said at the same time.
We both stopped. Looked at each other. Looked at Tyler and Devon.
Tyler’s eyes went wide.
Devon stopped chewing.
“Oh,” Tyler said.
“Oh,” Devon said.
“It’s not—” Marcus started.
“We’re not—” I started.
Tyler held up a hand. “Stop. Both of you. The fact that you both panicked at the same time tells me everything I need to know.”
“There’s nothing to know,” I said.
“There’s EVERYTHING to know,” Tyler said. “Are you two—like—are you—do you—”
“Do we what.”
“Do you HOOK UP.”
Marcus buried his face in his hands.
I looked at Tyler. I looked at Devon. I looked at Marcus, whose ears were glowing red through his fingers.
“Define ‘hook up,’” I said.
Tyler threw a Goldfish cracker at me. “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.”
“Tyler,” Devon said quietly. “I don’t think they’re going to answer that.”
“I NEED TO KNOW.”
“Why?”
“BECAUSE I LIVE WITH ONE OF THEM AND THE OTHER ONE IS ALWAYS HERE AND I DESERVE CONTEXT FOR MY OWN LIFE.”
He had a point.
Here’s what I should have done: denied everything. Changed the subject. Moved on. Kept the mystery alive.
Here’s what I actually did:
I looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at me through his fingers. I gave him a look that said I can handle this. He gave me a look that said please don’t handle this.
I turned back to Tyler and Devon.
“Yes,” I said.
Tyler fell off the couch.
Not metaphorically. He literally slid off the couch and onto the floor and lay there for three seconds before pushing himself up on his elbows like he’d just been shot.
“WHAT.”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“HOW LONG.”
“A month.”
“A MONTH.” Tyler’s voice was at a frequency that I’m fairly sure dogs in the next building could hear. “YOU’VE BEEN HOOKING UP FOR A MONTH AND YOU DIDN’T TELL US.”
“You didn’t ask,” I said.
“WE DIDN’T KNOW TO ASK.”
“Well now you know.”
Devon, who had been silent this whole time, finally spoke. He was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“So,” Devon said slowly. “When we were all in the bathroom. And you two were ‘just talking.’”
“Yeah.”
“And when Marcus came out of your room that one time with his shirt inside out.”
“Yeah.”
“And when Tyler heard noises from Marcus’s room at 2 AM and Marcus said it was his chair squeaking.”
“His chair does squeak,” Marcus said weakly from behind his hands. “But also. Yeah.”
Devon nodded slowly. He ate another Goldfish. He processed.
“I’m not mad,” Devon said finally. “I’m just… I need to recontextualize the last month of my life.”
“Take your time,” I said.
Tyler was still on the floor. “I sleep next to a wall. A WALL. That wall has been hiding secrets from me.”
“The wall didn’t know either,” I said.
“THE WALL KNEW.”
“The wall is drywall, Tyler.”
“DRYWALL HAS EARS.”
Eventually — after Tyler had processed, after Devon had recontextualized, after Marcus had removed his hands from his face and accepted that his life was now public record — we went back to studying.
Sort of.
Tyler kept looking at Marcus like he was seeing him for the first time.
Devon kept looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time, which was… interesting. I filed that away for later.
And Marcus kept blushing every time anyone looked at him, which was adorable, and I kept reaching over and squeezing his knee under the table, which made him blush harder, which made Tyler groan and throw another Goldfish at us.
“Can you NOT be disgustingly in love in front of me,” Tyler said.
“We’re not in love,” Marcus said.
“We’re not?” I asked.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
“I mean—” he started.
“Later,” I said. “Study now. Flirt later.”
“There’s always later with you,” Tyler muttered.
“There’s always later,” I agreed.
Marcus smiled. Small. Private. Just for me.
And I smiled back. And under the table, his hand found my knee. And neither of us moved it.
Tyler saw. Tyler groaned. Devon saw. Devon smiled into his Goldfish.
And somewhere, in the walls of our dorm, the drywall knew.
Tyler lasted until 10:40. Devon left first, with the Goldfish, which was a betrayal. Tyler stood in the doorway with his backpack on one shoulder and pointed two fingers at his own eyes and then at both of us.
“I’m going to Jess’s,” he said. Jess lives at the end of our hall. “I’m sleeping at Jess’s. I’m not coming back until noon. I want that noted. I am being extremely supportive.”
“Noted,” I said.
“Do not use my room.”
“We don’t use your room.”
“DO NOT USE MY ROOM.”
The door shut. We listened to him go down the hall, still talking to himself. Something about drywall.
Then it was quiet, and Marcus was sitting on the far end of the couch with his textbook open on his knees, not reading it.
“We’re not in love,” I said. “That’s what you said.”
He closed the book.
“I said I mean,” he said. “And then you said later.”
“It’s later.”
I went into his room first and changed. He knew what I was doing; he’s the one who bought it. Black pleated skirt, short enough that Tyler had once called it “a belt with ambitions.” His gray hoodie on top, sleeves over my hands. Nothing under the skirt. That part was for me.
When he came in and saw me sitting on the edge of his bed, he shut the door behind him and leaned on it like his knees had stopped working.
“Every time,” he said.
“Every time what.”
“Every time you wear that I forget how to talk.”
“Good. You talk too much at study group.” I hooked a finger at him. “C’mere. Glasses off.”
He came. He always comes. He stood between my knees and took his glasses off and put them on the desk, and without them he squints at me in this soft, helpless way that makes me want to ruin him. I pulled his sweats down and his cock was already hard, already wet at the tip. He’d been hard on the couch. I’d known.
“You were hiding this,” I said, wrapping my hand around him. “During nitrogen.”
“Please don’t say nitrogen right now.”
I put my mouth on him so I wouldn’t have to say anything at all.
He groaned and grabbed the back of my head with one hand and the edge of his desk with the other. I love sucking Marcus. He’s too polite to push, so he just shakes. His thighs shake and his breath shakes and he says sorry when he moans, like an apology for the noise, and every sorry makes me take him deeper. I went down until my nose touched his stomach and held there and he said “Fuck—sorry—fuck” and his hand finally tightened in my hair.
When I pulled off he was flushed down to his collarbones.
“I want you to fuck me,” I said. “In this. Skirt on.”
“Okay.” No hesitation. “Yeah. Okay. Yes.”
The lube was in his nightstand behind a phone charger and a copy of Organic Chemistry: A Short Course, which is the least sexy hiding place in history and the most Marcus.
I got on my hands and knees on his bed, the skirt flipped up over my back, and he knelt behind me and opened me up with careful fingers, the way he does everything, like there’s going to be a quiz. He asked if it was okay twice. I said yes twice and then I said Marcus, I swear to god and he laughed and stopped asking.
He pushed in slow. I dropped my face into his pillow, which smelled like him and the cheap detergent we all share, and felt him fill me up inch by inch until his hips were flush against me and his hands were holding the skirt bunched at my waist.
“Okay?” he whispered.
“Move.”
He moved. Long, deep, a little clumsy at first and then not clumsy at all. The bed frame started knocking the wall on the third stroke. The chair by the desk, which squeaks if you look at it, rolled backward and hit the bookshelf with a squeeeeak.
We both froze. Then we both lost it, laughing, and he dropped his forehead onto my back and kept fucking me through the laugh, which is a thing I didn’t know you could do and now I need it every time.
“Tyler’s gone,” I said. “Harder. Nobody’s here.”
He went harder. He grabbed my hips and pulled me back onto him on every stroke and the knocking got loud and steady and I stopped caring about the wall, the chair, the drywall, any of it. I reached under myself and stroked my cock in time with him, the pleats brushing my wrist.
“Hey,” he said. Breathless, right at my ear. “About earlier.”
“Now?”
“I lied. In the living room. I—” He thrust in deep and stopped there, all the way inside me, shaking. “We’re in love. I’m in love. I’m sorry I said—”
“Stop apologizing,” I said, “and finish.”
He finished. He fucked me hard and fast and messy until I came all over his comforter with my face in his pillow, saying his name, and he came a few strokes after with his arms wrapped all the way around my waist, holding on like I might go somewhere.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
We were lying there, him half on top of me, my skirt a lost cause, when both our phones buzzed on the desk.
The group chat.
Tyler: jess's walls are ALSO drywall
Tyler: i am at the end of the hall and i can hear the chair
Devon: 🐟
Marcus put his face in my neck and groaned.
“Rule Four,” I said.
“What?”
“Nobody gets distracted.” I turned my head and kissed him. “I’m repealing it.”
