"Well, I'm failin' Calculus again, baby brother." Joel plopped down across from Tommy at his usual haunt in the cafeteria.

Tommy rolled his eyes. "One: don't call me baby brother. Two: Dad and Mama are gonna have your ass if you don't pass this time, idiot. 'Sides, how can you know? We're not even three weeks into the damn semester."

"Just got my first exam back," he said with a mouth full of pizza.

Tommy lips twitched with a hint of a cringe. "How bad?"

"D minus." His voice was flat with imminent failure.

Tommy sighed, reclining in his seat and folding his hands over his stomach, imitating the posture of their father. "Jesus, Joel," he grumbled, even adopting the rumbling southern drawl of the elder Miller's voice. "If you fail that call, you ain't gonna find a home on my couch, I'll tell ya that much."

"Alright, Dad," Joel rolled his eyes. "Not really in the mood."

Tommy chuckled, returning to his sandwich. "Seriously, dude, just sign up for tutoring."

"I don't want to. The guys'll give me shit for it."

Being a member of the football team wasn't exactly helping his academic troubles. Joel had received a great deal of financial aid because of his athletic ability, but his teammates weren't doing him any favors with their nonexistent study habits and tendency to beat up on any of the guys who were easy targets. "Nerds", or the guys who received help from the Academic Success Center, were one of those targets, and Joel wasn't up for another reason for that group to pick on him. Though he did consider them friends, they gave him enough grief as it was.

"Well, the team already made a big exception for you when you failed last time, so I reckon you should probably figure out a way to get help for your math troubles." Tommy looked at him earnestly, actually truly concerned for his sibling for once. "Wouldn't want to see ya lose that scholarship, y'know?"

"I know." He nodded, taking another bite of pizza to soothe his troubles. "I do fine in everything else, I don't know why I have to take goddamned Calculus."

"Hey, I don't make the rules."

Joel cracked a smile. "Yeah, and I sure am glad ya don't."

Tommy opened his mouth to fire back a response, but a look of realization came over his face. He grinned, clearly pleased with whatever connection he was making behind the wall of his skull. "Oh no," Joel murmured. "You have an idea. This can't be good."

"No, no, trust me, it's good." He glanced at Joel's unbelieving eyes, ignored the look he got, and continued. "Y'know my friend Tess?"

"Your girlfriend?"

Tommy scoffed. "Gross. Not my girlfriend. But yes, that Tess, the ceramics kid."

"Sure, we've met a couple times." Joel remembered her vaguely, knowing that he'd liked her for the way she'd treated Tommy like an idiot almost as much as he did. Whenever he saw her, her hands and clothes were always spattered with some kind of paint or clay. "Why?"

"She's real good at math. Like, genius good. Maybe I could ask her to help ya out. Nobody would have to know unless ya tell 'em."

Joel pondered this for a moment. From what he remembered, she seemed like a nice girl. Pretty, too. He wasn't wild about the idea of an underclassman tutoring him, but he'd take what he could get, especially if it was on his own terms. "Sure, if she's willing to. I dunno how much I could pay her, though."

"I'm sure we can work somethin' out. You could probably pay her in coffee," Tommy chuckled. "I don't think I've ever seen her without a cup. Ah, speak of the devil," he nodded to the other side of the room, where Tess was scanning into the cafeteria, trailed by a girl of about the same size with a pile of dreadlocks sorted neatly into a bun on top of her head. Joel often saw them together when Tommy had them around, and knew that she was Tess's roommate. "Hey, Teresa! Get your ass over here!"

Tess glanced up, flipped him off with one raised hand, and went off to get herself a plate of food. Tommy replied to her with the same gesture, hiding a grin under his mock-grumpiness. The other girl approached the table, ruffling Tommy's hair from behind. "Hey, punk."

"Howdy, Lola. Hey, why would you willingly room with that one? Rude as hell."

Lola sighed, smiling at Joel from behind Tommy. "I don't know, she pressured me into it and I felt too bad to say no, I guess." She shrugged, suppressing a small giggle. She took the seat next to Tommy and kicked him lightly on the shin. "Nice to see you, Joel."

Joel laughed. "You too."

Tess came to the table from the same direction as her roommate had, smacking Tommy on the back of the head as she went by. She put her food down at the empty spot next to Joel and nearly threw herself into the seat, letting out a long noise of frustration and exhaustion. "I swear," she announced, taking an aggressive chomp of her salad. "Bill is gonna run me into the fucking ground and he totally does it on purpose. Just to me."

Seeing the look of confusion on his brother's face, Tommy explained. "Her ceramics professor." Joel nodded as she continued, noticing the faint traces of greyish clay in her hair.

"I swear, somebody else makes a bowl on the wheel? 'Oh, beautiful work, I love this and that and everything!'" She imitated her professor's gruff voice with ease. Lola was getting a kick out of it, seeing as she was in the same class. "I'm glad you think it's funny, Lo, 'cause I don't at all. I make something? 'Off center, too thin on this side, just scrap it and try again!' Fuck no! Christ, I'm gonna fail this class if he doesn't cut me some slack."

"So…" Tommy started, barely avoiding interrupting her rant. "Now would be a bad time to ask for a favor?"

She gave him a resentful look dripping with disbelief. "You're really gonna do this right now?"

"I'm serious, Tess, Joel here," he gestured to his older brother. Joel shot him a look, knowing that now was not the time to ask for a tutoring session, seeing as how much of her last nerve had already been danced on. Joel knew better than to ask a favor of a woman who had already lost her patience with someone else. "He's failin' Calculus again, and he needs to pass to keep his damn scholarships and also to avoid being disowned by our parents."

Joel swallowed. "And?" She said, her fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Joel glanced at her face, noting the annoyance pulling at the corner of her lips. This wasn't going to end well, he could feel it.

"And… he was wonderin' if you could help him out, just enough so he doesn't fail the class again," Tommy explained, ignoring the look on Joel's face at his use of "he was wondering."

He opened his mouth to save his skin. "No, I wasn't—"

"So Mister Linebacker needs some Calc help, huh?" To his surprise, she smirked, looking lighter than she had a moment ago. "I'm sure we could figure out some kind of arrangement."

"Really?" Joel and Tommy asked in unison, both staring at her. Lola laughed.

"Sure, I've got nothing against Joel. You, on the other hand," she gestured to Tommy with a stabbing gesture of her fork, a piece of lettuce falling from it and onto the table. "I won't do shit for you. Your brother seems nice enough to be worth my precious time."

"Thanks, Tess," Joel said, watching the curve of her lips turn upwards at the sound of his voice. A few overdue butterflies unshelled themselves from the pit of his stomach and flew up to gather in his throat. He swallowed them down, trying not to focus on the pretty girl that had agreed to tutor him and instead turned back to his meal. "I appreciate it. We can work out the details later on, I guess."

"Sounds like a plan, Texas."

He glanced up at her once more, despite his best efforts to distract himself. "Texas?"

"Yeah, you like it? Figure it suits you, with that accent and all." She smirked, elbowing him slightly with the same arm that held her fork before taking another bite of salad.

"The same accent my brother has?"

She laughed, the sound light as a bell in his ears, just barely laced with sarcasm. "Yeah, but he already has a whole collection of nicknames, most of them incredibly profane or just generally rude. I have good faith you're not dumb enough to earn similar ones, so I present 'Texas' to you with the hope that you'll live up to the cuss-free nature of the name."

"Why does he get a nice one?" Tommy protested while Joel and Tess shared a smile. "I'm not that bad."

"Every nickname that Lola and I have given you has been honestly earned." Tess turned to him with a nod, smirking slightly as he narrowed his eyes. "What else are best friends for, punkass?"

Lola took a long sip of her coffee before joining in on the fun. "You usually are that bad, for the record."

"Come on, back me up, Joel." Tommy looked to his brother, who could only offer a shrug.

"If they say you earned 'em, I would guess they're probably right, considering I know all the dumb shit ya did before they even met you."

Tess perked up at the sound of this. "Oh, dumb shit, huh? I'll have to hear these. You can pay me in stories that I can hold over your brother's head, that sound fair?"

"Well, I'm rich in that regard, so sure thing," Joel chuckled, watching dismay come over Tommy's face. "Come on, baby brother, don't look so distressed. What could I possibly know that you wouldn't want your friends here to know?"

Tommy protested loudly, throwing a half-eaten roll at Joel and missing. "Fuck you, Joel, I get you a damn Calculus tutor and this is what I get? What happened to brotherhood? Loyalty?" Joel chuckled as Tommy ranted with mock-melodramatics. "But seriously, I'll kick your ass."

"That so?" Joel cocked a brow at Lola, who was giggling silently next to Tommy. "He thinks he's tough, but he couldn't hurt a fly."

Tess scoffed, turning to laugh with him. "You're telling me." She elbowed him and they shared a smile, lingering just an extra moment as his eyes lingered on her bottom lip and traced up her freckled cheek to her green eyes, grinning. One leftover butterfly floated from his gut and up to his lungs where it dissolved into a bundle of nerves. "You're something else, Texas."

"You too."