Next Tuesday morning, Ryan woke up smiling. Halfway through getting dressed, he realized he was in such a good mood because he was looking forward to seeing Jack in class that day. Ryan sped from chem lecture to Humanities in record time, arriving first in the empty lecture hall. A minute later, he recognized Jack's voice.
"Any chance this seat isn't taken?" Jack gestured towards the unoccupied row of seats next to Ryan. As he did, Ryan couldn't help admiring the way Jack's floppy hair fell over his eyes and his lazy smile crept across his face.
"You know, I just might be able to find space," Ryan grinned as Jack plopped down next to him and the lecture began.
"So I hear this midterm's going to be a bitch," Jack sighed.
"Uh-huh." Ryan barely registered the lecture starting in the front of the room. Jack was too distracting. Or rather, watching the curve of Jack's mouth as he talked, smiled, or chewed his pencil seemed much more important than actually listening to Professor McGowan. For the first time, Ryan felt as though the lecture was flying by.
As the professor concluded, and the students in the back row who had dozed off finally started to stir, Ryan turned to face Jack.
"So, what're you up to now?"
"Um, section, Ryan, just like always." Jack shot him a quizzical glance as the boys started making their way towards their section classroom.
"Right. So, uh, afterwards, do you want to grab lunch or something?" Ryan offered.
"Oh. Um, today might not be so good. See, I have this important, official meeting to go to right afterwards—a bunch of us got tapped to join a frat. You know, the brothers want to select the right people from the freshman class really early."
"Okay, well maybe another time." Ryan was pretty sure that his disappointment was evident in his voice as they reached the classroom.
"Totally." Jack slid into the last free seat near the door, and Ryan was forced to sit on the other side of the seminar room. Today, the class watched a movie, and with the overhead lights off Ryan wasn't able to monitor Jack's facial expressions the way he usually did.
An hour and a half later, after struggling unsuccessfully to prevent himself from nodding off, Ryan blinked and tried to stifle his yawn discreetly. His section leader didn't seem to notice that half the class was waking up, and just reminded the students to post their comments on the film on the online discussion forum. Great, Ryan thought, he'd have a ton to contribute after missing the entirety of the movie plus zoning out in lecture. Maybe he could ask Jack what had happened. Ryan glanced towards the door, where Jack was leaning against the doorframe waiting for someone, with his arms crossed and wearing is most dazzling smile. Ryan cheered up and felt his pace quicken as he maneuvered towards the exit, then froze in his tracks as he saw exactly what Jack had been waiting for.
"Okay, I'm finally ready!" The perky girl who had placed ninth in the gymnastics Olympic trials giggled and picked up her backpack. "I'll help you study, I mean whenever you're free, Jack."
"Great!" Jack replied warmly, slipping his arm around the girl's waist. "So are you doing anything now?"
Ryan watched them disappear around the corner, and then slowly shuffled out of the classroom.
Late that night, Ryan sat staring at his desk, willing his problem set to solve itself. Why should he be expected to put these matrices in reduced row echelon form by hand, when he knew he could do it on his calculator in two seconds? Seriously, sometimes the rationale of the math department's curriculum defied comprehension. And at midnight the night before the problem set was due, their requirements seemed particularly heinous.
An insistent knock at the door interrupted his progress—well, if you could call shredding his scratch paper and cursing his instructor progress—and Ryan got up to see who was there.
Ryan slid the door open, and saw Jack leaning casually in the doorframe in just the way he had done after Humanities section earlier that day.
"Hey," Jack muttered, peering inside Ryan's room, oblivious to the other boy's glowering face. "Is Tony around?"
"No, he's at the library all night cramming for his Latin exam. But what're you…"
"Excellent," Jack replied, a wicked grin spreading over his face. He shoved Ryan into his room and closed the door behind them. "Can you spare time for a little study break?" he murmured, backing Ryan towards his bed.
Ryan couldn't believe it, but he actually felt too angry with Jack to say yes. Instead, he clenched his fists and pushed Jack off him.
"What the hell was that today?"
"What?" Jack was obviously stunned to meet opposition.
"That girl. You told me you had some frat meeting to go to, then you wander off hanging all over her!" Ryan held his ground, swatting Jack's hand away as he reached for Ryan's jaw.
"I went to my meeting late." Jack smirked and reached over to finger the hem of Ryan's shirt. This time Ryan didn't pull away, but he maintained his icy stare. Jack just laughed at Ryan's reaction.
"I told you this midterm was going to be killer. Come on, how else was I supposed to get her to study with me?" Ryan supposed that Jack had a point there; he could feel his resistance melting.
"Besides," Jack continued, looking Ryan straight in the eye while continuing to pull his shirt further up, "I'm here now."
An hour later, Jack slipped out of Ryan's room, his hair tousled and his shirt on inside out. Ryan, unable to wipe a smile off his face, slipped on some pajamas and headed back to his homework in a considerably better mood. He picked up his pencil and flipped to the right page in his textbook, but found himself unable to concentrate. Ryan decided to procrastinate by checking his email, and found fourteen new messages since he'd last checked an hour ago—not an atypical number in college. Requests from his dormmates for laundry detergent, flyers promoting a tutoring volunteer program, an announcement that intramural sports were cancelled this weekend…nothing major. Ryan was about to log offline and give his problem set another shot when one email caught his eye. The subject line read, "New pledges—info session!" Ryan opened the email and scanned its contents. Stanford freshmen, come learn about Greek life on campus… First official meeting next Friday!… He read on—something about how university policy strictly forbade any one frat from soliciting members before another, and that this meeting marked the very first activity that freshmen were allowed to attend. Ryan pressed his laptop shut slowly and propped his elbows onto his desk with his hands clasped, a frown etched onto his face.