The air in the study center is thick with the scent of old paint and a carpet full of compressed dust, and if not for the nervous freshman sitting beside him, Philip thinks he'd probably give in to the temptation to nap right on the tabletop. Can't let himself rest, anyway; not here. He already knows what landscapes await him on the backs of his eyelids, and they're full of dark, luxuriant waves and warm brown pools, sometimes glimmering with light, other times guarded in shadow.
The coffee he'd grabbed on his way from lecture was supposed to wake him up, but instead he feels like his brain's been microwaved and left to molder inside a sluggish body.
"This is a good improvement on your first draft, Jose," he says, stifling a yawn. "We just need to work on addressing your thesis. I made some notes on page six where you've gone off topic."
A buzzing in his pocket gives him a welcome jolt, but he resists checking. Listens instead for the mechanical crunch of the second hand, infernally slow, over flipping pages and soft murmurs.
Glances at the singular plant that droops in the corner and sighs. Twenty more minutes and he'll have a short break before making his way across campus to his Debate class; another mental exercise for which he is, at present, woefully underprepared.
"Let's go over your annotations," he suggests. Together they check over the latter pages of his draft, review his bibliography. Philip references the style guide, and somehow versing Jose in the technicalities eats up all the time they have left.
Pencils him in for the following week, and finally Philip's standing again, circulation doing wonders for his thinking capacity.
His phone's still buzzing as he pulls it from his pocket. There's some group text messages from Will, Georges, and Frankie discussing a new bar that's opening. Angie wants to know where he keeps his old tennis racket but don't ask why and don't tell AJ.
He snorts and shoots back a reply, just as he receives another message.
Theo: You changed your wifi password.
Philip: Turns out 123456 is not very secure. Also, our new neighbors stream a ton of porn.
Theo: I already tried "password"
Philip: Do you take me for a fool? It's wifipassword.
A polite, almost comic throat clearing steers his eyes up toward the flash of blonde he'd vaguely registered in his peripheral vision.
"Oh, hey Abbie."
"Hey," she giggles. Always a bit of laughter in her voice. Makes him feel like he's being laughed at, until he remembers she's not one of his siblings.
He pulls the flyaways back behind his ears anyway. "Uh, how was your break?"
"Not long enough," she sighs, feigned sounding, like she's trying it out for the first time. "But I'm kinda glad to be back anyway. Yours?"
"Not bad," Philip shrugs. If he's honest, it was a blur. Can't remember a single notable thing he's done in the previous weeks, preoccupied by the last twelve hours.
Luckily, she doesn't seem to mind. Just continues with that pearly smile of hers like he's said something hilarious.
"I didn't get your schedule for this semester," he remarks, for lack of anything better to talk about. Begins stuffing his backpack with notebooks, pens, the style guide, his discarded hoodie.
"Oh, yeah, I never sent it in. Actually, Shawna's going to be helping me."
"Oh." That stops him. Shawna's specialty is mathematics. Had Abbie not benefited from his tutoring last semester? He tries to remember if he'd got an evaluation back from her, but he can't remember anything negative from any of his students anyway.
His distracted gaze returns to his phone.
Theo: I'm in, thanks dear.
"Actually," Abbie echoes herself, words slightly rushed. "I was thinking since you're not my tutor this semester, maybe we could hang out sometime?"
"Oh, right," he nods. Nods, then hears. She wants to hang out. Wait. Hang out, or hang out ?
"Really? Awesome!" Smile brightening more than he thought possible—had he ever seen her not smiling? Come to remember, even his criticisms of her work were met with a dazzling buoyancy. She lays a gentle hand on his bicep. It's gone almost before he notices. "I'll text you!"
"Okay," Philip hears himself say for the second time that morning as she flounces off with one more crinkly-eyed simper.
He reaches for his tepid coffee, dizzied by the interaction, and scans the room for anyone else that might pop up to ambush him with social invitations.
As it happens, he needn't have bothered with the key anyway. When he returns home later that afternoon he finds Theo on the couch, reading in a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of his all boys high school.
"Hope you don't mind," she says sheepishly.
Philip swallows, because there should be nothing about the sight of her in his old clothes that makes his stomach twist the way it does now.
He does mind that after a long day, it's too easy to offer her a shrug and slump onto the cushions beside her; to pretend like this is normal. Like they're freshmen again, no baggage between them, nothing left to learn about one another.
And if there is, it's subtle: a slightly older, slightly more mature Theo who's shed whatever shyness she'd once had. A Theo who'd had a whole other life with someone she'd only just left.
Two years ago he might have dreamed up the sight of her lounging on his couch in his clothes, but he has to find humor in the fact that it'd come to fruition in some sort of "Monkey's Paw" circumstance.
It reminds him they've got Things to take care of. Things he knows she doesn't want to talk about, like why she hasn't bothered to charge her phone, which languishes on the counter, its screen lit up with unread notifications; like how long she thinks she can endure squinting into a book (his book!) before she'll concede that she needs her reading glasses (does she still wear them?); and, with nothing but her laptop, how she's going to keep up with her courses if she never crosses the threshold out of Philip's apartment.
First things first. If he's going to get her to talk, he's got to make an effort to get his own tongue moving. Tired, lacking brainpower, and nearly seduced into joining her vegetative state, he's almost forgotten how.
"Get any homework done?" he tries.
She responds with a nudge to his thigh with her toes. Pretty, bare things that look like they'd once been painted purple. "You sounds like my dad."
Philip gives her a tired chuckle. Never sure how to broach the subject of the two men, for the most part he and Theo had reached an unspoken truce where their fathers were concerned. "Then maybe your dad and my dad actually have something in common."
And he must be skirting the edge of it, because Theo just slides her eyes at him and discards his book on the table.
"I mean, I could help," he blurts. "I'm a tutor, after all."
"I'm ahead in most of my classes anyway. Do you need help?" She props her head on her hand, curves her brows.
Both are well aware of how intellectually matched they are; Philip having inherited the insatiable Hamilton thirst for knowledge, and Theo, in spite of her early years of homeschooling, having skyrocketed an entire grade ahead of her age level. Naturally, this incited a healthy amount of competition between them where intellectual pursuits are concerned.
"Why, you wanna edit my twenty page story?" he bluffs. To his dismay, her eyes light up. Oops. "Nevermind, I take it back."
"Too late," she sits to attention. "No takebacks. Where's your paper?"
"Uh, I'll show you later."
"Philip, please? It'll be fun!"
"Later, I promise." He's chickens out already. "Let's just watch some TV or something."
"Fine, but I'm not going to forget."
Two episodes into a crime procedural later and they're stretched out, Theo's head in his lap, when Philip sits up slightly to pause the TV. "That your phone ringing?"
"No," she says too quickly. "Press play. It was the brother, I know I'm right."
But he waits as the distant buzzing persists and sets down the remote. "It's definitely your phone," Philip says. "Aren't you going to answer it?"
"Wait, I need to see what happens! Just leave it," she groans when he stands and retrieves it from the counter just as the last ring goes to voicemail.
"Theo, it's your dad. Have you talked to him yet?"
"No, and I'm not ready to."
His eyes widen at the screen. "He's called you like four times."
"Give me that."
"You can't hide here forever, you know," he says. His second bluff. Because she can, and he'd let her. Hell, he'd probably lie through his teeth to anyone asking for her if that's what she wanted. But for now, he can at least pretend he's got a bit of leverage. "If he gets worried, he might come looking for you."
She snorts. "Well he isn't going to come looking here, is he?"
Is that why you're here? He wonders, one of his deeper insecurities awakening. Because it's the last place your father would look for you?
The notion comes with a sting, even if he knows it's not completely true. She needed him for something. Still does. And damn it if he isn't going to offer it to her.
"I suppose not." He sets her phone on the table. "When do you plan to talk to him?"
"Eventually," she says. "Come back and let's order some pizza."
"Theo." He doesn't mean to, but it creeps into his voice anyway: the same tone he uses when his brothers are hoarding each other's toys.
She sighs and crosses her arms; looks so much like Angie he wants to laugh. Almost wishes he had Angie to help him right now, but it's not the time for that.
In the end, the look he's giving her is sufficient, and he doesn't have to say anything more.
"I told you I don't want to talk about it now," she mumbles.
"I know. You don't have to, it's just…"
"Then can we go back to watching TV?"
"Theo."
"What?"
"Your phone is almost dead, and probably full of voicemails and texts. You don't have any of your textbooks—"
"I can borrow them from the library or one of my classmates."
He isn't even sure why he's pressing anymore, but frustration bubbles inside him. "Don't you want to get it all out?"
She goes quiet for a moment and he thinks maybe she's ready to. And then he catches the minute movement in her jaw, the flexing of her temple, the slight flare of something in her eyes; a family trait her father had long since mastered control over.
"Get what out exactly?" she spits. "I've had months to agonize over this decision. Months of wondering whether I was doing the right thing, or being selfish, or hurting someone who never deserved it. Months of telling myself I was just restless, or that I should be listening to what everyone else said about us. How good we were. How well-suited to each other."
Philip waits, watching the anger roll off of her. It doesn't seem to be directed at him, but he doesn't care anyway. Just wants to hear something, anything to give him the right measure of what's going on inside her.
"I'm done with it," she says, resolutely. "I'm done with feeling guilty, alright?"
"Alright," he says. And when she's still staring down at the badge on his sweatpants, he reaches out and quickly squeezes her toes.
For half a second he fears she might kick him, but instead she bursts into laughter and drops her head back on the couch.
"That's all I can ask for," he says gently. "Just promise you'll check in with me every once in awhile?"
In answer, she lets the tension melt from her body and, with a businesslike efficiency, stuffs him back into the corner of the sofa so she can lean back on him again.
He sighs at that, settles back in his seat with Theo's head cushioned on his thigh. Calls the place around the corner and orders an extra large Hawaiian. She squeezes his leg in appreciation and lets out her own contented sigh as he thumbs the remote to bring the court scene back into action.
Instead of a knock, the door bursts open twenty minutes later to a nearly forgotten face who surveys the room and drops himself into the old armchair.
"Whoa, what you doing here Theo? Haven't seen you in months."
She lifts her head slightly from Philip's leg and offers him a smile. "Probably because you're never home," she laughs. "But you're right, I haven't been around as much. I'm here now, though."
Will glances at the TV. "Ooh, is this the one where the guy drugs and murders his brother?"
Philip and Theo both groan.
"I knew it," she mutters.
Philip's phone buzzes midway into the next episode. It's Will, shooting him a bunch of kissy emojis with a string of question marks at the end.
He looks up sharply, but Will's phone is back in his lap, his eyes trained on the TV. Very smooth, Philip thinks wryly.
Philip: Not like that, and drop it if you want anything to do with our pizza.
Will's snort is drowned by the knock on the door and he springs out of his chair with enthusiasm, helping himself to Philip's wallet.
"Mmm, my favorite," he declares and sets the steaming box on the table, immediately claiming a slice.
Philip narrows his eyes. It's not watertight, but he's pretty sure he's entered into some sort of contract with his roommate.
"So, Theo," Will starts. "How long will you be staying with us?"
AN: I tried editing this down and it just got longer lmao. Anyway, thanks for reading! Writing is lonely, so I really appreciate your comments.