I woke up in a tight fetal position with an even tighter pain in my head. My very eyeballs ached as light entered my vision.

Fuck.

"Morning," said my favorite person alive.

"Shut up," I told him, then started coughing again.

Michael was standing by his desk, the dresser beside it open with a stack of folded clothes lying on his bed. "You want Advil?" he offered.

"Does it help?" I asked weakly.

He shrugged. "Better than Tylenol."

I closed my eyes. "Okay." He slammed shut the drawer and walked into the bathroom while I cringed from the sound. I reached down blindly to shove the sheet off me and felt my hand hit my bare leg. "Um... what happened to my pants?"

Michael reappeared and rattled the bottle in his hand as he walked over. "Oh, they're in some crazy old man's car," he said matter-of-factly. He stopped and pursed his lips. "Can I throw this at your head?"

"No," I snapped.

"Come on, please?" he said. "I need to. It'll be so epic. Full-circle. Ultimate revenge."

"No, Mich-" I started before he lightly tossed the bottle and it bounced off my shoulder. "Dude, I said no."

"Oh my god, oh my god," he squeaked, flapping his hands in front of him. "Don't tell me what to do! I'm calling the police!"

"Is that supposed to be me?" I mumbled, pressing my hand to my forehead.

"No way," he said in a high voice, tilting his head in over-exaggerated confusion. "I talk like this all the time."

I rolled my eyes, which I discovered was incredibly painful, and picked up the Advil bottle. I struggled for a second, turning the cap around in a circle, then finally succeeded in twisting it off and shook two tablets into my palm. They stuck in my dry throat and hurt going down.

"Want something to eat?" he asked as he started to walk away again. I couldn't remember the last time I actually ate something. Did the two bites of cereal yesterday morning count? Or the sandwich I threw away?

"Sure," I said. While he was gone I sat up the rest of the way and looked down at myself. There was something crusty on my shirt and my knees were bruised and scabbed over. Not to mention I had no pants.

"Christ," Michael muttered as he returned, one poptart stuffed in his mouth and another in his hand. "What now?"

"I can't remember anything," I whispered.

He held out the second poptart and retracted his hand when I didn't take it. "There's not much worth remembering."

"Did we..."

"Did we what?" he said.

I bit my lip and stared at him.

"Oh." His face fell. "No. Jesus. You think I would do something like that when you're drunk?" He took another bite of his poptart before strolling back to his bed. "By the way," he murmured, "if we did, trust me, you would know."

I looked down to avoid the smirk I assumed he would make and bit off a chunk of the poptart he'd given me. It was stale. "So we're still going to?"

"Well, yesterday was a bit of a rough day," he said. "Hope you can understand. You know, getting humiliated by my disgusting wreck of a car, getting punched in the face for absolutely no reason, getting humiliated once again in front of my friends as you waltz in and magically scoop up our lovely little lady friend, oh, the list goes on, having to practically pry her off your dick to carry you-"

"Stop," I interrupted.

He sighed loudly while I broke off a tiny chunk of poptart and nibbled it miserably.

"I'm sorry," I said finally. "I'm sorry about everything. I just wanted to get drunk because I knew you hated me and I didn't want to think about it and then... and then I saw you and I thought, oh, I'll go talk to you because I like talking to you and I wanted you to like-"

"Why'd you punch me though?" he said, completely disregarding me pouring my heart out.

"I was defending Rhoda," I said, crossing my arms.

And then I remembered.

"Oh my god!" I shouted. "Oh my god. Oh-" I jumped up and started crawling around my bed like a rabid animal, searching for my phone in the sheets. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit. I left her, I left her there, I don't- oh my god, I think I lost my phone. Help me, help me, what to do-"

"Fucking hell, calm down," Michael said. He held out his phone to me while I dug my teeth into the inside of my cheeks. "Here. Call her."

I nodded and got down on my knees to search for the note she'd given me on our first day. I was sure I still had it. I kicked over my bag and dumped everything out, then laid down flat on the ground to look under my bed.

"Dude, what are you doing?" Michael asked, one eyebrow raised.

I looked up, blinking through my tears. "I have- I have this little thing, and it says her number and I- can you help me find it? Please?"

He stood still for a second, then nodded silently and crouched down to spread out some of the things I'd dumped everywhere. I couldn't take it anymore and finally let the tears in my eyes fall, and he turned towards me. "Hey, hey, I'll look, okay?" he said softly. "Just calm down."

I wiped at my eyes and sat there while he searched for me. He gave up on the stuff on the ground after a moment and stood up to look around on my table, lifting the textbooks I'd piled there one by one.

"Hey," he said suddenly. "This it?"

He held up a small slip of paper and I let my breath out in a relieved rush. "Michael, thank you."

"You need to work on not panicking so much," he said. "Now. This is what we do. You call her, make sure everything's alright, and then I'll go in my Uber app and see if they can track down the old man."

"Old man?"

"You lost your phone in the car, right? There's a chance he's an idiot and still riding around with it in the backseat. But my guess is he's already tried to sell it or whoever he picked up next stole it."

I took a deep breath, not letting myself even think about that yet, and shakily typed the digits into his phone.

It was a long time before she answered. "Hello?" she mumbled groggily. Maybe I'd woken her up. "Who's this? Billy, if this is you, I told y-"

"Not Billy," I said quickly. "Ben. Um... are you okay? Did you get home alright? I'm so sor-"

"Ohh," she cut me off. "Yo, where the fuck did you go? I literally was like..." A good five seconds passed before she finished her sentence. "Literally out, yo. You leave?"

"Um-"

"Brooo," she rasped, her voice sounding like that of a dehydrated toad. "I think I had sex last night. Like a lot." She gave a short laugh.

I tried not to feel hurt. "With who?"

"Think I fuckin' know?" she muttered airily. "Call me later, okay? I gotta go."

I flinched as she hung up, then slowly set Michael's phone down on the bed. Though I had no idea who they were, I hated every man she'd slept with last night. Not just because I was jealous, which I was, but because they'd clearly taken advantage of her. And she didn't even seem to care.

I looked down as Michael came over to get his phone, feeling ashamed for some reason. Maybe because he had five hundred girls to choose from and I was in tears over one. "She okay?" he said, watching me carefully.

I shrugged and sniffled.

He blinked once, then turned and sat down, wrapping one arm around me. "At least you got ahold of her, right?"

I said nothing and tipped my face to the side so I could lie my head on his shoulder. "I don't think she likes me."

"She seemed to like you yesterday," he commented.

I forced a smile and we fell into a long span of silence. I decided I'd been wrong about Rhoda. She wasn't going to be my girlfriend. Maybe we'd get together again, that'd be nice. But we wouldn't go on dates and hold hands and eat ice cream. What could I have possibly been thinking? That the first girl I met here would turn out to be the love of my life?

"I miss Ohio," I said mournfully.

Michael tilted his head. "I miss Kansas."

"What's Kansas like?" I asked.

"Hot," he said. "Dry. Boring. Honestly, not that great. But I understand. It's hard leaving all your friends and family behind for some weird place where you have no idea if you'll be happy."

"I was never really happy," I whispered. "I just had all these high expectations that I was just gonna pack up one day and come here and everything would suddenly be amazing."

"Why weren't you happy?"

"It's a lot to get into," I muttered.

"Well, you can always talk to me if you want," he said. "I'm a pretty chill guy. I also am good at hugs."

I looked up, my heart melting at his words. "Yeah, you are." He looked at me and we both smiled, and then I got up and crawled onto his lap and nuzzled myself into his chest. "I guess there's one nice thing about being here."

"Did you forget Smurfy?" he chided jokingly.

I groaned and leaned over, snatching up the still half-eaten poptart on my bed. "She's gonna be pissed I haven't called her in a day. When am I gonna get my phone back?"

"You might not," he said. "But phones themselves are pretty inexpensive so you could probably just get another. What I would do is call your carrier and get them to shut down your service so no one can use it, and then on the new one you can just get back all your contacts and passwords and things."

"I'll have to use your phone again," I muttered. "Or Sarah's. I'll probably go try to find her for lunch. What time is it?"

"Almost ten," he answered, looking at his screen. "Speaking of lunch, I'm hungry." He leaned forward and took the poptart from my hand, making me gasp in betrayal as he devoured the majority of it.

"Michael!" I protested.

"What?" he mumbled, crumbs falling from his mouth. "You weren't eating it."

I jumped up and tried to attack him, wrapping my hands around his neck before he successfully pushed me over. "That was my poptart," I whined.

He laughed and climbed on top of me, pinning me with his weight. "Here, I'll feed you," he said, breaking what was left of it apart.

"No, that's so weird."

"Open your mouth," he said.

I pressed my lips tightly together and shook my head, glaring up at him.

"Fine then. Be that way." He reached up with his other hand and pinched shut my nose with his thumb and index finger.

I was confused for a second, and then I realized I could no longer breathe. "Not-" I started as Michael shoved the chunk of poptart into my mouth. "Not fair," I choked out.

He made a pleased humming noise and forced the next piece in.

"Sto-" I gasped as he poised the last bite at my lips.

He responded by jamming it into my mouth.

We both laughed as I chewed the food. I looked up at him, silent, and my thoughts began to slow. I noticed little details - the way his hands framed my face, the way his chest pressed down on mine. His smile, not a smirk but a smile, like he was just happy to be spending time with me.

My heart thudded.

"I- I have to take a shower," I mumbled.

"I'll be here." He batted his eyelashes at me and rolled onto his side. I made my way to the bathroom and shut the door firmly before letting out the heavy sigh in my chest.

Never, ever, ever had I had this much of a crush on anyone. Sure, in high school when girls flirted with me sometimes I'd get slight butterflies, but nothing like this.

I felt in love, like all I wanted to do was run back out there and jump into his arms and let him kiss every square inch of me. He probably would, too.

I wondered if there was a time in my life that I'd ever actually liked a guy. I couldn't even remember finding one attractive. I always did my best to avoid accidentally letting my eyes fall on a man while watching porn. I'd never felt anything weird when I'd shared casual one-armed hugs with my male friends. Perhaps I'd never given myself the chance to consider being gay, because I'd always written it off as some gross taboo.

But that couldn't be, could it? You were supposed to know. All the gay men I'd ever heard of always went on and on about how from the second they could form a single thought, they knew they were gay.

You're probably just anxious about moving here, I told myself. So you got attached to the first person that seemed to like you.

Satisfied with this conclusion, I took off my clothes and turned the shower on, then got in carefully. For a while I just stood there and drank the water while it was still cold. After I'd finished generously shampooing and conditioning my hair, I started in on a deep scrub of my entire body.

I toweled off before slathering on a layer of deodorant and brushing my teeth. Lastly I secured the towel around my waist and poked my head out the door.

Michael was still sitting in my bed, scrolling through his phone. I cleared my throat.

"Hello, Benjamin," he said, not even looking up.

"Can you get up?" I snapped. "I need to get dressed."

"So get dressed," he said.

I turned around and opened the first drawer in my dresser, selecting today's pair of jeans. "Fine then," I said. I tossed them onto my bed, hitting him in the arm, and pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.

I was fully aware of him slowly sitting up and swinging his legs to the floor, but I stood still as he walked up behind me. "Want help?" he murmured, his hands finding their way around my waist.

"Are you offering your skills as a stylist?"

He grinned and moved around me to the dresser. "Where's your underwear collection?"

I felt my cheeks heat up. "Um... bottom drawer," I mumbled.

"Hmm." He dropped into a crouch and pulled it open, then started rifling through them. "Boring," he said. "Boring, boring. Seriously, checkered? That's just ugly."

"You're just rude," I retorted.

He squinted and picked up a pair of solid black trunks. "You know, I like these. These could work."

I rolled my eyes.

"Here," he said, tossing them to me as he stood. "Follow me." He walked past me to his side of the room and opened one of his drawers.

"I think all your clothes are too big for me," I murmured.

He shrugged and dug around before selecting a t-shirt. It was grayish-white with a black wire pattern and ivory circles placed randomly. He stacked a pair of sweats on top of it and handed them to me. "Try it."

"I think I'll wear my own pants, thanks."

"You can still have them," he said cheerfully.

I dumped the sweats into my drawer and slammed it shut, planning on never touching them as long as I lived. He smiled and then, before I could turn away, reached forward and gently tugged where I'd fastened the towel.

I flicked my eyes up at once. "This is kinda like unwrapping a present," he murmured, watching the towel turn in slow circles around my hips. "That's the best part of getting one, you know."

"Were you good this year?" I joked, tilting my head.

He took one more step closer and cupped the side of my face in his hand, tracing his thumb over my cheek. "Nah."

I stood still for a second, then rocked forward and gave him a short kiss, the movement making the towel fall once and for all.

"Oopsie," he whispered, smiling. He ruffled my hair a little and let me walk away. I shimmied into the trunks and pulled the shirt over my head, frowning when I saw how it went all the way down to my thighs. "It's cute," he said.

"It doesn't look like a dress?" I asked as I sat down to pull my pants on.

"No," he said. "You'd look pretty in a dress, though."

I glared at him. "Shut up."

"Or like a little miniskirt," he went on. "I'd pay to see that."

Well, I could use some money, I thought. I stuffed the front of the shirt into my jeans so it looked at least a slight bit fashionable and found some socks to wear. My shoes had mysteriously disappeared so I was forced to wear the dirty white Nikes Sarah had convinced me to pack.

"Okay," I said finally. "I'm leaving."

Michael was lying on his bed, actually looking the tiniest bit sad. "Can I come with you?"

"Why do you want to come with me?"

He shrugged slightly, then blinked his eyes down. "I'm bored."

I took a deep breath, then sighed. "Fine."

"Yay," he said, jumping up.

I leaned over to my table and grabbed my keys while he, with no warning, grabbed my hand. I wrenched it away, scowling at his stupid happy face. "Fuck off."

He narrowed his eyes wordlessly and reached for my hand again.

"Fuck off, we're not holding hands," I snapped. I shoved my way around him, opening the door and starting down the hall without him. I was aware that I seemed like the meanest person on earth, but for some reason, I couldn't stop myself.

It was almost like I wanted him to keep chasing me, even on the chance that he would just give up one of these times and focus his attention on someone else. Maybe I liked having him like me.

The halls of campus were busy today, and as we navigated our way through them, Michael made no further move to act affectionate. I was still confused about our relationship. He said we were friends, but I'd never made out with and gotten jerked off by any other friends. So did that make us lovers? The idea made me want to throw up.

I wondered if he held off on the hand-touching for my sake, or because he too didn't want to appear gay. I hoped it was the latter, purely so he had no moral superiority over me.

The cafeteria was more crowded than I'd ever seen it before, filled with kids balancing paper plates of food in one arm, a heavy binder in the other, and a phone wedged between their shoulder and ear. Still, through all those people, I saw her.

I could spot that blue hair anywhere.

And I knew she saw me too, because one second she was staring forlornly out the window and the next she was squinting at me, and then on her feet and marching over. I panicked and did a full 180 turn, slamming into Michael.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Let's go, let's go," I chanted, trying to worm my way between him and a chubby guy in glasses who gave me an annoyed glare.

"Hey look, it's Smurfy," Michael pointed out.

"I know," I hissed. "Can we ju-"

I never got to finish my request. The next thing I knew Sarah was grabbing my arm and spinning me towards her with a strength greater than my own. The look in her eyes was deadly; she spoke through gritted teeth. "We gotta talk."