“I didn’t just roll out of bed. Not all of us have chauffeurs who can cart us around the city.”
“True. But all of us have at least alarm clocks, don’t we?” His grin is caustic. “Some might see your tardiness as proof that you don’t takethis program seriously, Sebastian. Others, like the grant committee, know you’ve already proven that tenfold.”
My jaw sets. Our interaction last night is still raw, and everything I’ve toppled through this morning has fallen on it like slow drips of vinegar—so I have no resolve to shrug off the attacks he fires with an archer’s precision. Especially when he’s looking like he leaped off a fragrance billboard, making every word he spews feel so much weightier, casting judgment and finding me wanting in every possible way.
He’s polished and pristine, composed and orderly.
Why wouldn’t he get the grant instead of me?
The knot in my stomach is rock-hard. Takes up every free space inside me.
He doesn’t matter. None of this matters, remember? It’s all noise. Get to the brunch. Get the grant. Rub his smug face in it.
I shift my garment bag and eye the bathroom stalls, but I’m hit with an image of dunking my shirtsleeve into a toilet, which leaves changing out here.
Elethior must follow my train of thought. His smile grows slyer, and he doesn’t move from where he’s reclined against the sink, ankles crossed so the leg of his pants rides up and a flash of skin shows above his low-cut sock.
“They’re due to begin the presentation in”—he checks a watch that likely cost more than my rent for a year—“seven minutes.”
His eyes pop up to me, amused and daring.
I think one of my molars cracks. “You gonna leave?”
With overemphasized deliberateness, he turns back to the mirror and swipes a finger along his eyebrow. “I don’t think so. Itisa public restroom, isn’t it?”
It’s a game of chicken.
Fuck him. Fuck this morning.Fuck all of this.
I toss my garment bag over one of the stall doors and plop my satchel on the sink next to him.
His eyes flash to mine in the mirror. For a too-long second, we stare at each other, challenge as thick as humidity in July.
Wrong day to mess with me, buddy.
The part of me that Orok’s always worried will take over bursts up out of my soul like a rabid dog, feral and snarling, and before I can think anything else through, I shrug off my coat, remove my glasses, grab the hem of my T-shirt, and yank it off.
Our eyes disconnect. The moment the T-shirt brushes across my face, I slide my glasses back on and I can see him again.
The silence arching between us stretches. The difference betweencome at me, bruh,and something that takes the knot in my stomach and douses it with kerosene and scrapes a match against my nerve endings to light it.
That light flares, illuminating a singular fact:
I’m half naked in front of him.
Elethior blinks twice, in rapid succession.
Prickles of chill race across my skin, goose bumps that make me shiver even though the bathroom’s pretty warm, heated for late November.
Elethior switches his gaze back to his own reflection. “Classy,” he says, but it comes out rough.
“Never claimed to be,” I bite back.
I move to untie my sweatpants, and he coughs, some jagged, garbled sound.
“For gods’ sakes,” Elethior rasps and hurries past me for the door.
I should feel vindicated for winning this game. But something’s off-balance, thrown into tumult byhimagain, and I’m so tired of him rocking me, and I’m tired of this rivalry, and I’mdone.
