Seriously? A broken pencil will not be the reason I don’t finish making this list for when Sky and I meet up later tonight.
Ryan is in his room—pretty sure he’s napping—and he definitely has a pencil.
In order not to wake him, I slip his door open quietly.
What I see makes my eyes pop out of my head, and then I immediately close them.
“Jesus! Broh, you couldn’t knock?!” he yells, and grabs a pillow to put it over his erect cock.
I freeze in surprise.
Yep. I just caught my roommate whacking it to porn.
“Jesus! I thought you were napping!” I say. “I just needed a pencil!”
“A pencil!? You interrupted me for a fucking pencil?!” Ryan yells as I run out and into the dining room.
Of course there’s a cupful of pencils just to the right of the sink that I forgot about. Makes total sense, now that I’ve got the image of my best friend with his cock in his hand staring at a screen seared into my mind, changing our relationship forever.
A few minutes later, Ryan goes into the bathroom, presumably to wash his hands, and then comes into the living room where I’m sitting.
“Sorry, man,” I say, holding up the pencil I now have. “I found the pencil.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “I’ve gone twenty-two years of my life without getting caught. I guess it had to happen sometime.”
“So what were you watching?” I wiggle my eyebrows, razzing him. “Anything good? Did you have one tab pulled up, or multiples?”
“Multiples, duh.” He shrugs.
All right, at least we’re back on a joking basis here.
“I’m surprised you’re whacking it at all,” I jab. “Jennifer not getting the job done for you?”
He wrinkles his brow and hunches his shoulders, his body language turning defensive all of a sudden. “That’s none of your business. And of course she is. She just has classes all day on Tuesdays, so it’s hard for her to meet up. Why are you always so critical of her, man?”
“It was a joke. You don’t have to take everything so seriously.”
“Well it’s not really funny when you insinuate that the girl I’m about to marry is not enough for me. Some fantasies aren’t meant to be lived out. Know what I mean?”
I see pain behind Ryan’s eyes and I feel as though I’ve been punched in the gut. Jennifer’s got Ryan trained so well to be on the lookout for any criticism I dish out. Even worse, Ryan is avoiding brutally honest truths that are right in front of him, like the fact that Jennifer actually has a lunch break on Tuesdays.
If she wanted to make time for him, she’d make time. That’s one of the supreme lessons of life I wish I could instill in not only Ryan, but everyone. And if you’re getting married to someone, they damn well should be in the category of people who ‘make time’ for you.
The image of Krista, the cute campus weed dealer, coming over, appears in my mind. I still can’t believe how shady Ryan was about that whole visit. I wonder how far he would have gone if no one was here…
I swallow a knot in my throat, because in a moment, I have this random flash of insight, and it’s deeply disturbing.
Ryan is my father.
Symbolically speaking, obviously.
He’s already used to channeling his desires away from his main woman.
I grip my pencil so hard it actually breaks.
“Fuck,” I say.
Ryan stares at it. “Why’d you just do that?”
I jump to my feet, and with Ryan’s stonewalling lately, I’m not about to go into this with him. “Shit, just realized I have this study group to get to in the library and I’m late. See you at practice.”
I grab my backpack and rush out the door.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’ve learned that when I have a gut reaction like this, my gut is right ninety-nine percent of the time.
I look into the future and see one where, if Jennifer doesn’t cheat on Ryan, he cheats on her instead. She’ll force his hand by slowly drying up attention and affection for him. He’ll divert his desire away from her until he becomes a sad old man and throws it all away for some dalliance with an intern. And since Jennifer’s smarter, he’ll get blamed for everything.
As he should, because there’s never an excuse for cheating.
But right now, he’s still got the chance to save himself and redirect the angle of this launch so he doesn’t end up as that sad old man.
Fuck, man. That’s a sad fate.
And I want to talk to Skylar about all of this and see if she thinks I’ve gone mad with my future predictions or if I’m onto something.
Also, I’d better fill out a few more fantasies for the little red notebook.
A text comes in from Sky.
Sky: You done yet?
21
Skylar
Luke and I meet up a little before class in Professor Gonelez’s room before everyone piles in. I’m excited for us to talk about the list we both have been working on, but he tells me a story about catching Ryan with his pants down.
I’m expecting it to be a lighthearted laugh of a story, but it quickly takes a darker turn when he reminds me about the story of his dad cheating on his mom ten years ago and the connection he made between his father’s cheating and Ryan’s current path.
I get up from my seat and give him a long hug.
“Do you think I’m crazy for conflating Ryan and my father?” he asks into my ear.
“Not at all. It’s a tenuous balance to keep a romance together long-term, and if Ryan is already hiding parts of himself from Jennifer, that’s not a good sign. And I totally saw her in the library ditching class this afternoon,” I add. “So if she’s saying she’s busy on Tuesdays, I call bullshit. She’s just not making Ryan a priority.”
“Fuck.” He squeezes my bare thigh, a reminder of the knee length skirt I wore today. “He’s at home rubbing one out, and she’s in the library ditching class. Everything about this makes me so angry.”
“I know.”
“Like if that were you and me? I’d be ditching class with you.”
“Yes we would.” I giggle. “And we’d be rubbing one out together.”
Luke rubs his thumb and forefinger on his forehead, clearly very frustrated. “Ryan is so fucked.”
I thread a hand through his hair. “It’s a good reminder why we’re going through with Operation Romper.”
“Ow,” I say as he squeezes my thigh harder. He lets go and looks down at his hand as if he didn’t even know it was there.
“So sorry,” he says, rubbing my skin.
I bite my lower lip. “It’s okay, I actually kinda like it. It’s just that I bruise easily.”
“Is that going to leave a bruise?”
“It might.”
His gray eyes sparkle, and the next move he pulls shocks me.
He gets on one knee and kisses the spot where he probably left a bruise. His stubble brushes against my inner thigh, causing warmth to pool between my legs.
I shudder when his lips make the smacking noise.
“Lucas. We only have a few more minutes until people start getting to class.”