Page 11 of Follows with Intent

“He wears real clothes, and he’s got a real job.”

“We’re not doing this.”

“He’s not a barista. He’s not a server. He’s not a bartender.”

“Those are real jobs. It’s classist of you to say those aren’t real jobs.” Maya shot him a look, and Nico raised his hands in surrender. “I’m saying the guys I’ve gone out with—”

“Exclusively, Nico. You exclusively go out with guys like that. Because at the beginning, they’re easy, and they’re uncomplicated, and they want to fool around, and their lives aren’t going anywhere. I know those are real jobs, Nico. But it’s not a real job when Chase’s life plan is to ‘open his own gay bar’ when his dad still does his taxes and he spends all his tips on clothes, and it’s not a real job when Marcus wants to get high and go out and has nothing lined up on the horizon. This guy is gorgeous—”

“He’s not that handsome.”

“I saw him, Nicolás, with my own two eyes. In the coffee equivalent of a wet T-shirt contest. And he’s totally into you.”

“He’s not—”

“Did you see how he was looking at you? Because I did. It was like a puppy that got hit in the head.”

“Actually, we did hit our heads—”

She stopped at the door they’d been looking for. “What are the red flags? What am I missing?”

“He ghosted me. Stopped texting me, totally. Out of the blue, Maya. I mean, things were going, or I thought they were, and then…nothing.”

Maya’s face softened for a moment. Then it hardened again. “Did you ask him why?”

Nico felt his jaw go weak. “Why should I—”

“You are unbelievable,” she said and pushed into the room.

The classroom that had been given over for the seminar was large, with desks rising in tiers toward leaded glass windows at the back. Cloud-colored light traced the patterns of the cames on the worn carpet squares. A Bunn coffee urn sat on a cart near the door, and Nico caught an acrid whiff as he passed it.

Three other grad students were already there, and because Nico had seen their emails and stalked them, he recognized each of them. Ridson was Black, with an oval face and his hair in short twists. Kaylee was white, her chestnut hair in a long side part, her eyes and mouth quick and expressive. Giovanni (Gio, who posted almost exclusively videos of himself doing yoga in nothing but a pair of tiny bike shorts) looked like Daniel Radcliffe meets Frankenstein. (A voice that sounded a little too much like Emery’s corrected, Frankenstein’s monster). Skinny, with glasses, his complexion the color of ceiling paint, he’d sent everyone an email inviting them to read “my latest piece in the New Yorker” before the seminar. Nico, channeling earth-shattering levels of pettiness, had checked—latest piece, it turned out, was only technically correct because it was also Gio’s only piece.

After murmured hellos, Maya continued in a whisper, “You are going to talk to him, Nico.”

“Will you knock it off? He’s cute, fine. He’s obviously not into me—”

Maya gave him laser eyes.

Nico stammered through the rest of it. “—and I’ve got to focus. I need to make a good impression, okay? I need to get into a doctoral program. I need publications, and letters of rec, and, you know, a reputation. I don’t need a random hookup.”

“Oh,” a familiar voice said. “Hookups. Nico, do tell.”

“What,” he managed in a strangled whisper, “the fuck is going on? Is this the fucking ghosts of hookups past?”

Maya smiled, even though she was clearly trying to look sympathetic. Then she said, “Hi, Clark.”

Nico forced himself to turn around. Clark Beaumont was white-bread money: movie-star hair, A-lister scruff, and he wore cardigans the way God had intended. He wasn’t handsome, not really, but he had an appeal. Nico remembered, his face heating, that the little cleft in Clark’s chin was eminently kissable.

“Why are you here?”

A tiny smile darted across Clark’s face as he sat at the desk with Nico and Maya. “Hello, Nicolás. Good to see you too. I thought maybe you’d be doing a shoot.”

Nico glanced around to see if anyone had heard, but no one seemed to be paying attention. He stared daggers at Clark.

“Oops,” he said.

“You weren’t on the email chain. I would have seen your name.”

---