Page 18 of Study Games

Pushing the ache in my heart aside, I slipped through the door keeping my footfalls silent to avoid as many of the players as possible. By eight on a weekday afternoon most were already on fourth beers.

Crush waved as I passed through, though he glanced over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. His silent question went unanswered, but I appreciated the gesture. He alone seemed to get my need for silence, and I was glad he was the mentor my father opted for me as we found neutral ground fast that didn’t impinge on each other’s bad habits too frequently.

The rest of the Kingsmen hadn’t read that memo yet, it seemed.

“Hey, Art Freak! Wanna drink?”

I managed to keep my expression stoic, despite the retort that lingered beneath my tongue. Arcing up against the teammates of the man who’d given me a place to live and helped me create the vibe I survived off by the end of my first year seemed to be a shitty way to repay his generosity.

Yelling back to the team only ended in misery, a fist planted somewhere on my body I wasn’t willing to return in case I actually injured one of them, and a beer upended over my head. That shit stank and it took an age to get out of my leather jacket, like the itching powder trick I pulled on Waverly. But that had been worth it in its own way.

Besides, I had a reputation to uphold that kept the other crazies at bay.

I shook my head to Crush and made my way up the stairs toward the third floor, cutting my gaze away before he tried to convince me yet again to socialize. He’d helped me form my own PR campaign of leave me the fuck alone and given it the edge of I’m arty and unavailable. That alone had guaranteed a sort of weird popularity I'd never earned and hated…but it had the desired effect I craved on rare occasion, grabby hands and shitty, undesirable sex appeal for Stepford Wives in training aside.

The captain of the Rippton Hails ice hockey team helped me out upon arrival during my first year when I was nothing more than a too-skinny, wannabe artist with a sketchpad stuffed under one arm and hand drawn tattoos across my knuckles. Bullied, frustrated, and blessed with the self-esteem of a slug, I’d been a pathetic waste of creative energy, and blocked to boot. With no space to free up my hyperactive mind, I created crap. Worse, I knew it.

Crush inclined his head, watching me ascend. While he never pushed me, I enjoyed competing with him in the early hours–or later at night when the gym was empty and everyone else was pissing it up or sleeping it off–until I could match his pace. I might not be able to bench as much as him but I could run him into the ground any day. That was a miracle in itself.

By the end of my first year he’d helped me develop who I wanted to be seen as, though I knew he wished I could just be me all the time. If only my head was that monochrome, the way his morals ran. Straight and clean without all the dark edges closing in. Simplicity wasn’t in my nature, and no matter how I tried to push that concept, I knew Crush didn’t quite get how I saw the world.

A concept I was familiar with by now.

I still sought the eternal fool’s dream of finding a girl who did understand my world, who’d talk to me through the quiet hours of the night but have her own projects and life to share, something so totally different but still connected to me.

Damnit, I was a soppy romantic at heart. A lover, not a fighter. Hater, not a rioter.

I had no love of crowds and making my way up to my own space freed up some of the accumulated weight that tried to bow my back. I straightened, rolling my neck until it cracked on both sides, taking the steps at a slow pace and left the opinions of others on the ground floor.

Taking the last few steps at a run, the burst of speed sending a shot of adrenaline through my body I’d need the moment I picked up my brushes, I pushed open my bedroom door. The large canvases I’d painted a solid black then varied the light until I had a rainbow of grays from dove to charcoal leaned against one wall in a collage of muted mist.

A heap of clothes I hadn’t left there was piled on my bed in an uneven heap. I squinted at the unusual shape, picking out the blue-and-white cut varsity sports colors, the skin tones layered in between with an artist's critical eye.

The pile let out a ripper of a snore and I shook my head. “Oh, hell no.”

Whatever game the boys downstairs thought they were playing, it wasn’t going to work. Maybe I needed to do a drunk streak through the campus—something they’d see as hazing but didn’t mean a damn thing to me. Hell, I’d pierce or ink my own dick if it stopped them shoving random females in my nest. Not a bad idea, and I kept that thought aside for later. Maybe one of Waverly’s bee trails.

The drunken contingent shouldn’t give a fuck how I spent my damn time or which who. They were all headed for drafts or corporate jobs to pay their lifetime of accumulated bills after their parental next eggs ran their course.

An artist got credit for being motherfucking weird. I was all in on that score. What I wasn’t in on was what looked like a drunk girl in my bed—a bed I doubted she’d come to the house to find herself in.

Swearing softly, I tossed my bag on the floor with too much force. It rolled over and a phone, text books and my graphites rolled out. I frowned, already kneeling to collect my kit when the girl flinched—a delayed reaction from the sound of me entering my own fucking room—and rolled right off the edge of the bed.

She hit the floor with a muted whump and lay there, still snoring.

“Fuck me.” I rubbed my hands over my face. She had to go. But go where?

Backtracking to my door, I opened it and peered out. Through the bannister, I got a bird’s eye view of the front door where Crush leaned against the frame, his bulk blocking out who he spoke to. It could have been Mindy, but it could also have been one of a hundred other psycho team stalkers.

“Crush,” I shouted.

He straightened, called out something cheerfully to the frat boys I couldn’t see, and shut the door. “Yeah, man?”

“Got a…little problem up here.” I winced. That was coming back to bite me.

“Want someone to hold your dick while you wank?” A disembodied voice yelled through the house loud enough to be heard by the next fraternity over. “You could use it to spray your next art feature.”

Someone snickered and the room broke up.

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