REN

WATCHING MADDOX WALK away, I could feel myself smiling. He was so cool, the kind of guy that made everything look effortless and easy, and he’d actually been nice to me. Really nice. So nice I couldn’t stop thinking about the stuff he’d said and replaying it in my head. Was that weird? Probably, but I’d always been weird. Or at least that’s what people were always telling me.

Adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder, I forced myself to turn and walk off in the other direction. Guys like that had never been nice to me in high school. College was already feeling so much better than the awkward, terrible four years before it.

I was close with my parents, so I’d been kind of worried about how I’d feel living away from them. But I was discovering that being by myself felt really free and liberating. Not that they’d ever stifled me or anything. They were always really encouraging, and always pushing me to take chances and try new things. Both sets of my grandparents, immigrants from Japan, were pretty conservative and strict, so I figured that was probably why. My parents had both rebelled against that in their youth, and it showed in their parenting style.

But even though being away at university was really cool, I was still glad my parents were only a few hours away. I didn’t want to miss going home for any holidays or anything.

I’d grown up in the suburbs, so the town of Byron Bay was really different for me. It was a coastal town, with beaches and fresh seafood stalls out on the docks where the big boats came in. The air smelled salty and bracing every day, which was neat.

Byron Bay University was just on the edge of a little downtown district, with cobblestone streets and little vintage shops. There was also a huge boardwalk, a couple miles long, out by the beach. It had rides and food and games like a year-round carnival and it was always packed with locals and tourists. I hadn’t had too much time to explore any of that yet, or even just the beach, but I had plenty of time.

When I found myself wondering whether or not Maddox had been on the boardwalk yet, and if he liked roller coasters, I decided I was fixating a little too much. Words spoken often by my ex-girlfriend, that I always tried too hard to be liked and ended up getting on everyone’s nerves, echoed in my head for a moment. Had I gotten on his nerves? Had I made him feel forced into giving me his phone number? I remembered how he’d rolled his eyes at my concerns, and my stomach pitched. No, I shouldn’t think about that right now. He’d offered to meet me to work on the project, not the other way around.

My next class was calculus, which was sufficiently distracting enough that I didn’t think about it for a while, and then I was free to head back to my dorm. Each residence hall had its own name, something beach or ocean themed, and mine was Coral Reef Hall, which I liked. What’s cooler than something that takes root in the ground like a plant, but is actually a colony comprised of tiny animals?

When I stepped into my dorm room, my roommate was on his computer. He pulled his headphones off when he saw me, giving me a single head nod as a greeting.

“What’s up? You done with your classes today?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“You wanna duo queue?”

“Sure!” I opened my laptop, set up on the desk on the opposite side of the room from his, and loaded up one of the games that we liked to play together, Federation of Fables.

Aspen Davis had intimidated me a lot when I first met him, mostly because of the tattoos and piercings and eyeliner. You’d think a guy who’s probably like 5’4 couldn’t be intimidating, but his default facial expression was kind of gruesome. He later told me he suffers from a condition called Resting Bitch Face, and that he had to save all of his positive facial expressions for working at the popular little bakery café thing down the street from our campus. But he’d introduced me to other people and helped me make friends, so he definitely wasn’t as scary as he appeared.

We chatted between matches, while the game loaded. He talked about his day a bit, which hadn’t been all that eventful, and then I brought up the group project in creative writing, which was a class he wasn’t in.

“Kelani’s in that class with you, right?” He asked. Kelani Knight was a mutual friend of ours, a fun extrovert who’d lately been making it her mission to get me out of my shell and expose me to more socialization.

“Yeah, she is. But the partners were assigned randomly, so…”

“Who’d you end up with?”

“Maddox Holmes. Do you know him?”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, after thinking for a moment.

“He’s on the swim team.” That was pretty much all I knew about Maddox, other than the fact that he had nice eyes and hair and made a plain white t-shirt and jeans look kind of modelesque.

“Ugh. I hate jocks.” Aspen expressed his disdain for the athletes at our school, or maybe at every school, with no room for interpretation.

“Um, yeah, I kind of get that.” Historically, jocks had always flat out ignored me, which I preferred, or used me as the butt of jokes they could tell their friends. I imagined Aspen’s experience had been somewhat similar. Maybe even worse. I was pretty sure being a gay trans guy put you higher on the bully-able scale than just being a general socially awkward loser like me. “But he was really nice. Honestly,” I added.

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered me doubtfully. “You could find something nice to say about anyone.”

It was mostly true, so I didn’t bother arguing. “Well, anyway, he actually wants to work together on it and doesn’t expect me to do all the work, so I’m happy.”

“At least there’s that,” he acknowledged, before changing the subject. Which was totally fine. It wasn’t like I wanted to talk more about Maddox anyway. That would be weird, even for me. “Speaking of Kelani, she was here earlier and asked me about going with her to some party tomorrow. I have to work so I can’t, but she said she’s going to make you go.”

“Ah…” Unsure of how to respond, I could only wince. “You’re lucky you have to work.”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “No. Unlike you, I actually want to meet people and have fun.”

I was fairly sure what he meant by meet people and have fun was mostly hooking up with guys. It had already happened three times so far where I’d finished my classes for the day and wanted to relax in our room, only to find a sock on the doorknob. Unfortunately, the first time I hadn’t known what it meant so I’d walked in anyway. That was more of Aspen than I’d wanted to see. I had some classes with that other guy, and he hadn’t made eye contact with me since that day.

“I like having fun,” I argued. “I just don’t think parties are that fun.”

“They’re only fun if you let yourself have fun. Don’t sit in the corner all night, you know? Play some drinking games. Make out with a girl. You said you’re not still hung up on your ex, right?”

He was referring to my ex-girlfriend, Gwen, who I’d talked about with him a little bit. We’d started dating in sophomore year, and then all through junior and senior. When she’d broken up with me over the summer, I think she’d expected me to beg her to reconsider but I’d only been relieved. I hadn’t even realized how unhappy I was until I’d gotten away from her. She still texted me sometimes, but I wasn’t sure how to tell her I didn’t even really want to be friends anymore.

“Definitely not,” I assured him.

“Then go have some fun!” He paused for a bit before speaking again. “I’m not being too pushy, right?”

“No,” I told him honestly. He could be assertive, but I didn’t mind that about him. “You’re right. I’ll try to have fun.”

That night, I laid awake for a bit, just staring up at the ceiling that I couldn’t see because Aspen liked the room pitch black like a dungeon. I had a nervous feeling in my stomach, but I wasn’t entirely sure why. Was it because of the impending party? I’d already gone to some of those, though I hadn’t had very much fun.

Was it because I was meeting Maddox on Wednesday? But that was silly. He was cool and nice, but I didn’t have any reason to be nervous about some writing project. It didn’t even count for a big portion of our grade or anything. Or maybe I was nervous about the fact that he was the kind of guy who I always seemed to manage to annoy or aggravate in some way. Was he dreading seeing me?

Heaving a deep sigh, I tried to push it out of my mind and sleep. I wouldn’t need to worry about seeing him until Wednesday anyway. Or at least, that’s what I thought then, right before my stubborn brain finally let me drift off.