Nate

I emerge from my bedroom, bleary-eyed and dazed from studying all morning to find a gang of chipped-toothed lunatics dive-bombing and laughing like hyenas in the pool room downstairs.

There’s about eight of them, all standing around in swim-shorts with the same Ken-doll body, pushing and manhandling each other in a manner my psych major friend Katie would have a field day over.

There’s nothing screening the pool from the anteroom leading into the kitchen save glass. If it isn’t completely steamed over, I have to look at my stupid brother - and what appears to be the entire hockey team - acting like they own the place every time I want to use my own kitchen.

Defenceman Engels stands a little taller and broader than the others, but still has a similar six pack/pecs thing going on and the same team mascot tattoo - I think it’s supposed to be a bison - on his right forearm. Engels’ is a little bigger than everyone else’s. Everything he does is a little bigger. A little louder. A little more annoying.

One of Harrison’s new fanboys grins through the glass at me and I turn my back with a groan. Give me strength!

I should be in Massachusetts right now. Five hours away by car. Enough to stop mom jumping in her SUV and visiting on a whim. Far enough from Harrison and his hockey goons that I’d only have to see him at Christmas and Thanksgiving. No forced hockey games on Friday nights when I should, (and would rather) be studying.

Even New Jersey would have been better than this. Maybe still close enough for a few impromptu visits, but far enough to have an excuse to miss Harrison’s games. Maybe I’d be guilt-tripped into the odd final of another pointless tournament, but the rest of the time would be all mine.

But I didn’t get into M.I.T and somehow I allowed mom to talk me out of Princeton and so, here I am.

Another cheer erupts from the pool room while I pour myself a cup of coffee and raid the fridge for something to eat that isn’t meat platters and cold pizza. I swear Mom shops solely with the hockey team in mind.

Thank god my room is in the attic. It might be the smallest bedroom in the house, but it’s also the most secluded, with the most character and the best view.

From my window, I can see acres and acres of forest laden with tall, dark pine trees. And in winter, the pines usually drop enough needles to allow me a view all the way to the lake.

I’ve positioned my desk in front of the window so I can at least look up every now and then and see the outside world. Remember what fresh air smells like between the short bursts I usually squeeze in between classes.

I can’t afford to lose focus. When I didn’t get into M.I.T, I thought my world had ended. For as long as I knew it existed, M.I.T had been my dream. I made my mom take me to open days every year, coming home with a car full of merch until my room looked like an M.I.T museum. It didn’t feel fair that I of all people shouldn’t get in, when not only had I worked so hard for it, no one loved that school like I did.

It made it easier for Mom to convince me to stay close to home after that. If it wasn’t M.I.T, what did it matter? In my darker moments, I had considered not even going to college, but thankfully, I had time to get out of that funk before the deadline to accept my place at my safety schools passed.

Sophomore year kicked my ass. Alongside my major in Operations Research and Engineering, I have to minor in Calculus and Chemistry for Engineering, and the workload ramped up so much last year, I can only imagine how crazy it’s going to get before I graduate.

While Harrison and the hockey team were playing exhibition games, (and god knows what else) in Europe, I stayed home studying all summer and trying to get a head start on this semester’s syllabus. One week in, and I feel like I’m drowning.

I take my drink and snack upstairs to my desk and don’t look up until I see movement outside a couple of hours later.

If I take my noise-cancelling headphones off, I can hear them even from up here, see Harrison piling everyone into the Volvo my parents bought for his 21st birthday, though he’d begged for a Jag.

The Volvo’s a big bulky SUV and way better suited for the captain of a college hockey team than a Jag.

Maybe when he’s playing in the NHL and doesn’t have to drive everyone around, he can buy his little sport’s car and stop complaining.

Car doors slam shut, and after the sound of tires on gravel fades out, there’s nothing but silence and the house is all mine.

I force myself to finish the problem I’m working on before putting the book down. A quick scan of the house to reassure myself I’m definitely alone, and I lock my bedroom door and close the drapes before opening my laptop.

Katie has told me multiple times that porn creates unrealistic expectations of sex, but it’s the best I have right now.

I open my secret favourites file and click on the most appealing thumbnail.

Two hot guys in glasses and tweed jackets sit at a flimsy-looking desk in a sparsely-decorated studio, and with very little preamble, start making out and undressing each other. Without the glasses and tweed, they’re just generic, naked porn stars with abs and pecs, but by this point, one of them is bent over the desk and making noises that suggest whatever the other guy is doing feels very good and I’ve stopped caring what they’re wearing.

I finish before they do and click off the video before going to clean up.

The silent room with the drapes closed feels too small, and judgemental. And rather than satisfy me, that video has only stirred something up.

I lay back on my bed and open a dating app I always say I hate, but still use.

You sometimes see guys from college, but I swipe past them. Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to hook up with a random guy I met on an app. But, do I want to be a 21-year old virgin? Nope. And am I any closer to having sex than I was last year? Also nope.

I swipe past the usual ab pics and bulges, and honestly, I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I hardly ever see guys who look like me, and when I do, they don’t want me, they want the guys with abs and badass tattoos. It’s a tattoo that makes me pause on one particular picture. Your basic shirtless, faceless pic. Probably some bicurious or closeted frat boy who doesn’t want his brothers to know he thinks about guys when he jerks off. Also a stupid one, if he doesn’t want anyone to recognise him, because you can see his school mascot tattoo in the picture.

So lots of guys have the school mascot tattooed on their arm. Not just the ice hockey team. But there’s something about this tattoo that stands out. It’s just a little too big and a little too clumsy, like it’s owner? The name over the picture is ‘J’. Jesse Engels?

He’s not the sharpest tool in the box, but surely he wouldn’t be dumb enough to think shortening his name to ‘J’ while his school mascot tattoo is in the frame would be enough to hide his identity from his teammates?

The more I look at the picture, the more I convince myself it isn’t him. I haven’t looked at his body hard enough to know if it really is so recognisably his.

Talking to him, even just to find out, is obviously out of the question, so I log out of the app and put my phone down.