Gavin started laughing, putting his hands on his hips and nodding a little. He had given them that nickname during our last class when they had completely blown an IQ test attempt. “Seriously, what is wrong with those two?” he asked, grabbing a hat from his bed and sliding it over his chin-length hair.
Gavin was the complete opposite of Reed—artistic, tall and thin. He had black-rimmed glasses that he wore all of the time and longer hair that he usually kept pulled back or hidden under a hat. Both of his arms were covered in tattoos, and his wardrobe consisted of nothing but old concert T-shirts—most of them from shows he’d actually seen. Like Reed, though, Gavin was smart, ridiculously smart. We’d talked about the stress of attending school on scholarships during our classes, and I’d found out Gavin was a Mensa Scholar. He was a bona fide genius, which was good, because I was going to need one to survive the dingle twins.
“I think we can fix it, but it’s going to take us a few hours,” I said, blowing the loose hairs from my face.
Gavin just stood at his doorway and put his hands in his pockets, shrugging his shoulders. “I got nowhere else to be, so let’s do it,” he said, scooping up his papers and sitting down on the floor with his legs stretched out to hold up his laptop.
My estimate wasn’t even close. Gavin and I worked until midnight finishing up the data and running our results. It was worth it, though, because not only did we come up with some killer findings and draw some great conclusions for our report, but also I was able to forget about everything else in my life for most of the night.
We ordered pizza, made fun of our lab partners and swapped stories about growing up with rich kids. Gavin came to ASU from Compton. I laughed at first when he told me, because I didn’t think anyone actually came from Compton, but he assured me they did. He said his neighborhood was full of families that had lived there for years, but that it made him sad to see people afraid to go out at night. He took a bus to a private school that he was able to go to on a scholarship. And I thought I had it hard.
I’d also learned that Gavin came to ASU because of a girl, but after their freshman year, they broke up; his ex, Maya, moved back to California, but Gavin decided to stay. This part of the conversation started to make me a little uncomfortable, partly because I didn’t want to go into my relationship with Reed and the drama that had descended on my life as of late, and partly because it felt a little as if Gavin was flirting with me.
When we were eating, he reached over twice to dab my cheek with a napkin; I kept one in my hand to take care of my own face after that. Then, when I was typing up our final results, he stood behind me and massaged my shoulders a little, sometimes his touch lingering just a little too long.
Gavin was incredibly good looking. He was the kind of guy who played the guitar with random bands for fun and rolled to class on a skateboard. His intelligence was a sexy contrast with his entire bad-boy image. When I was packing up my things and getting ready to leave, I felt a rush of heat hit my nerves as Gavin put his hand on the center of my back as he walked me to the door. And when he reached over to give me a friendly hug—one that suddenly felt not-so-friendly—I panicked.
“I have a boyfriend,” I just laid it out there, just like that. No preface, no real reason to add it to the conversation, other than the massive blood-rush hitting my eardrums and making me feel as if I might soon pass out. I had nothing left other than to give Gavin the stupidest of smiles.
“Oh, uh…okay?” he said, once again shoving his hands in his pockets, seeming to try to make himself appear less threatening. “I didn’t mean anything. I just…boy, I’m not really sure what to say here.”
He stood there rubbing the back of his neck and chuckling nervously. I had just made this extremely awkward.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to fix things. “I just… I realized that we talked a lot about you, and I hadn’t shared much. I thought it was one of those things that were good to know.”
He just smiled at me, his lips forming the most adorable grin, forcing his eyes to scrunch a bit. “It’s okay. Yeah, that…the boyfriend…it’s good to know,” he said, nodding and reaching out his hand in a fist to give me a pound. I just pounded back and laughed a little.
“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all weird. I think I just need to go home and get some sleep.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” he said, opening his door for me and leaning against the frame as I walked out backwards, making my way to the stairs. “Sweet dreams, you.”