I. CHANCE MEETING

Get up. Out. 

It was time to leave, and Flynn’s body knew it before his mind could catch up. In moments, he grabbed his scattered notes, draped his maroon aviator over himself, and stepped out into the busy city street. The café was too much. So much of this city was too much for him, really.

It was not the first time he felt this—this sick, inexplicable feeling within, spreading all throughout his body until it clouded his base senses. All those surrounding conversations, of plans to be made and friends to meet . . . they fostered a deep and irritating ache inside.

Briefly, he remembered Lewis’s words then: you just get used to it after a while. Feeling okay with getting lost in the crowd is something you eventually learn with time, he remembered his friend once saying.  

Flynn continued his trek across the blocks, hurriedly pacing past the endless crowds, until he reached his destination at the train entrance on 4th & Ellis. He had visited the barber yesterday; his neatly trimmed fade exposed his freshly cut sides to the chill of today’s breezy winds. As he pulled away from the hustling of the streets, like a shadow retreating from the sun, he pondered.

Most days in the city are like this. Just lonely.

A text message from his father laid itself bare on his phone’s screen as he stood on the descending escalator, interrupting him as he was shuffling through some school emails. He pocketed his phone and looked away at the empty railway coming into view. He had a hunch as to what the text already said: “How are you, anak? Your mom’s been. . .”

It didn’t feel great to lie. But Flynn figured it would feel worse to confuse them both. To learn their son was struggling but not possess the tools to discuss the whys and hows. Nothing like that was ever discussed in their household growing up. Yes, he figured, no point in bringing it up now.

He took out his phone and started typing. “Hi, Pa. I’m fine. Just busy with midterms.”  

One of which he almost failed, but he could omit that, of course.

He shoved the screen back into his pocket and sighed, opting instead to shift his attention to the rest of the day’s plans. Take the train back to campus, stop by the store on the way there for toiletries, head straight to the dorm to catch up on his ever-increasing load of homework, and maybe swing by the study center later in the evening if he was really struggling with prepping for next Tuesday’s exam. . .

“Ay, Flynn! Over here!” 

He snapped out of his fretting. A boy about his age came down the escalator, greeting him with a sunny grin.

“O-oh. Hey Lewis.” His words came out sheepish. He was surprised to run into someone he knew, in this transient place where thousands of people rushed by on the daily. The flickering lights of the station and the grime that caked the floors spoke as much to its communal use.  

“What are you up to?” Lewis asked.

“Just studying,” he said. “I was at a café this morning.”

“Oh? The one I told you about in Hilltown? With the upper deck?”  

“Yeah, actually,” Flynn said. “You made it sound really cool, so I thought—” 

“Well invite me next time, dude! I’ve been going crazy being all alone today.”   

Hah. I feel that one. Flynn could feel the smile creeping up his face. How quickly the tide of loneliness always swept away when Lewis was there.  

The approaching wind of the oncoming train came across the both of them then. Flynn took a brief look at Lewis as they stood next to each other. His patchwork sweater, layered by a navy windbreaker, looked thick enough to keep him warm from the escalating cold of the late season. His dark hair, wild and swept partly to the side, framed the depths of his observant brown eyes. 

“Going back to the dorms?” Lewis asked. Flynn nodded.  

The bullet edge of the train whirled onto the platform. Lewis took a minuscule step towards Flynn’s side as they braced for the wave of people getting off, but he was used to this gesture by now. He liked it. How close he always wanted to be.   

They made their way onto the train car, the density of the space making it feel akin to being filed and packed into a tin, even after the sizable crowd inside departed.

Lewis nodded over to the side facing seats, unoccupied on both ends. The two boys walked over, careful not to trip over any bags or outstretched legs that dotted the path. 

They took their spots, Flynn’s palm accidentally overlaying with Lewis’s as they tried to make themselves comfortable. Off. Take your hand off now, his mind urged, immediately, instinctively.

If Lewis noticed, he didn’t show it. “By the way, do you want to go to a movie?” 

“Today?” Flynn asked. He wished he could take it back. Obviously, Lewis meant today.

His spontaneity never failed to surprise Flynn. Spending time with Lewis tended to spark and evolve into some plan that he always loved to concoct on the spot.  

“Lemme look up the showings,” Lewis said, waiting patiently for his screen to load before thrusting it in Flynn’s face. “You pick.” 

Flynn saw that Lewis pulled up the showings at the nearest available theater, which was just a momentary two stops away. “Mm, that one.”

Lewis turned the screen back to him so he could see, before giving Flynn one of those smiles that seemed to make it feel like the world around them had frozen in time, if only for the briefest of moments. “That new heist movie? I’ve been dying to see to it.”

The two of them waited there for their next stop. The buzzing of the train lights and the minute shuffling of the standing passengers helped Flynn distract himself from the thought of their brief, careless touch. 

* * * 

A quieter scene came upon them. Flynn took the opportunity to indulge himself in a side glance at Lewis during it.  

It was his earnestness, he thought, that drew him so easily to his one single friend in college. He was affixed, like a magnet. And here, in the darkened rear side of the theater, it was—Don’t call it cute—it was impossible to describe, the way his eyes always lit up at every moment on-screen. Completely entranced.  

It was the same focus Flynn noticed Lewis would put into his drawings, when they were having a study session together. Or the moments during this quarter where they ran into each other on campus, Lewis dropping everything then and there to pour himself into getting caught up on Flynn’s life.

And if that wasn’t enough, it was his preternatural ability to sense the energy Flynn was always sending at him, and return it back unconditionally. Such as now, when his head budged just barely to return the glance.  

“Yeah?” His faint whisper resounded in Flynn’s mind with enough weight to shatter something. He held his gaze, curious.

“N-nothing.” Flynn adjusted himself to look back at the screen, lost in his understanding of the plot as he was pushed and pulled around by the sudden rush of his own thoughts.

He’s still looking at me.

Lewis was. That attention he put towards everything and everyone in his life was focused on him. Flynn hoped the darkness of the auditorium was enough to mask the reddened tips of his ears. 

* * *  

“Text me,” Lewis had told him as they parted ways at the stop. It was nearing midnight now, the day drawn out further by Lewis’s insistence that they go get ice cream at the parlor just around the block. Flynn, plopped down on his bed, shuffled between the open apps on his phone. 

“Thanks again for the movie,” he sent to Lewis. A moment passed. Gazing up at the barren ceiling of his dorm, he thought of what he wanted to add before Lewis could respond to the first message.

“You made today a lot less shitty,” he texted again. That should be enough, he reasoned.  

He closed his eyes, immediately finding the respite his body and mind sorely craved. Entering into the lull of a Saturday night’s sleep, his frenzied sea of nerves finally calmed down, the waves dissipating by the minute.

II. FALL IN FULL SWING

“Hey, Lewis?” Flynn didn’t say his new friend’s name often. It was still early on in whatever this relationship was that it stumbled as it rolled out of his tongue.  

“What’s up?” Lewis kept his eyes glued to his screen, reading something that Flynn couldn’t discern from a cursory glance.  

“How do you . . . this city. How do you manage to be okay with it all? I feel like I’m never not lost here, no matter what I do.”

“Well, that’s why people come here, no?” Lewis met Flynn’s gaze, his deep brown eyes fixating with a comforting, but not pitying, gaze. “Even if they don’t admit it to themselves. Everyone wants to take a chance and break free from whatever cage they were living in before, even if that means having to struggle for a while before finding their footing. Deep down, everyone knows the discomfort is part of the journey to some level. You just gotta let it happen. Then you’ll get used to it—of being in the crowd.” 

Lewis had one year over him, he remembered, while he was just a mere freshman barely a month into fall quarter. He hoped he didn’t have to wait a whole year for that comfort to settle.   

“I hope I get used to it fast.”

The intercom dinged, and the boys looked up to see their stop pull into view, the darkness of the underground tunnels giving way to a bustling commercial district. Their study session at Lewis’s favorite diner was set to go.

“Enough wallowing,” Lewis teased. “Let’s get you some food to cheer you up.”

* * *  

The two made their way through the park, passing by a handful of joggers. As the two caught up over classes and dorm living, not even the freezing temperature of the early morning could penetrate their mood.

“He’s only said ten words to you?” Flynn asked, brows furrowed. 

“More or less. And you know I’m not really shy when it comes to talking with strangers.” 

Flynn looked down at the paper sleeve in his hand, the crumbs inside being all that remained as evidence of the croissant that he picked up before meeting with Lewis. “Roommates are weird.” 

“Didn’t yours move out like a week into the quarter? And now you got the whole room to yourself.”

“Yeah, lucky me,” Flynn said. “Feels kind of lonely sometimes, though.”

“Is that so? Guess I’ll have to visit you sometime.” 

Flynn’s mind stirred on that while the two continued walking. The neighborhood’s clustered hub of crowded streets and stores opened up to them as they reached the park’s end; the morning’s traffic, too, greeted them as they came to a crosswalk. Immersed in his thoughts, Flynn wasn’t ready for the sudden arm jutted in front of him, the silent thud of his stomach making contact with Lewis’s arm like a failed attempt to get past a barricade. He looked up to see the crosswalk light still glowing red.

 “Careful,” Lewis chided. The light turned white just after, and his friend surprised him once more by gently grabbing his arm, leading him through the sizeable crowd coming from the other end of the crosswalk.

It was barely a grip, really. And yet it struck Flynn, now, how much Lewis liked to lead. It was nice, being pulled to do one thing or another by someone who wanted to spend time with you for some reason. To the park, to brunch, to places and things you’ve always wanted to do with someone.

Flynn let Lewis lead him across the blocks, until they reached the narrow entrance of an alleyway. A faded taupe canopy and a chalkboard easel with the day’s lunch special marked a lone storefront.  

Lewis took a sweeping look inside through the somewhat grubby glass windows. “Oh good! We got here before the usual crowd.”

As if summoned, a sizeable group of other college-aged looking students turned into the alleyway as well, their combined chatter commanding the street’s attention. “Just barely though,” he corrected. “C’mon Flynn, let’s head in.”

* * *

“What do you think? Nice, right? I come here all the time.” 

“I see why.” The morning’s beamed through their window, bathing them in a much welcomed warmth.

I’d like to come back here sometime. With you.

They went to work, as Lewis explained that the orders here can take a while to come out of the kitchen. The narrow table that they were seated at could barely fit one person’s belongings, let alone two’s. Flynn apologized when the ridge of his laptop bumped into Lewis’s sketchbook, the jutting turning a straight line his friend was drawing into something slightly crooked.

“Don’t be sorry.” Lewis went to correct the line without worry. Softly, he added, “Also, you apologize too much.”

I know.  

But he held those words in. “What are you working on, Lewis?”

“Mm, my project for art class. Just started it yesterday.” To go with the abrupt topic change was a grace given; it was a reprieve from talking about Flynn’s shyness, how he always receded into himself and reacted with apologies over irrelevant slights. Flynn liked how Lewis never let the conversation rise to a level of lingering uneasiness, as they always did with everyone else. 

“It’s for my final project, actually,” he continued. “Our professor is having the class set up our own art show.”

“Who’s coming?” Flynn asked. 

“Uh, you. If you want. Out of all my friends, I think you’d appreciate it the most, anyway.” 

“Ah.”  

Just ask.

He took a gulp. The feeling that always found itself in his gut, the one that told him to always linger behind the line, to always pull back, vanished. “W-when’s the date?” 

Lewis huffed. An expression Flynn couldn’t read, which in itself would usually make him nervous, but the proud-looking smile that followed abated his worry. Lewis was good at that. 

“Alright boys, got your orders right here,” the waitress interjected. Her hands balanced two different breakfast plates, one savory and one incredibly sweet. The boys took their meals with an earnest thanks, eager to dig in and discuss the day of the art show. 

III. STATIC

Maybe he was overthinking things again.

Everyone in his life said he did that too much. Or maybe he wasn’t, and what few good things that came about him this quarter here really were fabricated in the end. Because if they weren’t, Lewis wouldn’t have been responding to his messages the way that he has for the last two weeks. Sorry, can’t make it, been really busy, I’ll just let you know. . .

The onset of the other students in the lecture hall making haste to leave their row seats was barely enough to phase Flynn out of his jumbled twist of worries. Only when a line of students started forming to his right did he pack up and leave with the rest of them.  

The brisk salute of November’s afternoon helped him air out the pressure building up inside. He noticed how the sun had already begun to set though, while the clock just barely clocked past four. 

Maybe that was why people in this city were so reclusive. Everyone was always desperately making their way home to avoid the cold, and the rain, and the dark. All of it omnipresent until the summer. Although he hadn’t been around long enough to experience that season yet, he’s been told by the locals that those three months make the rest of the year worth it.  

Sometimes he wonders if he’ll make it to those months. 

He strode past Hamilton Library on his way back to the dorms, the imposing building shadowing him. Through the windows, he could see that all of the study tables were occupied.

They met there, once. He remembered that day so vividly.

The rest of the night in the dorms didn’t fare much better. Eating alone in the dining hall, to his surprise, had become a non-issue since the quarter started. It didn’t take him long to realize that he was one among many here, drifters too busy with class or work or some other project of their own to have the capacity to care about who was noticing their lonesomeness. 

He kept eyeing his phone though, kneeling and praying in the hollow of his mind for that text notification to pop down from the top. Any word from Lewis whatsoever that he wanted to hang out again. 

His bedtime routine brought him much of the same listlessness, a lifeless pantomime of dressing down and settling in while his phone, always in eyesight, remained an unlit screen.  

The static of his brain grew louder and louder, until eventually it was enough to subsume even his waking thoughts, pulling him into his most unsatisfying sleep in recent memory. 

His phone lay at the edge of bed, Flynn unwilling to give up just yet right up into the moment he got rest. But sleep came eventually. His errant, twitching hand pushed his phone off to fall against the cold linoleum of the dorm floor as he turned over to the other side of his bed.  

A pity then, that he wasn’t able to see it light up, the first of Lewis’s apologetic texts previewing itself on his lock screen.  

IV. THE DAY HE SAID YES

The stranger forgot his textbooks again. 

It had been several weeks of this back-and-forth dance, these fleeting moments of eye contact and low head nods. And now, Flynn could add on the stranger’s quiet goodbyes as he would leave the table. Most students knew Hamilton to be the best place on campus for studying, which naturally made it the most crowded as everyone flocked during the day to get the best tables where they could.        

“Hey, can I sit here?” 

That’s where it started. Around lunch time on a Wednesday, a weekday where Flynn miraculously only had one seminar late in the evening, which meant he could scurry over in the morning to the corner table on the fourth floor. It had the best view, in his opinion, and it hadn’t failed yet in putting him in the right headspace for getting things done. Getting a seat early in the day meant that his mind could ease into the gradual trickle of people coming in to fill the rest of the study area around him. And of course, no one ever tried to breach the unspoken rule of one person or friend group getting the table to themselves—until now.          

“Uh. Y-yeah, sure.” 

Ugh.

“Thanks man.” The stranger immediately set about getting his laptop propped up and his notebooks on the table while Flynn shuffled his papers together to make room for him. “I’m Lewis, by the way.”

Lewis. Flynn rolled that name over in his mind, putting it to the face of the guy in front of him. His stare took him from Lewis’s parted hair to his thick dark eyebrows to his mouth, where Flynn’s eyes lingered. Lewis was chewing on something, he noticed.           

“Want some?” he whispered, thrusting out a packet of gum in front of him.

Flynn paused, before taking a stick of it. His study buddy for the day smiled

Several weeks had passed since that first meeting, and their meetups were too frequent for Flynn to not suspect that this guy was trying to see him intentionally. Always on Wednesdays, around the same time, he could count on Lewis to survey the fourth floor, find no open tables, wave over to Flynn, and plop himself down. They rarely talked. Flynn chalked it up to Lewis being a busy person; for himself, he already knew it was because he was always the kind to hesitate. To never speak up, to leave the room early when no one’s looking.

Lewis had left his course books last week, and was endlessly relieved when he came up to the table today to see them by Flynn’s side.

“I can’t thank you enough man.” 

Yeah, they were heavy. “No problem.” 

He learned little about Lewis during those early moments, beyond some basics: Lewis was an early admit into the public health program, and he loved to sketch in his free time, which Flynn would catch peeks of from time to time.            

And he was apparently a true creature of habit, as he left his books once more just now in a hurried attempt to get to his next class. Flynn barely looked up when Lewis waved goodbye, and his study partner was already racing down the exit stairwell when Flynn noticed those textbooks once again laying abandoned on the table.

He looked out the window, at the flurry of students already taking flight to their next class. The rain had just begun to set in, and Flynn could already get a sense for how frigid the rest of the day was going to be as he traveled to his seminar later that day. But the time to leave was now.  

“Lewis! Lewis, wait!” The glass doors of the entrance parted as Flynn sprinted out to catch up, his target still within distance. Lewis turned around at the second call of his name. 

“You forgot these,” Flynn said, in between ragged attempts to catch his breath.  

Lewis took them, eyes wide. “Again?”

“Yes. Again.”

The rain drizzled around them, painting the surrounding campus buildings in a slight gray glow. 

“We’ve barely said anything to each other and you’re bursting out of buildings to catch up to me.” It was a matter-of-fact statement, if just a little bit teasing. 

Flynn immediately felt his face flush. “I-I didn’t watch to hold onto your books again. They were kinda heavy, y’know. . .”

Lewis smirked. “I’ll make it up to you. See you next Wednesday.” 

* * *

The next time Flynn saw his study partner come up to him, he had two cups of coffee in hand. He gave Flynn a head nod before passing a cup over the table.  

“I can’t stay today, unfortunately,” Lewis said. “But I wanted to give you something while I was passing by.”  

Flynn took a sip, the bitterness immediately warming him up. He only got a second taste in before he noticed Lewis eying the cup, all while making a twirling notion with his finger.

Flynn turned the cup over. A number, he noticed, written on the side in marker. He looked up at Lewis. 

“Mine. Text me later, okay?”

If Flynn knew anything about himself, a lone little freshman just starting his first quarter, it was that he was always one to say no to things. Especially to strangers.  

This time, though? He said yes.

V. BE SEEING YOU

The cold was harshest in the late nights, when the temperature dipped at its lowest. It was a lesson Flynn learned on his walks back alone from the study center, his body shivering all over from wearing an ill-conceived outfit for the evening’s weather. And tonight was especially bad, as the rain started to whip up throughout the city around the time he had gone to bed earlier.

But none of it mattered, even when the rainfall wildly sprayed over him as he hurried out of the stairwell exit. What mattered was that Lewis was there, his hand stretched high in the air in a wave.

* * * 

The two walked back to his room, careful not to make too much noise as Lewis shrugged off his belongings onto the floor. Flynn kept his eyes averted, hesitantly, as Lewis pulled his soaked hoodie off. A perfectly dry gold-and-black striped t-shirt adorned him underneath his covering.

“You still have the whole room to yourself,” Lewis said in amazement. Flynn could sense some jealousy emanating from him.

“Yup. Pretty lucky, I guess.” 

“No kidding. I’m surprised you were awake to answer my texts, by the way.” 

“Hmm? Oh.” Flynn’s mind turned back to those moments just before he caught himself all but sprinting for the stairwell exit at the end of his floor. “I didn’t. I woke up to use the bathroom and saw your texts.” 

“Oh really?” Lewis gave Flynn a shy grin. “Call it fate then.”  

Fate. Yes, exactly. 

“Because,” Lewis continued, pulling out a tucked plastic bag from the main pouch of his backpack, “I got us some food. And that would really suck if the ice cream melted.”

Flynn doubted it would have actually melted if Lewis waited outside longer, given the temperature. But the return of his only friend in his life was more than enough to let this jib go unspoken.

They spent the rest of the hour digging into the night Lewis planned. Lewis had picked up some shawarma on the way over, but Flynn wasn’t feeling hungry, who passed it back, keeping only the side carton of fries. 

“You have a stomach big enough to finish two anyway,” he chided. It was true, he could say. The first time they went out, Lewis eyed the remaining half of Flynn’s unfinished breakfast plate, and devoured it gladly as soon as it was offered. Flynn made it a habit then and there to give Lewis whatever he wanted.

Flynn took to the dessert instead, some matcha flavored mochi with an ice cream filling. Lewis handed him the remaining napkins from his shawarma order. The powder makes them messy, he warned.  

Only seconds in silence passed before the both of them wanted to clear up some things.

“Hey,” Lewis began. “So I’m really sorry about how MIA I’ve been recently. My uh, my art proj—here, let me just show you first.”

Lewis stretched to get a grip on his backpack. He pulled out his sketchbook, flipping to somewhere in the middle pages.

“Exclusive behind-the-scenes access, just for you,” Lewis said, gesturing with his hand for Flynn to scoot closer. 

It was sketches of a man, Flynn saw, across a spat of different scenes. A row of eight or so illustrations, each sequestered into their individual squares.

“It’s really not much, especially without the final painting I’m going to be layering over it.”

“Is this something you want to explain now, or wait until the day of the show?” Flynn asked, dumbly. He always loved Lewis’s art when it was shown to him, but he never considered himself to have much of an eye or understanding for it. He’s since made a habit of clinging to his friend’s subsequent descriptions.

“Heh. I can only say a bit, I guess. It’s moments from my father’s life.” 

Flynn could see it much more clearly now, with that hint given to him. The man in the scenes looked like he was caught in the middle of all kinds of different moments throughout: one looked like him readying some contraption atop a boat, while another showed a wedding, bride and groom under an intricately crafted arch. Another showed his father casually leaning back against the side of his car door. He had a cheeky grin on his face—one Flynn recognized with growing familiarity. Like father, like son.  

“You’ve put a lot of effort into this class this quarter,” Flynn observed, eyes still tracing the moments across the wood pulp paper. “Are you sure you’re not an art major?”

“Give it some time. I might be.”

That was surprising. Flynn remembered an earlier conversation, back when they were still fielding those awkward questions people asked to get to know a new friend. Well, they were always awkward for him, anyway.

“Wasn’t your dad really happy you got direct admission into the public health program?”  

“Exactly, Flynn.” Lewis flipped his sketchbook again, back until the front cover was in place once more. “Gotta have at least something to show for myself once I shatter him with the news.”

Flynn wasn’t really sure what to say to that. Lewis never let himself open up to be vulnerable around him. In this rare moment that fell upon them then, all silent barring the sound of the downpour outside his window, Flynn started to bear something like regret. Regret, maybe, for this being the first time his best friend felt comfortable enough to open up a locked door like this between them.

“I’m sure he’ll take it fine,” he advised, warily. It wasn’t enough, and he knew it, so he added, “Or, at least better than you’d expect.” 

Lewis’s nonresponse goaded him to say more. “That’s what you taught me, anyway . . . expect better for yourself.” Flynn gave a playful nudge to his friend’s shoulder, as if it was a defibrillator ready to bring back the friend he knew.

Flynn saw Lewis shift in his posture, the tension present in his shoulders loosening and taking its leave as soon as it came. 

Lewis exhaled. “You’re . . . right. You’re right, of course you are.”  

Flynn smiled to himself. But then another thought came into his head, one he knew he had to speak to before Lewis had to leave for the night.

“Hey, Lewis. I just wanted to say that these past few weeks I got, um, really sad about not seeing you. But I see now I should have figured that when you said you were busy, you really did mean you were busy. And much more than you’ve ever been before, with such an important project coming up.”

He took a breath. “So I’m sorry for being clingy, I guess. I’m not really good at being alone, I think. But I also know you need to work really hard on finishing this project that means a lot to you. So I guess I just wanted to say, that, y’know. . .it’s okay. Take all the time you need until finals are over.”

Lewis met his eyes. “. . .Oh, Flynn.”

His friend scooted closer, so close until their knees were touching.  And in that moment of openness, that was all that needed to be said and done.

After that, Flynn couldn’t remember exactly what time Lewis finally left his dorm to go back for the night. What he did remember though was the feeling of his friend’s embrace as he was seized in a tight hug, the smell of rain ingrained in Lewis’s damp hoodie rising towards him.

And he remembered Lewis’s lips, the closeness of it almost suffocating. “If you need anything, just call me,” Lewis said. “Otherwise, I’ll see you at the show, yeah?”

The proximity ignited an inferno inside him, but he relented from going for what he wanted to do further, however agonizing. Tonight they accomplished something too fragile to be broken by a rash, silly impulse.

“Yeah.” He nodded, forcefully, as if their night together didn’t already make his commitment clear. “Yeah, definitely.”

“Perfect. Be seeing you.” Flynn watched as Lewis made his way down the hallway of the dorm floor before reaching the stairwell exit. He waved, which Flynn reciprocated, and then he was gone.

“You too,” Flynn murmured back. It was a promise.

VI. REDS AND GOLDS

The rest of the weeks passed by strangely fast, and blissfully at that. Thanksgiving break was about as awkward as he expected it to be, his parents fielding questions Flynn could only offer half-truths for.

“Have you made a lot of friends, anak?” his mom asked. Neither her nor his dad had gone to college themselves, and they had a lot to inquire about.

“Hm? Uh, yeah. I want to make more, but the year’s just started, so. . .”

And the one friend I did make is more than enough for me. So it’s okay, really.

“Are your classes hard?” Frances asked, pressing a bit of rice with the back end of her fork into the spoon she held in her other hand.

Flynn envied his little sister a bit. For not knowing. “One of my engineering classes has been, yeah.” I thought I was gonna flunk the class because I got a 60 on the midterm. “But I brought it back.”

“Mmm, I figured as much. You always bring it back. Also, can you help me with my homework later?” He knew she always believed in him, even if she would deny it alright if he asked her.

“Of course.”

After dinner and France’s homework session, Flynn realized he was smiling again. What a weird feeling, to have missed something he was desperate to get away from just a couple of months ago.

* * *

Finals week came crashing over him like a wave, as it did all students. He felt fortunate to have gotten all his exams cloistered around each other, two of them during the end of dead week, and the remaining one . . . he realized was in the afternoon, on the same day of Lewis’s art final. If he took the full allotted time for his exam, he would have about ten minutes to spare to sprint towards the campus courtyard where the art building was.

He texted Lewis about the logistics shortly before the exam began. “See you soon,” he sent.

The clock struck three. “Turn your pages over to the front and begin,” his professor said. “And best of luck!”

* * *

“Hey!” Flynn looked up to see Lewis waving vigorously, trying to pull his attention towards him like they weren’t the only two people around this part of the quad.

“Hi Lewis! Before you ask, it went well—” he was promptly cut off as Lewis grabbed him into a hug. The smell of rainwater was gone, but the memory of the last time they held each other like this shored up again at the forefront his mind, as if it happened last night.

“Glad to hear it,” Lewis said, beaming. “Now c’mon, it’s about to start in a minute.”

Lewis looked over at the art building, a clearly aging structure still renowned around campus for its beautiful, daunting architecture. He grabbed Flynn’s hand and led him in a frenzy, the two of them laughing like their lives depended on getting inside in mere seconds, as if the doors were about to shut and lock forever if they didn’t sprint.

* * * 

It made him feel like nothing had ever made him feel before.

And maybe that was because he knew the artist so personally, but still.

Lewis heavily reworked the project Flynn saw that night, several weeks ago. He saw the origins, at least. They were still separate scenes of his father across different points of his life. But there were all fashioned into the shape of a larger outline, a red and gold splattering of paint. And that outline itself was in the shape of a man, twisting and turning—or perhaps he was dancing, the ends of his arms and legs reaching across the far edges of the canvas.

“That was originally the layer I was talking about,” Lewis said. “I talked to my dad since we last met to get more ideas for this piece.”

He continued while Flynn stared at the work in quiet awe. “It’s funny, when I started this project I didn’t have any real direction for this. All I knew is that I wanted to do something about my dad, to show him I was serious about pursuing something like this. So I thought of all the different things he’s told me about his own life. All the fragments of stories he told me, from when he was a kid growing up in the province to now, raising me here in the US.”

“When you meet people, they never tell you their story from point A to point Z, you know? They only give you what they feel comfortable giving you. But when you get to know them, you start getting the full picture, however fragmented it was before. But of course, he isn’t a stranger to me.”

Lewis turned to Flynn, who felt his gaze now on him and returned the same. “Even with people close to you, it feels like it would take a lifetime to actually learn who they are, and what they need, and where they want to go.”

“It’s worth trying though.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Lewis! Over here!” A pair of girls called out from the other end of the gallery floor. Flynn immediately understood them to be art students, and probably Lewis’s classmates, if only because they dressed so similarly to him.

“Oh hey!” Lewis gave Flynn a look. “Classmates. Wanna say hi?”

Flynn did, actually, which surprised him. He always figured he wouldn’t want to share Lewis, when the time came to inevitably meet his other friends. But it was okay, and the lightness of experiencing that feeling sent relief flooding throughout his body.

They welcomed the girls into their little group, chatting away about the works on display all around them, these emblems of everyone’s passions.

VII. HERE WE SLEEP  

It’s three in the morning.

After grappling around for his phone, Flynn found it under his pillow. 3:17 a.m, it read. Not too far off then.

But there was something much more pressing than just what time it was, and he knew it immediately. Felt it. He nudged his head to his side, cautiously, and saw Lewis lying down next to him, completely passed out. They were in the confines of his small dorm bed that could barely fit himself without needing to be mindful of falling off.

He racked together what happened last night. It was Friday, the day before they both left for winter break. They had spent the last few days of finals week together, enjoying the premature time off while the other poor students weren’t so blessed to have early exams and project deadlines.

And last night, what happened while they were out on town. . .

Did they?

No, they didn’t. But he remembered how drunk they got at Lynn’s pregame. Lynn, one of the classmates Flynn had met during the art show. She was bubbly and genial, and as everyone was talking about their break plans she moaned about how desperate she was to party like “real" college students.

It was his first time drinking. Lewis teased him as he downed his first shot, and his second, and then a third. They went out a while after, to the house party of some other person in Lynn’s circle. And from what Flynn remembered, he and Lewis stumbled out of there a little early, after the touchiness of the crowd and the heat of the room got a little too overwhelming for him.

They went somewhere for food. Thai? Pizza? He can’t pin down that specific part. But there was the memory of the walk back, where he felt the air of midnight whisking past them both, as his eyes squinted against the beacon of the street lamps glimmering against the starless sky. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders, bursting into chronic fits of laughter as they hobbled over to the far end of the train station.

And then they were here. It might be a dream, given that he’s had dreams just like this before, the room always murky and ambiguous as they shared breaths together.

Lewis stirred. Flynn watched with dread as he kept shifting, slightly, until he settled.

“Flynn.”

Shit. He was just about ready to spring up from the bed, apologize in shame, and take his leave on the floor with a spare bedsheet and pillow from his closet when Lewis went on. “What ti—what time is it?”

Ah. “It’s three.” His voice came raspy from the howls and the cheers and the endless laughter of last night.

“I gotta get on the train heading home by nine. So I can stay until seven, I think. Shouldn’t take me too long to pack. Can you set an alarm on your phone?”

Stay. He wanted to stay. Flynn opened up his alarm app and set the requested time without a word.

“Thanks man. Hey, come closer,” Lewis said, a soft command that put Flynn in a trance. Yes, of course.  

He shuffled himself so he was fully within Lewis’s personal space. The tips of their noses were just a hair’s breadth away from touching. Lewis had kept his eyes closed, until he opened them just now, the umber hue of his irises peeking up. He stretched an arm out, gripping at Flynn’s back and pulling him in. The color in Flynn’s cheeks quickly rose, before settling.

“Night, Flynn. Again. Because I’m sure I said it when we first crashed.”

“Oh yeah? Are you really sure?” Flynn asked, a tease laced in. “I remember you almost ready to drop dead after we left that house.”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m a gentleman.”

As if to prove his warmth, Lewis inched himself further up the bed, until Flynn’s face was level with his chest. Shyly, Flynn took refuge in the blossoming heat of his head laid against it. Lewis pressed a kiss to the top of Flynn’s dome, nose tingling against the short, brittle dark hair.

“Good night. For the second time, if I really didn’t say it before.”

“. . .Good night, Lewis.”

END