Social Skills (2 page)

A quick scan of the day's offerings
led him to the line for chicken parmesan. Rebecca chose the salad station, and
her long blond ponytail swung its way back to their table before he'd even
received a plate. Restless, Connor drummed his fingers against a plastic tray
and considered jumping ship. Maybe a simpler meal, like a bowl of cereal, was
in order.

Someone bumped into him as the line
started moving again. “Sorry,” a voice above him said.

He shifted his gaze to the speaker
and quickly looked away after a brief nod. Though he’d never gotten a name, he
recalled the face from his anthropology class.
Black curly hair, full lips, warm chestnut
eyes
.

In his peripheral vision, he caught
the guy stretching and was momentarily lost in the lean but sharply defined
muscles along his tall frame. Was he an athlete? Either that, or he just took
really good care of his body. Prone to people-watching, Connor kept his eyes
lowered but intensely focused.

“Son?” A warm plate of chicken parmesan,
the oil bubbling away from the melted cheese, shook in front of his face.

He mumbled an, “Oh, sorry,” even if no
one with human ears could’ve heard it. Dish in hand, he stepped away from his
classmate, who continued to stare ahead without a second glance in his direction.

It was for the best. If the guy
had
tried to talk to him, he was pretty
sure he’d have turned into a stammering idiot. That was just how things went
for him.

When he reached Rebecca’s table, the
two preppy girls had left, and he now clearly stood out from the group as the
only one wearing an undeniably new button-up shirt and crisp khakis. It was probably
time to start shopping at a local thrift store, so he’d blend in a little
better with his crowd.

If this was to be his crowd.

He made certain his shirt was at
least untucked and set his tray down, foolishly pleased to see his violin right
where he’d left it, its gray case looking slightly dirty alongside Rebecca’s
earthy brown one.

“So, a fresh soul ripe for the
picking.” The brunette across from him leaned forward, dragging the sleeves of
her coarse knit tunic across the table.

Blushing, Connor took his seat. By
the time he realized he should have said something in response, it was too
late, and he floundered with his fork while opting for a shrug.

“Connor’s already in the first
violin section. I bet if he wanted to, he could beat out the Scandinavian Devil
in a few years,” Rebecca chimed in for him.

“You and your hatred of tall, thin,
very white men. Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” responded the taller
of the t-shirted males, running a thumb over his own pale cheek.

Rebecca rolled her eyes and the
banter continued, right over Connor’s head. He chewed and swallowed methodically,
nodding and smiling when he felt it appropriate, and silently wishing he were a
more interesting person so he could quit being a shadow on the sidelines of his
own life.

***

Laptops unfolded, instant-messaging
windows flew open, and classmates began chatting all around Connor. They didn’t
even stop when his anthropology professor began her lecture.

Connor didn’t join in. He never
joined in. Instead, he opted for a plain spiral bound notebook where he
furiously scribbled notes if things interested or confused him, and doodled in
the margins when he already knew the material. Although today, he was allowing his
thoughts to wander a little. Wander all the way to the side of the room, where
he could observe one particular classmate from a safe distance.

It was actually pretty easy to
stare, because the guy was looking up, as if he could see the sky through the
ceiling tiles of the small room in New Cabell Hall. With practiced peripheral
vision and the cover of bangs, Connor watched him lean against the window,
where he always sat. A beam of sunlight hit his hair.

Dark brown…not black.

Connor’s visual target yawned and shifted
down in his seat. His lids began to droop, his blinks became longer and more
frequent, and then his eyes shut completely, showing no signs of opening any
time soon. His lips parted as he slept.

Connor smiled to himself. Now he
could
really
stare.

A slight snore and resulting giggles
eventually startled the guy from his slumber. He looked around sheepishly and
wiped his mouth clean of the tiny bit of spittle that had gathered in the
corner.

“Connor, could you stay and talk
with me for a minute?”

Turning abruptly, Connor faced his
professor, embarrassed he’d been distracted enough to miss the last few minutes
of class. But as the rest of the students filtered out she perched on the end
of her desk, smiling warmly enough to quell any fear that he was about to be
chewed out for his inattentiveness. After all, it wasn’t like he had fallen
asleep.

“You’re doing really top notch work.”
Professor Abrahms gestured to the written assignment on his desk, which bore an
“A” as well as “excellent” in red ink across the top. “You have wonderful
insights into the reading material, and your theories are quite well reasoned.”

Connor blinked. Should he thank her
for her contribution as his teacher, or keep quiet to avoid sounding like a
brown-noser?

He chose quiet. Or ended up with it by
default, anyway.

“I wanted to ask you whether you have
any interest in tutoring.”

“Oh…” He took several seconds to
process what she was asking. “Why, does someone need help?”

Professor Abrahms smiled again, but
it seemed less than genuine this time. “The athletic department has asked me to
recommend someone they can hire as a tutor. There are a few students on the football
team who could use help in this course, and unfortunately the Anthropology 101
tutors are too swamped this semester to cover the specific reading material.”

He nodded slowly. He’d worked with
little kids before, volunteering as a reading coach for elementary students
during summer school. But he’d never considered working with someone his own
age, mainly because he assumed his social ineptitudes would get in the way. And
working with
athletes
, cool and confident and completely unlike him in
every way, seemed like an even more disastrous idea.

“It’s ten dollars an hour, and for
now they’re only looking for a commitment of about two hours a week, but if it
works out well they could hire you for other subjects as well.”

He couldn’t stop nodding, mostly because
he was using the time to think of a polite way to suggest she find someone
else.

“I usually don’t recommend first years,
but in your case, you showed me such maturity in your work over the summer…I
really think you could be of assistance.”

A sinking feeling in his stomach
told him he was already stuck, and over his head at that, unless he wanted to prove
to himself he really was a coward—and worse, disappoint Professor
Abrahms. Would she hold it against him for the rest of the semester? He hated
how much he cared what she—or anyone—thought of him, but the idea
that her friendly eyes might one day hold him in contempt made his insides
squirm.

Dazed, he nodded yet again. “Yeah,
okay.”

Professor Abrahms beamed. “Great. I’ll
call them and let them know you’re interested. They’d like you to start
tomorrow, if possible. Here’s the contact info.”

He took the offered paper and
mumbled his thanks, praying he hadn’t just made the worst mistake of his life.

***

For the first fifteen minutes of his
maiden tutoring session, no one showed up. Connor sat in a small, barren room
with a rectangular table and four burgundy-cushioned chairs. On one of the bare
walls, a large clock worked away audibly.

He would have been perfectly content
for the next forty-five minutes to have gone by the same way, since he was
making decent progress on his assigned reading, but a quiet knock at the door meant
that would not be the case.

Curly brown hair and chestnut eyes
greeted him. “Hey, you’re the tutor? Cool, dude. I’m Jared.”

Jared. Finally, a name to the face.

Jared stuck out his hand. “Michael’s
on his way in. Kinda had to drag his ass. He needs this class for his major, in
case you’re wondering why you got hired. Though why anyone would major in
anthro is beyond me.”

Connor was already shaking the
offered hand by the time Jared flashed him a contrite look. “Sorry. Maybe you
were planning on it?”

“Uh…” Connor’s doomed attempt to
come up with a response was cut short by the arrival of another classmate, this
one a little taller than Jared and much bulkier.

The new arrival—Michael—planted
himself in a chair without a greeting. “All right, dude, let’s see if you can
help me figure this shit out. Because right now, it all seems like a waste of
my time.”

The blood drained from Connor’s face,
but a furious blush quickly replaced the pallor when Jared smirked at him as if
they shared some sort of inside joke.

Suddenly aware he hadn’t said a word
since Jared and Michael had arrived, Connor sat down heavily and grabbed the
book in front of him. He couldn’t think of any pleasantries to utter that
wouldn’t sound completely useless, so he launched right into the text, where he
felt safe, carefully explaining the main points from their assigned reading.

Every so often he tentatively made
eye contact with his tutees, and was greeted with a bored expression from
Michael and a tired one from Jared. He made sure to stop after each page to
check if there was anything they didn’t understand or to see if they had any
questions, and each time they both answered in the negative.

Of course, when he got to the end of
the chapter and asked for either one to reiterate the main ideas, he received
blank stares.

Michael finally shook his head. “I
gotta be honest with you, man. I don’t know why I picked this major. I think it’s
’cause everyone was saying it was easy, and it wouldn’t be too much extra
stress on me since our schedule is so rough. But this shit ain’t easy. I mean,
not if you’re really trying to learn it. I guess I could just coast on through
and buy papers off people and shit, but what’s the point of even getting a
degree then?”

When Connor didn’t respond, because,
as usual, he found himself at a loss for words, Michael continued. “Take it
from me, dude. If you’re not into this, pick something else.”

That last comment was directed at
Jared, who gave a little shrug. “Yeah, I haven’t really decided what I’m gonna
major in yet.”

“Huh. Well you better think of
something, ’cause the way you play, you’d never make it pro,” Michael jeered,
and Connor was surprised when Jared just scoffed.

“Yeah, well, at least I have my
youth. You’re getting pretty old there, fifth-year.”

“I’ll show you old.” Michael
retaliated with a swift jab to Jared’s ribs.

Only ten minutes of their session
remained—which meant Connor should be doing something to rein them in and
return them to the tenets of Boasian cultural anthropology. Unfortunately,
telling two large athletes to stop their bickering and get back to work was
just not within his abilities.

He waited until the two had had their
fill of fake-fighting before hesitantly glancing back at his book.

“W-would…would you like to go over
the prompt for the next writing assignment?”

Michael sighed, making no effort to
hide his displeasure, but Jared regarded him with a raised brow and a grin. “Yeah,
sure, Connor. You’re the boss.”

Chapter Two

Connor
took his normal walk to the athletic hall in the hazy light of dusk, frowning
at the pumpkins and ghosts that had suddenly appeared in dorm room windows. October
was sure to be filled with even more lively parties he wouldn’t be invited to…not
that he would know what to do if he actually were invited anywhere. He kicked a
pebble toward the mocking grin of a jack-o-lantern, then crossed the street to
avoid an oncoming group of people.

Jared
arrived for tutoring a few minutes after him, clutching at bare arms that stuck
out from his orange UVA t-shirt.

“It’s
fucking
cold
already. Couldn’t we have had a few more days of the nice weather? People
say it’s great we get all the seasons, but I still say Virginia sucks. Most of
the time, it’s either too hot or too cold. Or raining.”

Connor
grinned, but didn’t say anything. Michael was usually there to spare him from
the small-talk.

“So,
I got some bad news.” Jared plopped down in a chair. “Michael withdrew from the
class. He talked to his advisor and decided it’d be better to take it next
semester, or maybe over the summer. I dunno. I think he just wants to put it
off as long as possible.”

Connor
nodded slowly, wondering if his tutoring days had come to an end. Michael was a
defensive lineman, and one of the team’s star players. He
had
to keep his grades up. But Jared was only a first-year, and he
wasn’t as important to the team yet. Besides, he wasn’t likely to destroy his
GPA with all the general education requirements in his course load. So he’d probably
withdraw from the class now, too.

“You
frown when you think.” Jared broke into his speculation. “And you think a lot.”

Connor’s
pulse quickened, his abrasive inner voice immediately taking center stage, reminding
him he wasn’t even close to normal— and that everyone around him could
see it. He stared down at his textbooks and willed the feeling to pass,
unsuccessfully.

“I’m
not dropping the course, if that’s what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t want to put
you out of a job.”

Despite
efforts to continue studying the fake wood grain of the table in front of him,
Connor found his eyes drifting up toward Jared’s. He fully expected to see
derision or mocking.

Instead,
Jared met his gaze with a gentle smile. “So, you gonna tell me about the
chapter?”

“R-right,
right,” Connor stammered. He flipped open his book and silently cursed the way
his fingers trembled against the pages. In a last ditch attempt to steady
himself, he drew in a deep breath, careful to keep his chest from expanding and
making his discomfort any more apparent.

It
was a wasted effort. The breath was trapped in his lungs when Jared stood and
walked around the table to grab the seat next to him.

“You
don’t have to be so nervous around me, you know. I don’t bite.”

Really?
In
the instant before his anxiety took over, Connor had a moment to feel annoyed. It
wasn’t like it was a
choice
. His skin began to tingle, first with
warmth and then with cold, rising and ebbing in waves along his arms. His heart
pounded, his palms grew clammy, and the constricting muscles in his throat
blocked off any hope of even excusing himself from the situation.

Jared
regarded him quietly, mouth tilted in a half-smirk. After a few seconds he slid
his hand over to the textbook Connor was mechanically creasing open with his
thumb.

“All
right, so I read the last chapter, but I got a little confused when they were
talking about the British structural-functionalism approach,” Jared said, his
low voice gentler than Connor could ever remember.

“Oh,
y-yeah.” Connor swallowed gratefully, his mind kicking back in now that it had
something solid to hang on to. “No problem. We can go over that.”

The
rest of the session went by without any off-topic conversation, but Connor
still couldn’t bring himself to feel at ease. Perhaps it had to do with Jared’s
proximity, or perhaps it was because Jared was acting differently without Michael
around. He seemed more genuinely interested, asking questions and trying to
formulate his own—albeit less than stellar—conclusions.

Any semblance
of calm was shattered when Jared stood at the end of the hour, stretching and
causing his t-shirt to ride up over his toned stomach. His hand came down and
settled on Connor’s shoulder.

“See
ya in class, bro.” Jared’s fingers pressed into a light squeeze before he
took off.

Bro?
Actual physical contact and now he
was a
bro?
With a flash of clarity, Connor recognized that nervous
feeling in the pit of his stomach. That jittery, ticklish feeling that had the
potential to turn into something different—and something far worse. Something
that often made male friendships a particular challenge for him.

He
frowned at his train of thought. Friendship? With Jared? A highly unlikely
scenario. And since he did have to work with him twice a week for tutoring, it
probably wasn’t a good idea to make use of him in his fantasies, either.

***

Keeping
Jared out of his fantasies was easier said than done. Especially since Jared
never returned to the spot across the table, but instead spent the next two
sessions right beside him, often leaning in and pointing to the text as they
spoke. Sometimes their fingers brushed, sending little pinpricks of shock and
pleasure rippling through Connor before he was able to rein in his thoughts.

He could
tell Jared had biked over to the athletic hall the following Thursday, because
the earthy scent of his sweat blended perfectly with the clean smell of his
shampoo. Before he could stop himself, Connor inhaled deeply and cracked a
little smile.

“You
can’t tell me that’s not ridiculous,” Jared mused, evidently taking the expression
to mean Connor was listening to his latest—and mostly futile—attempt
to drag them into a casual conversation. He tilted his chair and rocked on the
back legs. “The guy literally drew on his application in
crayon
and
got accepted into the Brown dorms. I mean, it’s like they try to get the
weirdest people they can possibly find to fill that place. Maybe they just want
all the crazies in one location, so they can keep a better eye on them?”

It did
seem a little odd. Connor had no idea
how the applications to get into the desirable housing facility were processed,
but there was no denying the Brown residents tended to possess certain “artsy”
qualities. Rebecca and her friends were no exception.

For
once, he found the power to open his mouth. “Um, m-my friends live there,” he
answered in an effort to remain loyal, though he wasn’t quite sure he could
refer to Rebecca’s entourage as
friends
just yet.

Jared
flopped back on all four legs of his chair. “Those people you eat lunch with? Shit,
I’m sorry. I should have figured they did. I mean, they all kinda have that
weird artsy look…shit, I’m insulting them again…”

A
bubble of laughter welled up in Connor as he watched Jared fidget and trip over
his words in the attempt to backtrack.

“And
shit, you probably want to live there, too, so I should just shut up now. I
didn’t mean to offend you.” Jared thrust a hand into his hair to twist one of
the loose curls into a tight ringlet, and Connor’s laughter finally escaped.

“Um…I’m
not really very good with crayons.”

Jared
relaxed, chuckling as well. His grin faded as the laughter died off, though,
and he turned to Connor with his brows drawn thoughtfully. “You know, your eyes
look more gold than green when you laugh.”

The
air in the room grew heavy as Connor labored to draw in his next breath.
His
eyes?
Jared was looking at his
eyes
?

They
weren’t green, really, because they had small flecks of a murky brownish-yellow
obstructing them. From far away he’d always thought they looked a dull olive
color.

But
Jared had just said they looked
gold
.

Movement
startled Connor as Jared stood. “Well, time’s up. I gotta jet—got a paper
to write for my English class.” A hand dropped down on Connor’s shoulder and
gave it a gentle rub. “See ya later, bro.”

***

Jared
smiled at him the next day in class, a fleeting grin so brief before he took
his customary chair by the wall Connor wasn’t sure it was meant for him. But he
smiled again during the next class, and the one after that, and the one after
that—sometimes even adding a brief nod of recognition to the friendly
expression, making his warm eyes seem even warmer.

Maybe
Jared knew, Connor reasoned—or hoped, actually—that such
uncharacteristic
humanness
from a
jock would put him at ease. Each smile became like a spoonful of medicine, used
to help him get a grip on handling himself like a normal eighteen-year-old while
in Jared’s presence.

Once
or twice, though, alone in the quiet of his dorm room, he thought of Jared and
handled himself in an entirely different way. He never meant for it to happen,
but their time together was so private it was all too easy to gaze at Jared
intently, memorizing bits of his astounding physique for later use.

He worked
his way down, from the unruly curls to the broad shoulders to the firm
midsection, and on the day before Halloween he was just about ready to concentrate
on Jared’s lower half when the sound of clipping heels echoed through the athletic
hall.

She
strode in before Jared, wearing fishnet stockings and a tight black mini-skirt,
along with a glittery purple top. Sparkles covered her face and chest.

“It’s
a
Halloween
party, Jared. You’re supposed to dress up.”

“Maybe
I’ll just wear your butterfly wings, then,” Jared replied, looking like his normal
self in jeans and a hoodie.

“Ha
ha. Very funny.” The girl rolled her eyes and pulled out a chair across from
Connor. She lowered herself into it carefully—a difficult task given the
restrictiveness of her skirt.

“Yeah,
I guess you’re right. Without those, no one would know what you’re supposed
to—” Jared cut himself off at her glare.

Whatever
sense of camaraderie Connor had tricked himself into feeling rapidly
disintegrated. He couldn’t forget now, even for a second, how different he was
from Jared—how much they didn’t belong together as friends, let alone
anything else.

“Connor,
this is Ronnie—Veronica. Ronnie, Connor.” Jared pointed between them.

Veronica
thrust her hand into Connor’s for a shake. “The girlfriend,” she stated.

Jared’s
shoulders twitched and he coughed into his hand. “Listen,” he cut in. “I know I’m
not supposed to bring in friends, but we have this party to go to afterwards
down Barracks Road, and she—we—just thought it’d be easier to go
directly, rather than have to drive all the way back to grounds.”

“Yeah,
that’s fine.” Connor nodded absentmindedly, trying not to stare at Veronica’s
bedazzled top as she leaned forward on her elbows.

“I
promise, I won’t be a bother,” she said sweetly. “Just do your normal brainy
thing. Maybe I’ll even learn a thing or two.”

Veronica
was wrong. She was a bother, both unintentionally, as she continually ran her
hand over Jared’s arm or along his thigh, and intentionally, as she interrupted
their conversation with random irrelevant comments. When Connor began
discussing the tenets of British symbolic anthropology, she decided it
pertinent to inform them that the British had bad teeth. When he moved on to
American cultural materialism, she started talking about the material her faux-leather
boots were made of.

Even
more disconcerting than her asinine chatter was the lack of Jared’s presence
beside him. He couldn’t detect Jared’s scent at all with Veronica’s perfume
blanketing the room, and he longed for those accidental touches they usually
shared. Only the apologetic glances Jared shot his way every time Veronica
opened her mouth helped him retain his cool.

“It’s
almost nine.” Veronica intruded on their discussion for the umpteenth time with
a sigh. “Can’t we just leave now?”

“Ronnie,
no one gets to a party right at nine. You’re being ridiculous.”

Veronica
graced Jared with another glare. “Why do you have to go over the reading right
now, anyway? You only need to understand the stuff for the papers that get
assigned. Why don’t you just pay him to write them for you?”

“Ronnie!”
Jared snapped, his eyes flashing.

Veronica’s
demeanor changed immediately, the haughtiness draining away as she feebly
crossed her arms over her chest. “Sorry.”

“Look,”
Jared said, though he looked at no one in particular, “maybe we should go. I
don’t think I’m absorbing much today, anyway.” He reached into his pocket and
handed Veronica a set of car keys. “Go get it started. I’ll be out in a second.”