Social Skills (3 page)

“Thanks,
baby,” she whispered, loud enough for Connor to hear, then leaned over and pushed
her pink-glossed lips into Jared’s mouth.

Jared
waited until she had disappeared down the hallway before wiping the leftover
shine on his sleeve. “Hey, I’m really sorry about her. She’s not always like
that, but lately she’s been having these weird mood swings or whatever. Maybe
it’s just that female time-of-the-month thing.”

Connor
shuffled through a series of response ideas.
Yeah? It’s okay?
Or better yet, change the topic entirely, as that
felt safest. “You…you have a car? I, uh, didn’t think first years were allowed
to have a car on campus.”

“I
got this dude who went to my high school to buy me a parking permit. It comes
in handy when I want to leave grounds.”

“Oh,
that’s…cool.”

“Yeah.”
Jared stood. “So you know, if you ever need a ride anywhere in town, let me
know.”

Connor
strained a smile and nodded, but there was no way he’d ever take Jared up on
that offer. He rose as well, overwhelmed by the need to be in the safety of his
room, where he wouldn’t have to face any more surprises.

Perhaps
it was because he was already standing, or because Jared was in a hurry, but
for the first time in a month Jared did not drop a hand on his shoulder to say
goodbye. And the fact that Connor noticed, and bitterly missed the contact,
meant Jared was beginning to have far too great an effect on him. He was going
to have to do some serious damage control to prevent the problem from getting
any worse.

***

Connor
sat alone in the dining hall on Monday afternoon, his European history text
open in front of him as his shield against the world. Reading was an excuse to
remain withdrawn, and it was the only way he felt safe eating in the crowded
cafeteria when Rebecca and her friends were not around to give him a place to
belong.

At a
particularly juicy part about the Medici family, a familiar weight landed on his
shoulder.

“Hey,
what’s up, bro? Eating alone today? Where are your friends?”

“W-what?”
was the best thing Connor could stutter out, caught off guard at hearing Jared’s
voice outside of their tutoring sanctuary.

“The
friends you eat with—that tall girl—she’s your stand partner in
orchestra, right?” Jared used his elbow to gesture to Connor’s violin, which
sat in the chair next to him. He’d wrapped the strap around his arm loosely as
he ate, more out of habit than anything else.

For
a split second, he wondered how Jared knew Rebecca was his stand mate, since he
was pretty sure he’d never mentioned it. But he lost that line of thought the
instant Jared’s fingertips pressed into his shoulder.

“Oh…they…they
have an earlier lunch break on Mondays.”

“Oh,”
Jared replied, his hand still resting on Connor’s shoulder.

Connor
held his breath. Was Jared actually going to sit down and eat with him? His
heart began to beat faster, first with familiar nervousness, and then with
excitement.

“Jared!
Hey, our table is over here!”

Veronica.
She was dressed normally today, but that didn’t do anything to hide her
hourglass figure and classically beautiful features. She squinted at them for a
second, then offered a half-wave in Connor’s direction before sitting at a
table that rapidly filled with people.

Jared
sighed. “Okay, well, I’ll see you in class.”

Connor
nodded, but Jared didn’t take off immediately. Nor did he do his customary
squeeze-of-the-shoulder as he hesitated a moment longer, eyes transfixed on the
air above them.

The
fibers of Connor’s sweater shifted against his skin. It was impossible to be
sure, but it
felt
like Jared’s thumb was
brushing soft arcs along his back.

“Later,”
Jared said, and finally walked away.

As
soon as he’d vanished behind a sea of people and trays, Connor tossed his
remaining food into the trash. Disparate emotions ripped through him—humiliation
at being caught eating alone, and unwelcome arousal from the thought of Jared’s
fingertips on his skin. Of course, they hadn’t
actually
been touching his skin just then, but that wasn’t stopping
his imagination.

And
imagination like that demanded an outlet.

***

Despite
the chill in the air, Connor was sweating by the time he arrived at his dorm. He
could’ve taken the bus, but the walk back was supposed to help him clear his
head from the fog of his growing—and irrational—infatuation.

It
hadn’t worked, though. Now two hours after his encounter, he still found
himself straining in his jeans at the mere thought of Jared. He unbuttoned his
pants and let them fall to the floor, and then, because he was still hot, stripped
off his sweater and undershirt as well.

That
was a mistake. When he turned to grab the clothes and shove them into the
hamper he caught sight of himself, short and pale in the full-length mirror
affixed to his closet door.

His
straight blond hair, so very unlike Jared’s dark and lively curls, stuck out at
odd angles from his head. Too-skinny arms folded across a pale chest, and he
frowned at the slight outward curve of his stomach. Maybe it would be a good
idea to skip more lunches, and perhaps spend some time outdoors to get rid of
the pasty shade of his skin.

God,
what was he thinking? Not even in his fantasies could he imagine Jared wanting to
touch someone like him. The high from earlier was gone. Closing his eyes, he feebly
tried to recapture it, until the ringing of the dorm room phone interrupted
him.

He
almost didn’t answer. There was only one person it could be…but this particular
caller would not give up easily, and if she didn’t reach him there, his cell
phone would ring constantly for the next hour.

“Hi,
Mom.”

“Hello,
dear,” she responded in her syrupy tone. “I haven’t heard from you in such a
long time, and I just wanted to check to make sure everything is okay.”

“Yeah,
everything’s fine.” Connor sighed, pulling the ancient corded phone as far as
it would go so he could sink onto his bed.
Such a long time
was about
six days.

“Well,
you could call more often, you know. Are you going to all your classes? Keeping
up with your homework? Getting good grades?”

“Yes,
Mom.” He always had. So why did she feel the necessity to ask him this same
question at least once a week?

“And
are you eating healthy? Remember you’re short, so you’ll need to watch yourself
closely to make sure you don’t gain the freshman fifteen.”

Connor
chose not to respond to that and instead stared at his ceiling.

“You
should really take up a sport, you know. It would be good for you.”

“Hey,
is Melissa there?” Talking to a teenage girl was never high on his list of
priorities, but at least his sister’s child-like concerns offered an escape
from his mother’s scrutiny.

“No,
she’s at a friend’s house.”

Of course
.
Where
else would Melissa the social butterfly be?

“But
your father’s here. He wants to speak to you.”

After
a few seconds of shuffling, Connor heard his father clear his throat. He didn’t
have to be there to see the scene in his mind—his father’s reluctant hand
gripping the phone, his mother’s stern glance ordering him to be the backup
singer for her parenthood performance.

“You
keeping your grades up?”

“Yes,
Dad.”

“Good,
good. I was reading up a little on your school…you should join this debating
group they have…called the Jefferson Society. All the prestigious grads were in
it. It’ll look good for getting into law school.”

Connor
had to suffocate his bitter laugh by biting down on his forearm. How was it
possible he’d spent eighteen years of his life under the same roof as his
parents without them knowing a single thing about him? Maybe it was because he’d
never told them, or maybe because they’d never asked. Either way, if they
thought he was going to join a debating society, they had serious delusions.

“Sure,
Dad. I’ll…look into that.”

“Mmph,”
his father mumbled. “Okay, well…uh, take care.”

“Yeah,
you too,” Connor replied in the same monotone before gratefully hanging up.

If
staring at his body in contempt hadn’t put him out of the mood, then talking
with his parents certainly had. He abandoned all hope of sexual release and
opened his violin case instead.

At
least he’d always have that.

Chapter Three

“Hey,
is that the guy you’re tutoring?” Rebecca stole a few french fries off Connor’s
plate to accompany her usual lunch of tofu and salad. Her friends Tate and A.J.
took their chairs across from her, cutting into Connor’s line of sight.

“What?”
he mumbled, ducking his head to continue his no-longer clandestine
observations.

Across
the crowded room, Jared took a neat bite of his hamburger. The guy next to
him—another football player, from the looks of it—already had a mouthful
of some sort of casserole, and seemed content to display the half-masticated
bits to the world around him.

Veronica
said something and everyone at the table laughed, but Jared only joined in
after he swallowed his food. Connor narrowed his eyes and studied Veronica’s
form. She looked thinner than the first time he’d seen her, and didn’t really
have much more weight to spare.

“She
means the guy you’re staring at,” came the helpful clarification from another
of Rebecca’s friends. Chrissy set her tray down, completing their usual lunch
crowd. She tossed her wavy brown hair over the shoulder of her hemp shirt. “Isn’t
he the guy you tutor?”

“Oh.”
Connor finally managed to look away. “Yeah…he’s…yeah.”

Tate
leaned toward him with a snort. “Athletes. I find it pretty insulting they get
to come to this school for free just because they can throw a ball around. And
then when they can’t pass the courses, they get extra help and don’t have to
pay for that, either.”

Connor
frowned while he considered a response. His contributions to the discussions at
lunch were limited at best, but he had a strange impulse to make sure Jared was
not unfairly judged. “Um…Jared didn’t get a full scholarship. He came to UVA
because he wanted to.”

“Well,
I suppose when you get paid for their lack of intelligence, it’s easier to see
the good in them.”

“Hey,”
Rebecca snapped at the same time Chrissy threw in, “Don’t be rude. They’re
people too.”

Tate
shrugged.

Connor’s
cheeks burned, and he was torn between defending Jared further and backing away
from the conversation very carefully. One slip of the tongue was sure to reveal
his schoolboy crush.

Rebecca
solved the problem for him, though not in the most helpful way. “You okay,
Connor? Your face is kinda red.”

“Mmm…uh,
yeah. I’m fine.”

Thankfully,
A.J. cut in with his preparations for the upcoming Brown dorm crawl, and the
talk shifted into safer territory. Having no stake in the activity, Connor felt
perfectly justified retreating into silence.

But
his gaze wandered again. It was hard to look anywhere else when Jared was
smiling.

Tate
kicked him under the table a few minutes later. “C’mon, you can tell me, is he
dumb as nails?”

Connor
jumped up, tripping over the leg of his chair and causing four pairs of eyes to
stare at him in alarm. “I…I just remembered, I have to finish a…a
take-home quiz for my last class today. I gotta run.”

“But
you haven’t eaten your lunch!” Rebecca called after him.

Connor
blinked back at his abandoned tray. “I…I really have to finish my work.”

“All
right.” She nodded, concern obvious in her drawn brows. “I’ll put it up for
you, it’s okay. Go ahead. Catch ya later.”

He
escaped into the sunlight
.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If he kept this up, he’d out himself
in no time, not to mention be completely humiliated in front of the closest
thing he had to a group of friends. Newcomb was starting to seem less like a
place for sustenance and more like a lion’s den.

He wandered
to UVA’s historic Lawn with a bag of chips from a vending machine, looking for
the least populated spot to settle down. A secluded tree beckoned to him, and he
scurried behind it to let out a pent-up sigh.
You and me, tree
. His
fingers traced the crevices in the bark. Maybe it simply was his destiny to
continue his friendships with plant life. It was a nice enough tree, after all,
and a couple of nearby squirrels looked happy to call it home.

Definitely
a safer place to eat lunch from now on.

He
finished his chips, fervently avoiding the world around him by dint of an open
book in his lap.

***

Connor
arrived early to his anthropology class the day before Thanksgiving break,
taking his time adjusting the strap of his violin case against the back of his
seat. Sometimes he pulled the entire case under his desk and propped his feet
along the edge, but today he noticed the dusty stains gathering on that part of
the gray fabric. He bent over and wiped the smudges, having little effect on
them.

A
pair of legs slid into the seat next to him. Familiar legs. When he looked up,
he was greeted by large brown eyes.

“Hey,”
Jared said with a grin.

“Hey,”
Connor managed to say back, much too softly for his liking.

“You’ll
never guess what I saw after tutoring yesterday,” Jared whispered
conspiratorially, like they sat next to each other and shared little conversations
in class all the time.

Only,
they didn’t.

“Like
fifteen streakers on the Lawn. It was barely eight o’ clock! Man those guys
have balls.” He paused to shudder. “And I had to see them, flapping in the
wind!”

Dumbfounded,
Connor forced a weak nod.

That
was all they exchanged for the remainder of class. Professor Abrahms beamed at
them both, probably because she reasoned that with Jared away from the wall, he
wouldn’t be able to fall asleep as easily. She looked genuinely shocked when
Jared raised his hand to participate a few times, and after one comment even
shot Connor a little wink, which had him sinking down in his chair with
embarrassment.

Still,
it’d been a fairly successful day. A little attention from Jared, an exchange
of cordial greetings, and no major incidents of anxiety. He retrieved his
violin and gathered his books at the end of the hour with the happy notes of
Dvorak’s
Humoresque
bouncing through
his head.

“So,
I don’t see you in the dining hall anymore,” Jared’s voice cut in.

Humoresque
slipped into a minor key. “Oh.” Connor licked his lips and drew himself back
into the moment. The room was nearly empty. “I…I kinda stopped eating
there. Sometimes I have work to do during lunch.”

Jared
frowned as they made their way into the hall. “Listen, don’t take this the
wrong way…but it doesn’t seem like you have a lot of friends. Maybe it’s not
such a good idea to quit hanging out with people during lunch.”

A
sudden cloud of heat enveloped Connor.
Escape,
his brain told him. Humiliation
that threatened to turn into tears clawed at his throat, and he took quick
steps to exit the crowded hallway as fast as possible.

Jared
was faster.

“Wait,
Connor, wait. I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I’m sorry.”

He
only stopped because Jared forced him to with a firm grip on his arm. But he
still couldn’t say anything, and chose to focus on the wall just past Jared
instead.

Jared
dropped his arm and pushed a hand through his curly hair. “Look, sometimes I
don’t think before I speak. I didn’t mean to imply you were some kind of loser
or anything.”

Wincing
at the choice of words, Connor tried to school his gaze on a corkboard papered
with colorful flyers, but Jared ducked into his line of sight.

Surprisingly,
his cheeks seemed reddened by a blush. “Listen, you want to come over to my
dorm and do our homework together? I mean, I missed a few classes, so I could
use your help…”

No.
That simple response would suffice. Or
rather,
no, thank you, I have some work to do.
But as Connor prepared
to excuse himself and retreat to the safety of things he knew, Jared flashed
him a smile so full of bright white teeth and warm eyes that he was left
wanting to stare at it for however long he could get away with.

“Y-yeah…okay.”

“Cool.”
Jared grinned impossibly wider, hitching his bag up on his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Connor
had to take longer-than-normal strides to keep up, as Jared had at least a good
ten inches on him. He was embarrassed to find that after several minutes of
walking like that with his bag and violin banging at either side, he was
slightly out of breath.

“You
want me to carry that for you?” Jared asked, motioning toward the violin.

“N-no,
I’m fine.”

Jared
reached over and grabbed the strap off his shoulder anyhow, yanking the case
away. “Really, it’s no problem. Now I can pretend to be a musician for five
minutes.”

He grinned
and Connor bit back his panic, letting the infectious smile win him over.

They
reached Jared’s building and entered a lounge area filled with people munching
on snacks and typing away on laptops. A guy about Jared’s height, but much
leaner and with a hooked nose, stood and gave Jared’s hand a slap as a
greeting.

“Yo,
Jared. Whaddup? You starting a new hobby?” He eyed the violin on Jared’s
shoulder.

“Nah,
man. This is Connor’s. He’s my anthro tutor. Connor, this is Ben, my
roommate.”

Connor
received a hand slap as well. His arm flailed from the unfamiliar greeting, and
he dropped his head to hide a grimace.

Ben
smirked, clearly having noted his difficulty. “Cool, dude. You gonna study?”

“Yeah,
we’ll be in the room. Let me know if anything fun is going on tonight,”
Jared threw over his shoulder as he walked away. Connor trailed after him
and nearly smacked into Jared’s chest when he abruptly turned back around. “Oh,
and Ben? If Ronnie comes by…tell her I’m at the library or something.”

“No
problem, dude. I’ll give you a break from the crazy chick.”

The crazy chick?
It was times like these Connor wished he were the kind of person who
could pry. But he wasn’t, of course, so he just quietly followed Jared into a
room at the end of the hallway.

Like
all the other dorm rooms, two twin beds lined the walls. One was a mound of
covers, books, food wrappers, and clothes. Some of the clothing spilled onto
the floor, but as if an invisible line had been drawn, the encroaching mess
stopped just left of the center of the room. The other bed was neatly made with
an organized desk beside it to match.

Jared
dropped onto a smooth dark blue comforter—on the tidy side—and
leaned against the wall, closing his eyes.

For
a moment, Connor stood awkwardly and waited to be directed, but when Jared didn’t
acknowledge his presence he took a seat at a desk and pulled a few books from
his bag. “What would you like to go over first? The reading from last week, or
what we covered today in class?”

Jared
shook his head, finally reopening his eyes. “Neither. Actually, it just
occurred to me that having you help me off the clock is like cheating you out
of money or something. I shouldn’t be taking advantage of you just because you’re
a nice guy.”

Connor
blinked rapidly in a few seconds of silence before stumbling into a response. “I…I
can study with a friend without getting paid.” As soon as the word
friend
was out of his mouth, he blushed, but Jared only smiled. A warm smile, not a
teasing one.

“Well,
friends do more than study together. I just want to unwind right now.” Jared
grabbed two video game controllers from the top shelf of his desk. He kept
one in his lap and tossed the other to Connor, then turned on the twelve-inch TV
that sat nestled between some books in crates against the wall.

“Yeah,
I know,” Jared said, even though Connor had said nothing. “It’s a tiny-ass
screen, but luckily I still have my eyesight. What do you want to play? Between
me and Ben we have just about everything.”

“Um…anything’s
fine…” Connor mumbled, picking up the controller and eyeing it warily. He’d
never played any electronic game that wasn’t educational, at first because of
his parents’ steadfast rule, and later because he realized he had no aptitude
for them.

“Cool.”
Jared fidgeted with the TV and the box above it. A moment later a game lit up
the screen, and Connor was caught between staring at Jared’s hands, desperately
trying to mimic their movements, and watching his tiny figure get shot over and
over again. His tongue found a notch between his teeth and he accidentally bit down
several times in his intense concentration.

By
the fifth time his character died, Jared turned to him with a grin. “Dude, have
you ever played this before?”

“No…I…we
weren’t allowed to have video games,” Connor admitted. It had to be less
humiliating for Jared to know the truth than to think he was totally inept,
right? “I guess I don’t have very good hand-eye coordination.”

Jared
laughed and crawled over to the end of the bed so he could take Connor’s
controller. “I don’t know about hand-eye coordination, but you have decent hand
coordination at least, or you wouldn’t be able to play violin as well as you
do.”