“You don’t have a room mate?” I asked, surprised to see the room half empty. The top bunk I had fled from in the middle of the night a few months prior was piled with an assortment of various boxes and cases.
“No, he… left at the end of last semester, so I’ve had the place to myself since winter break.”
I didn’t want to pry too much in case it jogged Luke’s memory of me. He was already pretty obviously feeling awkward about my presence, I didn’t want to make it worse. He pulled a second chair over to his desk and sat in front of his laptop as he gestured me in. I took his cue and entered his room. He jumped like he was shot when I closed the door behind me.
“You… could leave that open.” He stammered. The picture was becoming a bit clearer now. It wasn’t that he was nervous about helping me, he was seemingly nervous that I would think he was only helping me in exchange for sex.
“Oh, I don’t mind.” I brushed him off. It was sweet, but I had already sat down by the time he had gotten the words out.
What ensued was one of the sweetest gestures I think any guy has ever undertaken for me. He didn’t just walk me through some bulleted list of topics I needed to study; he spent two hours of his day walking me through the basic structure of a program, functions, of types and variables. As it turned out Luke was the exact right guy to ask. He had been programming since a young age and was just knocking this class out as a prerequisite for his major.
As the hours passed he loosened up with me a bit. He stammered less over his words and even made a joke or two. They weren’t great jokes by any means, but I started getting the impression that he just didn’t talk to many girls like me. And yeah, I was well aware that he was stealing glances of my body every so often, but he wasn’t being a creeper about it or anything. I didn’t blame him! I was still in my gym outfit. I was cute dammit and it was supposed to catch a boy’s eyes.
He even let me use his computer to write a small program. He gave me pointers on what the professor would look for when I wrote my code sample on Wednesday.
I could tell when we swapped chairs so that I could use his computer that he was getting a better view. I made sure to sit up straight, arch my back and spread my legs slightly to make my tits and ass each stick out just a little more. I disguised it all as just trying to maintain “good posture” but Luke shifted uncomfortably and crossed his arms in his lap. I made sure to let him see that I had noticed what he was trying to hide. I didn’t say anything I just gave him a small smile, circled my shoulders and stretched my neck. His neck began to flush deep red.
I was surprised he was so unguarded about me using his computer though. Normally guys would get really uptight about where I clicked or they would dive on the keyboard if I ever got remotely close to the search bar. I’m not naive, I knew it was because they didn’t want me to see what weird porn they were into, but not Luke. He didn’t care where I clicked nor did he flinch when he had me type a website into google to show me where I could look for more advice if I got stuck on a particularly tricky coding problem. It wasn’t until we were wrapping up and I minimized the program we were using that he showed any emotion about his computer.
“Oh, who is that?” I asked curiously as if it were no big deal. On his desktop was a selfie of him and some girl that looked a bit above his station. They were sitting on the back of a boat; he was wearing a white rash guard and she was wearing a one piece bathing suit. Even though they weren’t embracing they were close enough to either be siblings or lovers, but they had to be the latter. I don’t have a brother but I couldn’t imagine ever keeping a picture where your sisters nipples are poking through her swimsuit. My heart sank just a little. It sank not because I necessarily had any disappointment about his availability, but he had been so sweet to me all day and I didn’t want to jeopardize anything he had. I had been putting my body on display and subtly flirting with him, but even though my intentions weren’t anything but above board I could see how a girlfriend might take issue with him spending multiple hours behind closed doors with someone like me.
“Oh. That’s nobody.” He replied, but I wasn’t buying it. I gave him a scolding glare.
“Luke, I’m bad at CS not at relationships. That’s not nobody.”
The hours spent of slowly coming out of his shell vanished as his demeanor changed. He sat back in his chair so that his arms were folded across his chest and turned his body away from me slightly. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. His voice was shaky. “Well, it’s not anybody anymore.”
We sat in silence for a few seconds as he fought back the tears. The wound must have been fresh. I turned my body toward and put my hand on his knee. I guess I don’t really know why I questioned him, but he had just spent so long helping me it felt like there was probably some room to help him here.
“Do.. you want to talk about it?” I finally asked once the silence got a little too thick. When he didn’t answer I flatly asked: “When did you guys break up?”
“Over winter break” he choked out, his voice thick with emotion. “She told me she couldn’t do the distance thing anymore.”
“Yeah. Distance can be pretty hard. Thats actually why my first boyfriend and I broke up.” He turned his head back towards me, maybe realizing that I was actually willing to hear him out. “Did she go to another school or something?”
“Yeah, we had plans to go to the same school, but when I didn’t get in she went anyway. I think her family pressured her pretty hard and they held more sway than I did.” His voice was rough like he was about to cry. I gave his knee a gentle squeeze and a rub. “We just.. we had plans you know? We were going to get married.”
“Well come on. It couldn’t have been that serious in high school!” I prodded half joking, half sympathetic.
“We dated for three years! Three and a half!” He stated incredulously. I wasn’t expecting that. “And then she threw it all away. I thought I knew her. I thought I loved her.” A tear fell down his cheek but his voice more angry than sad “I still do, I guess. I just don’t understand how someone can do that.” His hands were clenched into fists. He wiped the tear from his face and looked away again.
“There was another guy.”
“Yeah.” He sounded resigned. “How did you know?”
“There always is.” He looked up at me again hurt so I gave a shrug and explained “If there wasn’t another guy what reason would she have to break up with you?”
“When you and your boyfriend broke up was there another guy?” He sounded a little on the accusatory side, but I let it slide.
I tried to dodge and play it off. “I was a freshman then. It wasn’t just another guy.” In reality it was many other guys. “I had to spread my wings a bit! It’s college! That’s completely normal.”
I could see plainly on his face that it wasn’t normal for him. He turned that over in his head for a moment as he mouthed words. It looked like he was trying to figure out how to say something. Finally he managed to get out a meek “We were just…” before he trailed off.
I gave his knee another thoughtful squeeze and scooted my chair a little closer to him. “It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I’m not going to judge.”
He took a deep breath and steeled himself. I could see it was hard for him. “It’s just that I just feel like an idiot. We were saving ourselves.”
This time it was my turn to gawk at him.
“Do you have any idea how hard that is? To know that all your friends are hooking up but that you could have just given in at any point and it not mattered any less than it did?”
I shook my head and had to consciously pick my jaw up off of the floor. I have no idea how long my mouth had been hanging open. He studied my reaction and then continued “I heard through a friend of a friend that she had started seeing a guy at her school. He’s older, but also a freshman. Just got back from his mission. I confronted her about it over winter break, and she admitted to everything.” He paused before forcing the next sentence out. “She admitted to a lot more than I was expecting.”
I just nodded. I felt like he probably needed to get this out. The way he was dancing around the issue I suspected that this was probably the first time he was putting everything into words. Just call me Ashley the therapist.
“She.. she broke our vows with him. It didn’t even sound like he pressured her. She even said she initiated it. She seemed relieved when she admitted it to me even though it could get her kicked out of school.”
“It must be some school.” I interjected.
“BYU.”
Yeah. That made sense. In fact, everything about the day was making a lot more sense. I was suddenly very aware of how little I was wearing.
“I’ve considered filing an anonymous Honor Code violation against her.” I could see he wasn’t thinking straight. Ash to the rescue.
“You don’t want to do that.” His face was a mix of emotions. Rage, defeat, sadness, and betrayal. “It won’t win her back.” He slumped back in his chair. “Look. Luke. You’ve been so nice to me today. You’ve gone out of your way to help me. So I want to make it up to you.”
His eyes came up and met mine.
“Im going to give you some advice and I want you to listen to me very, very carefully. She’s moved on and you need to too. I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m saying this because I don’t think you’ve accepted it, and it seems like your friends aren’t telling you a hard truth.” He gave me a look like a kicked puppy dog. “Yeah. Sure. You could report her and get her kicked out of school and ruin her life, but what’s that going to get you?”
He looked away from me, embarrassed.
“You want to get some real revenge on her? You live an awesome life. You go do cool shit. Enjoy the fuck out of college. She went to BYU. B. Y. U. You said you didn’t get accepted? You’re fucking lucky. She’s literally living in fear right now that someone will report her for having sex! How can that be an enjoyable existence at all?”
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