“We have someone new moving in and I need Jack to share with you. Cool?”
He blinks the sleep from his eyes and glances around the room. It’s a little messy, but huge. It practically takes up half of the second floor.
“Yeah. That’s fine. He’s moving his stuff now?”
“Should be soon.”
He nods. “I’ll shuffle some stuff around.”
“Thanks, Evan.”
If the conversation with Jack had gone that well, it would have been a whole different story. But there’s more than one reason I want Juno upstairs with me. First, of course I want her close. Second, even though I beat consent into every one of the guys in my house, she’s still living in a house full of men. And that deep instinct that I have when it comes to her tells me that I have to protect her.
Though Juno is a fighter, and if anything were to happen, I have no doubt that she’d easily be able to take care of herself, no problem.
When I climb the stairs again, I hear slamming noises from Jack’s room. He’s aggressively packing his stuff, but I don’t give a shit. It’s been barely a week of school, nothing is that settled yet. He can deal.
My phone rings, and I half expect it to be Juno scolding me for sending people and scaring Bailey, but it’s not. It’s my little brother John. That’s good, I haven’t heard from him yet.
“Hey bro, how are you settling in?”
John is a freshman just like Juno, though he decided not to come here, much to my father’s embarrassment. But I get it. He needs to be his own person away from me and my dad, even if I wish that he were here so that I could keep an eye on him.”
He laughs on the other end of the phone. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to call me ‘bro.’”
“Sure thing.” I’m definitely going to call him that again.
“Things are going okay. Pretty average first week, I guess.”
I sit down on my bed and ignore the passive aggressive yelling that’s coming from across the hall. “You got to all your classes?”
“Thankfully I made my schedule so that I don’t have to get up that early,” he says. “It’s brilliant.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Roommate is good so far,” he says. “Though the one thing I’m jealous of right now is that you live in the house.”
“Yeah, that is nice,” I say. “Though it’s annoying at the moment.”
“Why?”
I snort. “Leadership duties. I asked one of the guys to move in with someone else so we can have a new person and he’s not taking it well.”
“Sounds like a fun guy to be around,” John says.
I shrug, even though he can’t see me. “Most of the time he’s usually okay. Today though, he’s a raging pain in my ass.”
John laughs. “Who’s moving in.”
I hesitate, because I don’t want John to tell our father, but I trust him. The question is, do I ask him specifically not to tell Dad? I’m not sure.
“Malcolm?”
I was quiet long enough that he had to ask if I was okay. Geeze. “Okay, John, it’s an experimental thing, but I need you not to tell Dad.”
John snorts. “Because I’m on such buddy-buddy terms with Dad? That’s fine.”
“It’s a girl. Woman. She’s moving in.”
I can practically hear his eyebrows rise in shock. “Really?”
“Yeah. She marched into the beginning of school party and into my poker game and declared that she wanted to pledge Granite House. It was a dare, but…she’s moving in anyway.”
He pauses for a second. “I feel like there’s a lot of parts to that story that you’re not telling me.”
“That’s entirely possible.”
“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?” He chuckles. “Bold move, bro.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m not judging, Malcolm, but I can see why you don’t want me to tell Dad.”
I sigh and rub my hand across my face. “We’re seeing where it goes. And there are things I can’t talk about yet, but I think that you would like her. She hates drinking and drugs. Despises them.”
“Does she have any idea what she’s getting in for, moving in there?”
This time I do laugh. “Well, she’s with me, so at the very least she’ll have a sober partner.”
“That’s true.”
“How’s that going?”
He sighs heavily. “Don’t worry, Malcolm. I’m not doing anything wild. My college existence is safe, boring, and educational.”
“Well you know that you can call me,” I say. “Any time you’re struggling.”
“I’m not struggling.” He sounds entirely genuine. “Trust me, after everything that happened, I don’t miss it. I’m not going to break the pact, you don’t have to worry about me at all.”
“Just because I don’t have to, doesn’t mean I still won’t,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t you have a class to get to or something?”
There’s a slam from across the hall that shakes the floor, almost like Jack has thrown a piece of furniture, and I swear I’m going to pummel his ass into the ground. “You’re the one who called me, remember?”
“Just like I promised.”
“Good. Well I’d love to keep talking but I have to make sure that this guy doesn’t break any furniture. Call me if you need me, otherwise I’ll talk to you next week.”
“Sounds good. Thanks,” John says.
“Love you, bro.”
“Fuck off, asshole,” he says, laughing as he hangs up.
I used to be one of the guys in Granite House that loved to drink. Hell, even before I got to college I was what people considered to be the life of the party.
I never thought anything of it, until I got the call one night that John was in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. He’d drunk himself into a stupor, and could have died. And I realized that he got it from me.
He had seen me drink myself so drunk I couldn’t see straight and done the same. And so we made a pact together that neither of us would drink until we both graduated from college. After that, we would decide together
