I didn’t run into Johannsen, thank God, and by the first week of January I was speeding away from Sillitoe, heading east on I-70 and watching my rearview mirror for the moment the Rockies dissolved into the horizon. I drove straight through a day and a night again, and when I pulled into East Campus on a mild gray Sunday, it felt like I could take my first full breath in weeks.
I entered Stager Hall intending to sleep off the afternoon, and I was so woozy from the long drive that when I opened our unlocked door and stepped inside, it took me a beat to understand what I was looking at. A naked Jamie was sitting at the far end of Reshawn’s bed, hands clutching the top sheet, nipples erect and ribcage coming in and out of view as she cycled shallow breaths. A naked Reshawn had his face sunk into her lap, back muscles working under his hairless skin as his ass cheeks puckered—
I slammed out of the room and hurried to the elevator bay, punching the button so hard it got stuck in the recessed position. I worried the two seconds I’d watched them had cost me all the goodwill I’d earned from Reshawn last semester.
—Hey!
Jamie’s head poked out of our doorway. She held a bath towel against her body.
—That’s okay! I said, punching the button again, hating how long this fucking elevator took.
She laughed.
—No! We’ll be decent! Come baaaaaack!
The elevator dinged open. I sighed and let it close, slowly retracing my steps. When I walked into the room, Jamie and Reshawn had switched places: he was leaning his back against the headboard, wearing sweatpants and no shirt; she was leaning her back into his chest, nestling her butt into his crotch and laying her palms on his thighs, like you would the arms of a love seat. She was wearing King Football running shorts rolled up at the waist and one of Reshawn’s long white tees.
—Good break? she asked me brightly.
—Sure.
—You’re from Utah, right?
—Colorado.
Reshawn brought the back of his hand across his lips to see if anything was still on them. I was relieved to see his expression was more embarrassed than angry. Jamie, meanwhile, was neither. A senior who must have had practice shrugging off walk-ins, she carried on conversation as if sex-fug wasn’t still hanging in the air.
—I was in Atlanta, she was saying about her own break. I grew up there.
—You don’t have an accent.
—My parents are both from Brazil, she said. They got transferred to Coke’s headquarters when I was little.
—She speaks fluent Portuguese, Reshawn added.
Jamie rolled her eyes, which Reshawn couldn’t see.
—Just enough to get around. Anyway, this guy found out he gets to RA for Grayson … What are you taking this semester, Miles?
Another suite of joke classes I cared nothing about. I felt ashamed to admit this to serious students, and changed the subject back to what Jamie said.
—What’s an RA?
—Research assistant, she said. Professor Grayson is the one who taught our folktales class last semester? Right. Well, his research is on this North Carolina poet, and he hires somebody to help him with database searches and logistics. I’ve been his RA the last two years, but now that I’m graduating, he needs someone to take over. I’ll show Reshawn the ropes.
She squeezed his knees.
—Grayson is this star in American Lit. If I get into half the schools I applied to for my PhD, it’ll because of his recommendation. Reshawn’s going to have his pick of programs when he applies in three years.
Reshawn told me he was planning to play in the NFL for at least five years to make money for his mother’s medical expenses, which would mean he wouldn’t be applying to grad school for almost a decade. This alone made it clear he was keeping his reason for playing football secret from Jamie, but just to ensure I didn’t contradict him now, he gave me a long, meaningful stare over the top of Jamie’s head.
I stayed mum. She slept in Reshawn’s bed that night, and the next morning the three of us rode to West Campus together for the first day of classes. In the players’ lot Jamie broke off toward the English building for an independent study while Reshawn and I went to the Hay to retrieve our textbook vouchers from the team’s academic advisor. We walked to the bookstore in the basement of West’s Student Union, traveling from aisle to aisle. I didn’t really need the plastic basket I was carrying, my courses required so few books, while Reshawn looked like someone on a shopping spree, his first basket full after just three shelves. He didn’t comment on the disparity between our baskets, but I still felt like I was being judged for taking easy classes again.
We arrived at his last shelf, for a class called The Other Rebel Yells: Dissent in Antebellum America. The label said Professor Grayson was the instructor, and I impulsively took copies of the class’s books.
—You sure? he asked. Grayson doesn’t fuck around.
—Definitely.
The first lecture was that morning, and when we entered the classroom in the English building I wasn’t feeling so definite. All four of my courses last semester had been in the college’s biggest lecture halls, academic hangars that fit four hundred where I could happily disappear, but this was a seminar room that only seated fifteen. I wanted at least to sit in the back row, but Reshawn led us to the center of the front row.
And then there was Professor Grayson, who strode purposefully into the room and unloaded the contents of his leather satchel onto the wooden lectern without greeting Reshawn or anybody else. A grave-faced black man in his forties, Grayson was dressed in a beautiful houndstooth suit and a
