Obsessive Saint

COLLEGE

ELI

**Three years later**

I was standing on the pavement outside my childhood bedroom with two bags and a box that was heavier than it had any right to be, waiting for the taxi, when my phone lit up with her name.

"I can't believe I'm missing your first day," she said, before I'd finished saying hello.

Her voice had that specific texture it got when she was trying not to cry — too bright, too quick, running a little faster than normal.

"My baby's first day of college and I'm in Edinburgh for a conference like some kind of monster."

"You're not a monster," I said. "You're a keynote speaker."

"Same thing."

I almost smiled.

"Are you packed? Do you have everything? Did you remember the thing for the — "

"Mom."

"Right. Sorry. You're fine, you're seventeen, you know how to pack a box."

"I'm fine."

A pause. Softer now, underneath the brightness.

"I just wanted to see your face when you got there."

Something moved in my chest. Small and inconvenient.

"I'll send pictures," I said.

"Of the room, not just the architecture. Last time I asked for pictures, you sent me eleven photographs of a ceiling."

"It was an interesting ceiling."

It was a planetarium-themed hotel after all.

"Eli."

"I'll send pictures of the room."

She laughed — real this time, the one that lived behind all the performance.

"You're going to be wonderful, you know. You always land on your feet." She said quieter

I thought about that.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll talk to you tonight."

"Tonight. Love you."

"Love you."

The taxi pulled up. I picked up the box.

I didn't think about what she'd said — *you always land on your feet* — for the rest of the drive. I was very deliberate about not thinking about it.

*************

The campus was older than it had any right to be — stone buildings arranged around quadrangles like they were embarrassed about being in the same century as the rest of us. September light fell through the oak trees at long specific angles that would probably look beautiful in photographs and currently just make it difficult to find building numbers.

I had been here forty minutes.

I had already gotten lost twice, fixed it both times, and was currently standing outside Merton Hall trying to decipher whether my room was on the second floor or the third when someone said my name.

I knew his voice before I turned around.

Three years of dinner tables will do that.

Dorian was standing a few feet away, a coffee cup in one hand and a bag held loosely at his side, and he looked — different. The same, but different. He'd grown into whatever it was he'd always been on the edge of being. Taller. Quieter in a way that had nothing to do with volume.

The too-still eyes were exactly the same.

Currently aimed at me with that old familiar quality.

The one that felt like being examined.

"You're in Merton," he said.

It wasn't a question.

"Apparently."

"Third floor," He nodded upward. "The numbering system on the directory is wrong. They haven't fixed it in two years."

A pause.

"How do you know which floor I'm—"

"Your conversation with Eleanor wasn't exactly in private."

Of course, he was home that day and heard me and mom.

Was probably there to report to his father as usual.

The thing about sharing a house with someone for three years is that you learn their patterns without meaning to.

The specific weight of their footsteps on the landing. Which floorboard outside the bathroom they always miss. The time they come home when they think no one is watching — later than they should be, quieter than they need to be, careful in a way that tells you everything.

I knew Dorian's patterns the way you know the layout of a room you've been navigating in the dark.

I turned and walked ahead to the third floor and, from my periphery, Dorian had also started walking away.

That's it.

No more talking than necessary between us.

We had developed, over three years, a system.

It wasn't discussed. It wasn't agreed upon. It simply emerged, the way things emerge when two people are smart enough to understand that the alternative is worse.

We were civil at dinner. We answered direct questions. We did not fight in front of our parents, who were still, inexplicably, in love — the kind of sustained ordinary love that felt almost aggressive in its persistence.

Outside of that, we maintained a careful distance.

Mostly me.

But it worked.

It worked right up until I got into Crestwood University and found out he had moved back to the City to attend Ashford University.

Crestwood's long-time 'friendly' rival.

My mother delivered this information like it was good news.

"You'll already know someone who's experienced the two," she said. "Isn't that lucky?"

I had looked at her for a long moment.

"Yeah," I said. "Lucky."

She told me on a video call last night.

The room was bigger than I expected — a lot bigger — the outside may have looked the same for nearly a hundred years, but the rooms looked updated with a modern furnished living room, two private bedrooms and a bathroom.

I unpacked and put all my essential toiletries in the bathroom, and the necessary clothes at the front of the closet along with putting up sheets. I was always methodical when things felt like they were sliding.

My roommate wouldn't be here till next week. Meaning I have the living room and study hall all to myself.

Though the latter is more of a tiny closet filled with books.

But overall, I like it.