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Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

Harry

I arrived at Theo Barnaby’s room a few doors down from mine just as my watch shifted to ten, and he answered the door with a grin that summoned the dimple below his one eye. The morning light reflected in the glare of his thick-rimmed glasses, concealing the circles beneath his eyes, like bruises. Theo didn’t sleep on weekends.

            He stepped aside with a lift of his eyebrows, letting me inside. You could always tell what a student majored in just by looking at their room; Theo was firmly filed under the literature student category. The room was better described as a library; books were piled upon books on every flat surface and everywhere that would hold the weight of his sci-fi worlds. I lodged myself between George Orwell and Shakespeare’s alphabetically ascending towers on the carpet - the bed was occupied by Jane Austen. “What are you smiling about?” I asked.

            “Oh, nothing,” Theo closed the door and threw a hand into the pocket of his denim jeans, the smirk engraved and unmoving. Without looking at me, he removed his phone and opened a message on the screen. “Ah, I thought it might be her again.”

            “Thought it might be who, exactly? Who have you wooed with your sonnets this week?” I joked, propping my legs up on his coffee table and leaning against the wall behind me. Theo threw a cautious look at me before noticing that Shakespeare had gone unscathed by my brisk movements. His dirty blonde hair was pointing in three different directions, and he smelled of last night’s cider and somebody else’s perfume.

“The ladies love a good sonnet. They don’t call me the San Fran Stud for no reason,” he stopped to laugh at his own joke.

“Theo, nobody calls you that except your mother.” I laughed, but it was true. The worrying part was that people actually did call him that. He had all the material that girls loved down to an art. Love letters, mixtapes, poetry, sleeping with their friends. He was a real romantic, Theo.

“Don’t bring my mother into this. My mother is a saint,” Theo chirped, slamming his phone down on the coffee table beside me. A message flashed up onto his screen. My eyes widened as the contact read ‘Hope Thorne’.

“This is the girl I met last night,” I breathed, my fingers nimble as they opened the message.

“Read it and weep, my friend.”

‘So, I found the place you told me I would track down your hot friend. I might have to steal Harry away from you, Shakespeare. – H’

            “Wait, you know her?” I felt my heart rate pick up slightly and I cleared my throat with a smug grin.

            “Yes, I know her, I damn told her where to find you,” Theo broke my confused silence with a laugh. “Don’t look at me like that. Just because you’re my ‘hot friend’ doesn’t mean you’re usurping my position.”

            “Your position?”

            “Casanova. Romeo. Lothario. Theo.” He waggled his eyebrows and used a thick book as a coaster for his drink. “Jesus, Steel you’re still learning the ropes around here.”

            “Right... Womanizer?”

            “You got it, my friend.”

            “Glad we cleared that up, but back to Hope. Stay with me here…” I patted Shakespeare’s dusty works gently to regain his attention, and it worked. He had a sixth sense for when his books were in danger of being touched, but he hadn’t made his bed in two weeks. He called it irony.

            “Right. Hope. I almost stole her away for myself but I made the bold mistake of mentioning you and her ears pricked up and never really went back down.”

            “Are you sure that wasn’t her way of telling you to stop explaining that your jacket is made of boyfriend material?”

            “I’m going to ignore that comment,” he lifted a finger and stifled a laugh, continuing. “As I was saying, she liked the sound of you, so as your loyal wingman, I told her all about you. She wanted to meet you so I told her that you spend every one of your miserable evenings working at Frosty John’s. Thank me later.”

“I’d say that’s pretty nice of you, but I’m cautious about why you mentioned me in the first place,” I smirked at him and he shrugged. “How did you meet her?”

Theo stood up abruptly and swiped up his phone, tapping fiercely and making a grand arm gesture when he hit ‘send’. “Actually, thank me now.”

“What did you just do?” I asked slowly, walking over to the doorway and propping my foot against the doorframe, leaning against it with my arms folded, just in case I needed to make a grand exit. Theo loved grand exits.

“Do you know what I like best about Hope? She has a great…” he narrowed his eyes to read her reply and I noticed they sparkled, excited. That terrified me. “Texting pace,” he finished curtly, grabbing his car keys and slapping a hand onto my shoulder on his way out of the room. “You up for an adventure, Steel?”