The Collegiate Chronicles

Chapter 6

There this guy stood shirtless with his mocha-colored skin tone, showing off his six-pack (which looked to be developing into an eight-pack). His eyes were brown and piercing, and he had a goatee.

"You good?" he questioned, bringing me back down to reality.

"Sorry, I must've knocked on the wrong door. Or maybe the asshole gave me the wrong address."

"If the asshole you're referring to is my brother, then you've got the right place."

My eyes widened. Brother?!

He laughed, clearly amused by my surprise, "I'm guessing you didn't come all the way here to just stand out in the hallway, so welcome to our humble abode. I'm Malik."

"I'm-"

"Landon. I know," he smiled as he stepped aside to let me into his place.

It was a nice little setup. The kitchen and the living room were all in one huge space. You could go down the narrow hallway in the back. There were two bedrooms and one bathroom.

"Take a seat," Malik instructed me, and I sat down on their sofa. I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and placed it on the coffee table.

"Sorry for the mess. It's been a rough week, as you can probably see."

I shook my head, not knowing what he was referring to.

"I look like a black caveman," he said running his fingers through his hair and his beard.

He's tripping. Maybe a little trim around the edges of his beard, but definitely not a caveman, "You look good to me," I accidentally said aloud. I quickly looked away embarrassed. What the fuck was I thinking? If this nigga is half as homophobic as his brother, then I won't be making it out of here alive!

But instead, he smirked?! "Preciate it," he responded.

I powered on my laptop instead of saying anything back to avoid more verbal vomit, but then a genuine question popped up, "So, where is Ricky?"

"He 'had some shit to do,'" Malik used air quotes around that phrase to quote Ricky verbatim.

I folded my arms and scoffed, annoyed, "I told him that I'm not doing this project by myself. He must not know I'm not playing with him!"

"Relax, bruh. I gotchu," he assured me.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna help you with your project."

"Not to sound like an ass, but how good are you at math?"

Malik laughed, "Good enough."

For a three-cushion couch, Malik took the seat closest to me. I felt his leg brush against mine and his muscular arm lean against me. I picked up my laptop from the coffee table and placed it in my lap. He shifted his body to the right a bit, bringing us closer together...

No! Nope! This isn't happening. I'm reading entirely too deeply into this. Malik probably just wants me outta here as fast as I want to be and is just being a gracious host. I'm done fantasizing about these niggas! The wound from the whole Jose debacle was still fresh, and I wasn't going to get played twice in three days.

I finally brought up the Word Document that had the instructions from the project, and Malik took a spiral notebook that was on the edge of the coffee table and opened it up. He removed a pen he had wedged in the spine and started writing down the formulas in the notebook, "Okay, so do I need to give you a quick rundown of the Pythagorean Theorem or can I just write down the sohcahtoa method and we jump right into this?"