Micah couldn't yell. He couldn't scream. But he also couldn't look at Benny without wanting to do both.

    So he didn't look or talk to Benny at all.

    And Benny... for what it was worth, knew why and proceeded to look pitiful about it at every encounter. Before class, after class, on campus when they normally would walk together. Micah avoided him like the plague so he wouldn't have to look at Benny's doe eyes and speak his mind.

    It also didn't help that, at every opportunity they did have to walk together, Micah could vaguely see Benny's shadow trailing with him.

    Hunter.

    Micah wanted to snap that little twig's head right off.

    The guy had managed a glow-up of sorts since their breakup. He kept his dark, longish hair in a bun with baby hairs framing his face and a smile that looked too fake for Micah's preferences. Hunter was always socially awkward, but for some odd reason, Benny found this beyond attractive.

    Micah glared at a distance whenever he saw them. He couldn't look away. Eyes fused on their joined hands, Micah thought to himself, Why hold hands when it's this cold out? Get frostbite. I don't care. Too stupid to wear gloves. Put them in your pockets, for Chrissake.

    Kennedy extended the dinner invitation over text on Monday knowing that, come the day, Micah would vacate the apartment and avoid responsibility. Benny never texted, never checked in, and likely believed he was in the wrong but also, for once, didn't want to apologize.

    Micah responded to Kennedy's complaints about bailing by saying, "I'm saving you from having to pay my bail."

    "Asshole," was all she said, and that was that.

    That very same evening, just as Micah suspected Kennedy, Benny, and Micah's Arch-Nemesis were paying the bill, Micah's phone rang. It was an unassigned ring, which meant Micah would probably—

    Alistair.

    —ignore it.

    Micah set his phone aside as he left it ringing. Was this... a booty call? The odds were high. They hadn't fucked since Thursday, and Micah was primed to say yes. He'd been too frustrated by Hunter being in his life again against his will to risk sitting in silence a moment longer. His weekend, when it wasn't spent avoiding parties suspecting Hunter's attendance, was spent at other peoples' flats watching movies and making out. Giving handjobs. Screwing on couches with roommates just in the other room.

    Micah rolled his eyes so hard his entire head lolled. Slouched over his desk, he picked up the phone, answered, put it to his ear, and sunk his head along his forearm. "Yeah?"

    "So I met Hunter."

    That little—! Micah thought, livid with Kennedy. Evidently, Micah's absence from the intro dinner could just be replaced.

    Micah cleared his throat, straightening in his chair. He slouched the opposite direction—far back with his feet making the front two legs of his chair airborne. "And?"

    "Is that seriously the guy you told me about?"

    "The very one."

    "How are you taking this."

    Poorly. "I'm leaving soon to avoid Benny," he confessed. "I don't know if he's been bringing Hunter around the apartment. I don't want to risk punching the guy and causing World War III."

    "Because you know Benny would take his side."

    Micah hated that in just a single setting Alistair was able to deduce this was still a possibility. It just confirmed for Micah that Hunter hadn't change and, likewise, nor had Benny.

    "I need a cigarette and then I'll be at the bar on the corner if you want to chat. And if we're not entirely pathetic and defeated after, we can fuck, I guess."

    It was such a pitiful proposition that Micah laughed. He checked his notifications and, though he'd gotten a positive response from a potential admirer...

    He shook his head. In any other circumstance, this would be considered a date. Drinks at a bar, gossiping, talking, going upstairs to finish the night. It was all too textbook for Micah's tastes, even if the person he did it with was just as indifferent to the idea.

    "Can't. Have other plans, and I need to get tested anyway if we sleep together again." He'd been with two other people since Alistair and it was only Monday, one of whom he was going to see presently. "But how was Benny. At the dinner."

    "Same old. I think he's taken to being left-handed."

    Micah's nose scrunched. "What?"

    "I don't think they ever stopped holding hands. And I don't think Benny's ambidextrous? I was impressed, honestly."

    Micah struggled to hide his amusement even as he said, "Nice observation. I gotta go."

    "Benny looked like a kicked puppy when I asked why I was there and you weren't."

    Micah's throat seized. He struggled to swallow. "Why would you ask that?"

    "Kennedy said you were busy and Benny didn't talk for, like, five minutes."

    Micah wished he could hang up. Instead, he sat there and took it, nursing a headache coming on from how tight the muscles in his neck were.

    "How does it feel to be guilt-tripped."

    Micah scoffed. "Fuck you. I'm not doing this on purpose. It's better than the alternative."

    "And what's the alternative?"

    "I can't answer that," he admitted, because he knew the truth and didn't want to face it. Talking to Benny now would facilitate Micah's worst and most aggressive form of avoidance to date: moving out and never speaking to Benny again.

    If Benny was going to fuck off and get married and never speak to him like a proper friend again, then so be it. Micah didn't want to be around to watch their downfall crumble like an expired Nature Valley bar.

    I wonder if Benny knows that, too, he thought.

    "I'll let you go then."

    "Bye."

    Bumming at other peoples' places was made easier by their want to see him again—ASAP. He was an available, walking sex toy for his partners to use and that was how he liked it. The latest was a guy in his physics class who, that very same night, asked Micah to stay the week.

    "I shouldn't," Micah told him.

    "Come on. You'll just be over here again anyway." The reminder of the truth just made Micah want to turn it into a lie.

    It was morning by then and Micah had an 8AM to literally run to. He was late, and his attendance record was shot after his two week stint getting high and studying in Alistair's flat.

    He hitched his jeans up and fastened the zipper. "I'll see you in class later," Micah said.

    The guy reached for his hand and Micah let him. He'd already decided he'd never see the man again, no matter how prettily he begged. "You'll be back, right?"

    Micah studied him. "Just to hookup?"

    He didn't miss the twitch in the man's lip that almost turned to a scowl. "Does it have to be? Look, I'll give you my number and I could take you out. There's a place in Kips' I've been meaning to go to."

    "I'm not interested in dating."

    "Then why the fuck did you message me?" the man said. "I had 'looking for a relationship' on my profile."

    "And I had 'casual' on mine," Micah said, omitting the fact that this guy had messaged him. First.

    "We could be casual."

    "Casual doesn't involve going out to dinner."

    "Is sleeping around all you do?" the man said. "Or did your lease end and you're just using sex as an excuse to bum around? I gave you an in for a week."

    Micah's skin crawled with not only contempt, but mortification. That was exactly what he was doing, but he didn't want a relationship out of his half-assed sleeping-on-peoples'-couches plan.

    Micah swiped his backpack up and said, "Stop sitting next to me in physics. In fact, don't even look at me and I'll stop 'bumming around' here. Goodbye."

    "What! Wait—You can't just say that and—"

    Micah was gone and livid. He wished he had time before class to channel his anger into a workout at the gym. Instead, he festered in silence all through lecture as James gave him nervous glances and fidgeted with his notebook.

    Micah would have needed to be blind and deaf to avoid noticing James' melancholy. He likely would have noticed it sooner had he not skipped so much class and realized, quickly, that Benny was seeing Hunter again. James waited until the end of class to say something.

    "Are you avoiding me because Benny and Hunter are back together?" James asked, quietly, as the rest of their peers packed up to leave class.

    Micah paused packing. He licked his lip and realized that James had translated Micah skipping classes as an excuse not to see James. "No, I didn't know they were together until Thursday last week."

    James' brow pinched. "Benny says you two haven't been talking."

    "Yeah, 'cause I'm pissed at him and he knows it," Micah said. "I don't like yelling at him so we're avoiding each other until I calm down."

    "Does he know that?"

    "Yes."

    "Have you talked to him to know that?"

    Micah glared at him. James flinched. "Sorry. I'm just worried because it feels like he's falling off the face of the planet without you."

    "He's doing that on his own."

    "Can you at least talk to him?" It sounded so similar to Micah's pleading to Alistair that Micah wanted to punch a wall. Experience did wonders for empathy.

    Micah exhaled his frustrations and said, "Trust me. That won't solve anything." And then, to shift the target, he said, "Sorry it didn't work out with you and Benny. I was honestly rooting for you."

    Pink colored his cheeks. "Really? That—Wow. Thank you. And it's fine. Wasn't meant to be."

    That was in Kennedy's Empathy Flashcards under 'what not to say', Micah thought. When James said it, though, Micah felt compelled to say, "I think it was, which is why I'm so pissed at Benny."

    James flustered. "You don't have to be angry at him on my behalf. I'm not mad."

    "I don't give a shit. He's a fucking idiot to trust that wannabe emo prick with his feelings again," Micah said, pushing to his feet. "I'll see you around."

    Bewildered and speechless, James watched him go.

    Micah needed fresh laundry so he returned to the flat. Brunch was tomorrow and he was only inclined to accept Kennedy's invitation because she'd promised him Hunter wouldn't be there, and it could be an intervention of sorts.

    The apartment was empty when he arrived.

    If he was going to see Benny and possibly speak to him again, he needed to get his anger out of his system. He needed to be exhausted, fatigued, and unwilling to pick a fight. He needed to—

    He opened his bedroom door. Benny was sitting on the bed.