“I should have picked a different major.”

  Alex, seated on the floor and leaning against the couch where BJ reclined, hammered on the attack button like it might prevent him from getting his ass kicked by Loretta, Knight of the Haligtree. “I thought you liked Russian.”

  BJ lifted the textbook from where it had tented over his face. “I liked it better as a hobby. Why did I think I need to read Anna Karenina in the original language?”

  “Find out what the translators missed. Fuck.” Alex sighed, aggravated, and leaned back against the couch while his character respawned at his last bonfire.

  “Right. Stupid. Let them keep their secrets. I don’t care anymore. I should’ve done Hindi.”

  “Your family would have approved.”

  “Ugh. There’s just no winning.” BJ watched Alex get wrecked by Loretta once again before swatting the back of his shoulder. “That’s ten.”

  It seemed Alex might argue, but then he turned off the PC and opened his school bag. His timing was good; fifteen minutes later, his mom came home and looked pleasantly surprised to see the two of them studying.

  “Hard at work?” she asked.

  “Hey, Mrs. P,” BJ greeted, waving. “Good day at work?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Pays the bills. You eat yet?”

  They had been snacking all afternoon, but this did not stop Alex from answering, “I could eat.”

  “Pizza?”

  Mrs. P ordered a veggie supreme, extra large, and made them eat at the dining table in the kitchen, not because she was particularly attached to the state of the couch or the carpet but because eating together like civilized adults was important to a sense of order. BJ liked Alex’s mom. She wasn’t a dictator, didn’t humiliate her son in front of his friends, and was friendly without making it weird. She was still a parent, but she didn’t act like it made her a superior being. It made hanging out at Alex’s place really nice, which was why he usually pushed to go there instead of have Alex over at BJ’s, where his mother would act like a petty tyrant. It cost less financially to keep living at home while he studied, but the emotional toll was going to transmute into some supermassive therapy bills later.

  Maybe it was time to switch majors, after all. Go into something which paid well. Or something which would send him to the ass end of the planet to study a niche category of marine life. But that would mean another year or two of school, another year or two of his mother criticizing his choices for the future while Dad left the room, and he was already straining from the last, oh, entire educational career of maternal expectations.

  Way easier to just avoid being at home than study as an escape from verbal abuse.

  Thank God Mrs. P liked feeding him.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  They ate and went back to work. Alex held up flashcards for BJ. BJ walked Alex through math concepts. Typical Thursday evening at the Paulson household.

  BJ finished his homework and used Alex’s Steam account to play Skullgirls while Alex muddled through the rest of the problem set he’d been assigned. Then they played Heroes of Might & Magic in co-op mode until BJ could reasonably assume his mother had gone to bed. He took his time packing up his books, just in case a few extra minutes might spare him a late night meltdown.

  “You free tomorrow?” he asked.

  Alex shook his head. “Tutoring in the morning. Getting tutored in the afternoon.”

  “Circle of life. Do you want me to pick you up on Saturday?”

  “Yeah, thanks. Looking forward to it.”

  BJ gave him a sharp look. “Yeah?”

  Alex turned red from the collarbones up. “Not — I just mean it’s good to all play together again.”

  “She barely talked to you all night.”

  “I know. It’s still hard to act normal in a group.”

  “You doing okay, hanging out with her?”

  “Of course. We’ve hung out a few times, lately.”

  There was something in the way Alex’s eyes shifted, looking anywhere but BJ, which didn’t feel right. Every time Bethany came up lately he got kind of weird about it, so that wasn’t new. This eye thing was, though. BJ was used to seeing Alex stare at the floor when her name fell out of someone’s mouth, and he was used to getting second-hand heartbreak watching the poor kid watch her. The red face, the shifty eyes — obviously, something was up. Alex hadn’t developed the skill for lying, not even by omission.

  The only reason BJ didn’t ask was because every question he could think of sounded like an interrogation, like his mother and her paranoid ideas about what he got up to when he wasn’t home, and he might be her son but he didn’t want to be her clone.

  And anyway, Alex asked, “You liking your character?” to distract from the subject of Bethany, which was no distraction at all but good enough as an excuse to change subjects.

  “Syem Dyesit’s great.”

  “It sounds like a Russian word.”

  “It is. Sort of. Sounds like ‘Seventy.’ I’ve decided it’s a chimeric experiment gone wrong — seventieth iteration. Since it’s clearly sentient, it was granted autonomy, but it made all the academics uncomfortable.”

  “Reminder of their hubris?”

  “Smarter than all of ‘em.”

  Alex laughed.

  “What about you and Sabreena?”

  “I dunno. She’s fine. Haven’t RPed a girl before.”

  “Your Elden Ring character’s a girl.”

  “I’m not RPing her, though. It’s different. Still might ask Sylvie if she’s got a dwarf I can play instead.” After a long pause, he added. “Or, I dunno, maybe not. I don’t want to mess up her game.”

  “If you really hate it, you can have Sabreena do something stupid and get KOed. You can request your dwarf then.”

  “Haha, nah, I’ll give it the ol’ college try. Just feels weird.”

  Mrs. P came out at the sound of their voices near the apartment’s front door, free of her makeup and clad in pajamas and a bathrobe. She hugged BJ goodnight, hugged Alex and kissed him on the cheek, and went to bed. BJ and Alex bro-hugged, agreed BJ would come by on Saturday afternoon, and he left.

  The drive home didn’t take long. He and Alex used to bike or walk to each other’s homes. But BJ saw the kitchen light was still on as he approached the turn onto his street, and kept driving.