Jason slid into his usual seat near the back, dropping his bag beside him, and Ben settled in next to him a second later with the particular stiffness of a man whose arms had clearly staged a formal complaint overnight.
"Okay," Ben said, rolling one shoulder gingerly. "I need you to explain something to me."
"What."
"How are you not dying right now."
Jason raised an eyebrow, entirely unbothered, stretching one arm across the desk just to demonstrate the point. "I feel fine."
"That’s not possible. We did the exact same workout. I can barely lift this pen." Ben held up the offending pen like evidence in a trial. "You should be in worse shape than me. You’re the one who hadn’t touched a weight in your life before Saturday."
"Guess I’m just built different."
"You are not built different. Nobody’s built different after one gym session." Ben squinted at him, clearly suspicious, though nowhere near suspicious enough to land anywhere close to the actual truth. "This is deeply unfair. I’ve been sore since yesterday morning. You look like you just woke up from a nap."
"Maybe you’re just weak."
"I am not weak. I have been going to that gym for two years."
"And yet." Jason spread his hands, letting the implication hang there, entirely too pleased with himself.
"I hate you," Ben said, without any real heat behind it, slumping slightly in his seat. "I genuinely hate you right now."
"You’ll get over it."
"I will not." He was still grumbling about it when Marcus dropped into the seat on Jason’s other side, arriving with his usual chaotic energy exactly four minutes before the lecture was scheduled to start.
"Gentlemen," Marcus said, like he was arriving fashionably rather than barely on time.
"You’re late," Ben said flatly.
"I’m not late. Class hasn’t started."
"You’re late relative to when class actually requires you to be functional and prepared, which is a different metric than the one you’re apparently using."
"That’s a very specific metric for a Monday morning." Marcus dropped his bag on the floor, unbothered. "Anyway. I’ve got news."
"Do you ever not have news," Jason asked.
"Exactly" Marcus grinned, leaning in slightly, clearly building toward something he’d been sitting on all weekend. "You are not going to believe what happened after you left Amanda’s thing on Saturday."
Right. Here we go again
Jason felt a small, distant flicker at the mention of it, nowhere near the weight it had carried Saturday night, mostly just curiosity now about whatever fallout had unfolded in his absence. "What happened."
"Okay, so, Priya’s over there running her mouth, right, telling everyone how you basically ran off with your tail between your legs." Marcus was already gesturing with both hands, fully in storytelling mode. "And then Sarah, who apparently was there the whole time and nobody even clocked it, just walks up, right in front of everyone, and absolutely tears into her."
Ben straightened slightly, interest piqued despite the soreness. "Wait, Sarah? From the other class?"
Sarah. Something warm settled in Jason’s chest at the phrase even though Ben clearly meant nothing beyond simple clarification. "Go on."
"So Sarah basically calls her out for repeating something secondhand, some word Amanda apparently used behind your back, and just completely dismantles her in front of like fifteen people."
"Damn," Ben said, genuinely impressed now. "That’s wild."
"That’s not even the best part." Marcus held up a finger, clearly savoring the buildup. "Apparently Amanda found out later that night what Priya actually said to you. And I heard, secondhand again, that Amanda’s been going around acting all guilty about it since, like properly guilty, not performing guilty."
Jason listened to all of it with a strange, quiet detachment, the whole story landing somewhere distant now instead of raw.
Amanda feeling guilty.
He turned the information over once, checking whether any part of him still cared, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that the answer was genuinely no. Not anger. Not satisfaction. Just a mild, passing acknowledgment, the same weight he’d give a headline about a stranger’s minor scandal.
"Huh," he said out loud, keeping most of that internal indifference off his face. "That’s rough for her, I guess."
"That’s it? ’That’s rough for her’?" Marcus stared at him. "Dude, this is the woman who rejected you and then talked trash about you behind your back. I expected a little more satisfaction out of you."
"I’ve got other things going on."
"Cryptic." Marcus narrowed his eyes, clearly filing that away as suspicious in the exact same way Ben had earlier, though for once nobody pushed harder on it, both of them apparently deciding the mystery could wait.
Ben, however, circled back to the earlier thread instead, tilting his head slightly. "Speaking of which. Why’d you actually go to that party, man? You’ve been dodging that question since Saturday morning."
Finally, I planned this lie. Time to actually land the lie properly this time.
Jason had rehearsed a version of this over the weekend without fully meaning to, the same instinct that made him rehearse everything, and he delivered it now with practiced ease. "Figured avoiding Amanda forever wasn’t sustainable. We’re in the same circles. Better to get the first awkward interaction over with in a low-stakes setting than let it hang over every future run-in."
Ben considered that, nodding slowly, apparently satisfied. "Huh. Fair, actually. Mature of you."
"I have my moments."
"Rare moments," Ben said, echoing almost exactly what Marcus had said two days earlier, and Jason huffed a short laugh at the coincidence of it, both of them apparently drawing from the same well of gentle mockery.
The lecture hall door opened before Marcus could dig further, and their usual lecturer walked in, not Professor Warren, who apparently had some kind of conference this week, but a younger substitute Jason vaguely recognized from a seminar the previous semester, calmer, more measured in his movements than Warren’s usual brisk energy.
The class settled into its usual rhythm after that, the substitute working through the week’s material with an even, unhurried pace that Jason found himself appreciating, easier to actually absorb than Warren’s typical rapid-fire delivery. Ben and Marcus both quieted down, notebooks open, occasional whispered commentary passed between them that Jason mostly ignored in favor of actually following along.
The hour passed steadily, the lecturer working through a dense section on behavioral heuristics, and Jason found his attention drifting only once or twice, briefly, toward Sarah, wondering how her own study session had gone yesterday, whether Vivian had been there the whole time without either of them realizing anything beyond the surface of two names existing in the same room.
Near the end of the lecture, the substitute set down his marker and turned to face the class properly, folding his hands in front of him with the air of someone about to deliver news that mattered.
"Before you go," he said, "a reminder. Your midterm is scheduled for eleven days from today. I’d recommend starting your review now rather than later. This material compounds, and cramming it in the final week rarely goes well."
A ripple of quiet groans moved through the room, Ben’s included, loud enough that Jason caught it beside him.
"Eleven days," Ben muttered, gathering his things. "Great. Perfect. Exactly enough time to panic properly."
"You’ll be fine," Jason said, standing and shouldering his bag.
"Easy for you to say. You’re apparently immune to soreness now. Probably immune to exam stress too."
"That would be convenient."
"Everything’s convenient for you lately," Ben said, only half joking, and Jason let the comment pass without dwelling on it, filing it away instead as they filed out of the lecture hall together, the eleven-day countdown already settling into place alongside every other clock quietly running in the background of his week.
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