Chapter 1

I’m still not accustomed to the whole shorts-and-T-shirts-the-day-before-Christmas thing. I’m from Colorado. Okay, not every Christmas Eve is dusted with quiet white snow—I’m from Boulder, not the lid of a collectible fruitcake tin—but Christmas definitely happens in the winter. At the very least you need a sweatshirt. Growing up, I couldn’t even keep track of my flip-flops from one summer to the next; I usually had to buy a new pair in May. Now flip-flops feel like dress shoes—I only bother with them when I go to class or the Commons, and only then ‘cause they make me.

Of course, when most people ask me where I’m “from,” the answer they’re fishing for is “Vietnam.” But I was a baby when I was brought here. I don’t remember Vietnam, I don’t speak Vietnamese, I never knew my birth parents. I was raised on Scooby Doo and Capri Sun the same as all my other American friends were. Colorado is Home, and until I started at Inland Empire University last year, it never occurred to me that people might string Christmas lights from palm trees or roast chestnuts in tank tops.

Not that I’m complaining. When George Cortner shuffles into the Commons in his tank top and flip-flops the day before Christmas Eve, I’m downright grateful for the California culture that brings the world those squat, fuzzy legs in those snug, above-the-knee shorts year-round. Built like a big, blond teddy bear, all of five-foot-six with shot-putting shoulders, he lugs the Freshman Fifteen—along with a more recent Sophomore Ten-or-So—around in a juicy spare tire, and the bump and bounce of his pronounced quad muscles under all that sun-kissed thigh meat has me hypnotized: I watch him mosey around the side of the dining hall and grab an orange plastic tray.

As usual, he loads it up—a butt that big’s not full of helium, even if it does hover impressively high. We’re not great friends, and we’re certainly not in the habit of sharing a table in the Commons, but he is the last tenor in the row on the third step up in concert choir, and I’m the first bass. By sheer luck of the numbers, he’s my warm-up backrub partner when we all turn to the person on our left, and then again when we shift to the right. So we know each other on a small-talk basis, and this close to the holiday, the Commons isn’t exactly full to bursting; I’m sure he plunks his tray down across from mine at least partly because it would just look rude to sit on the other side of the empty room.

“May I?” he asks. As if I don’t lay awake nights fantasizing about pretty much this exact moment. With any luck, this means he hasn’t noticed I’ve broken into a sweat like I’m in a sauna

“Sure,” I say, even as he’s plopping down.

“Brent, right?”

“Right.” I grin, way too happy to discover that someone I’ve stood next to three days a week for the last three months knows my name.

“George,” he says, pointing to himself with a Ranch-tipped French fry before popping it into his mouth.

“I remember,” I say with a nod, eliciting a grin from his peach-fuzzed mug. “Hi.” I have probably two more bites of my nightly Cap’n Crunch, otherwise my tray is empty. Do we know each other well enough for me to keep sitting here after I’m obviously finished? And do what, watch him eat his huge heap of fries? Just how small can two dudes really talk before all the perspiration gets awkward?

Small talk—I seize on a generic exchange we had during choir backrubs a week or so ago and say, “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“‘Cause I look like a guy who misses out on a lot of meals?” He throws in a wink.

I chuckle self-consciously. I’m five-ten and wouldn’t weigh a buck forty if I got on a scale holding a bowling ball; the very last thing I’m going to comment on is a guy’s weight. You know, to him. “I mean, on campus,” I clarify. “Tonight. Didn’t you say you were going home for the holidays?”

“Huh?” He makes to think about this like maybe he doesn’t get what “holidays” I’m referring to. Swallows a gob-full of fries, then nods. “Oh yeah, I guess I did. I mean, I was gonna…”

“What happened?”

“Ride fell through.”

“Really? That sucks. Sorry, man.”

“I was just home for Thanksgiving,” he says, emphasis on the No Big Deal.

“Still…”

He shrugs. Loads up on more fries. Nudges his plate across the table as if to offer me some.

I take him up on it. Eat two, then two more, ‘cause it keeps me at the table.