Avoiding Each Other

The dorm room was stifling when Elliot woke, the air thick with the lingering musk of Bryce's gym gear and the faint hum of morning traffic outside. He blinked against the gray light seeping through the blinds, his body heavy from a night of restless half-sleep. The mattress groaned as he shifted, and across the room, Bryce was already up—shirtless, broad back flexing as he rummaged through a drawer. His buzz cut gleamed faintly in the dimness, and the sound of his low, irritated muttering filled the space like static.

Elliot froze, ocean-blue eyes darting to the floor. "Don't look," he told himself, the mantra sharp and automatic now. "He hates people like me." The whispers from class—the ones about Bryce screaming, shoving, nearly beating someone for being different—echoed in his skull, cold and relentless. He tugged his blanket higher, a flimsy shield, and waited for Bryce to leave.

But Bryce didn't. He turned, green eyes narrowing as they landed on Elliot, still curled on the bed like a shadow trying to vanish. A smirk tugged at his lips, but it didn't reach his gaze—there was something tighter there, something coiled. "So," he started, voice rough from sleep, "that chick yesterday. Purple hair. She your girlfriend or what?"

The question hit like a slap, sudden and jarring. Elliot's stomach twisted, and he kept his head down, fingers digging into the blanket. He didn't answer—just grabbed his sketchpad from the nightstand and flipped it open, pretending to focus on the blank page. "Distance", he thought, jaw tight. "Stay away from him. He doesn't get anything from me." His pencil scratched a jagged wave, harsh and uneven, as if he could drown the moment in ink.

Bryce's smirk faded, his brow twitching with something sharp—annoyance, maybe, or something uglier. He stepped closer, bare feet thudding against the linoleum, and Elliot flinched, shoulders hunching. "What, you ignoring me, now?" he pressed, voice louder, edged with a bite he couldn't quite mask. "I asked you something. You and that loudmouth chick a thing or what?"

Elliot's pencil stilled, the lead pressing hard enough to dent the paper. "He hates me," he thought, chest tight. "He'll hate me more if he knows." "No," he muttered finally, voice barely audible, eyes locked on the sketchpad. "She's just… a friend." He didn't look up—couldn't—those ocean blues hidden behind dark lashes, shutting Bryce out.

Bryce snorted, but it sounded forced, brittle. "Yeah, sure. Looked real cozy out there." His tone was mocking, but his hands flexed at his sides, restless, like he wanted to grab something—or someone—and shake it. He didn't like it, that much was clear. The image of Elliot with that girl, her arm looped through his, her laugh cutting through the quad—it gnawed at him, a splinter he couldn't pull out. "Shouldn't matter", he thought, scowling. "So why's it feel like a punch?" He turned away, yanking a shirt over his head with more force than necessary, muttering, "Whatever. Just keep her outta here."

Elliot didn't respond. He waited until Bryce grabbed his bag and stormed out, the door banging shut with a crack that made him jump. Only then did he exhale, shaky and thin, letting the sketchpad fall into his lap. His pencil traced the wave again, softer now, curling into a tide that stretched across the page. Oceans. He loved them—loved the way they moved, wild and endless, untamed by anything. He'd never seen one, not in person. No beaches, no salt air, just the flat, gray sprawl of the inland town where he'd grown up after his parents were gone. But he'd dreamt of it, night after night—standing on a shore, the water roaring, pulling at his feet.

His mother used to say his eyes were like that. "Ocean eyes," she'd called them, her voice soft as she brushed his hair back when he was small, before the crash that took her and his father. "Deep and restless, just like the sea." He'd cling to that, sketching waves in the margins of his notebooks, imagining a place where he could breathe, where the weight of secrets and loss didn't press so hard. Now, in this cramped room with Bryce's chaos looming, the ocean felt farther away than ever.

He slid off the bed, grabbing his bag for class, and tucked the sketchpad inside. "Distance," he reminded himself, stepping into the hall. Bryce was a storm he couldn't weather—not with what he hid, not with what Bryce might do if he ever guessed. He'd stay quiet, stay small, keep his world to the page.

Across campus, Bryce kicked at the gravel outside the gym, his jaw tight. Practice was in an hour, but his head wasn't in it. Those ocean blues—dodging him, shutting him out—stuck like a burr. And that girl, clinging to Elliot like she belonged there. "Doesn't matter," he told himself, spitting into the dirt, but those dodging blues lingered in his head, quiet and heavy. "Fucking freshmen," he growled, stomping inside, though the twist in his chest stayed put.

Elliot reached the lecture hall and sank into his usual spot, back row, wall at his side. He pulled out his sketchpad again, the pencil moving on its own—a lighthouse now, perched on a cliff, waves crashing below. It was the one from the photo in his drawer, faded and worn, a tether to his mother's voice. He didn't hear the professor start, didn't notice Lila slide in beside him until her elbow nudged his arm.

"More ocean stuff," she said, peering at the page. "You're obsessed, huh?"

He managed a faint smile, shy and fleeting. "Yeah," he murmured. "I… like it." He didn't say more—didn't tell her about the dreams, the longing, the way the sea was all he had left of a family he barely knew. She wouldn't get it, and he wouldn't let her try.

She grinned, oblivious. "Cool. You should see one sometime. They're wild." She turned to her notes, and he nodded, silent, the pencil tracing the lighthouse's beam cutting through the dark. *Wild,* he thought. *Free.* Everything he wasn't—not here, not with Bryce breathing down his neck.

The day stretched on, and Elliot kept his head down, his world shrinking to lines of ink and the promise of staying unseen. But in the back of his mind, those green eyes lingered—sharp, restless, watching him like a tide he couldn't outrun.