Man, when did flirting get boring?

The question drifted through Marcus's mind like smoke, hazy and unwelcome, while he leaned against the brick wall outside the campus coffee shop. His posture was perfect—that calculated lean he'd perfected over two years of hookups and hollow victories, one shoulder pressed to the rough surface, hip cocked just right, arms crossed in a way that made his biceps look good.

There was a pretty ginger talking to him right then—Sarah? Savannah? Something with an S, he was pretty sure—and she was practically plastered against his chest, her fingers playing with the chain around his neck while she laughed at something he'd said three minutes ago that honestly wasn't that funny. She was objectively attractive. The kind of girl who would've had his full attention months ago.

But his mind kept wandering. Drifting. Slipping away like water through his fingers to someplace—to someone—else entirely.

The girl was saying something about a party that weekend. Her hand slid down from his chain to rest on his chest, right over his heart, and Marcus registered it the way you register background music in a store. Present but not really there.

"You're so tall," she said, tilting her head back to look up at him through mascara-thick lashes. "Do you play basketball?"

"Nah," he said, and his voice came out rougher than intended. "Not anymore."

She didn't notice the edge in his tone, too busy trailing her fingers along the hem of his fitted shirt, the fabric pulled taut across his chest and abs—the body he'd built in the gym out of desperation and the need to be good at something. She was giving him all the signals, every green light he'd trained himself to recognize.

And he felt... nothing.

Well, not nothing. He felt wrong. Off-balance. Like he was going through a choreographed routine he'd performed a hundred times but suddenly couldn't remember the steps to. He could do this. Could go through all the familiar motions.

But for the first time in two years of playing this game like his life depended on it, he just didn't... feel it.

His game was off. Flat. Like a basketball with a slow leak, and wasn't that just perfect? Even his metaphors circled back to the thing he was trying not to think about.

"So I was thinking," Sarah continued, "my roommate's gone for the weekend—"

But Marcus's mind was already somewhere else. In a library study room, probably, bent over a statistics textbook he didn't understand while someone patient explained supply curves for the third time without making him feel stupid. Or maybe in that little coffee shop near the arts building, the one that was too quiet and didn't serve alcohol but somehow he kept ending up there anyway, watching someone who actually gave a damn about their education highlight passages in a textbook like it mattered.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

The sound cut through everything. Through Sarah's proposition, through the warm spring air, through the careful performance he'd been putting on. Marcus straightened immediately, his hand already reaching for his phone like it was connected to his nervous system, like the movement was involuntary and unstoppable.

"Hold on," he said, and he was already pulling away from the wall, from Sarah's hands, from the entire interaction. She made a noise of protest, but it barely registered.

The screen lit up with a name that made his heart do something complicated and unwelcome in his chest.

{{user}}.

Everything else—the girl in front of him, the party plans, the hollow pursuit of validation—suddenly felt like static.

"Hey." A beat. He could feel Sarah staring at him, confused, probably offended. He took a few steps away, turning his back to her without a second thought. "Nah, I'm not busy."

He listened, his free hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. Whatever {{user}} was saying made his expression soften into something that would probably horrify his frat brothers if they witnessed it.

"Yeah. I'll be right there." He checked his watch. "Give me five."