Wes stepped out of the library adjusting his collar to look composed, and Reggie was leaning against the nearest pillar with a grin so smug it should’ve needed a permit.
“Did you have fun?” said Reggie, laughing under his breath.
“You’re out of your mind, man.”
“Seriously? Because I just saw a girl, ran one script, and had her unzipping me behind the history shelves in under ten minutes. So what’s so special about that?”
“You make it look like it’s nothing,” said Wes.
“It is nothing, kid, because you’re going to be a sensation,” said Reggie, and his tone shifted into something almost serious.
“It took me months to do this with any natural rhythm, but I’ve seen your plays. I’ve watched you cry on command and hold a hundred strangers perfectly still with nothing but your voice, and that’s the entire skill set.”
“You can laugh, you can grieve, you can pretend to fall in love on cue, and most women can’t tell the difference between the act and the real thing because most of them have never been handed the real thing.”
“So here’s my professional assessment. You’re a potential seducer in the making, and the only thing wrong with you is that you need to lose the fear.”
“The fear,” said Wes.
“The flinch. That half second where you apologize for wanting something before you’ve even asked for it. Kill that and you’re dangerous.”
Reggie scanned the hallway while he talked, eyes narrowing at a girl filling her water bottle at the fountain, picking her out of a crowd the way other men check out cars.
Wes watched him do it and understood that this was just how Reggie saw the world now, everything in inventory.
“So. Want to try again?”
“Screw you, I’m not doing this.”
“Fine, but when you feel like playing, I can give you some lessons,” said Reggie, checking his watch.
“Speaking of lessons, it’s time for the next class, so what are you doing?”
“I’m going, obviously.”
Reggie raised an eyebrow.
“What, you actually want to graduate?”
“Aren’t you still here despite everything?”
“I don’t come here to study. I just look for people to have fun with, because it’s fun,” said Reggie.
“Don’t you do that all the time at work?” said Wes, dropping his voice on the last word because they were standing in a public hallway.
Reggie leaned in with a grin.
“It’s not as easy as you think, because once you start you need it constantly, it’s addictive, so I always keep somebody on the side to blow off steam with. Speaking of which, the Dragon gave you her number, right?”
“Fine, fine, I’m going to class because I actually want to graduate,” said Wes, and he walked away and left Reggie in the hallway, took his seat in the classroom.
The atmosphere hit him the second he sat down, thick with pity, because his classmates were looking at him like a man walking toward a firing squad.
Word of the morning had already traveled through the whole building.
He’d burst into the Finance hall at 8:04, gotten ejected by the Warden in front of forty witnesses, and apparently that was better entertainment than the syllabus.
He ignored all of it and stared at the ceiling, and that’s when he noticed something new about himself, because Tessa Grange, the class delegate, was crossing the room toward his desk and his heart wasn’t doing anything.
No panic, no sweat, no flinch.
Tessa was the kind of beautiful that didn’t announce itself, neat pressed blouse, hair pinned back, the girl who collected attendance sheets and knew everyone’s deadlines better than the professors did, and she stopped at his desk with a serious expression.
“The professor said you need to go to her office when classes are over, because she wants to talk to you about what happened earlier,” said Tessa.
“I understand. I’ll be there,” said Wes.
She stood there a second longer than the message required, and Wes looked up at her and let his eyes linger, because a new thing was happening in his head, and it was happening fast.
Reggie’s words were still sitting there, seducer in the making, lose the fear, and his mind grabbed them and started building, because that’s what it did now.
He looked at Tessa and took her apart like a script.
Perfect posture.
Notes color coded by subject.
The way she’d delivered his summons loud enough for the entire row to hear, like she was performing her own reliability.
Perfectionist, obviously.
Only child, almost certainly, because only children learned early that love arrived with report cards attached.
Somebody had been stacking pressure on those small shoulders since she was old enough to carry a backpack, and people built like that didn’t want a clown.
They wanted a kindred spirit.
Somebody serious, somebody carrying a weight of their own, so their pressure had somewhere to sit down next to.
So he built her a character on the spot, right there in the middle of a class he was failing, and he adjusted his posture, dropped his shoulders into a tired dignified resignation, and decided the character would be the Hollow Graduate.
Brilliant, hollowed out, a guy who’d spent his whole life being praised until the praise wore a hole straight through him.
Running on fumes and habit, polite to everyone, close to no one, and underneath it all, quietly done.
He took a slow breath and let the mask settle over his face while his eyes went from worried to cold and focused, because every conversation was an audition now, and he was done auditioning for parts other people wrote.
“Alright,” he whispered to the ceiling.
“We have the character. So let’s see what happens.”
As the final bell rang, Tessa lingered by the door, watching him pack his things with deliberate grace, and Wes felt her watching and did absolutely nothing about it, because the Hollow Graduate didn’t chase.
The Hollow Graduate had stopped chasing a long time ago.
“Are you ready?” said Tessa.
“As ready as I’ll ever be to face the Warden,” said Wes, and he slung his bag over one shoulder with his eyes carrying that practiced exhaustion, and Tessa fell into step beside him toward the faculty wing.
“She’s not usually this aggressive unless she sees potential in someone,” said Tessa.
“Because if she didn’t care, she would have just failed you and forgotten your name by dinner.”
Wes let the silence sit for three steps, because silence was a prop too.
“Everyone keeps telling me I’ve changed,” he said, quiet, like it cost him something.
“Maybe I have. When you spend long enough carrying what everybody needs you to carry, you stop asking what’s underneath.”
Tessa stopped walking for half a step, and when he glanced over, she was already looking at him, and she was pink to the ears, and she snapped her eyes forward and studied the faculty wing like it was the most fascinating architecture on the eastern seaboard.
“Sorry,” she said quickly.
“That’s just, that’s a really heavy thing to say out loud like that.”
“It’s fine,” said Wes, and he didn’t soften it, because the Hollow Graduate had no energy left for softening.
They reached the faculty wing and she slowed down outside an office door with a nameplate that read B.
HOLLIS, and Wes stopped in front of it and gave Tessa a faint weary smile.
“Thanks for the heads up, Tessa. I appreciate it.”
Tessa hesitated with her hand resting on the strap of her bag.
“Good luck. And don’t let her get under your skin,” she said, and she turned and walked away, but Wes noticed her look back over her shoulder one last time before he knocked twice on the heavy oak door.
“Come in,” said the sharp cold voice of Professor Hollis.