Jem puts his hands up.
"Okay, okay. I'll leave you alone. But I still think that you should lock that shit down. That's all I'm going to say. Hey, did I tell you about the girl I hooked up with the other night?" He didn't, and he proceeds to tell me that she's on the gymnastics team and apparently quite flexible. I get a graphic play by play. Typical Jem.
"So, are you going to call her again?" He gives me a look as if I've suggested he chop off his own head.
"Hell no. One and done, man. One and done."
"One of these days you're gonna run out of girls," I say and he chuckles.
"Never. There are always transfer students or freshmen."
"You're an asshole," I say and he grins at me.
"Yup. And don't you forget it."
I change the subject and we talk about the current political mess and natural disasters and global warming and all that shit. Despite seeming like he doesn't care about anything but himself, Jem does actually care. He's an environmental science major and would love to work for a solar or wind power farm, or have his own. I tease him about being a tree hugger all the time.
"Someone's got to save this fucking planet. Might as well be me," he says.
He tries to steer things back to Freya again, but I block him.
"I feel like you've been hibernating with her. Why don't you bring her out?" I sigh.
"Because we're doing what we're doing and I don't need any comments from someone who has no experience even getting a girlfriend. I'm doing fine, Jem. Drop it." He presses his lips together and does. Finally. His fixation on my life always seems extreme, but I know it's because he doesn't want to talk about his own. I've known him long enough to figure that out.
I honestly know next to nothing about Jem's life. He lives in a sweet complex and never seems to be hurting for cash. He refuses to talk about his family, his childhood, or anything he did before he came to MSU. I don't think he has a whole lot of friends, other than me. Tons of acquaintances, but not friends. He's an odd one and he seems to come from a charmed background, but I don't know where that money comes from, or how he gets it. My suspicion is a trust fund and he doesn't want people to think he's a spoiled rich boy. Understandable. Since I'm not too keen on sharing my own past, our friendship works. Still, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to tell someone my whole story.
Growing up essentially homeless, being passed around like a hot potato in different foster homes. I finally ended up, at age sixteen, at a group home and stayed until I aged out and then I was out on my ass. I've struggled and worked for every fucking thing I have, and I'm proud of that, but it wasn't easy. I believe that kids in the system should have more than they get. They need guidance and life skills and help. Just help. If I can give at least one kid what I didn't get, then all of this shit will be worth it.
"You there?" Jem says, waving his hand in front of my face. "Or are you off thinking about your girl's tits?" I glare at him.
"Don't be crude."
"Why not?"
* * *
We're well into the football season and the weather has taken an abrupt turn into cold as fuck. The sidewalks are icy in the mornings and getting to and from class and work turns into an extreme sport. The kids at the day care whine when I tell them it's time to go outside, but I just say that the cold is good for them. Builds character.
"What's char-ac-ter?" Joey, one of the most precocious of the three-year-olds, says.
I laugh.
"It means it makes you into a better person." His little brows furrow as the thinks about that.
"But why?" I groan. The "why" stage is one of the cutest, but most frustrating. No matter how many different ways I can explain something, there is always another inquiry. And since I don't know everything, sometimes I just tell them it's because of magic. Kids are usually cool with things being explained by magic.
"Because of magic," I say, wiggling my fingers. He frowns even more.
"But why?"
I groan again and pick him up and hold him upside down until he shrieks at me to put him down. The kids often use me as a jungle gym, and I have no problem with it. I'm used to coming home from work with goldfish crackers in my pockets and random bits of snot on my shirt because some kid used me as a human tissue. Kids are messy. Kids are loud. Kids are chaos, but it gives you a whole new perspective on life. They get stoked about a rain puddle. Or a flower. That kind of enthusiasm is always contagious, and I find myself stopping and thinking about all the good things in the world, in spite of the bad.