"Or can he?"
"It'll be better than wheat."
"Do you really want to take that chance, Tom?"
Jesus, I want to leap across this table, throw you down on the ground, and kiss the everloving fuck out of you. Coop gulped back hard.
Tom shut his eyes, lifted the brick card from his hand, and slid it over to Coop.
Coop leapt out of his seat. He slammed each resource card down on the table. "One road. One settlement. Res ipsa loquitur, motherfucker." He did a crotch thrust for good measure.
Matty remained poker-faced. Coop pulled his road and settlement piece out of his baggie. He did a semi-victory dance and beatboxed as he put the pieces down. "I needed that brick. I needed that hit./I got to build. How you like dat shit?/Here are the facts./I stopped you in your tracks./I thwarted your attacks. / I left you feelin' wack."
Coop high-fived every non-Matty player.
He flopped back down in his chair and reverted to his calm self. "Your turn, Matty."
Matty rolled the dice as if Coop's theatrics never happened. He rolled a six and collected his resources.
"Try building a settlement," Coop said. "Oh, wait. You can't." He pointed across the table at Akash, who was holding back a smile. "Akash found that funny."
"I'm going to build two cities." Matty displayed the iron and wheat resources cards in his hand. "And that means I win the game."
Matty replaced two of his settlements with cities. The world turned black-and-white, then static.
"Wait. That's it?" Coop was wired, every synapse in his brain was on fire. How could the game end just like that, cold turkey?
"That's it." Matty took a picture of his winning board, then the guys set about breaking down the game.
"But … " Coop couldn't just stop. He had to come down off his Catan high.
"You lost, Coop, but a valiant effort," Matty said.
Tim checked his watch. "That was a long one!"
"What time is it?" Coop asked.
"Ten-thirty."
They played a three-hour game? It passed in the blink of an eye. Maybe Coop really was on drugs.
"You guys do this every week?" Coop asked.
"Don't you have your Catan group?" Matty shot Coop a mocking smile that showed off his dimples.
Damn, this guy is even cuter when he wins.
"Are you taking off?" Coop asked him.
Matty nodded. Coop said good-bye to the other guys and hoped he saw them around campus. He jogged up to Matty, who was already opening the front door.
"I'll walk with you."
Chapter 8
Matty
Matty and Coop strolled down a path that cut across the sleepy science quad. The buildings reminded Matty of sleeping giants, catching shut-eye before being overtaken by students in the morning.
"I had no idea Tom was studying to be a bishop, or that he was Mormon. That's really cool," Matty said. "And Tim has participated in environmental protests. And you can rap. How'd you get into rapping?"
"One Thanksgiving years ago, my cousin and I snuck away from the table, and he had me listen to this Kanye West album. It seriously blew my mind. He would email me albums and artists to check out. I was hooked. It was a great escape."
"An escape from what?"
"Just life, I guess." Coop seemed flustered for a second before regaining his cool. "So you really had no idea about any of those guys? How long have you been playing with them?"
"Since September." Matty didn't have to see Coop's reaction to know how strange that sounded. "When we get together, we play. Catan is no time to play twenty questions."
That wasn't the best answer, but it sounded most like the truth.
"They know what I major in." Matty listened to the breeze sweep through the branches above them. "There isn't much else to know."
"I think there is." Coop said it with such conviction that Matty had to take a deep breath. Either Coop was just saying that to be nice, or maybe this was the longest con ever.
Matty stopped and leaned against a mighty oak tree. A nearby lamppost lit them in the darkness. "What's going on? What's your deal?"
"My deal?" Coop slipped his hands in his jeans pockets, and Matty checked out his triceps.
"Why are you so interested in hanging out with me?"
"Why is it so weird that I think you're cool?"
"Because nobody does." Matty's voice echoed in the quad.
Coop took a step toward him. The first prickles of stubble formed on his cheeks. His thin lips pouted, his eyebrows were stick straight, and his eyes … they seemed to peer right through Matty's paranoia and insecurity, to a private place not many people got to see. Or cared to see.
"They just aren't looking hard enough." Coop placed a gentle hand on Matty's arm.
The short distance between them had enough energy to power a major city. Matty was very aware of his heart beating, and his mouth going dry, and his stomach caving in.
Does Coop know that I'm gay?
Does he want to kiss me?
Do I want to kiss him?
All valid questions.
"I'm up here." Coop pointed left at his dorm.
"I'm that way." Matty pointed right. They were at a fork in their path. And what a fork it was.
Coop took another second to look into Matty's eyes. "Thanks for not narcing on me tonight."
Matty tried to get a little studying in before bed. Books sprawled out on his blankets. He read up on breakthroughs in haptic technology, which involved robots who could perceive touch. It was one of those developments that average people wouldn't think was anything important, but if you actually sat down and thought about it, it was pretty astounding. Robots could determine what something was just by touching it.
A bolt of memory lightning struck Matty's head. Coop's hand, touching his arm. Yes, a robot would be able to determine human skin, but could it determine what that contact meant?
"It was nothing," Matty said aloud. Coop was saying goodbye, and in those situations, a hand can naturally brush against somebody's arm. He shook it off and returned to his textbook.
He read over the section that differentiated between kinesthetic and tactile feedback within haptic perception. He wondered if emotions played a part in haptic sensations.
Emotions?
Matty blinked his eyes. He was staring at his textbook in his lap, but his mind had flown elsewhere. He reminded himself how pointless and futile thinking about Coop was. All it did was drag focus away from his real pursuits. The great minds who changed the world didn't let trifling emotions stand in their way.
"Focus," he whispered to himself.
Matty woke up with his book still in his lap. A ray of morning sun hit him directly in the eyes. He didn't remember when he fell asleep, but he had a feeling Coop was the last thing on his mind.
He needed to talk to somebody about this, even though he couldn't say much, and that left only one option. He texted Aditi to see if she was available to Skype.
"Hey, baby brother!" She waved to him over her morning coffee. Just seeing her smiling face perked him up. Matty thought of the best way to approach what he needed to say.
After they exchanged pleasantries, and Aditi gave him an update on their parents, Matty launched into his dilemma.
"There's this really annoying guy. He bothered me at the library, and the other night, he showed up at my Catan group."
"Uninvited?"
"Yes! Well, no. Technically, he reached out to the group, and they let him join. But it was under false pretenses."
"Maybe he was looking for a group to play with?"
"He'd never played Catan a day in his life! And now he wants to join an intense group of players?"
Aditi didn't say anything. She smiled heartily, that same smile she used when she knew she was about to win gin rummy. "I think this guy wants to be your friend, Matty. Or more."
"More?" Matty sat up straight in his chair. He swallowed a lump.
Aditi shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe he has a crush."
"On me?" The idea of Coop having a crush on Matty sounded ridiculous and terrifying at the same time.
"He obviously joined the group to be around you." Aditi searched for the right way to phrase what Matty knew was coming next. His stomach tightened into a fist. "How do you feel about that?"
It was code for a question she was too scared to ask, and Matty was too scared to answer. The words sat in the back of his throat. Despite how close he felt to his sister, saying that seemed too close. It would be like the wall of a house just crumbling to the ground.
"I just want him to go away." He was saying it to himself as much as to his sister.
"I like him," Aditi said.
"You haven't even met him."
"He's actively trying to be your friend. He's a brave soul."
For today's lecture, Professor Chertok took the class to his lab to meet Imelda. The robot had a slender frame and long arms. Even female robots had to abide by male standards of beauty, apparently.
"Imelda is our haptic robot. So far, she's been programmed to identify thirty-five different surfaces." Professor Chertok directed the class to a bulletin board hung on the wall. Square samples of different textures, no bigger than a carpet sample each, were tacked in neat rows with their name listed underneath.