Frustration -SERIES- [Part 1] [boyxboy]

Chapter Six

'I don't know why you're going.' Josh was reclining in his computer chair, watching me as I darted around the room in my underwear trying to find something to wear. Why was it so impossible all of a sudden? I had plenty of clothes.

Since Conor had essentially excused us from writing the play, and we had the week off classes anyway, the others were planning on spending the day in the Coffee Dock and then heading to the screening room at the back of the library to watch a film. Josh couldn't understand why I was going to pass that up in favour of spending the day with Conor, though I'm sure he had a pretty good idea and just didn't want to admit it.

'I told you, he asked me,' I lied, pretending to dig around in my sock drawer so I wouldn't have to meet his gaze.

'Yeah, and what if it's, like, a trick? What if he and his friends just decide to jump you or something?'

'In the library?' I asked sceptically. 'Come on, Josh.'

'I still think you should bail out and just come hang out with me and the girls.'

'If he says anything I'll come join you guys,' I said, ripping a pair of black skinny jeans off a clothes-hanger in my wardrobe and jumping around the room trying to get them on. My hair was still wet from the shower and I was already late. I stood in front of the mirror, still shirtless, examining my forehead critically. 'Do you think it's gone down any?'

'It's turning brown and yellow. Like diarrhoea.'

'Thank you,' I spat sarcastically, reaching for the hair drier and switching it on to drown out any responses. Five minutes later my hair was straight and dry, covering up my forehead completely. I grabbed my phone and my wallet, shoving them into my back pockets, and opened the door to leave.

'Shirt,' Josh reminded me lazily, not even looking up from the sports magazine article he was reading. I looked down, realised I was still topless, threw on a blue t-shirt and finally left the room, walking at double speed across campus to the library. I was twenty minutes late by now and as I've said before, Conor is a punctual guy.

I stopped outside the library for a second to calm myself down and also give out to myself for acting like such a moron, and my phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out, and immediately felt overwhelmingly guilty when I saw it was a text from Jackson.

Hey! Hope the play is going okay! Currently in a maths test... Do you know anything about differentiation? Lol XD See you this weekend? x

Jackson Smith 9:13

I groaned, conflicted, and eventually slipped the phone back into my pocket without texting back. The message and the situation had put me back in my normal slightly grumpy mood and I slouched into the library, located Conor, and dropped into the chair on his left.

He was scribbling messily in a notebook, pausing every few seconds to tap something out on the table or close his eyes and run through it in his head, then going back to scribbling again. Call me crazy, but it didn't look like he was writing a play.

'What's your damage?' he asked, glancing up at me and quickly taking in my demeanour before returning his attention to the notebook.

'Nothing,' I answered, shaking it off. 'What are you doing?'

'What's it look like?'

I leaned in closer, ostensibly to look at what he was doing but also because he smelled really, really good. There was a jumble of lines and blobs on the page that wasn't immediately recognisable as anything save, perhaps, some mutated form of binary code. 'It doesn't look like anything,' I said dubiously.