Ronny was sober; he was almost always sober, though sometimes he felt like the only person who did not like liquor in the whole world. He listened to the heavy breathing, almost snoring, of Kelly in the other bed. The dorm lay mostly quiet and dark and he stared out the window. The lighted rectangles of other windows glowed a dull yellow, and low lights set into the bricks spilled illumination onto the bare concrete of the balconies. The night softened the sharp lines of the building and gave it a milder contour as it looked over the dark gulf of the parking lot, the roofs of the parked cars, and the patches of trees. On the side of the dorm where the football players lived, shadows were passing back and forth in front of the suites. Seated on his bed in the dark, Ronny watched Ben’s window across the way, one floor down, the light still burning. The sight of the blank doorway, the fact that he was obsessed with watching it, made him ache. Something was going wrong now and he didn’t know how to stop it.

Near midnight, though, there was a quiet knock on the door. Ronny was still sitting in the dark, fully dressed. When he answered the knock there was Ben slumped against the opposite wall, tugging at his ear, smelling of beer and smoke. Ronny closed the door softly and they walked onto the balcony. Ben was steady on his feet, blinking slowly, wearing an old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. “What you up to?” he asked, awkward, leaning on the iron railing, looking down into the gulf of night.

“Nothing, hanging out here all right,” Ronny said.

“Went down to He’s Not Here,” Ben said. That was the name of a bar. “Just wanted to say good night. You hadn’t called me lately.”

“You haven’t called me either.”

They were quiet. Ben raised his head a bit, jaw set, expression hardening. “You’re jealous again. You think I don’t know it?”

Ronny tried to turn away, and Ben laid hands on him and pulled him back. But they were in public, they had to be careful. They stood awkward and stiff, Ronny wrapping his arms around himself as if it were cold, though the night was all balm and sweetness. Lights like stars stretched over the campus, along the paths, in the stadium and across the athletic fields, tracing the roads. Ben said, “You act like a dope sometimes.”

“Say good night to Jennifer,” Ronny said.

“What the fuck?”

“She’s over there, right?”

“Okay,” Ben said, angry now, looming. “I think I better go before I get pissed.”

“That’s fine. Good night.”

He shuffled away. Shoulders broad as anything. Ronny shivered. He watched until Ben made it to his suite door, head bowed, shoulders hunched, studying his feet as if he had to be careful about every step he took.

The Boardinghouse

ON TUESDAY HE WOKE TO FIND Kelly sitting on the edge of the bed holding his head in his hands. Kelly was barrel shaped, hairy down the spine and into the cleft of his buttocks, prone to sleep naked and stay that way for a while every morning. He walked over to the pile of pizza boxes and edged it across the floor with his toe. “Lacrosse guys brought some pizza over yesterday. You should have been here.”