Chapter 3: Bros Are People Too
Staring at Sabrina's number in my phone feels like holding a live grenade with the pin half-pulled. After lunch, we went our separate ways with that awkward "see you around" dance that could either mean "Let's hang out tomorrow" or "Goodbye forever, random cafeteria person." I'm not great at deciphering these social cues.
We did exchange numbers, which is objectively a win, but now what? I've literally never texted a girl unless it was about some group project where I was desperately trying to sound professional while secretly hoping they didn't think I was a complete loser. What am I supposed to say? "Hey, it's that awkward guy from lunch who rambled about Doctor Who and has mommy issues you definitely don't know about"?
Despite how refreshingly weird Sabrina was, or maybe because of it, this feels like scaling Everest without oxygen. I keep typing and deleting the same "Hey, it's Gabe" message over and over like a fucking lunatic.
"Yo, Earth to new guy! You with us?"
I snap my head up to find twenty pairs of eyes on me in this stuffy classroom where they've herded us freshmen for some mandatory "community building exercise." Kill me now.
"Sorry, yeah," I mutter, shoving my phone into my pocket before the orientation leader, some aggressively cheerful junior with too many teeth in her smile, can confiscate it.
"As I was saying," Teeth continues, "partner up with someone you haven't met yet and share three interesting facts about yourself!"
The room erupts into that special kind of chaos where everyone's desperately scanning for someone who doesn't look like a complete psychopath to pair with. I'm still frozen in place when a guy built like a linebacker slides into the desk next to mine.
"Sup, bro? Wanna team up?" He extends a meaty hand. "I'm Brad."
Brad is exactly what you'd get if you typed "college bro" into an AI image generator. Backwards baseball cap over dirty blonde hair, a muscle shirt that's doing overtime containing his biceps, and a smile that says he's probably chugged beer from a shoe at least once in his life.
"Gabe," I reply, shaking his hand and immediately regretting it when he nearly crushes my fingers.