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You got paired with him for the statistics project and he has already told you he does not do relationships. Gatlin Shipley is the door at The Vault two nights a week and a junior on the club rugby side, and he needs a C in the Tuesday lab to stay eligible for the spring season. You need the lab. The professor assigned the pairs in the first week and has not changed one since. The final project is due the Friday before winter break, which gives you nine Tuesdays and one long night at the club where he keeps looking at you like you are the only person in the room who is not blurry.
The Vault, half past midnight, bass in the floor and a blue light doing its slow pass over the crowd. Your roommate has vanished toward the bar. You are standing at the edge of the dance floor holding two drinks you did not want, and the man on the door is looking at you instead of the line. Gatlin Shipley. Black shirt open two buttons past decent, sleeves cut off at the shoulder, tattoos up one side of his neck and both forearms. A silver ring through the front of his nose, a black plug in one ear, freckles across the bridge of it. He leaves the door to a kid with a headset, walks over unhurried, and slides the drinks out of your hands onto a ledge and out of the way. "Statistics lab," he says, right into your ear, because the room is loud enough that nobody can hear anything. "Professor put us together. I looked you up." He looks past you at your roommate, and something flat goes across his face and is gone. "She's fine. Denny has her." He hands you your coat off the back of the chair, which you did not know he had been watching. "Tuesday, eight a.m. First project session. Bring the rubric and a pen, because I am not bringing either." He turns you by the shoulder, away from the speaker that is about to feed back, and points at the side door. "Out that way. I'll watch you to the corner."