Chapter 4: Beer pong study
Dash’s house loomed at the end of the cul-de-sac, a monument to benign neglect. Weeds cracked through the driveway pavement. A single porch light cast a yellowed glow over a pile of discarded solo cups. The bass from inside was a physical thump in the thick night air, a heartbeat Jay felt in his teeth.
He parked behind a car he didn’t recognize. He sat for a moment, his hand on the calculus book in his passenger seat. The clean, silent focus of his dining room felt a million miles away. He took a breath that didn’t feel deep enough, grabbed his bag, and got out.
The front door was unlocked. He pushed it open and the noise engulfed him—a shriek of laughter, the tinny blast of hip-hop from a Bluetooth speaker, the clatter of what sounded like bowling pins. The air was warm and smelled of cheap citrus vodka, sweat, and microwaved popcorn.
He moved through the crowded living room. Faces turned, voices called his name. He offered nods, half-smiles, kept moving. He saw the promised beer pong table set up in the dining room, cups already arranged in a tight triangle, a puddle of spilled beer shimmering on the polished wood.
Emily was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter next to the fridge. She had a can of soda in her hand. She saw him and her posture straightened slightly, a look of relief flashing across her face before it was schooled into neutrality. She’d dressed simply, jeans and a dark sweater, her hair pulled back. She looked like an observer, which is exactly what she was.
Jay slid through the bodies toward her. “You set the timer yet?”
“Waiting for the study group to assemble,” she said, her voice raised over the music. “Dash is… somewhere.”
As if on cue, Dash emerged from the hallway that led to the basement, his arm around a laughing girl with bleached blonde hair. Samantha Cruz. She wore a tight black top and her eyes, already bright and searching, locked onto Jay immediately. Her smile widened. Dash saw Jay, detached himself, and bounded over, clapping him on the back.
“The man of the hour! You brought the books. I’m impressed.” Dash’s eyes were already glittering, his movements slightly amplified. He’d started without them.
“You said study first,” Jay said.
“And we shall!” Dash swept an arm toward the cluttered kitchen table. It was covered in chip bags, a sticky bottle of liquor, and a stack of red plastic cups. “Command center. Let’s conquer some calculus.”
Emily pushed off the counter. “Where are we supposed to work? Here? It’s a disaster zone.”
“Details, details.” Dash began haphazardly shoving the debris to one end of the table. “There. Clean slate.”
Jay expected the study session to just be him, Dash, and Emily, but Dash had other plans. He whistled, sharp and loud, and gestured. Samantha appeared at his side instantly, followed by another girl—taller, with long auburn hair and a wary expression. Rachel.
“Ladies, you remember Jay,” Dash said, his tone jovial, conspiratorial. “And Emily. We’re doing a little pre-fun academic torture. Samantha, you’re in calc too, right? You can help.”
Samantha’s gaze never left Jay. “I’m more of a visual learner.”
Dash leaned closer to Jay, his voice a low, beer-warm chuckle meant to be private but carrying perfectly in the din. “Samantha and her friend, Rachel, wanted to join in.” He dropped his voice further, a smirk twisting his lips. “Samantha really wants that Jay dick again.”
The words hung in the greasy air. Emily, who had been clearing a space for her notebook, went very still. Jay felt the words like a physical touch, crude and possessive. It wasn’t a question or an invitation; it was a statement of fact, a commodity being discussed. He saw Samantha’s pleased, confident smile. He saw Rachel look away, uncomfortable.
He looked at Emily. She was staring at the stained wood of the table, her jaw tight. The timer, still unset, was clenched in her other hand. The ramen bribe, the quiet solidarity, the Okay—it all shriveled in the heat of Dash’s casual pronouncement. This was the bridge Dash had built. It led directly back into the nullifying fog.
Dash clapped his hands together, oblivious or indifferent to the fracture he’d just widened. “So! Who wants to derive first?”
The kitchen table felt like a spotlight. Samantha slid into the chair next to Jay, her perfume—something sweet and synthetic—cutting through the smell of stale beer. Rachel took the seat beside her, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else.
Emily remained standing. She placed her closed notebook on the cleared space with a quiet, definitive sound. She looked at Jay, then at Samantha, then back at Jay. Her expression was unreadable, a flat mask that chilled him more than any anger.
“Okay,” Emily said, her voice clear and cutting through the music. She opened the calculus book to a pre-marked page of practice problems. “Let’s set the terms.”
Dash grinned, popping open a beer. “Terms! I like it. Go on, Em.”
She ignored him, her eyes locked on Jay. “You’ve got fifteen minutes. Get these five questions correct.” She tapped the page. “Show your work. All of it.”
Jay stared at the problems. They were integration by parts, the very topic that had tripped him up on the test. Thompson’s red ink seemed to bleed at the edges of his vision. The numbers swam. He could feel Samantha’s knee almost touching his under the table.
“And if I do?” Jay asked, his voice tighter than he intended.
A slow, cold smile touched Emily’s lips. It didn’t reach her eyes. She glanced past him toward Samantha, then back. She raised the stakes. “Get these five questions correct within fifteen minutes and you can have five minutes alone with your friend over there.” She gestured towards Samantha.
The air left the room. The music from the living room pulsed, distant and stupid.
Samantha’s face lit up with victorious delight. She leaned into Jay’s space, her voice a purr. “A private tutorial. I like that.”
Dash let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Damn, Em. Playing for keeps.”
Jay felt the old, familiar pathways in his brain light up. This was a language he understood. A transaction. Effort for a reward. The exact mechanism of every party, every hookup, every numbing night. A+B=C. Calculus for connection. His stomach turned, but the habit was strong.
Emily placed a cheap plastic kitchen timer on the table with a sharp click. She twisted the dial. The tick-tick-tick was obscenely loud. “Clock starts when you pick up the pencil,” she said. Her tone was that of a dispassionate judge. He searched her face for any trace of the girl from the ramen shop, from the quiet dining room. There was nothing. Just a wall of polished ice.
He looked at the page. The first problem was a monster. ∫ x² e^x dx. He knew the formula. u = x², dv = e^x dx. His hand hovered over the blank notebook paper. The timer ticked. Samantha’s perfume was a fog. Dash took a long sip of his beer, watching him like this was the night’s best entertainment.
Jay picked up the pencil. The graphite point hovered, trembling slightly. He wrote u = x². He took a shaky breath, trying to block out the warmth of Samantha’s leg, the tick of the clock, the weight of Emily’s stare. He wrote du = 2x dx. The steps were mechanical, rote. He had done this with Emily. He had gotten them right.
He moved to the next line, his mind grasping for the procedure through a thickening haze. The numbers were just symbols, devoid of meaning. He could feel the five minutes with Samantha like a physical space—a dark, quiet room somewhere in this house. A place to disappear. The pencil dug into the paper.
He completed the first integration, the answer looking clumsy but possibly correct. He didn’t know. He glanced up. Emily’s arms were crossed. Samantha was watching his hand, a small smile playing on her lips. The timer read 12:47.
He attacked the second problem. The work was messier, an anxiety sweat forming on his back. He could hear Dash say the words again. Samantha really wants that Jay dick again. It was a hook in his ribs, pulling him away from the page, toward the easier, darker math of the body. He forced his eyes down.
Three minutes in, he was stuck on the third problem. A trig substitution. His mind blanked. Panic, sharp and acidic, rose in his throat. He glanced at the timer. 11:22. He had twelve problems worth of time for five. It was impossible.
“Need a hint, genius?” Dash chuckled.
Jay didn’t answer. He stared at the equation until the symbols blurred. He thought of the whiskey bottle in his trash at home. He thought of the silent, empty victory of tossing it away. This felt harder. This was a test in a burning room.
He scribbled a guess, a half-remembered identity. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong as soon as he wrote it. The futility crashed over him. He couldn’t do it. Not here. Not like this. The timer was a countdown to his own humiliation, a public proof of his failure. He saw the five minutes with Samantha not as a reward, but as a sentence. An acknowledgement that this—the noise, the transaction, the numbness—was all he was built for.
His pencil stopped. He looked up, not at the problems, but at Emily. Her gaze was still hard, but he saw something flicker in it now. Not hope. Resignation. She had expected him to fail. She had structured his failure into the bet.
The ticking was inside his skull. Samantha shifted, her hand brushing his forearm. “You’ve got this,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
Something in him snapped cleanly. It wasn’t anger. It was a sudden, lucid clarity. He saw the whole ugly machinery of the night—Dash’s loyalty that was really enablement, Samantha’s desire that was really consumption, Emily’s bribe that was really a goodbye. He was the prize, the product, the problem to be solved. He was tired of being an equation.
He put the pencil down. The sound was final.
“Time?” His voice was rough.
Emily’s eyes dropped to the timer. “Nine minutes, forty seconds left.”
Jay looked at the two completed problems, the third a botched mess. He wouldn’t get the other two. He knew it. He pushed the notebook away, the paper scraping across the sticky table. The movement was slow, deliberate.
He met Emily’s eyes. “I forfeit.”
Silence swallowed their corner of the kitchen. Dash’s smile faded into confusion. Samantha’s triumphant expression dissolved into open-mouthed surprise. Rachel just looked relieved.
“What?” Dash said. “Dude, you still have time. Just guess!”
Jay didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on Emily. The wall in her expression fractured, just a hair. A crack of pure, undiluted shock.
“The terms were five correct answers,” Jay said, his voice gaining strength. “I won’t get them. So I don’t get the prize.” He finally turned his head toward Samantha. He gave her a small, polite nod, utterly devoid of the heat she was waiting for. “No offense.”
Samantha recoiled as if slapped. Her face flushed a deep, mottled red. She stood up so fast her chair screeched. “Whatever,” she spat, and stalked away, grabbing Rachel’s arm and pulling her into the swirling crowd of the living room.
Dash stared at Jay, then burst out laughing. It was a real, startled laugh. “You are a wild card, Tanaka. I genuinely did not see that coming.” He shook his head, finished his beer, and clapped Jay on the shoulder before wandering off, already calling out to someone else.
They were alone at the kitchen table. The timer ticked on, meaningless now. The bass from the other room thumped. Emily reached out and pressed the plunger on the timer. The ticking stopped.
She slowly sat down in the chair Samantha had vacated. She looked at Jay’s attempted work, at the surrendered pencil. “You had the first one right,” she said quietly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?” The word was a breath. Not an accusation. A real question.
Jay looked at his hands. The silence between them was different now—charged, but not with anger. It was full of the things they hadn’t said, the bet she’d made, the one he’d just refused. He thought of his promise in the parking lot. I’m trying to.
“Because I don’t want five minutes with her,” he said, finally looking up. He held her gaze, letting the unspoken second half of the sentence hang there. I want the hour with you. I want the ramen. I want the quiet. He couldn’t say it. The words were too big, too new.
Emily swallowed. Her fingers traced the edge of the calculus book. The judge was gone. The girl from the ramen shop was back, her eyes wide and uncertain. “So what do you want?”
Before he could find an answer, a crash and a roar of laughter erupted from the dining room. The beer pong game had begun in earnest. The spell was broken, but the fracture between them had been sealed with something new, something fragile and real.
Jay nodded toward the noise. “We could still study. Somewhere quieter.”
A real smile, small and tentative, touched Emily’s lips. It was the first one he’d earned all night. “Your place is quiet,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
It wasn’t a question.
Jay felt the word settle in the space between them, a tangible offer. His place was quiet. It was also a vault containing all his failures and his one, small victory—the discarded bottle, the finished essay, the silence he was learning to occupy instead of flee. Letting her in felt more exposing than any party. He nodded, a quick dip of his chin. “Yeah. Okay.”
They gathered their things under the indifferent chaos of the party. Dash was deep in a beer pong match, his shout of triumph echoing as they slipped out the front door. The night air was cool and shockingly clean. Jay inhaled, trying to clear the scent of weed and spoiled lime from his lungs.
Emily hugged herself against the chill. “That was…”
“A lot,” Jay finished, digging for his keys.
“I shouldn’t have made that bet.” Her voice was small in the dark driveway. “It was gross.”
He stopped, keys in hand. The porch light from a neighboring house cut across her profile. “You wanted to see what I’d do. I get it.”
“It wasn’t a test, Jay.”
“Everything’s a test.” He said it without bitterness. It was just a fact of his life. He unlocked the passenger door for her, a habitual, almost forgotten gesture.
The drive was a tunnel of streetlights and silence. The radio remained off. The only sound was the rush of asphalt under tires and the soft click of the turn signal. He could feel her looking at him, a weight on the side of his face.
“You really had the first one right,” she said again, as if confirming it to herself.
“I believe you.” He paused, gripping the wheel. “That’s not the part that mattered.”
“What part mattered?”
“The forfeit.” The word felt strange in his mouth. It tasted like honesty, metallic and new. “I didn’t run. I didn’t fake it. I just… stopped.”
She was quiet for a block. Houses slid by, windows glowing with ordinary lives. “That’s harder,” she finally said.
He knew she wasn’t talking about calculus.
His house was a dark monolith at the end of the driveway. He killed the engine, and the quiet rushed in to claim them. It felt different with her here. The emptiness had a new quality, like a held breath.
He led her inside, flipping on the foyer light. The entryway was stark, a table with unopened mail, a mirror reflecting their wary faces. “It’s clean,” he said, a useless defense.
“It’s quiet,” she repeated, her earlier observation now a physical reality. She followed him to the dining room, her eyes taking in the single lamp, the neat stack of books, the laptop. This was his bunker.
He pulled out a chair for her. She sat, placing her calculus book on the table with deliberate care. He sat across from her, the table feeling like a vast plain. The specter of the bet still hung between them.
“So,” she said, opening the book. “Integration by parts.”
“Right.” He pulled his notebook over. The same problems stared up at him, but the numbers were just numbers now. No timer. No perfume. No prize. Just the work.
She explained the third problem, the one that had stalled him. Her voice was low, methodical. She drew a clean graph on a fresh sheet of paper. He followed her logic, the connection between the symbol and the shape it described. It clicked. He took the pencil from her hand, his fingers brushing hers, and finished the substitution.
He solved it. Then the fourth. The fifth. His handwriting was tight, controlled. He showed his work.
Emily watched, her head tilted. When he finished the last one, she didn’t smile. She just gave a slow, approving nod. “See. You know it.”
“I know it when it’s quiet,” he said, putting the pencil down. He looked around the room, at the shadows in the corners. “When it’s just the work.”
“That’s all it ever is, Jay. Just the work. The rest is just… noise.” She meant the party. She meant Dash. She meant Samantha. She meant the whole loud, desperate performance of his life.
He leaned back, the chair groaning. The adrenaline from the party, from the forfeit, was leaching away, leaving him raw. “What’s your next bribe, Em?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
“The ramen worked. The study party…” He gestured vaguely toward the direction of Dash’s house. “That wasn’t a bribe. That was a punishment. So what’s next? What do I have to do to get you to keep sitting here?”
His voice broke on the last sentence. He hadn’t meant it to. The need in it was embarrassing, laid bare on the polished table between them.
Emily’s eyes softened. She looked down at her hands, then back at him. The lamp light caught the gold in her eyes. “You don’t bribe someone to be your friend, Jay.”
“I’m not talking about friendship.”
The air changed. The words, once spoken, couldn’t be retrieved. He watched her process them, her lips parting slightly. The quiet in the house was no longer empty. It was full of this new, terrifying potential.
“Then what are you talking about?” Her voice was a whisper.
He had no smooth answer, no charming deflection. All he had was the truth, scrappy and inelegant. “I’m talking about this. You. Here. I forfeited the game because I wanted to leave with you. Not with her.” He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s the deal. That’s the only bribe that works now.”
Emily was silent for a long time. The refrigerator hummed in the distant kitchen. A car passed outside, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling and gone. She closed the calculus book with a soft thud.
“Okay,” she said. The word held a universe of meaning. It was an acceptance. A new term.
She stood up. He stood too, unsure. She didn’t move toward the door. She took a step around the table, closer to him. The space between them crackled.
“The next bribe,” she said, her gaze steady on his, “is you have to actually try. Not for ramen. Not for a party. Not even for me. You have to try for you.” She took another step. They were an arm’s length apart. “And you have to stop pretending you don’t know what that means.”
He could smell her shampoo, something like green tea and clean cotton. It obliterated the last trace of Dash’s party. “And if I do?”
A faint, real smile finally touched her lips. “Then maybe you get more than five minutes.”
She reached out, not for him, but for his abandoned calculus notebook. She picked it up, holding it to her chest like something valuable. “I should go. It’s late.”
He walked her to the door, the silence between them now comfortable, charged with a promise. On the front step, she turned. The porch light illuminated her face. “Finish the essay edits. Send them tomorrow.”
“I will.”
“And Jay?” She paused, looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite name—a mix of hope and fear that mirrored his own. “Don’t ghost me.”
He shook his head. “I won’t.”
He watched her walk to her car, a lone figure in the vast, sleeping neighborhood. She didn’t look back. He stayed on the step until her taillights vanished around the corner.
Back inside, the house was quiet. But the silence was different. It was no longer a void to be filled with noise or numbed with whiskey. It was a space he had chosen. He sat at the dining table, in the pool of lamplight, and opened his laptop.
He started to type.