Forward (BoyxBoy)

Chapter Three

James's stay away from Bradford's plan was effective for about twenty more minutes.

Him and Tyler finished their food while making aimless chitchat— which his friend seemed far more comfortable with than their previous topic— before parting ways for their second round of classes. Ty offered to walk him there, teasing him about getting lost again, but James's next course was Organic chemistry, and he thankfully remembered how to get there from his humiliating experience that morning, so he waved his friend off, insisting that he, "got this".

"Whatever man. Just don't be calling me when you get a fine for being out in the halls past the bell," Tyler said, and James reached his hand out quickly to grab his friends arm, stopping him.

"A fine?"

"Yeah man. This whole place is about making a profit. Of course they charge us for stupid shit like that. Didn't you read through the admissions book?"

"I thought that thing was a joke," James admitted, which made his friend snicker and shake his head.

"No way. You should probably check that out when you get home tonight. It costs you like five dollars every time you need to leave class to go to the bathroom". Since James had already done that once that afternoon, he looked at Tyler with incredibly wide eyes as he waited for him to say he was joking. He didn't. Instead, he pulled his arm from James's grasp and said, "you better hurry unless you have twenty dollars you're willing to spare".

"Twenty dollars?" James repeated, but Tyler was slipping into the nearest stairwell, leaving him behind.

While James had far more in his bank account than twenty dollars— he had a job back in Florida to save money for college— he really didn't want to pay the school for something as bullshit as that, so he began to make his way down the hall in the direction he remembered, walking at a pace slightly faster than those around him.

At some point, it occurred to him that he was following two of the four Bradford sons down the hall. It would have been hard to tell who they were, given that fact that from behind they all looked the same with their dark hair, but James recalled all of the twins being around the same ridiculously tall height, and one of the two boys parting the traffic ahead of him seemed to be a handful of inches shorter than the other. Kalen, James deduced. Like this, walking beside one of the three triplets, he seemed short, but James didn't recall feeling this way when they had bumped into one another earlier.

James wasn't nearly as tall as the triplets, and he could say this with great confidence, even though he had yet to be close enough to them to compare. They were just that tall. Just by observing how the one with Kalen towered over the majority of people he passed, James estimated him to be over six feet by a few inches: at least six' two. This was already three inches taller than James, so he guessed Kalen was only an inch or two shorter than him.

The two Bradford's turned into the nearest stairwell, giving James a view of the unidentified one's face for half a second. He noticed it was the shadowy one— which one was that one again?— and then the two of them were gone.

The particular staircase they had gone up was familiar to James, and when he realized he too had to go up them, he slowed his pace, making sure there would be distance between them so he'd go unnoticed.

He managed to delay himself long enough that he was able to easily stay out of their eyesight, but he could still hear their conversation as he started up the stairs behind them. "I'm just saying Kal, maybe you should talk to your teacher and see if she'll let you work on it alone".