Chapter Three – The Shirtless Problem

Chapter 3: The Shirtless Problem

I’d read somewhere in some pretentious literary blog, probably that great literature prepares you for every human emotion. Joy, grief, rage, despair, even love in all its messy forms. Clearly, whoever wrote that smug little sentence had never had to share a cramped dorm room with a six-foot-three athlete who treats shirts like an optional personality trait.

The first time Dante peeled off his sweat-soaked practice jersey right there in the middle of our room, I told myself I’d be cool about it. Detached. Clinical, even. Just another human body. Shoulders, chest, abs perfectly normal anatomy, the kind you see in anatomy textbooks or gym mirrors. Nothing poetic. Nothing worth memorizing. Except my traitorous brain immediately launched into composing iambic pentameter about the sharp curve of his collarbone, the way the light from the desk lamp caught the faint sheen of sweat still clinging to his skin, the slow roll of muscle under golden-brown skin as he reached back to tug the fabric over his head.

And Dante didn’t just strip and call it a day. No, he had to stretch afterward arms overhead, back arching slightly, every line of him lengthening like he was auditioning for a slow-motion sports drink commercial at 3 a.m. My gaze was supposed to be glued to my book. Milton. Paradise Lost, of all things. Divine punishment, honestly. The irony wasn’t lost on me: here I was, watching paradise very much in the process of being lost, one deliberate stretch at a time.

“Why’re you staring?” His voice came out rough around the edges, gravel from shouting drills all afternoon, but not unkind. Not accusing. Just… curious.

Heat roared up my neck and flooded my face in record time. “I wasn’t.” My voice cracked on the second syllable like I was thirteen again. “I was… uh… rereading this passage.” I tilted the book toward him so he could see the proof. Which would’ve been more convincing if the damn thing hadn’t been upside down.

The corner of his mouth twitched barely, but enough. Like he wanted to smile but his pride wouldn’t let him commit. “Right. You do that a lot.”

“Do what?”

“Talk too much when you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” I said. The truest lie I’d ever told. My heart was doing Olympic-level gymnastics behind my ribs.

He dropped into his desk chair with the kind of careless grace that should be illegal, towel slung loose over his broad shoulders, dark hair still damp from the post-practice shower and curling slightly at the ends. The room filled with the faint, clean scent of his soap something crisp and cedary and underneath it, the ghost of whatever cologne he wore that made every frat guy on campus smell like a magazine ad come to life. I hated that I noticed. I hated even more that I liked it, that the smell made something warm and stupid unfurl low in my stomach.

The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Normally I filled silences like this with nervous chatter rambling about my lit seminar, how my professor seemed personally offended by happiness, how I still couldn’t decide whether T.S. Eliot was a genius or just the most pretentious man to ever wear a bow tie. Tonight the words stuck in my throat like dry toast. Every time I opened my mouth, I was afraid something mortifying would fall out. Something like, “Has anyone ever told you your back looks like it was carved by angry Renaissance sculptors?”

“Don’t you have a paper to finish?” he asked after a long minute, voice low.

“I do.” I tightened my grip on the pen until my knuckles whitened. My handwriting had devolved into frantic little squiggles, like my brain had gone on an unscheduled strike.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him leaning back in his chair, long legs stretched out, watching me. Not with the usual flicker of irritation he wore when I talked too much about dead poets. This was softer. More curious. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle he hadn’t expected to find in his own room. It sent my pulse into a full freefall.

I forced my eyes back to the page. One sentence. Just write one coherent sentence. My pen hovered, then traitor sketched the rough outline of his shoulders in the margin instead. Broad. Tapered. Ridiculous. Fantastic. Now I was doodling the guy like some lovesick high-schooler with a sketchbook full of secret crushes.

“You’re weird,” he muttered, almost to himself.

The word should’ve stung. It didn’t. The way he said it wasn’t cruel it was bemused, almost fond. Like he was turning the idea over in his head, trying to decide whether weird was a dealbreaker or something he could live with. Like maybe, just maybe, he was trying to figure me out too.

I decided to push back. Humor was my only reliable weapon in situations like this. “Weird is just another word for interesting,” I said, forcing a grin I didn’t feel. “You’re welcome.”

That earned me a huff of laughter short, quiet, but real. It rumbled low in his chest and landed somewhere in the center of mine like a touchdown in a game I hadn’t even known I was playing. Victory. Pathetic, beautiful victory.

The room settled again into that charged quiet. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, scrolling through his phone with one thumb. The screen light painted blue across the sharp line of his jaw. I pretended to study, eyes fixed on the same paragraph I’d been rereading for twenty minutes, but every few seconds my gaze betrayed me darting back to the slope of his back, the way the muscles shifted subtly under his skin when he breathed, when he shifted his weight.

I wondered what it would feel like to trace those lines with my fingertips. To follow the dip of his spine, the flare of his shoulder blades, to map every inch like I was trying to memorize a poem I’d never be allowed to recite out loud.

And then I hated myself for wondering.

Because Dante Cruz was a walking, breathing complication. A closed book with a language I didn’t speak and no business trying to translate. We’d only been roommates for a handful of weeks, but already I knew the truth: he was the kind of story you couldn’t put down, even when every chapter hurt. The kind that ended in ashes or epiphanies or both, and either way left you changed.

So I buried my head deeper in Milton, whispering the line that suddenly felt too perfect, too cruelly accurate: *The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.*

Yep. Hell of heaven. Exactly.