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“What are you reading?” Gansey asked.
He was shocked to find Ronan’s bedroom door unexpectedly open when he returned to Monmouth Manufacturing after school. Ronan had not been at school, but he was now laying on his bed, headphones around his neck, crossed-legged, with an open book in his hands. Gansey hoped it was for a class he missed.
Ronan lowered the book and Gansey saw scribbled notes in the margin. “Nothing.”
Despite the door being open, Gansey did not cross the threshold. “Missed you at school today… again .”
“Did you get the notes for me?” Ronan asked, monotone.
Gansey sighed. “Yeah.”
“Great.” Ronan picked up his book again, putting a pencil between his teeth and continued reading. Gansey couldn’t make out the title, but he imagined it was not for academic purposes.
“Adam’s headed over to study,” Gansey said, reaching out for the door handle to shut Ronan’s door.
“Leave it open.”
A beat. “Excuse me?”
But Ronan didn’t repeat himself. A little stunned, Gansey backed away, heading out into the open living space. He set down his backpack next to his desk and began unpacking his textbooks for his study session with Adam, who was staying late for test prep for another class they didn’t share.
He didn’t hear a sound from Ronan until Adam arrived a half hour later.
Gansey and Adam fistbumped at the door and while Adam unpacked his books, Gansey went to get him a drink from the bathroom/kitchen hybrid. He filled a glass and heard Ronan’s voice.
They had been spending a lot of time together lately, once Ronan and Adam now RonanandAdam . With everything happening, Gansey was busy, too, but there was something different about his two best friends hanging out without him. He wasn’t sure what made him pause, but he kept to where he was, opting for eavesdropping and watching his friends through the doorway.
Ronan had the book he had been reading outstretched toward Adam.
“You didn’t have to buy yourself a copy, I said I’d lend you mine,” Adam was saying, but his voice was quieter, different. Gansey couldn’t put a name to it.
“This is your copy, Parrish,” Ronan replied, pushing the book into Adam’s hands.
“You stole my book?” Adam asked incredulously. It was true, if Gansey thought about it, Ronan and books normally repelled each other like magnets. Stealing from someone was a believable act of one Ronan Lynch, but stealing their book?
“Borrowed it,” Ronan replied, completely unphased by Adam’s reaction. “I just thought I’d leave some notes in the margin for you.”
Gansey braced himself for an argument, but one didn’t come. Instead, Adam opened the book and flipped through a few pages, face soft and anything but annoyed at Ronan’s vandalism.
“You’ve read this before,” Adam said but it wasn’t a question.
“About forty times,” Ronan said, nodding. His voice was also gentler, softer, like the voice Gansey rarely heard him use with Matthew, but there was something more to it that Gansey couldn’t quite recognize.
“You said you didn’t read much,” Adam retorted, eyes glued to the book, studying the first page or so of Ronan’s penciled-in notes.
“Well, what is ‘much’?” Ronan replied with a shrug, though he watched Adam cautiously, studying his reactions to the notes on the page.
Gansey took his chance to enter the room, although he had a small feeling that he was interrupting something as he approached them. He handed Adam the glass of water and looked at Ronan.
“Are you going to join us?”
“Nah.” Ronan’s smile was sharp. He raised his headphones to his ears, the thumping cacophony of bass and synth escaped and quickly faded as he walked back over to his bedroom door and kicked it shut behind him.
Gansey went over to sit at his desk, pulling a calculus textbook into his lap and opening to the set of practice problems for their exam. He looked up at Adam, who was still looking at Ronan’s closed bedroom door, seemingly frozen in time.
“Adam?”
Adam abruptly turned to face Gansey, quickly shoving the book that Ronan had given back to him in his messenger bag and sitting down across from him. He was uncoordinated as he pulled the same papers and textbook out of his own bag, shuffling them to get to the appropriate chapter and digging around through the front pocket of his bag for a pencil.
“Starts on chapter twenty-three, right?” Adam asked, flipping back to the index to find the right page.
“Yeah,” Gansey replied, looking at Ronan’s closed door and back to Adam. He felt like there was something very obvious he was missing, but quickly got lost in the academic land of differentials.