No Such Thing as Perfect by Sarah Daltry

him since last night and we didn’t make any kind of promises, but I need to rewrite this paper and my mind felt open when I was talking to him, so I go in spite of it being odd. When he doesn’t answer after I knock twice, though, I start to think I’m a moron.
    “You could have at least checked with him before bringing your computer,” I mumble to myself and I’m about to turn around when the door opens. He’s dressed, but his eyes are heavy, almost like he’s been sleeping. He stands in the space between the door and the room and takes in my full arms.
    “Writing that paper?” he asks.
    “Yeah. I’m sorry. This was stupid. I shouldn’t have... I mean, I didn’t think,” I stutter.
    “Hold on, okay?”
    He shuts the door and I stand in the hallway, wondering if I should go back to my room as the minutes pass. I’m ready to leave when he opens the door again. This time, he opens it all the way and invites me in.
    “Alana,” he says, which I don’t understand at first until he moves aside. The girl on his bed is beautiful, but not in the way you normally recognize someone as beautiful. It’s not a physical beauty, but a sense that she has walked through the world and survived something awful. Grace, I guess people call it, but I’ve never seen it in person before.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize you had company.”
    “I was just leaving,” Alana replies. “Jack, I’ll... call you, I guess.”
    He’s just a guy – a guy who picked up a book for me. Our lives are not linked in any way. He owes me nothing, yet in some of the emptiest moments since I started school, he’s been there. Coincidentally, sure, but he’s been there. Yet as I watch Alana flip her long, dark hair up into a rubber band and she and Jack avoid looking at each other, I feel like an intruder not just in his private moment with her, but also in his life. They don’t make eye contact at all and the silence in the moments between her getting off the bed and leaving lingers once the door is closed.
    “I shouldn’t have come.” Breaking the silence seems almost sacrilegious, but the soft buzzing of Jack’s overhead light is humming inside my brain. “I’m sorry. I interrupted something.”
    “It’s nothing,” he says finally and lifts his head.
    The only guys I’ve really known, beyond quick conversations in class or as Abby’s recent interests, are Jon and Derek. Since arriving at college, the illusions I’ve held about Derek are slowly peeling away, but they’re still the precedent for guys in general for me. So seeing Jack in pain bothers me. It changes my perceptions and I don’t do well with that. My own agony is something I bury as much as I can, but I gather that mine is only the superficial flaking off of what I see in him. And it terrifies me to feel so helpless.
    “I never asked,” I comment. “I told you I had a boyfriend, but I never asked about her. I should’ve asked.”
    “She’s not my girlfriend.” He stresses this fact like it’s absolutely necessary that I recognize it as truth. “Not for a long time.”
    “But she was?”
    He opens his window and takes out a pack of cigarettes. I don’t like the smell of smoke, but he’s trying to hold his hands steady while he gets the cigarette out and I worry he’ll light himself on fire with the way he can’t control the lighter. I’m about to offer to help when he gets it lit and tosses the lighter onto his dresser. He sits on his bed, smoothing down the covers, and takes a long drag on his cigarette, not answering my question and not looking at me. We’re definitely not supposed to be smoking in the dorms. 
    “Last night, you asked me if I ever feel alone. There are things I spend most of my time trying to keep distant, to leave in the past and let go, but yes, I do. I feel that way a lot. In high school, I had two friends – Alana and Dave. And now...” He stops and finishes his cigarette. I don’t push him, because he’ll