Jay was pleased to hear Anna agree to engage in a survival situation with him, even if she did so reluctantly. [i]Hopefully she’ll warm up to the idea later,[/i] he thought. ‘Survival’ could sound intimidating at first, but he knew it could also be a lot of fun. His heart was already beating a little faster with excitement at all the possibilities. They could go camping in the woods with only a bare minimum of supplies; they could take a trip rafting down a river; or they could go backpacking in the mountains. He didn’t care what they chose. Anything would be great to him.

He clicked his ballpoint pen in thought when Anna asked if he had time to work on the project with her over the weekend. He was always busy with various events on weekends, but he couldn’t remember what, if anything, was going on during the next one. There wouldn’t be a cross country race yet—the season had only just begun, so they were still training—but his fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon (ΔΚΕ, or ‘Deke’ for short), always seemed to have something planned.

“Let me check,” Jay said, reaching for his phone. He opened up his calendar to see what his weekend looked like. He was glad he had decided to make note of all the events this time around. He hadn’t done so during his freshman or sophomore years, and he had had a wild experience trying to remember when things were happening. This time, it looked like there were two events, one on Friday and another on Saturday. On Friday, Deke was hosting a paintball tournament. He definitely wanted to go to that. However, the Saturday event was a “bad movie” party at the frat house. Having been a part of Deke for two years, he knew how that was going to go down: All of his brothers would get shitface drunk and hook up with the sorority girls they invited. Personally, Jay had never been fond of drinking events. He attended a few of them every once in a while—mostly for the sake of bonding with his brothers—but he preferred to be sober.

“I’ve got plans on Friday night, but I’m free for the rest of the weekend,” he announced, deciding not to go to the movie night. He put his phone back down on the table again. “I know I said I prefer presenting, but I promise I’m not gonna make you do all of the hard work, Anna.” He didn’t want her to think he was going to leave all of the preliminary work to her. He had had enough lazy partners in the past to know how annoying that could be. “I’ll do some research this week, too, and we can meet up on Saturday to discuss what we find. How about we get together again at noon to grab lunch at the hub? Oh, and one more thing,” He picked up his phone again. “Do you mind giving me your number so we can stay in touch? Just in case plans change, or we need to reach each other for whatever reason, you know?”