Wrong Way Home - Taken (Criminal Delights 1)

He smiled at her, because there was no point in making enemies. He didn’t feel like many people harbored warm feelings for him anyway. Then again, he didn’t come here to make friends, and had never felt that he fit in with the other students.

Sometimes, he felt like there was no one at all he fit in with.

“Maybe next time. Thank you for inviting me. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” he said, and walked toward the exit, trying hard to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes. He put on his headphones and was about to switch on the music when Megan’s voice reached his ears, muted by the rubber and foam but clear nonetheless. “Jesus Christ! I swear I’ve never met anyone so predictable. No idea what Mikey sees in him.”

Megan wasn’t a mean person. She was the type of girl who would never say anything negative to your face, so she likely believed Colin couldn’t hear her, but that didn’t change the fact that she was talking about him behind his back. For the briefest moment, the heat of anger rapidly boiling under Colin’s skin told him to turn back and reveal that the true nature she hid behind her good-girl act has been exposed. But Megan was well-liked while Colin was not, so he suppressed the urge to confront her over this and left the lecture room, heading straight for his car.

He was quick to select a calming pop playlist on his player, but the soft voice of the singer aggravated Colin even further. Why was he putting up with this? He was never outright mean to anyone, and yet his refusal to attend parties and lose valuable time on getting wasted was enough to make him a social pariah. Wasn’t it enough that he followed the expected career path? That he had good grades and didn’t take a year off after college, instead going into pre-med right away? Expectations were never ending, and he couldn’t even be himself with hook ups, who, half the time, wanted dumb small talk over beer after the sex.

Some days, he wished he could just disappear as one big ‘fuck you’ to everyone, but guilt ate him up whenever he thought about how much money his parents spent on his studies, and how it would have disappointed them. There was no other way. He had to see it through.

Those thoughts returned every week when he was about to head home, to spend two days under constant stress and scrutiny. His parents insisted on them all eating together, and an hour or two of ‘family time’ on Saturday, which made him itch for the privacy of his single-occupancy dorm room, and for the books that gave him no joy, but at least offered benefits in the long run.

But despite all this, he got into the car and headed out from campus every week without fail.

The drive home would take three hours, and the pop music wasn’t cutting it anymore. If he wanted to achieve any peace of mind tonight, it was time for the big guns, so he put on the latest audiobook he got in a bid to become a better person. Meditation: Your Guide to Success.

The foreword was the usual boring babble about the pace of modern life being a challenge to brains that were not equipped to deal with such large amounts of data. The narrator, likely the author itself, considering the issues with his pronunciation, then went on to explain it with a convoluted take on evolutionary theory.

It seemed like a load of bullshit, but as Colin listened, the theory made a lot more sense. At times, it was like listening about himself—overstimulated by sounds, images, and the number of people striving for his attention, when all he really needed was food, shelter, basic comforts, and perhaps a couple of people to satisfy his social needs once in a while. Following a script in life meant that bits of one’s day were already planned out and that freed up mental capacity to navigate everything else. How did the others have the mental capacity for parties and active socializing?

The empty road he knew so well was yet another beaten path he never ventured away from. The darkness around him was comforting in some ways—just the night sky above and the knowledge that in a few hours, after going through Father’s interrogation and an uncomfortable dinner, he would lie in a warm bed.

“So we get used to our ways and don’t question them anymore. Work, home, sleep. Rinse, repeat,” the voice went on. “But is that what we truly need? Does that tap into our primal instincts? We become robots, slaves to society.”

Maybe this audiobook wasn’t the best choice after all, since the author seemed to be going off on a personal rant, and his message angered Colin rather than provided relief. It was just like Megan had said. Colin was predictable and always followed the path laid out for him. He got good grades, he was studying to become a doctor, and he didn’t even want to rock the boat by coming out to his parents.