He was stressed out enough about the holiday, though Reese had been the one to suggest that they skip gifts. Tom’s laptop froze and couldn’t be brought back to the land of the living during the mad, no-sleep rush to finish research papers and projects in the last week of the semester. He knew Reese assumed it was more a matter of not having time to go buy a new one than a money problem, because he still hadn’t gotten around the explaining exactly how bad things were. Reese thought he was charmingly anti-materialistic for someone who’d grown up with obscene wealth. He thought Tom hadn’t noticed the sole of his running shoes separating from the body of the shoe, peeling dangerously farther with every early morning run he logged on the track or on the trails, avoiding the rest of the team. He knew his shoes were in dire need of replacement. Could feel the cushion in his insole had worn out completely by the ache of tendonitis in his knees. He took to timing his runs so he could ice his knees afterward while Reese was gone, wanting to avoid questions about that too.
