Brendan Fletcher—Zack

Brendan Fletcher and Zack’s college-roommate bond gives Brendan an early foothold in an unfamiliar life: Zack feels less like a stranger than the ready-made brother Brendan did not know he wanted. Their connection rests on easy similarity—matching clothes, shared plans for the room, casual touch, and the same taste in jokes and parties. That comfort matters to Brendan precisely because college freedom initially feels less exhilarating than expected, while Eve Fletcher sees the pairing as a missed chance for her son to meet someone different.

First Impressions and Eve’s Expectations

When Eve reaches Brendan’s room on the seventh floor of Einstein Hall, she finds him already bonding with Zack, a broad-shouldered student from Boxborough with a neatly trimmed beard. The roommates are dressed alike in flip-flops, baggy shorts, tank tops, and angled baseball caps; Zack’s puka-shell necklace is their main visible distinction. They are also admiring their matching mini-fridges and discussing how to arrange them, with one imagined for beer and the other for food. Their conversation establishes the practical, unselfconscious ease that will define the room they share.

Eve conceals her disappointment. She had hoped Brendan would room with someone who could widen his experience—a student from a different background, a visiting student from China, or a gay student passionate about musical theater. Zack instead seems to her like Brendan’s long-lost brother or a teammate from Haddington High. The difference between Eve’s hopes and Brendan’s welcome is central to the relationship: what she reads as sameness and a lost opportunity is, for him, a source of immediate security.

Making a Shared Room

Eve puts sheets and blankets on Brendan’s bed and organizes his closet and dresser as they were at home, hoping to prevent him from feeling disoriented. The roommates barely attend to her. They are already planning to loft a bed, move a desk beneath it, and find a couch so they can play video games. Zack suggests that people leave couches on the street and that they could retrieve one later. Their attention is on making the dorm their own, not preserving the arrangement of Brendan’s childhood bedroom.

Eve tells herself that being ignored is natural: this is the boys’ room and their world, and she is an outsider who will soon leave. Brendan’s later account confirms how much he wants that separation. He finds her energetic unpacking and unsolicited advice about laundry claustrophobic, and feels relieved when she finally takes the elevator. His relief troubles him because it is not how he thinks he should feel toward his mother at such a milestone. Zack’s presence offers an immediate alternative focus: the roommate is there to share the new space on Brendan’s terms.

Familiarity, Touch, and Privacy

As the roommates walk, Zack casually puts an arm around Brendan as if they have known one another for years. The gesture recalls Wade, Brendan’s friend from lacrosse, whose joking physical affection included cheek or head kisses and a squeeze of Brendan’s backside. Brendan presents that history as funny within the boys’ shared assumption that they were not gay. Zack’s touch therefore registers as familiar male camaraderie, not as a demand for explanation or a challenge to their easy rapport.

Their first plans for the year likewise emphasize uncomplicated common ground. Zack looks forward to drinking in their room; Brendan adds smoking weed and going to parties. Later, when Brendan returns with Zack in time for a Skype session with Becca, he asks for privacy. Zack agrees to put on headphones, and Brendan then asks whether he can leave for five or ten minutes. The exchange shows that their closeness does not eliminate Brendan’s need for space, even as their early companionship makes the room feel shared rather than lonely.

Boundary-Crossing and Shared Humor

Zack does not keep Brendan’s conversation private: he eavesdrops, then treats the breach as funny and as a bonding experience rather than something creepy. Brendan finds it hard to stay angry. Zack compliments Becca and becomes especially animated about her pink nipples, comparing them to eraser nubs; he also asks why Brendan would want to break up with her. Brendan answers that he wants a clean slate. Zack then offers to take Becca off his hands and give her expert instruction. The teasing is intrusive, but the scene also shows how quickly their relationship accommodates embarrassment and irreverence: Brendan is annoyed without withdrawing from Zack’s company.

The roommates’ evening plans do not produce much adventure. Zack takes Brendan to an off-campus house party through his older brother’s friend, but the half-hour walk ends at a party that is already breaking up. They hear of another gathering nearby, cannot find it, and walk back to the dorm. The failed outing does not undermine their ease with one another. Tired, they brush their teeth together in the bathroom, strip to their boxers, and get into bed; Brendan thinks of the arrangement as being like having a twin brother.

Why the Match Matters to Brendan

Lying awake, Brendan decides that college will probably be okay and recognizes that he has been lucky in his roommate. His judgment depends less on Zack being an exceptional guide to campus than on the relief of having someone whose habits and humor feel legible. Brendan contrasts him with Sanjay, whom he imagines as a nerd with whom he would have little in common, forced to eat alongside him and pretend interest in architectural drawings and outstanding test scores. Brendan assumes Eve would have preferred Sanjay, but insists that she is not the one who has to live with the roommate.

That contrast clarifies the different meanings the pairing holds for mother and son. Eve wants college to unsettle Brendan’s suburban comfort zone; Brendan, feeling overwhelmed by the number of people in town and the sense that none of them cares about him, values a familiar companion. Zack’s similarity does not solve every uncertainty of starting college, but it changes the immediate prospect from isolation to shared routines, plans, and jokes. In the evidence presented, the relationship’s significance lies in this early reassurance: Zack makes the unfamiliar room feel inhabitable, and Brendan’s first tentative judgment is that college may be all right after all.