"Hey," Benson replied, managing to hide his surprise that she wanted to talk to him. After the drama at his party he had decided to let Mallory make the first move in talking to him; when she hadn't, he guessed that she either didn't want to talk to him or her jackass boyfriend had told her not to.
Benson sure wasn't impressed with Brian and neither was Elise, who had actually spent time talking to him. After Benson apologized for being a jerk to her at his party and they made up, he and Elise had created a game centered around how much they disliked Mallory's boyfriend. Mostly it consisted of one of them telling the other some outlandish thing that Brian probably did for fun and the other agreeing with it or topping it. Right before class, Benson had received a text message from her:
I bet that The Brain carries a club around, just in case he runs into any baby seals.
"The Brain" was because Elise kept accidentally typing "Brain" instead of "Brian" and decided to make it an insult because they didn't think that he was actually very smart at all. Benson was still trying to think of a good response when Mallory came up and the tiniest part of him felt like she had caught him thinking bad thoughts about her boyfriend.