I roared to a stop, my mouth dropping ever so slightly against my best intentions. What was rich boy’s diagnosis . . . other than stupefying me?
He sauntered up to the end of the line of students waiting for food that was more nitrate than nutrition, watching me with unyielding eyes while I made my way up to him once I unfroze myself. I turned my attention away from him, too flustered to know what to say or do next.
I drilled holes into the student’s head in front of me, willing it to move so I could be done with this night, until I realized we were at a standstill. I peeked to the side, where I caught sight of the culprit for the hold-up.
A student with an overflowing backpack was flustered red, fumbling in his pockets. The others behind him were growing impatient, tapping fingers over crossed arms.
“I got it.” I pulled a bill from my backpack’s zipper pocket and rushed to the front of the line. I curled the money in the cashier’s hand without another word and ducked back to my place in line.
“Thanks,” the student called back to me, barely catching a textbook as it toppled from his bag. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” I answered, trying to draw as little attention as possible.
William was reviewing me, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t have a clue what he was expecting.
“What?” I asked finally, peering at him from the side.
“Do you know him?”
“No.” I shrugged.
He paused. “Then why did you pay for him?”
“Wouldn’t you have?”
“You can’t answer a question with a question,” he said, as we took a few steps forward. Finally making progress.
“It was only a few bucks,” I said, retrieving another bill from my backpack.
“Exactly. Anyone of the dozen people in front of us could have done the same thing, but didn’t.” He cut in front of me and handed the cashier a crisp bill before I could pay. “Why did you?”
“Are you this persistent with everything?”
“Most things,” he said, a wide grin lighting up his face.
“More people should come to each other’s rescue,” I said looking away. “That’s it. Is that explanation enough for you?”
He looked at me again in that unapologetic, unheeding way, as if he didn’t care anything about holding up the line or what those people standing in line behind us would think of the way he was staring at me.
“Come on.” He winked, nodding to the cafeteria entrance “I’m famished.”
I didn’t miss the inflection in his voice, and what was worse, I liked it.
“Are you getting ready to hibernate?” I said, eyeing the heaps of food that resembled an edible model of the Rocky Mountains. He grinned, hooking a chair with his foot and scooting it next to me. “It seems arguing with you gives me quite the appetite.”
He took a seat and inched the chair closer to me, so close our elbows nearly touched, and despite a sliver of air and a couple of garments separating us, there was a current sparking—coming from his skin or mine, or both, I couldn’t tell.
I had my campus map and highlighter at the ready, pretending to focus my attention on the poorly xeroxed copy and took a swig of my coffee, which would be serving as my dinner tonight since, unlike William, the knots in my stomach induced by the man beside me had taken away my appetite.
I took another sip of the coffee while he terrorized a piece of pizza dotted with oil-pooled pepperoni.
I curled my nose. “Is that good?”
“Not really,” he answered, sawing off another bite.
“Then why are you eating it?”
He swallowed, then took a long drink of soda—a calculated attempt at stalling. “Because I’m nervous, and I eat when I’m nervous,” he said, looking at me from the side.
Despite the loose dark-wash jeans and charcoal canvas jacket he was wearing, I could tell the body wrapped within was lean and muscled, leading me to assume he was rarely nervous.
“Why are you nervous?” I asked, trying not to think about his body.
Another long drink of soda before his eyes looked hard into mine. “You make me nervous. I can’t seem to say the right thing, or do the correct thing. It seems anything I do only makes you madder, and I want you to like me. I really want you to like me.”
My stomach flipped, then flopped, and repeated, before I had a chance to process everything. Guys like him didn’t like girls like me, I knew that. Everyone knew that—it was a pubescent right of passage learning the etiquette for what kinds of people could date other kinds of people, and nowhere on this planet would I date him. Not that I wanted to anyways . . .
I could tell he was staring at me, straight through me again, and I knew I’d be done if I let my eyes meet his. My wall of indifference and façade of irritation would crumble and I would be revealed for what I really was: a girl who felt destiny climbing up her legs like a tangle of ivy. A girl who wasn’t only falling hard for the man sitting next to her, but wasn’t fighting the free-fall, despite knowing she should.
I distracted myself by looking across the room, immediately regretting it. A set of eyes caught mine—mascaraed, lined and narrowed with the expertise of a true mean girl.
Amy stumbled theatrically across the cafeteria, falling into the arms of the nearest male, whose face lit up like he’d hit the jackpot. Her followers looked back at me, laughing through their nibbles of lettuce, one forming an L with her hand she held to her forehead. Could I fall any deeper down the rabbit hole tonight?