I shoved out of my chair and rushed out of the cafeteria, leaving him behind with the campus map, my half-drank cup of coffee, and the desire to see him again so much I knew I never should.
CHAPTER THREE
SPARKS
Since storming away from him a week ago almost to the hour, I hadn’t seen him once, and it wasn’t for lack of looking. I told myself I didn’t care, but I wasn’t very convincing.
The crowd erupted behind me, thousands of OSU basketball fanatics hollering, stomping and snarling. I pitied the poor referees who should have come prepared with body guards and armored tanks if they wanted to leave the campus unscathed.
Home team was down by fifteen, and one of the refs had just doled out a technical to our top scorer, or at least that’s what I’d heard a couple of guys complaining about when they passed by the ticket booth, also known as the haunt I got to spend a few hours at just about every week thanks to the volunteer sheet I’d signed at the start of winter quarter.
The other students who worked the booth got paid, some sort of work study thing, but since I’d been naïve enough to sign the “volunteer” sheet, I was basically a modern day indentured servant. I was pretty much convinced by now I had the word sucker tattooed on my forehead.
Other than the foul stench that led me to the conclusion the walls were shellacked with sweat and stale hotdogs (I kept a cinnamon scented candle burning under the counter to keep it bearable), and the endless stream of people shoving their crumpled bills at me like I was a malfunctioning change machine, it wasn’t a bad gig.
Someone had to man the booth until halftime (again, the sucker always got conned into it), and once the seas had parted and the fans were directing their attention at someone else, I used the time to catch up on some homework or doodle until my mind was empty. Those were precious moments for me that didn’t come often.
Knowing my Business Ethics book would look like it was printed in hieroglyphics—as it had all quarter—I’d spent the last half hour sketching whatever my subconscious directed my hand to. I surveyed the current masterpiece just as I finished topping the layer cake with candles.
My mind went from nothing to brimming.
The pen fell from my hand as the memories came back, each one hitting me like a boulder until the avalanche crippled me. I crumpled the sheet and tossed it in the direction of the garbage can, like it was a game of hot potato and I couldn’t get it away from me fast enough.
“Let me guess,” a voice spoke, pricking goose-bumps on my arms. “Mrs. William Winters written a hundred times with little hearts dotting the i’s.”
His smile was relaxed, mimicking the positioning of his body leaning against the booth, a crumpled piece of paper in hand.
He crinkled it open. “Nope,” he said. “Just some bad drawings. Some really bad drawings,” he said, playing trombone with the paper.
“Do you mind?” I said, reaching for the paper. “That is private property.”
He dodged away from my reach, holding the paper above his head like a worm on the end of a hook. “No it’s not. You we’re discarding it,” he said, eyeing the garbage can. “Therefore, your former piece of private property is now, by default, a very public piece of property.” His eyes glinted. “Me being the public.”
“You being the annoying,” I said, blowing aside a piece of hair. “So how did your first week go? I didn’t see you around.” It took some effort to sound indifferent.
“It was a great week. I was busy observing, studying,” he said, his face amused. “You know, college stuff?”
Taking advantage of his temporary distraction, I heaved against the counter, jumping to reach the paper. Not even close. He was a solid half a foot taller than me, and his arms seemed disproportionately large the way they were towering above me.
“You’ve got the height, but I think you need to work on your jump shot if you want to play for the lady Beavers,” he said, sounding delighted with himself.
“Grow up.” I gave up trying to retrieve my doodle sheet and crossed my arms.
“I’ve wasted too much time being grown up,” he said, his mouth curling up on one side. “I want to act my age, if for once in my life, now that I’m here.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “How old is that?”
“Twenty-two,” he answered immediately.
“Maybe in calendar years,” I said, trying my hardest not to let his mischievous expression and low-slung Levi’s distract me. “I was referring to maturity level.”
He lowered his arms, folding my kipped artwork into his back pocket. “So, maturity-wise, how old would you say I am?”
“You wouldn’t want to know.”
“I guarantee I would,” he said, folding his arms on the countertop. His shoulders were tense, his eyes more-so, although he was attempting to disguise it.
“On the surface I’d say you were twelve, maybe thirteen, but there’s something about you I can tell you try hard to hide away, like the way you look now,” I said, eyeing over his rigid form, “that leads me to believe you’ve seen more than the rest of us.”
His eyes grew old before me, older than any pair I’d ever gazed into. He exhaled and opened his mouth, heavy words about to pour out I could only imagine, right before some guy painted head to bellybutton in black and orange ran by us, pitching a soda can in the garbage.
Our stare broke for a moment, but it was long enough so when he looked back at me, that curtain of confidence was down and ready to put on a show. “So do I get a half-price ticket since I missed half the game?”