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?”
I rolled my eyes, not understanding why he felt the need to put the ridiculous front on. Didn’t he know it was those moments of male vulnerability that the opposite sex went wild for?
“For you my friend, double,” I said, eyeing the flashy watch on his left wrist.
“That was a gift,” he said, his tone more excusing than explaining.
“Some gift,” I replied, not wanting clarification on who he’d received it from, although my imagination filled in the blanks just fine.
“It’s jam packed in there.” I pointed with my eyes to the auditorium behind me, while another eruption broke up. The particle board counter started vibrating. “Good luck finding a seat.”
“It’s alright. Someone saved me one,” he said, looking behind my shoulder.
As if his words spoken to me were some kind of alert, one of the cheerleaders with an orange ribbon curling from her auburn ponytail raised her hand at him and waved with such zeal she could have been hailing a cab in downtown Chicago in the middle of winter. She pointed at a front row seat and mouthed, “Yours” to him.
He raised his index finger at her and looked back at me. “Will you join me when you’re through here?”
The earnestness in his voice tempted me, right before I remembered he’d been invited here by another woman and was currently asking another woman (that woman being me) to join him as well. I wasn’t about to feed into his womanizer tendencies.
“Looks like there’s only room for one.” I kept my voice level, keeping any sign of jealousy at bay.
He leaned over the counter. “You could sit on my lap.”
“I could if I wanted to.” I backed away from him until my back hit the counter behind me. “Besides, little Miss Ribbons might beat me bloody with her pom-poms if I do.”
His forehead lined and his eyes said, explain.
“She likes you,” I said in a tone one would tell a kindergartener the world was round.
He shrugged. “I don’t like her.”
I contained a smile. “Why? What’s not to like?” She looked like a swimsuit model, with a few more freckles and a slightly more innocent face.
He grabbed the ledge of the booth, his knuckles blanching white, while he feigned focus on the crowd filling up the hall. “I like someone else.”
“That was quick,” I said, trying not to vocalize my disappointment. “You’ve been here a whole week now. Who? The cheerleader to her left or right, or maybe long legs Kirkpatick.” I was jealous, and while I’d heard the emotion associated with the color green, I felt and saw nothing but red.
“Nope, not my type,” he answered simply.
“Just what is your type?” I didn’t really want to know if girls—who were gorgeous in my book—didn’t clear his bar.
He didn’t let a second fill in the space between us before answering. “You.”
The look on his face was unfamiliar, like a far-off land, something I wanted to know, but was too scared of the unknown to journey into.
A slow smile crept over his lips, and I let a few heartbeats pass. Heartbeats where my mind wandered to what those lips would feel like against mine, what they would taste like, how his hair would feel knitted between my fingers, what it would feel like to have his gaze find me in the middle of dozens of other people. His smile pulled tighter, acknowledging the dreaminess playing out on my expression.
I snapped back to reality, feeling its whiplash. “Stop it,” I whispered, tucking my arms around my stomach. “Stop playing with me. It’s cruel.”
His smile fell and he looked panicked, as if realizing I was aware of the games he was playing. “I’m not—”
“Just leave,” I said, meaning to shout, but my vocal chords choked around the words.
I chanced a look up, and he was a pillar of stone still before me. “Leave!” This time I harnessed the volume I’d been meaning.
For the first time, he listened to me.
Since he’d stormed off, I’d remained in the booth . . . I’d hid in the booth. With his confounding presence removed, I finally had a chance to think clearly and knew I’d behaved like a crazy person. Although I’d called him the twelve-year-old, my own behavior was more in accordance with pre-pubescence. He hadn’t said one thing insulting or humiliating—perhaps frustratingly evasive—but it had been my interpretation of what his words meant that had put me in defense mode. I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself confidence bankrupt, but somewhere in between being terrorized by the pretty girls and ignored by the beautiful boys, I’d steeled myself against any future attacks. I was an impenetrable fortress, but it came at a high cost. Lack of meaningful friendships and dates on the weekend to name a few.
I wanted to retreat to the confines of my dorm, at least the coward in me did, but this other part of me—the dominant one I wasn’t familiar with—told me I had to go to him and apologize. It was telling me with such persuasion, I doubted it would have allowed me to take a step in the opposite direction.
I closed the ticket window, trying not to rehearse my apology. From experience, I knew my rehearsed speeches sounded like I was reading from a teleprompter moving at a snail’s pace.
I yanked out my ponytail holder and picked through my hair with my fingers, attempting to inject some volume into hair that was, by definition, flat. A smear of chapstick and a pinching of the cheeks completed my ad-hoc beautification.
Too bad I’d picked my favorite tee that probably should have been tossed in the rag bucket several washes ago, instead of the new tunic that played up the blue in my more-gray-than-blue eyes.