I nodded, grabbing a cup of coffee. ‘Soon as I get out of my tutoring session. It ends at two.’
‘You’re such a sweetie!’ she beamed, following me to the back. ‘I’ll be back in time for you to get to your lab.’
I couldn’t help but smile in response as I stuck the photocopy in my file and left a note for my manager that I’d done so.
‘We need to find you a girl,’ Gwen said, out of nowhere. I choked on the sip of coffee I’d just taken, and Gwen thumped my back.
‘Uh …’ I stammered once I could speak. ‘Thanks, but I’m good.’
One of her pale brows rose, telling me without words what she thought of that statement. ‘You’re a good guy, Lucas.’ I must have made some expression of disbelief, because she shook her head. ‘Trust me. I’m an honest-to-God expert at finding dickholes, and you aren’t one.’
Kennedy Moore was in his usual centre-of-attention position, laughing and clueless as to what his ex-girlfriend of three years had been through two days prior. I wondered if he was even friends with the guy I couldn’t picture without having to do taekwondo forms in my head to calm down.
I slid into my back-row seat and pulled out a textbook, preparing to study for a quiz in my eleven o’clock class. Waiting for Heller to arrive so Moore and his buddies would sit down and shut up, I sketched something violent in the margin of my text. I’d often wondered what people who ended up with my used textbooks thought when they turned the page to one of my doodles. Usually, they were just designs – the product of momentary daydreaming. Sometimes, they were personal illustrations for the printed material. Rarely – very rarely – they included faces or body parts.
Heller entered by the door at the front of the classroom, snapping my attention from my pointless musing. Since Jackie had quit coming, class had grown incredibly boring. I knew the material inside out. I knew all of Heller’s jokes and humorous anecdotes. The personal touches he incorporated into his lectures made him an awesome instructor, but even so – three times was plenty for most of them, and four was bordering on torture.
‘If everyone will be seated, we’ll begin,’ he said. From my vantage point on the back row, everyone was sitting down, but he was clearly addressing someone with that statement –
Oh, God. I stared. I couldn’t do anything but stare.
Jackie – cheeks flushed, eyes wide and fixed on Heller – stood feet away from me, just inside the back door of the classroom. Suddenly, as if prodded from behind, she scampered three rows down, sliding into the only empty seat … except for the one next to me. Which would have been closer.
Maybe she hadn’t seen it. Or me.
Maybe she had.
What was she doing here?
Good thing I’d been through this lecture three times and could comfortably regurgitate it for my session later, because I couldn’t focus on a single word Heller said the entire fifty-minute lecture. It was all blah blah blah and swishes of lines on the whiteboard. Jackie didn’t appear to be faring any better, though I assumed her inattentiveness was caused by altogether different reasons than the shock I’d received from seeing her. She couldn’t seem to look up without glancing at the back of her ex’s head, which left her staring at the board – whether or not Heller was writing or diagramming graphs on it, or at the empty page in her spiral notebook – which remained unfilled the whole lecture.
She was there to drop, I thought, finally, relaxing. That’s what she was doing – dropping the class. She’d arrived too late to speak with Heller before class began, so she was sticking around to get his signature on the drop slip after it was over. Reinforcing my conclusion, she stepped down to the front at the end of class (once her ex had passed in the centre aisle – without even noticing her). After a quiet exchange with Heller, she waited for him to chat with two other students, and then followed him out the door.
I should have been relieved. No need to assume any further responsibility for her. No need to send that email I’d written this morning.
No need to ever see her again.
So why this conviction that I would surrender something irreplaceable if I let her vanish from my life?
The answer was just another question. What other choice did I have?
Just like the Halloween party, I saw her the moment she entered, taking her place at the back of my line. She was an invisible force, dragging at something equally hidden inside me. I wondered at the magnetic field we’d managed to create between us, and whether she’d feel the pull of it as she moved nearer. Maybe it was just me who felt it.
She was with the pretty redhead I vaguely recognized from the party, where they’d arrived together – Jackie in her red-hot devil costume and her friend dressed as a wolf – fuzzy ears and bushy tail, requisite skintight leotard … and granny glasses on the end of her nose. Which I didn’t get until a tall, shirtless guy in jeans and a hooded red cape jogged over, picked her up – literally – and carried her on to the dance floor.
Whenever it rained, people elected not to leave campus between classes, and the student-centre Starbucks was besieged. Snaking round two displays and trespassing into the miniscule seating area where every seat was taken, the end of the line trailed down the hallway. The rush showed no sign of letting up. I didn’t have time to be distracted, but I was, watching Jackie and her friend inch closer, one step at a time.
Her friend leaned out of line to check the wait and decided it would be too long. I thought they’d both leave, but she enfolded Jackie in a hug and darted off alone.