Fuck it.
“Would you settle for the worst end to a first date?”
Bowen glances to the side in thought and then shrugs, “I’ll allow it.”
I hesitate for a moment before committing, “It ended with him dragging me out of bed and holding a gun to my head.”
I feel the chill hit me like a bucket of cold water and begin shivering. I tilt my head back, looking up into the black sky through the birch branches. I take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and finally, the trembling begins to subside.
Bowen lets his arm fall onto the armrest of his camp chair, “Seriously?”
CHAPTER SIX
Brett
College
Every time I look at him out of the corner of my eye, Colson Lutz always looks the same; leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, and his head cocked to the side.
Unbothered.
He sits next to his two friends, but he barely speaks to them. Instead, he starts off the spring semester of our senior year in Popular Fiction by looking over the syllabus and then asking me which I liked better: the book, Carrie, or the film version.
I jump at responding to him, because I have opinions about film adaptations.
“They’re almost different stories, aren’t they?” I ponder, “I saw the movie when I was in fifth grade and I loved it. A couple years later I read the book, and I liked that, too, but Carrie from the book is no Sissy Spacek. I mean, pig blood and being impaled with knives is cool, but God forbid they cast a fat girl in the starring role. People would lose their minds.”
Colson leans over the edge of his desk, “You saw Carrie in fifth grade?”
He leans so close that I can smell the notes of mint and citrus in his dark auburn hair, styled in a messy blowout on top of his head. When I look over my shoulder, I’m caught entirely off-guard by his striking aquamarine eyes studying me.
“Yeah,” I try not to stare at him, “when did you see it?”
“I don’t know, in high school maybe. Didn’t it freak you out?”
I tip my daily bottle of Naked Mango Madness protein smoothie into my mouth, “Which part?”
Colson pauses, clearly running through the scenes in his mind. It’s obvious he doesn’t know where to begin.
Finally, he picks the opening scene, “A bunch of bitchy girls screaming at you in a locker room while you’re bleeding everywhere? Total humiliation?”
I straight up giggle at his assumption. Never mind child abuse, bullying, being doused in pig blood, and murdering your peers by telekinesis—menstrual blood is way worse.
“No,” I reply with an eye roll, “because I didn’t grow up under a rock and I’ve known how periods work since elementary school.”
At that, Colson opens his mouth, hesitates, then closes it right back up again. He gives a nod, realizing how ridiculous he sounds.
At first, I think it’s strange that a forestry major is taking an English elective. But it’s senior year, which means that those who have already satisfied the requirements for their majors often find themselves in a smattering of random elective courses. I can only assume this is the case for Colson. I’m just glad I found one with a smaller class size instead of in an auditorium with 200 other people.
I also can’t stop looking at Colson because, I swear, I’ve seen him somewhere before. It’s his eyes. I can picture them—vividly—in my mind, like at some point he was standing right in front of me. I didn’t know his name until he introduced himself to me in class, but the feeling is so strong that I can’t shake it. It’s like a word that’s on the tip of your tongue or forgetting the name of a song.
It’s a huge campus, and it’s highly probable I have seen him somewhere before—a hallway, a bar, a football game, a party, one of the thousand other places I go on any given day. But it still doesn’t explain why I have a very specific image of his face so close to mine that I can’t see the rest of his body. Eventually, I resign myself to the likelihood that I’ve seen him in one of these places, if only for a split second, and his striking blue eyes are the only thing that registered in my memory.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, Colson walks into the room and sits down at the desk right next to me. At first, he only glances at me and smiles every so often. But, soon, he starts giving me half of his Twix he always gets from the vending machine in the hallway. Then I start giving him a stick of my cinnamon gum. Sometimes, he’ll scrawl a snarky comment in my notebook, and by midterms, we’re carrying on silent conversations in class, whether they’re written in my notebook or making faces at each other during one of Dr. Selter’s pop culture rants.
One day, just for fun, I walk into class and sit on the opposite side of the room. When Colson walks in, I watch him turn right and almost sit down at the desk he usually does. But, this time, he catches himself, hesitates, and then after a quick glance around the room, continues across the tile floor and sits down at the desk next to me.
It takes all I have to not let him see me smile.
Another time, I act like my laptop is dying and I need to move closer to an outlet. He waits until there’s a break midway through class. Then he gets up, grabs his backpack from the foot of his desk, walks across the room, and sits down at the desk next to me without a word. He just acts like he’s been sitting there all along.
One day, with midterms approaching, Colson leans back in his seat and looks over his shoulder at me, “Do you know Cade Wheeler and Anderson Hicks?”
I glance up from my notebook, “I know of them.”
And by know of, I mean their names sound familiar.
“You should come to their house tomorrow. It’s Cade’s 21st birthday.”
“Where do they live?”
“On Windham—next to the park.”
I chew the end of my pen, mulling it over. At this point, I’m over house parties in the student slums, which is why Barrett and I decided to live off-campus in a nicer apartment and suffer the 15-minute commute to class. However, if Colson is inviting me, that’s a different story.
“OK,” I nod, and continue jotting down my notes, “I’ll see if I’m free.”
He lowers his voice with a smile, “Promise you’ll come.”
