Page 5 of Back to You
“No, hang on,” he told her. “Don’t agree just yet—we haven’t even spoken about pricing.”
“Wait, what?” She blinked at him in confusion. “What pricing?”
“I’m paying you, of course,” he said. “It’s a big project, you shouldn’t do it for free.”
“Are you kidding?” She flushed. “I don’t really know if my art is that good, I mean, I’m happy to just draw it and ...”
“Don’t undersell yourself,” he said, firmly but gently.
I wanted his gentleness, his easy, smiling manner, his confidence and calm. His attention. I wanted him.
I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it, acting normal about the whole thing. As if I’d ever been good at acting normal about anything. Then, one day around exam season, we happened to be in the study hall at the same time, and the only empty seats left were across from me and my best friend, Victoria. I lifted my head from my history textbook, then quickly glanced back down again, but I could feel my whole body reacting to his presence. I was suddenly very conscious of my hair falling on my shoulders,my posture. I underlined the same sentence three times and couldn’t remember a single word.
“Hey, does anyone here have an eraser I could borrow?” he whispered.
Without even thinking, I unzipped my pencil case and offered him mine. “Here,” I said. That was all I said. But maybe I had been a little too enthusiastic, a little too flustered as he took the eraser from me.
Because after he left the library, Victoria turned to me with her brows raised, a disdainful look on her face. “Oh my god, you like Luke Blythe, don’t you?”
Blood rushed to my cheeks. “What? No, I—”
“You so do,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Really,Luke? That’s so cliché of you.”
These are my feelings we’re talking about,I wanted to argue.I’m not trying to make a statement of individualism here.But I knew that arguing with her would’ve led us right where she wanted: a heated intellectual debate on my moral failings for pining after a conventionally attractive, upper-middle-class representative of the male population. She was always the better debater, anyway. Victoria didn’t speak to communicate; she spoke to win.
I wonder what she would say now, about me talking to Luke like this, after all these years.
Luke’s phone buzzes, and he takes it out quickly, checks the time. “Hey, listen, I’ve got to run to class—but we’re heading down to the club tonight.” He tilts his head. “You want to come?”
“Who’s going to be there?” I don’t know why I’m asking—it’s not like I would know anyone even if he named them all.
“Mostly some of my frat brothers.”
“Oh,” I say. “You’re in a frat?”
He smiles in a way that’s almost self-mocking. “Not anymore, no. I joined for a few days, but, like, it wasn’t for me.”
This is more surprising to me than the idea that he was in a frat to begin with. “Why not?”
“They were just doing stupid shit all the time,” he says. “Like, physical stuff.”
“Oh,” I repeat.
“Not physical likethat,” he says, his smile teasing now, and I wince at how obvious my reaction must’ve been. “More like stupid pranks. They always expected me to join in because of—well, I don’t know, people always seem to have this idea of me in their heads. This fun athlete guy who only ever parties. But it’s exhausting, and I feel like there are more productive uses of my time and energy, you know what I mean?”
“Right, yeah.” I feel a twinge of guilt, realizing I’d fallen for that image of him too. The popular boy. The champion athlete.
“But the guys are friendly,” he says. “And there won’t be any pranks, promise.”
“Sure, I’d love to come,” I say before I can lose my nerve. “Where is it?”
“Don’t worry about that, I can come pick you up,” he offers. “What’s your number?”
He holds out his phone and I take it slowly, almost expecting him to retract it at any second and tell me he’s joking. Could it have been this easy, all along? He has not collapsed in horror at my confession. He hasn’t run away from me yelling at the top of his lungs. He’s letting me add my number to his contacts.
“Cool,” he says, once I’ve finished typing. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Victoria only exists inside libraries.
