by Zoey Shores
Suddenly, Sage’s head perks up.
“Shit,” he says, before quickly stumbling over to the trash can we’re passing and emptying the contents of his stomach into it.
“That a boy,” Chase jokingly cheers.
“At least he’ll get a good sleep after this,” Lincoln comments.
“You really are the nicest little house mom,” Archer jokes with Lincoln, tussling his hair. Lincoln responds by playfully punching Archer in the arm.
It looks like Sage might be by that trash can for a while. I step aside from the group to stretch a little bit and calm down. I stand on the corner of the nearby intersection, a couple feet away from the other guys. I just want a second to clear my head.
When I turn my head to the side, though, a clear head is the last thing I get. A get a head overcharged with memories, emotions, and way more complicated feelings than I have the cognitive bandwidth to deal with this semester.
I see Heidi, standing right in front of me.
CHAPTER SEVEN: HEIDI
I’m walking down the street, lost in thought, my eyes cast down toward the sidewalk in front of my feet. Rory is next to me looking down at her cell phone; she’s scrolling through Instagram and Snapchat; both platforms, as well as countless others, are flooded with pictures, videos and commentary of the fight that we just witnessed at the Alpha Kappa house.
“It looks like your boy got the best of him,” Rory jabs.
I roll my eyes, though they’re still downcast, trained on my feet that carry me forward down the sidewalk. “He’s not my boy.”
“Suure,” she teases. “I’m gonna force you to stick to our pledge this semester. But next semester, I don’t know … I smell romance in the air – a second chance romance, no less! Oooh, this sounds spicey.”
I balk. “Yeah, right. After seeing all those drunk frat guys at the Alpha Kappa house, I’m thinking about extending my man-free period through the end of the year.”
“What’s that Shakespeare line about protesting too much?”
“I’m pretty sure the line is shuteth up, Rory.”
Rory snorts. “I don’t know if you have play writing in your future.”
I notice a figure in front of my path, so I stop short. I lift up my eyes, still directed toward the ground, to see who I just stopped short of stumbling into.
Once I see who it is, I dare not look to my left, because I know the teasing, insinuating face that Rory would be making to me right now.
Because none other than Luke Tanner stands in front of us.
He’s turned to his side, his arms lifted above his head, stretching. His biceps surge up out of his arm, strong and tight. His mouth is wide open in a yawn, accentuating his wide, solid, sharp jaw. The solid whiteness of his perfectly straight, strong set of teeth practically glimmers amongst the darkness of night. His brown hair is messy, stray tuffs jumbled, evidence of the struggle he was just involved in.
He turns his head toward us, and a spark of recognition flashes in his eyes. The side of his full, pillowy mouth perks up in a smirk. I feel a warmth grow in my cheeks as I notice that he’s actually happy to see me.
“Heidi,” he says my name simply as a greeting.
“Hi, Luke,” I answer, awkwardly.
“I have to take a call, I’ll be over there,” Rory says, shooting me an obvious wink. Before I can protest – because I know, as would anyone with a brain, that her having to take a call is full of shit – she’s already a couple steps away, leaning against an old, black wrought-iron fence, her phone pressed toward the side of her face – a total pantomime.
In the warm light of the streetlamps, Luke’s deep dimples are accentuated, as is the outline of his strong, prominent, high cheekbones. Even as the streetlights cast our surroundings in soft, orange light, dominating their natural colors with its yellow hue, the rich green of Luke’s eyes still stand out.
“Are you coming from the Alpha Kappa party?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer, still feeling awkward. I’m still not sure how to act around Luke.
“Left because of the scene I made?” he asks with a cocky tone in his voice. Rather than stumbling over the topic awkwardly, he immediately owns up to it – almost with pride.
“We were ready to get going anyway,” I answer, unable to suppress a smirk. Luke’s carefree demeanor when referencing the fight he just had reminds me of his personality, the personality of the Luke I used to know, years ago: unflappable, willing to take on anything that came at him with a smile.
“Do you live around here?” I ask. I have no idea how in the world I ended up here, standing on a random street corner here in Winthrop, in the middle of the night, engaging in small talk with Luke Tanner. But here I am.
“Yeah, we’re just giving our friend some time to recover.” He nods his head in the direction of a group of guys standing a couple feet down the other direction of the sidewalk. One of the guys looks terrible, hunched over a trashcan with a line of vomit running down the side of his mouth.
I cringe. “Is he alright?”
Luke, cavalier as ever, answers, “Yeah, he’ll be fine. Just needs to get it out of his system and crash on our couch for the night. He’ll have a shitty morning, that’s for sure, but he’ll be okay.”
The guy looks young. He must be a freshman, no older the eighteen. He’s probably one of hundreds – even thousands – of freshman this weekend who end up overdoing it and exceeding their limits.
“Freshman, right?” I offer, trying to add some humor.
Luke chuckles in his deep, rich voice. His laugh was also something I loved about him way back then, so full of life. It still sounds like I remember. “Yeah, but this time, it isn’t his fault. Those assholes over at Alpha Kappa were trying to get him to drink too much.”
I frown. “You mean like hazing?”
Luke’s facial expression sours as he nods his head. “Yeah, we had to get him out of there.”
Is that what his fight was about? Protecting this freshman from a bunch of frat guys hazing him and trying to get him to over-drink? A feeling of admiration creeps up in me. Could this Luke really be the same Luke I knew back in high school?
After all the stories I heard – who hasn’t? – of his sleeping his way through the sororities of Winthrop University made me think that he’d changed, that the success had gone to his head, that a well-know and a famous Luke Tanner just couldn’t be the Luke Tanner I knew when we were sophomore high school kids – that he just couldn’t be the Luke Tanner I fell for.
Besides, I didn’t want to come across as, like, a groupie or something. Someone from his past, years and years ago, only reaching out to him once he’s famous, and probably just a couple years away from being rich as a professional athlete.
It’s not like I ever tried to speak to him or see him again after he got kicked out of our school – not that my parents would have ever let me … but, couldn’t I have tried?
Maybe those were all stupid ideas to have. Maybe it was silly for me not to try to seek him out, just to say hi, to reconnect, to reminisce and laugh about old times, after we shared so much back then.
How would I feel if I were in his shoes? I mean, of course, he had no idea in the world that I went to this school. Luke Tanner is a name everyone on campus knows – Heidi Locke, one maybe a dozen know. But if I knew that he knew that we were going to the same school, that I was easy to find, and he never once even tried to say hello, how would I feel?
Maybe he feels like I’m stuck up, like I think that he’s just some screw-up who I left in the past long ago. Like I think he’s someone not even worth trying to reconnect with.
But that’s so not true.
“It looks like your friend’s on a really engaging phone call over there,” Luke quips, bringing me out of my jumbled thoughts and back to reality. He nods towards Rory with a bemused look on his face.
Rory is still standing a couple steps away from us, leaning against the fence, turned about a quarter away fr
om us, barely even pretending to be engaged in a conversation, her phone held idly next to her face.
I can’t help but giggle at Luke calling out the charade. “Maybe a telemarketer from a different time zone.”
Luke grins, still looking over at Rory with eyes that see through her fake conversation – not that she’s even trying to hide what she’s doing. “He must be a pretty good salesman.”
I try to hold back a smile as I look up at him. The way his face is arced, looking toward Rory, accentuates the stark cut of his sharp, prominent jaw. His gorgeous face rests atop a strong neck, wide and thick with corded muscle.
“She looked surprised that we used to know each other. The other day, I mean,” Luke comments.
I blush, and hope that the color is masked by the darkness of the night. “Yeah, I mean … I don’t want to go around bragging about how I used to know the star quarterback a million years ago. You know?”
A lame excuse that only lightly adumbrates my reasons for keeping my history with Luke to myself.
Luke grins and lets an amused chortle escape from his lips. “A million years ago, huh?”
He looks above my head, toward the dark night sky, with a contemplative expression on his face.
“So,” he begins. “Did she pry the story out of you when you got back home?”
“Well, yeah,” I force a laugh.
“What have you been up to since then?” I know what he’s referring to when he says then – since he got kicked out of school. Since we saw each other last.
“Nothing exciting. Just finished up school, got accepted here … just a regular high school and college life, I guess.”
The mundanity of my summary contains an obvious but unstated contrast to Luke’s journey from freshman year of high school until right now: a very much not mundane life.
“Nothing exciting? I couldn’t call getting accepted into the best college in the country – shit, in the world – nothing exciting. That’s impressive as shit. You must have a ton of accomplishments over the last couple years.”
“Accomplishments? Oh, I don’t know. I mean, compared to you …”
“Me?” Luke cuts me off. “I just throw a ball. Sure, I’m pretty damn good at it, but they wouldn’t let me through the door here if it was based on my grades or test scores. You actually got here on your academic merits. Damn right that’s impressive.”
I know Luke is just being modest. He was smart as hell back in high school. His grades weren’t exactly the best, because he hardly ever studied or paid attention in class, but I remember how quickly he could learn things when he put his mind to it.
Hearing Luke’s words takes me back to those days. He really is more the same than I expected – in a good way. He was always giving me pep talks back then. He was always so confident and assured of himself, and he always knew how to take that self-confidence and apply it to someone else, to make them believe in themselves as much as he believed in himself.
“How’s your family?” Luke asks.
“They’re doing well. How about your mom?”
His mom was always the sweetest woman. She was so nice to me – unlike how my parents felt towards him, I’m sad to say.
“She’s doing good. Still comes down every week to watch my games during the season.”
“No way! That’s so sweet.”
“Did you go to any games last year?”
“I didn’t,” I admit, kind of feeling bad about it now.
Luke tilts his head and jokingly raises his right hand up to his heart in a melodramatic gesture. “Not even one? You’ll come to one this year, right?”
I giggle, feeling a warmth spread over my body. Finally talking to him like this, casually, now that the chilly awkwardness of our years apart has faded, bring back so many memories, and so many feelings I haven’t felt in so long. “When you ask like that, well, I guess I’ll have to find the time to come to at least one.”
He grins a cocky grin that almost makes my knees shake. “I’ll be looking up in the stands every game, then.”
“Oh, no. Then if you throw an interception, you’ll try to blame it on me.”
Luke’s laughter booms out of his wide-open mouth. A deep, warm sound. “You better sit right in the front row every week, so I don’t have to look around too long to see you, then.”
“Hey, Romeo, come on! Rookie’s stomach is finally empty, we’re heading home.”
One of Luke’s friends – a teammate, I’m guessing – calls for him. The freshman who was bent over the trashcan belching is leaning against another of the guys, all the color drained from his face and his eyes barely open.
“I’ll see you around then,” Luke says.
I nod and smile goodbye. “See you.”
He turns and walks down the street to our right with his group of friends. Once he’s a couple feet down the other sidewalk, I see him turn his head to glance back at me, for just a second.
“Hm, that was interesting.” I hear Rory as she walks back over to stand next to me, as we look toward Luke and his group of friends slowly receding in the distance.
“That must have been some phone call,” I say to her sarcastically.
“Wrong number.”
I roll my eyes. “Come on, let’s go home. I’m worn out.”
We walk quietly in the direction of our apartment. After a minute or two Rory muses ironically, “I wonder what you’ll be dreaming about tonight.”
I nudge her in the arm, drawing a laugh from her as we finish our walk home. Once through our door, I head to my bed and plop down, exhausted, and quickly slip into sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT: HEIDI
On the first day of the semester, Dr. Gasten calls a meeting of all the staff and writers at the student paper to lay out the agenda for the upcoming year.
“Alright everyone, big year coming up,” Dr. Gasten announces in the main staffroom. The school newspaper offices occupy three rooms on the second floor of the English building, a beautiful, late-nineteenth century building replete with sleek marble floors and finely crafted wainscotting adorning the walls.
Gasten stands at the head of the room, looking like the classic journalist with his suit jacket off, crisp white shirtsleeves rolled up below his elbows, and a pair of dark suspenders attached to his grey slacks. The student writers and I stand in the middle of the room, some of us leaning against nearby desks, looking toward him expectantly.
Dr. Gasten is a highly accomplished international reporter, whose articles have regularly appeared in the likes of the New York Times, The Washington Post, and all the other big-name newspapers and magazines over the years.
Being able to have him as a mentor and advisor is an incredible opportunity. Know that he was a professor here, and that I wanted to get into journalism, is a big reason why I busted my ass as hard as I did during high school to have the kind of bona fides that acceptance into Winthrop University requires.
“First of all, all your hard work last year paid off. As you all know, last year was the biggest year the student newspaper has had – maybe ever. That’s because of the hard work you all put in last year,” he pauses, a smirk popping up on his face. “And, of course, having our very own tabloid drama with the football team didn’t hurt.”
Laughter breaks out around the room. Even though Dr. Gasten is the epitome of a prestige journalist, covering the most important stories in the world with incredible depth and insight, he’s always preached to us that it’s the popular news stories that carry the financial success of any publication – and it’s that financial success that allows the more “serious” journalists to get their work out to the public.
Dr. Gasten resumes, “Due to our incredible sales volume last year, we’re actually going to be able to sell ad space in our paper this year.”
Surprised and curious chatter spreads throughout the packed writing room.
“That means we won’t only have to subsist off the scraps that the University throws at us for a poor excuse o
f what they call a budget, the crumbs that are left over after the sports programs get paid. That means we’ll have the money to do more on the scene reporting, to upgrade our photography equipment, and to increase the production values of our paper.”
The writers applaud his announcement. The excitement about the upcoming year is palpable. Not only will our circulation be bigger than ever this year, but the popularity will allow us to do the kind of reporting far above even the newspapers of other super-elite college. We all know that means good things for our future, because recognition as a student writer translates to prestigious internships, and eventually into the highly sought-after jobs at the biggest newspapers, magazines, and news websites in the world.
“To capitalize on the popularity of the football story with our readership, this year, I’ll be assigning a permanent writer to that beat. They’ll report on-scene at every football game, including traveling with the team for away games. Every week, there’ll be a front-page featured column. Basically, you could say that this person will be carrying our newspaper.”
Everyone starts talking amongst themselves in hushed voices. Immediately, everyone wants this assignment. Myself included. Even though what I really want to report on is international news – like Dr. Gasten – I know that if I get this assignment, I’ll be the most well-known student journalist in the country. Not only is the football team drama generating excitement on campus, but even the national sports media loves to cover it now.
Anyone who gets this assignment will be able to write their own ticket to the internship of their choice over this summer. And I won’t shy from admitting it: I want that person to be me.
I scan the room, which is awash in the energy and optimism of my fellow writers. Even though only one person is going to benefit from the flagship column about the hottest story, the larger success of the paper will benefit all of us.
However, my eyes stop on something – or, rather, someone – that turns my feelings of optimism into sour disdain. Greg.
Greg wears, as usual, a cocky smile – one of forced cockiness, a superficial confidence desperately trying to fool others into believing he’s as important as he thinks he is. The source of his obnoxious cockiness right now is clear: he believes he’ll be the one to grab that coveted assignment to the football team, securing himself a prominent, front-page column for the rest of the season.
