by Sandy Hall
“You do make it sound kind of wonderful.”
“And if I tell them my brother needs a job, they’ll take you.”
“Cool.”
I want to say more, because there’s always more to say, but I leave it at that. I don’t want to scare him off. He’d been doing well over break, seemed happy and more like himself than he has in a long time. I think my parents were relieved to just see him acting like Gabe.
“Everything else okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s good,” he says. “Beginning of the semester means that I’ll have lots of kids coming to see me this week, worrying about their schedules and whether or not they’re making the right choices.”
“I don’t remember caring about that stuff as a freshman.”
“I think I just have some overachievers in my dorm.”
“Here,” I say, handing him a ten-dollar bill as I’m about to head into the building where my meeting is.
“No, it’s cool.”
“Take it, you can pay me back when you get a job.”
He shakes his head.
“If you’re sad and you have to eat alone, at least go get some decent food.”
“All right, fine. But it’s a loan.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep a tab.”
He punches me in the arm but at least he laughs.
Maxine (a waitress)
Those two darlings are back, all by their lonesome this time. It seems kind of sad that they’re sitting alone, but at least this time they smiled and waved at each other. I think the girl would have sat with him but she didn’t notice he was here until I was bringing her food out.
I see her staring and since it’s an oddly quiet Sunday evening I decide to meddle.
I say, “You could go sit by him.”
“What if he doesn’t want me to?”
I lean down to talk to her more quiet-like. “Well, what you could do is go to the restroom, and when you’re passing the table, ask if he’s waiting for anyone.”
“Okay,” she says, her eyes big.
“And if he says he isn’t, ask if he wouldn’t mind some company. I bet you he’ll say yes to that. And if he says no…”
“I’ll die of embarrassment.”
“At least you’ll die knowing.”
“He’s really shy,” she tells me.
“All the more reason to take the bull by the horns.”
“He looks busy.”
“He’s flipping through a magazine, sugar,” I say. “Listen, why are you here alone?”
“I was hungry and my roommate isn’t back on campus yet and I didn’t feel like finding any of my other friends.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s here alone. And then next time, you won’t have to come here alone, you know?”
She nods and takes a deep breath before she stands up.
I stand behind the counter, making myself look useful as I wipe it down.
“Hi, Gabe,” she says.
He smiles and nods. Oh, he is a shy one.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
He shakes his head and blushes.
“You maybe want some company?”
“All right,” he says.
“I’m just gonna go get my food and come back?” she says.
“Okay.”
“You don’t mind?”
I kind of want to wring her neck. He’s not giving her the response she wants, obviously, but he’s also not saying no, he’s not making up excuses. She’s one of those girls who’s so blinded by how much she likes this boy, she’s ignoring his bashfulness.
He shakes his head and looks up at her.
She comes back with her cheeseburger platter and sits down, looking very uncomfortable.
“They have good burgers here,” he says quietly.
“They do.”
She sits and eats primly and I bring his grilled cheese out a couple minutes later.
“Look at you switching seats all over the place,” I tease her. I wish I could break the ice for them. I’ve never seen two kids look so scared of each other before.
He twists his fingers together and doesn’t look at her. He so pointedly doesn’t look at her that it’s obvious to me at least that he’s working hard not to look at her, like looking at her is going to mean she’ll see on his face how much he likes her.
She smiles at me and I walk back behind the counter. It’s quiet for a Sunday afternoon.
“Do you want to play hangman?” she asks, flipping over the placemat and grabbing a pen from her bag.
He nods and smiles and looks so relieved.
They play a few rounds and then she gets a text message.
“My roommate just got back, so … I gotta go,” she says. “I’ll see you around?”
He nods and waves and she’s out the door in a whirlwind. He spends a good fifteen minutes writing something on the back of a placemat before crumpling it up and leaving. I can’t stop myself from uncrumpling it and reading for myself.
Things I should have said but didn’t:
1. How are you?
2. How was your break?
3. Are you still taking creative writing part two this semester?
4. I like girls, just for the record.
5. I’m kind of an idiot and I don’t know what to talk about.
6. Thanks for sitting with me.
7. Thanks for playing hangman.
8. We should do this again sometime. I could give you my number and then next time you could text me or something. Or I could text you. We could text each other and I would stop being so stupid and pathetic and talk to you even though I always feel pretty stupid and pathetic. And there’s a lot of stuff I should tell you, because you might not like me as much if you know the other stuff, but maybe you still would.
9. I really like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
10. Bye. (I didn’t even say good-bye. Why do I suck so much?)
I have to force myself to crumple it back up and throw it away. Because what I want to do is save it for that girl, so she knows how much of an effect she has on this boy.
Maribel (Lea’s roommate)
“The most amazing thing just happened!” Lea says when she bursts into our dorm room.
“What?”
“I sat with Gabe at the diner and we ate food and played hangman!”
“That sounds like you babysat him.”
She slumps onto her bed and makes an angry face.
“No! I mean, that’s cute! Don’t be angry!”
She toes off her shoes and throws one at me, missing by a mile, but I laugh and continue putting my clothes away. “Tell me exactly what happened and leave nothing out.”
“Well, I think that old lady waitress at the diner—”
“Maxine?”
“Yes!”
“I love Maxine.”
“Me too! I think she wants Gabe and me to like … hook up. She was giving me all this advice about sitting with him and then she was watching and smiling as we sat together.”
I think about that for a second. “That’s weird, but good. It means that other people see the chemistry the two of you have.”
“I agree,” Lea says. “He was friendly, but quiet, of course. So we played hangman when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to exactly jump into small talk with me.”
“I think that’s sort of brilliant. Keep him engaged, show him you accept him. Good work.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
I slump onto the floor. “What else?”
“Well, then you called so I left.”
“You left?”
“Yes. I mean, I was done eating. It was weird, it would have been weird to stay longer.”
I slap my forehead.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she says.
“No, but you should have stayed! You could have walked back together. Why would you leave? Right when things were sort of happening?”
“I don’t know!” she says, throwing up her
arms in exasperation. “Because I need you to be my life and relationship coach. I need to get a Bluetooth headset for you to whisper into and tell me when I’m making a mistake.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “So I’ll be outside hiding in the bushes or something?”
“Basically.”
“We’ll work on that plan.”
Casey (Gabe’s friend)
“What does it mean that Bianca asked you if I was gay?” Gabe asks the second I open the front door for him. He said he’d be over as soon as he finished eating. But that was literally like four minutes ago.
“How did you get here so fast?” I ask as he comes in and we head upstairs.
“Flying car.”
“You don’t drive,” I toss back as we take seats in front of the TV and Gabe fires up the Xbox.
He side-eyes me and then takes a deep breath. “It means something, right?”
I accept his obvious subject change. “This means they talk about you.”
“It does, right?” he says, licking his lips. “That’s what I was thinking, but I wasn’t sure if I was kidding myself or something.”
“No way, they so obviously talk about you. Bianca and Lea and Maribel. Did I mention she did that thing where she introduced herself halfway through the conversation?”
“She’s so cute,” Gabe says, shaking his head. “She’s never going to like me. I was just at the diner with her and we were sitting together—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up!”
“I know, I should have mentioned that sooner even though I’ve only been talking to you for fifty-three seconds.”
“Damn straight.”
“But like, I didn’t say anything. We sat together for at least twenty minutes. I barely said two words. It was like I couldn’t think of any words. Now I can think of about nine million words.”
“How many words are in the English language?”
“Not the point.”
“Sorry, you’re right.” I make a mental note to Google the number of words in the English language later on. “You can do this. I mean, you’re gonna see her in class and she comes to parties here.…”
“But how do you go from like not really even being friends to dating?”
“Talk to her.”
“Oh, yeah, ’cause that’s easy.”
“Dude, it’s not like you don’t have anything in common. Chat her up in class.”
“Chat her up in class?” he asks, his voice robotic, mocking me. “Does not compute.”
“You know, people are always like, ‘Oh, that Gabe, he’s so nice.’ And I’m like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s a dick to me.’”
“I have to get my dickish nature out somehow.”
“Anyway. We’ll figure this out with Lea. We have a whole semester to wrap this up. There’s no way that she doesn’t like you. She acts like she likes you. You told me that she even asked you to go out that one night. Girls don’t do stuff like that if they don’t like you.”
“But what if she asked me because she feels bad for me or something?”
“Why would she feel bad for you?”
“I dunno, I guess she wouldn’t.” He stares at the ground.
“She doesn’t know anything,” I say, hesitant, treading lightly around the unspoken topic.
“I know. You’re right.”
“’Course I’m right. I’m your Yoda.”
“Yeah, you’re really not.”
Inga (creative writing professor)
“Ready for another semester of fun?” I ask Cole as he comes into my office the day before our first class of the new semester.
“Oh, for sure.”
“Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way, and then we can gossip?” I suggest.
We talk for about a half hour about dividing up grading and confirming office hours. I give him a thorough description of my vision for the course, about how it’ll be a lot more like a workshop with short assignments each class period and a lot more peer critiquing.
“Sounds good,” he says, like he always does. He’s without a doubt the best TA I’ve ever had.
“So how was your break?” I ask.
“It was good. My girlfriend and I went up to Boston for New Year’s to see some of her friends. How was yours?”
“Fine,” I say, and then I break into a grin. “I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore. Look who both signed up for this semester?” I turn the roster to face him.
“Oh! Gabe and Lea!”
“This semester, Cole. They will get together. I don’t care what I have to do, or who I have to take out in the process.”
“I notice that Hillary is also on that list.”
“I know, I’ve been trying to ignore her.”
“I’m a little surprised she wanted to take part two.”
“Believe me when I say I tried to talk her out of it. But there was no convincing her otherwise. I think my protestations actually spurred her on.”
“Such a shame. Although, Inga,” he says, and I know he’s about to play devil’s advocate, “she is a decent writer.”
“For a bubblehead,” I say, not wanting to relent.
“For a bubblehead,” he agrees.
Victor (creative writing classmate)
When my friends asked me to go see a local band at a bar two towns over, they failed to mention it was an all-ages show. And that somehow this local band has garnered a ton of sixteen-year-old screaming girls as fans.
And worst of all, that Big Foot and the Giraffe are also fans of said band.
I don’t know that they see each other right away, which is so freaking annoying because they should be together. They obviously deserve each other. If I tried to instill anything into those two in the four months that I was forced to be in their presence in class it was that they need to get their shit together and start dating. I mean, I don’t really care, but this crap is annoying.
I do my best to ignore them, hitting on this chick Lilla who my friends insist likes me even though every time I try to talk to her, she just laughs at me and walks away. Even when I’m not saying anything particularly funny.
About midway through the set, I go up to the bar. They’re not serving much of anything, no liquor or mixed drinks, but at least they have beer on tap. I’m not picky as long as it’s cold.
Just my luck though, I end up in line behind my archnemeses.
“That’s six bucks,” the bartender says to Big Foot.
“For a bottle of water?”
“Oh, I rang you and your girlfriend up together,” the guy says, gesturing toward the Giraffe. Even in the dim light I can see the Giraffe blush.
“Oh.” Big Foot starts digging deeper into his pockets and the Giraffe steps in.
“It’s cool,” she says. “I’ve got it.”
“You don’t…” Big Foot starts.
“I don’t mind,” the Giraffe says, smiling at him. “You can pay me back or something.”
I want to smack their foreheads together. Maybe that will wake them up. How can they both be so blind?
She pays and then hands him the overpriced bottle of water.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Big Foot mumbles.
“Or you could just say thank you,” Lea says, her face kind even if her words have a hint of snark to them.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She turns and walks away.
Big Foot turns toward me, giving me a dirty look and pushing his way back to his friends.
At least he didn’t want to fight.
There’s no way I could have absorbed a kick from one of his massive feet.
Maribel (Lea’s roommate)
“Where the heck have you been?” I shout at Lea as she moves back onto the dance floor with Bianca and me.
She holds up a bottle of water.
“Bless you!” I say, grabbing for it and taking a sip. “Oh, sweet relief!”
As the song winds down, Lea pulls Bianca and me off to the side
.
“Gabe is here!” she says.
“You don’t look very happy about that!” Bianca says.
“I’d be happier if he wasn’t such a … buttprint sometimes!”
“What’s a buttprint?” Bianca asks.
“Like a butthead but worse,” Lea says, crossing her arms.
“Why is he a buttprint?” I ask.
“The bartender accidentally rang our waters up together so I bought them and it was like he didn’t even want to thank me.”
Bianca nods. “You stole his manhood!”
“I did not! He was digging in his pockets. I had a ten out to pay. Let me pay, you buttprint.”
“Stop being a buttprint!” I yell in his direction.
That makes her laugh.
“I know he’s not going to automatically be in love with me. But like, he could have been nice to me. I don’t need profuse joy for the sake of a bottle of water, but he was so vehement that I didn’t need to pay.…”
“Lea, my love, my roommate, my special friend,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders. “You need to calm down. You’re doing a really good job getting yourself out of your comfort zone when it comes to this guy, doing what you can. And I think it’s going very well, and if he doesn’t like you, screw him!”
“Thank you.”
“Because you’re being super sweet to this kid, and he’s being mostly…”
“Aloof?” she offers.
“Yes, aloof.”
“I know, but I feel like that’s just him, like that’s not about me. That’s just how he acts.”
“And,” Bianca adds, “we have the proof thanks to his essay about being shy.”
“I think I need to continue to forge ahead.”
“Oh, I wasn’t telling you to quit, I was just putting things into perspective.”
She hugs me and we return to the dance floor.
Casey (Gabe’s friend)
Gabe sits with his shoulders slumped for about fifteen minutes after he comes back from getting a bottle of water. I can’t take it anymore.
“What’s the deal?”
“Huh?” he says, squinting his eyes at me.
“What’s wrong?” I yell, directly into his ear.
“Oh, Lea. She bought me this,” he says, gesturing with his now-empty water bottle.
“Awesome!”
“Not really. It was only because she felt bad for me. The bartender rang us up together, but I didn’t have enough money to pay for both. And I guess she saw me digging around in my pockets and I just looked so totally lame.”
