by Sandy Hall
“So pay next time. You’ve got that sweet job at the library now.”
“What next time? There’s no point.”
I give him a withering look and then he proceeds to pout for another half hour.
When I notice that Lea and her friends are on their way out, I gesture for him to go talk to her and he shakes his head. I grab his arm and race to cut them off before they exit.
“Tell her you’ll get her next time,” I say.
“I’ll get you next time!” he yells as I push him within Lea’s earshot.
She gives him a confused look as the three girls walk out the door into a gust of cold air.
“I sounded like a cartoon villain. She should be afraid of me.”
“I didn’t mean you should quote me word for word.”
“I told you I suck at this.”
“I should have listened.”
Squirrel!
The boy passes first, but I’m too hungry to follow him.
Then the girl is on the green, so I sit up, hoping she’ll notice me and stop and talk. And give me food.
I can’t find my acorns again and it’s going to snow soon.
Then I’ll never find my acorns.
“Hey, little guy,” she says when she sees me.
I stop and sit up straight, making my tail fluffy, and I blink at her.
“I don’t have any food today.”
She frowns at me.
“You’re looking awfully skinny.”
I try to frown at her.
“I’ll bring food for you next time. I promise.”
Luckily I get distracted from my hunger when a leaf cartwheels by on a stiff breeze. I decide to chase it.
Charlotte (a barista)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Gabe and Lea in here, though that’s not particularly rare considering the time of year. But I’m almost happy when I see Gabe wander in Tuesday afternoon. He orders a coffee and settles down with his homework. About ten minutes later, Lea comes through the door, bright eyed and graceful and making me hate her and wish I was more like her at the same time.
“Hello,” I say as she approaches the counter.
“Hi,” Lea says. She seems so happy and I don’t think she’s even noticed Gabe yet. And as if he could hear me think about him, he appears next to her.
“Hi,” he says to her.
She looks flustered. “Hey.”
“This one’s on me,” he says.
“Oh, you really don’t have to.”
“No, I want to,” he says, taking a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure I made a creepy cartoon villain promise while I was drunk the other night.”
“It was a little bit like a cartoon villain.”
I’m stunned by what I’m seeing. Something has definitely happened between them in the past month. Because the last time I saw them in here together, they barely even greeted each other, and now here Gabe is, buying her a drink. I can’t wait for Keith to come back from his break. He’s going to be so jealous he missed it!
“I didn’t buy you a drink to get a drink back,” she says. “It just happened.”
“Then why did you say…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Listen, my aunt always gives me Starbucks gift cards for like every occasion. She gave me a fifty-dollar one for Christmas. She has stock in this place or something, I swear. So let me buy you a drink.”
Her jaw drops. “That’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk except for in class.”
This is quite obviously the wrong thing for her to say, because he clamps his mouth shut and blushes furiously right to the tips of his ears. His shoulders tense up and his eyes sweep around the room. This conversation went from fun to something that I don’t know if I can continue watching in about three seconds flat. The secondhand humiliation is palpable.
“I’m sorry,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean that in like a bad way. It’s good, to hear you talk.”
He heaves a long sigh and then rolls his eyes. “It’s cool, I get that a lot. I’m not a big talker. Whatever.”
“I’m starting to realize that.”
“Lemme buy you a drink,” he says, gesturing with an adorable tip of his head.
“All right.” She turns to me, and it’s weird because the tension that was there two seconds ago is magically gone simply because she relented. “I’ll have a grande peppermint latte.”
He stands with her while she waits for her drink and I hear him say, “Do you want to, um, maybe, um, you can say no, of course. You could maybe, if you wanted to, sit with me.” I hate to admit that it is absolutely endearing, the way he digs his hands so deep into his pockets and how he sort of kicks at the floor tile and doesn’t look at her. I feel like this whole exchange is being wasted on me. I wish the others were here to see it.
It’s a shame he’s not looking at her though because the look of complete and utter delight on her face could kill puppies. She’s like the happiest girl in the world, as if she’s basically having the best day of her life.
“I’d like that,” she says.
He looks at her then and smiles. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Keith comes back out front as Gabe and Lea sit down.
“Holy crap!” he exclaims. “They’re sitting together!”
I laugh and tell him about what happened.
They sit there in the window of the coffee shop for almost an hour, not talking much, but looking at each other over the tops of their books, flirting somehow even without words.
It would be gross if it weren’t adorable.
Bench (on the green)
No one sits on me all damn winter except that idiot squirrel. And now it’s snowing and I’ll be covered in the stuff for weeks and then I’ll be all wet and I won’t see a single butt for the whole duration.
All those ungrateful delinquents walk by hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Not one glance my way, not one single decent sitter in the whole bunch.
No one has time for benches in the winter.
If I could, I would grow spikes. That would show them, come spring when the birds are chirping and the sun is out. They would sit down and I would grow a spike right into their rotund rear ends. Then they’d stop taking me for granted.
FEBRUARY
Pam (Inga’s wife)
Inga eyes me suspiciously when she catches sight of me through the window in the classroom door. She waves me in.
“Hey,” she says, walking toward me, looking vaguely alarmed. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I was going to wait outside, see if you wanted to go to lunch.” I look around the classroom. There’s a low hum of chatter going on as the students work together. I can see why Inga likes this group so much.
“And maybe spy on my couple?” she whispers between her teeth.
“Yeah, maybe that, too.”
She makes a silly face. “I’m sure you can pick them out.”
I take a good look around the room and she’s right, it’s easy to pick them out after all I’ve heard about them. Their desks are pushed close and their voices are quieter than the other groups around them, but their body language speaks volumes.
I can see why Inga was pulled to them.
“How many syllables in ‘smile’?” one of the kids asks.
“They’re working on a haiku project,” Inga explains.
I watch Gabe and Lea for a few minutes before Inga dismisses the class.
“They’re fascinating,” I say as the door closes.
“They are. She’s really come around to making him laugh and he just lights up anytime she says anything.”
“Finally,” I say.
“Finally,” she agrees.
Bob (a bus driver)
I’m sitting outside the student center on my break when I see my two favorite kids. They don’t seem to take the bus at all lately while I’m driving so it’s nice to see them out and about. The girl walks out the door as the boy walks in.
“Hi, Gabe,” she says.
“Lea,” he responds.
I’m happy to know their names now, it’ll make telling my Margie about them a lot more fun.
They stop in the middle of all the students flowing in and out of the doors and just look at each other.
“Did you…” she starts to say, as he starts to say, “Can I…”
I’ll never know what they were about to say, because someone bumps into him from the side at that moment and they both seem to lose their train of thought.
“I guess I should…” he says, gesturing in the other direction.
She nods and tips her head toward the entrance to the student center.
They definitely remind me of Margie and me except for three differences. We met at a go-go bar, we’re not particularly educated, and she’s not Asian. But if it weren’t for those things, they’d be just like us. I told her about them and now she likes when I tell her stories. Sometimes I make stuff up since I haven’t seen them in a while.
But now I can tell her I saw them, and about how they were happy to see each other, bashful and awkward, but happy. It’s like our own little soap opera that no one else knows about.
They’re gone now, both out of sight, so I go back to reading my paper and freezing out here. But I always need some fresh air after being cooped up on the bus so much.
I see we’re supposed to have a big snow later on this week, biggest in years they’re saying. Hopefully they close the school because I hate driving in that garbage. Call me a bad driver, call me a fraidy cat, but no one should be on the roads when the weather’s bad.
Casey (Gabe’s friend)
I sneak onto the elevator in Gabe’s lobby without calling first and hit the button for the ninth floor. I head down the hallway and knock on his door, hoping he’s around.
“Hey,” he says when he opens the door.
“It’s snowing.”
“I know.”
“We’re all gonna go play football or some shit and I came over here specifically to drag your ass out.”
He pulls up his left sleeve and shows me some gauze wrapped around his elbow.
“What happened?”
“I got the pins out over the weekend. Do you listen to anything I say?”
“I guess not,” I admit. “So that means you can’t come out at all?”
He rolls his eyes. “I probably could come out, but I shouldn’t exactly play tackle football with stitches in my throwing arm.”
“So you could cheerlead. I hear that Lea might be around,” I tell him.
He perks up at that, but then frowns. “Let me go find some layers.”
I step into his tiny room. It’s basically built for a monk and barely big enough for the school-issued bed, desk, and dresser. I look at the pictures he has tacked onto his corkboard while he changes.
When he’s ready to go, he has on track pants and his high school baseball sweatshirt.
“I’ve got layers upon layers and I put a little extra padding around my elbow.”
“Where are you living next year? Have you thought about it?” I ask.
He shrugs, tugging his ski jacket on. “I could do this again maybe. I don’t know that I’m exactly excelling at it, but it was nice of the school to find a way to make up for some of the scholarship I lost. And I’m actually kind of good at it.”
“If that doesn’t work out, I bet somebody will move out of our house. You could move in with me and Sam.”
“You’re staying around here after graduation?”
“I don’t know, probably. We’ll keep you posted.”
“Costs a lot of money,” he mutters.
“You’re too young to worry so much about money.”
Gabe laughs as he pulls his gloves on and shoves a hat in his pocket.
“All right, let’s go.”
“I’m sorry I forgot about your elbow stuff,” I say when we’re in the elevator.
“No big deal.”
“Does it hurt, right now?”
He shrugs. “Not bad like it did after it happened. Mostly the cuts hurt from where they took the pins out.”
“I feel like an asshole for not remembering.”
“I don’t ever really say much about that stuff.” He starts to whistle tunelessly and I take that as a hint to move past this topic.
We walk outside and even though it’s two in the afternoon there’s a weird quality outside like it’s almost dusk.
“Usually snow makes everything seem too bright,” he says, looking around as we walk.
“I think it’s because the clouds are so dense or something.”
“Thank you, Al Roker.”
“That’s funny you bring him up. He’s the one who told me the clouds would be particularly dense during this storm.”
“I think you missed your calling as a meteorologist.”
The walk to the green takes ten times longer than usual because the snow is at least eight inches deep.
“So what’s up with Lea?” I ask.
“Not much.”
“Are you going to like … ask her out or something?”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“You say, ‘Hey, Lea, let’s go out sometime.’”
“I don’t have a car.”
“So?”
“It’s not like I could take her to the movies.”
“Think outside the box a little, Gabe. You’re so full of self-doubt. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“We’ll see what happens if she’s here today.”
We come out on the green and there’s already a group of people there, including Bailey and a bunch of my roommates. He jogs over to us.
“You ready for some football?” he asks.
“We forgot about his bum elbow,” I tell Bailey, gesturing toward Gabe.
“Oh, man.” Bailey slaps his forehead. “What are you doing here? We should put you in bubble wrap and send you to bed.”
“You sound like my mom.”
“Yes, I’d imagine that Mrs. Cabrera would be a big proponent of that idea.”
Gabe rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m here because maybe…” He glances around and he smiles before he even finishes that thought. Across the green are Lea and her friends, picking their way toward us.
“Bailey set that up for you. He got Bianca’s number a couple of weeks ago,” I tell Gabe, patting him on the shoulder.
“I’m gonna freeze my balls off,” Gabe grumbles.
“Lea will keep your balls warm,” I say.
“Now go be a good cheerleader and sit on that bench,” Bailey adds.
“The bench that’s completely covered in snow?”
“Yes. Clean it off and maybe the girls will join you.”
He groans but walks over there, pulling his hat onto his head and putting his hood back on before scooping the snow off the bench and plopping down.
“I feel kind of bad,” Bailey says.
“He seems okay about it,” I say, looking at Gabe thoughtfully. “Come on, let’s get this going.”
Sam trots over to us.
“Why didn’t you tell us Gabe was getting the pins out of his elbow?”
He makes a face. “I totally forgot. I am the worst brother ever.”
Bianca comes over by the boys and wants to play, but Maribel and Lea take a seat by Gabe. I’m happy to see Lea sitting right next to him. Unfortunately Gabe is sitting as far away from her as possible, basically hugging the arm of the bench.
I lose track of them during the game and eventually it seems like everyone is having a snowball fight rather than following any of the rules of football. I glance back over by the bench and Gabe is sitting by himself and apparently talking to a squirrel.
I’m a little bit concerned.
Bench (on the green)
Well, well, well. Looks like someone’s finally cleaning me off. Probably just gonna use the snow to make snowballs or a fort or something. But it’s nice to feel the wind at l
east, sort of refreshing after weeks of being under ice.
What’s this? Are they actually sitting down, too? And is it possible that this is my favorite butt from way back when? This day has gotten a lot better. Considering I thought it would be another in a long string of lonely days on this tundra.
He seems a little tense.
Oh, damn, it’s because he seems to have some lady friends joining him. Terrible. And they’re making the whole structure off balance and he’s turned all wrong. Go away, ladies, you’re ruining the perfect butt.
“Hey, Gabe,” they both say with varying levels of enthusiasm. If you’re going to talk to this great ass, at least be excited about it.
He doesn’t say anything in return but I think he might at least wave or something.
“What’s up?” one of the girls asks.
No response.
“Not a big football fan?” the other one asks.
I can feel him shrug, but I’d kind of like to tell him that he should probably talk. Unless he doesn’t like these broads; maybe that’s why he’s so tense.
After what seems like a really long time, too long to wait to respond to a question, he says, “I hurt my elbow.”
“Are you okay?” a girl asks, her voice worried.
He’s slow to answer again. What’s with this kid?
I hope the girls leave soon so he can relax and I can enjoy our time together.
Maribel (Lea’s roommate)
Lea is working really hard to talk to Gabe and he’s giving her nothing to work with. I’m starting to think he’s a lot weirder than I realized. Either that or our voices are getting lost in the wind. I feel bad for Lea.
“Which assignment did you pick for class?”
He kind of scrunches up his face and shakes his head, but I’m not sure if that’s answering Lea’s question or whether he was trying to get the snowflake off his nose.
“So, you played baseball in high school?” she asks, pointing toward the sweatshirt underneath his unzipped coat. I should yell at him to zip it up; it’s freezing out.
He crosses his arms and smiles at her.
“Yeah, I played softball,” she mumbles.
