“Keira, look at me.”
I lifted my head. Oh.
His eyes were bright, and his face was somehow different. In place of his usual cocky grin was a more sincere smile.
“Brennan?” I searched his face.
He led me to a more secluded area, and he scraped the outrageous Indian Chief headdress off and laid it on a nearby table. His normally perfect hair was matted down, and, without thinking, I reached up and ran my hand through it, then pulled back quickly.
“Sorry,” I said softly and turned away.
He placed his hands on either side of my face and pulled it up so that he could look into my eyes.
“For what?”
I shrugged.
He shook his head.
“Don’t be sorry. Do you think I’ll be sorry for this?”
He leaned down and kissed me tenderly.
I blinked and whispered, “I guess not.”
“Or this?” His next kiss was decidedly more forceful, and I reached my arms to entwine them around his neck.
We eventually broke apart, but he moved his arms to encircle my waist. I left my arms resting on his shoulders.
“Nice.”
For an articulate girl, sometimes I could be at such a loss for words.
Brennan threw his head back and laughed.
“Just nice? Not as good as advertised?”
I pulled my arms away.
“What, you’d like to think that all women are clamoring after you?”
“Well, sure,” he began playfully, but saw my face. “No, Keira. I don’t know why you think that of me.”
“Seriously? You don’t practice that smile? You haven’t seen those sapphire eyes?”
“Come on.” He shook his head and grabbed my shoulders.
“Right.” My skepticism was ruining the mood, but I didn’t care.
“Keira, you have to believe me,” he started.
“Sure.” I was on a roll now. “Aren’t I just the girl of the cruise?”
“No, no, no,” his voice became insistent. “You don’t recognize me, Graham Cracker?”
Graham Cracker? I hadn’t heard that nickname in forever—since I was in college, in fact. I stopped, looked at him, examined his face a little closer. My eyes widened. Oh no! No! It couldn’t be!
I ran off to find Alexandria as the music blaring through the Promenade Deck changed to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
Years Earlier
“Ali, why do you insist on singing that ABBA song over and over? I keep hearing it on the radio, too,” I asked my roommate as we crossed the Notre Dame campus on a crisp fall day of senior year.
“It’s a contest. I entered it hoping to win tickets to the show that is coming to town that’s based on their music.” She returned to her singing.
“Oh, Mamma Mia? It’s all based on their music from the ‘70s, right?” I asked. “Are you expecting me to go with you?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said, her pixie hair bobbing up and down as she nodded. “Who else?”
“I thought maybe you’d talk one of your admirers into taking you and buying you dinner.”
“Ha! I want to wear a boa and dance in the aisle. Frat boys generally are not into boas outside of keg parties.”
I rolled my eyes. Ever since freshman year, when we had been randomly matched as roommates, Alex had not allowed me to remain in my introverted comfort zone but dragged me to numerous activities. I had accompanied her on enough visits to her family back East to know that she came by her exuberance naturally, so I didn’t stand a chance as her best friend to be left behind.
“Fine, I’ll go.” I secretly hoped she didn’t win the tickets.
“Cool beans. What’s on your agenda today, Keir?”
“Probability and Statistics, Abstract Algebra, then my turn in the computer lab.”
She frowned.
“What, Alex?”
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything.”
“But obviously you’re thinking it, so go ahead.” I stopped short.
“It’s just ...”
I could tell she was trying to be diplomatic.
“Just what?” My tone must have been impatient.
“Well, Keira, you’re so ... organized.”
“That’s it? I’m organized? Oh, the humanity! The world will end because someone has the audacity to be organized!”
“Are you finished?” She tapped her foot.
“Yes.”
“What I mean is, that you make everyone fill out all this paperwork to work in the lab, and it just seems so—”
“Organized?”
“Unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary!”
Alex pulled herself up to her full five foot two inches.
“Yes. Unnecessary. Come on, Keira, we know that you don’t make the math majors or your fellow computer geeks—”
“Hey!”
“Come on, face it. Your computer department is full of geeks. And you don’t make them do it.”
“Well, your marketing people are not as ORGANIZED as my people.”
She waved me off.
“I know, I know. You’ve explained it all before. But it seems a little ... prejudiced. They have a nickname for you, you know.”
“I know, I know, ever since freshman year. Ice Princess.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, that one. But you have one just for the computer lab.”
I was afraid to hear it.
“Graham Cracker.”
“Graham Cracker?” I plopped down on a nearby bench.
“Yes, because you always crack down on people for no reason. And the guys say you also crack their—”
“I get it, I get it.” I stopped her before she explained the more vulgar definition.
I plopped my elbows on my knees and rested my chin on my fists.
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” Alex sat beside me and encircled my shoulders in a hug.
“You would say that, Miss Popularity.”
“What! You are popular, too!”
“I thought I was a geek!”
“Uh, with those killer eyes and your hair and your body? You could never be a geek. I’ve been around when guys fall all over themselves to get next to you.”
I leaned my head on her shoulder.
“Oh, they’re just comparing me to you and making the obvious choice.”
She hopped up.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” The mischief spread from my smile to the rest of my face. “You gave me the opening, and I had to take it.”
“Glad to see you rebounded so quickly.”
I sighed. “No. Not so much.”
“Come on, seriously, don’t worry about this lab thing.”
“Oh, I’m not changing the process. But, well—”
“I know. It’s hard to be the only one in the world who is right,” she said with sarcasm.
I hopped up.
“Do you not have some sort of class to study for?”
“Nope. I get by on my looks.” She grinned and skipped off. “See you in the student union after your lab. I signed us up for a pinochle tournament.”
“Pinochle? Alexandria! I don’t know how to play pinochle!” I called after her, but she was long gone.
I entered the lab after my classes to take over my shift from Marlon, the grad student who had managed it for the early part of the day.
“No takers on your shift?” I looked around at the empty room.
“Oh, no,” he said, as he gathered his books and backpack to leave. “All the machines were taken, but they seemed to leave at the same time.”
Now I was paranoid. Did they all leave because it was my shift? Impossible. Alex could not know everything.
I pulled my own books from my backpack and began to study. Time passed before I heard the distinctive click and swish of the door opening. I glanced up to see one of the regulars.
Tall, with scruffy hair and a beard, he wore the horn-rimmed gla
sses that seemed to be on all the undergraduate boys that semester. He pulled a sign-in sheet from the stack and took his normal place at a computer near my desk. His fraternity had complained about my sign-in process to the head of the computer department just enough that they could now sign in with the frat name and their frat nickname. I suppose that counted as successfully rebelling.
This shambling freshman was “Capone,” and he had explained to me that he earned his nickname because he played violin. His frat brothers apparently could only associate the violin case with gangster movies, hence the nickname. It was a serviceable, if oddly generated, nickname, I suppose. And I certainly had heard worse in the fraternity circles.
Capone was soon joined by two sprightly coeds who I usually couldn’t tell apart because they looked and dressed almost as twins in the most up-to-the-minute trends. Their names didn’t help: Mariah and Marissa. They were chatty, and I often had to walk over to them and shush them if anyone else was in the room. They could have easily reminded me of my best friend except for the fact that Alexandria had a whole different level of work ethic and an amazing intellect behind her vivacious personality.
They became especially chatty when a football player nicknamed Real Deal walked in the room. He rarely came in on my shift, but when he did, Mariah and Marissa quickly sat up and took notice. Frankly, it was hard not to take notice. He was tall with a dazzling smile and dazzling eyes. He was in the same fraternity as Capone, and everyone on campus, if not the country, was awed by his prowess on the gridiron.
“Keira!” He grinned as he swept through the door.
I shook my head, placed my finger to my lips, and gestured to the other students in the room.
Undeterred, he clapped Capone on the shoulder and sat next to him with a hearty “Capone!”
His frat brother shrugged him off and pointed to his screen to indicate that he was working.
“Oh, sorry,” Real Deal said in barely hushed tones. “Oops.”
He strolled to my desk to pick up a sign-in sheet.
In similar tones, he said, “By the way, we’re having a kegger at the house tonight. Think you can make it? We’d love to have you there.”
I put my finger to my lips again and whispered, “My roommate and I are in the pinochle tournament. Sorry.”
“Bring her! We’ll still be partying after the card game, won’t we, Capone?”
Capone glanced over and shrugged.
“I guess.”
“There! You can’t let Capone, down. He’ll be looking for you particularly!”
I looked at his frat brother, whose cheeks flushed. Great, Real Deal, pick on the freshman. I felt Capone’s pain because I knew all too well what it’s like to be shy.
Before Real Deal had a chance to make more of a scene, and since I saw more people entering the lab, I said, “Sure, we’ll try to make it. How about you get back to your machine ... quietly.”
His face split into a bigger grin, and he strolled to his computer, prepared, I was sure, to dazzle Mariah/Marissa and the other entranced female marketing majors who had entered the room.
“Wow, Keir, a personal invite from the star running back.” Alex fluffed out her short hair and took a last look in the mirror before we left our dorm room.
“I think they think they’re going to get special privileges in the lab if they’re nice to me, don’t you?”
“Maybe. Doesn’t mean they’ll get them, if I know you.”
“Got that right. Besides I just felt bad for him picking on his pledge brother in the room.”
“Who was it?”
“Some freshman they call Capone. You know the type: shy, bookish.”
She threw her brush at me.
“Uh, yeah. I came into my freshman dorm room three years ago and met her.”
I picked up her discarded brush and brushed my own hair out and prepared to pull it back in a ponytail.
“Maybe he was just pulling him out of his shell. Leave it,” said Alex.
“Leave what?”
“Your hair, Rapunzel. Leave it out of its prison tonight. It looks good.”
I looked in the mirror and shrugged.
“Sure, it’s not like I’m going on a date or anything.”
We left our dorm to head toward fraternity row.
“You know, you should have worn your hair down to hide your eyes during the card tournament,” Alex said. “We might not have been eliminated so quickly.”
“I TOLD you I didn’t know how to play pinochle.”
“But you didn’t tell me you didn’t know how to have a poker face.”
“Wouldn’t it be a pinochle face?”
“Must you correct everything?”
“Must you correct my corrections?”
I punched her in the shoulder, and we laughed as we continued toward the party. As we got closer, the music and laughter got louder, and we began to see more people heading the same way we were.
Once there, we were each handed a flower lei by the behemoth guarding the front door.
“I wasn’t told this was a Hawaiian theme party,” I shouted over the music into his ear.
“It isn’t,” he shouted back.
“Oh. Okay.”
Alex and I looked at one another, laughed, and put the leis on.
Navigating through the front room, the kitchen, and into the backyard was no small feat. Along the way, Alex was stopped by numerous people she knew from her marketing classes.
“Needless to say, not a lot of computer ‘geeks’ here,” I noted.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that,” she said.
I shook my head. “I’m just trying to give you grief.”
We finally reached the crowded backyard where the food, drinks, and a DJ were. We each filled a red plastic cup with beer from the keg and stood to the side. Some sort of skit was about to take place.
Hawaiian music poured from the speakers and a line of young men in grass skirts with their backs to us filed onto a makeshift stage doing an awkward hula. The music sped up, and they turned around and revealed their coconut bras and leis as well as rather sketchy wigs with flowers entwined on their heads.
“Hey! I thought this wasn’t supposed to be a Hawaiian party,” Alex reached up to say.
“Aren’t ya watching the dancing?” I answered. “It obviously isn’t.” We doubled over in laughter.
At that moment, the dancer on the end lost his wig, and I saw that it was none other than my most diligent computer lab attendee, Capone.
“That’s Capone!” I yelled to Alex and pointed.
“That’s Capone?” she yelled back. “He sure doesn’t look shy to me!”
Grinning and kicking, he was dancing as if he were on Broadway. No, certainly not shy right now.
The music stopped, and the hula “girls” jumped down from the stage. I saw Real Deal grab Capone and pull him toward Alex and me. They continued laughing and gesturing until they reached us.
“So, what do you think of our dancer?”
Once Capone saw me, suddenly the shy computer lab personality I knew so well reappeared.
“Hey, um, Keira.” His face turned red.
Alex took in this exchange.
“Aha! I see now.”
“There is nothing to see, Alex!” I didn’t want this freshman to be embarrassed by my best friend as well as his frat brother.
“No, of course,” she backed off. But Real Deal was not as tactful.
“Well, say something to her, Capone. I got her here for you.”
Capone wasn’t wearing his glasses, and for the first time I could clearly see his eyes. They were such a beautiful shade of blue, but at that moment they were so mournful, looking from side to side as if searching for a way out of this situation.
Real Deal continued. “What do you think of our dancing king, Keira? Hey, that’s it! They’ll have to change that song that’s been playing on the radio all week from ‘Dancing Queen’ to ‘Dancing King’!”
&nb
sp; Capone tore off through the crowd, but Real Deal kept singing behind him “Dancing King, you are the Dancing King!”
Chapter Seventeen
The shipboard strains of ABBA had died down on the Ocean’s Essence when I found Alex in front of the Promenade Cafe. I dragged her inside to a booth.
“It’s him, Ali, it’s him!”
“Who’s him?”
“Capone!”
“The gangster?”
“No! From the university!”
“What! Where?”
“Brennan!”
“What?” Then she put it together.
“Noooooo!”
“Yes!”
“That’s impossible. He was in my department. Wasn’t he the big goof with that beard and all? How can you be sure?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure of it. You were a senior and he was a freshman, so you wouldn’t have had classes together. And you really only saw him up close at that Hawaiian keg party that one time.”
She leaned back.
“I’m not seeing it. You have to be mistaken.”
“No, Alex, I’m sure of it. I saw him so often in the lab until he stopped coming on my shift after that kegger where that Neanderthal Real Deal embarrassed him.”
“I still don’t see it, Keir. I’m sorry.”
“Look, Alex. Picture Capone without the beard and glasses. And obviously nicer clothes.”
“But Brennan has those dimples and those eyes—”
“The beard covered the dimples, and I saw Capone’s eyes at that kegger. You don’t forget those eyes.”
“Well, apparently, you did until about twenty minutes ago,” she said dryly.
“Well, maybe, but here’s the kicker. He called me Graham Cracker.”
Alex shot straight up in her seat.
“Omigosh. THAT is too much of a coincidence. No one called you that except people from computer lab.”
“I know, right?”
We both leaned back simultaneously.
“Well, what does this mean?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘what does this mean’?”
“I mean just what I asked, Keira. What does this mean?”
I shook my head.
“Come on, Keir. This is huge! A guy had a crush on you in college, and you don’t see him for a million years—”
Love on the Lido Deck Page 15
