Chapter 2

FOUR YEARS AGO

“Are you going to show up for Mr. Freyer’s class?” Carrie was sitting on the couch beside me, running her fingers down her golden auburn hair. She looked like a Disney princess done right.

“Is he going to give another sermon on John Donne? Because all man now is an island.” I rolled my eyes when Carrie shot me a look. She gets boisterous and sassy when it comes to Literature. "Don't tell me you're in love with some old man because you like how pretentious he is in our classes?"

Carrie has always been in love with Dante and metaphysical poetry. She wanted to revel in darkness and the spirituality behind human existence. She had this constant gleam in her eyes whenever she sat in Mr. Freyer’s class, like she was in awe or something.

I wanted to ask her what Bertrand Russell once said, “Day after day, man is accumulating knowledge, but is the man getting any wiser?”

I felt my inner Virginia Woolf fist thumping when I looked at her. What’s all this passion for?

Carrie hummed a low growl like a dog in heat, getting all pissed. She ran a finger under her chin as she fought for my soda can. "You know that pale skin, dark-haired guy is also going to be there," she said.

“Which guy?” I averted my gaze, suspicious that I’d been caught. "Who are you talking about?"

”Kid me not, woman,” she chided, “I know the way you look at him. Something is definitely fishy. Do you know him or something?”

“Nope. He ...” I look at her, embarrassed, “… has the most beautiful eyes. It’s just the eyes. I’m not sleeping with him or anything.” I mused as if I was just getting to learn how to get lost in those blue eyes of his. He does have them good. "I try my best to not look at him during our classes."

“That’s the thing. It’s easy to give away your body sometimes, but, in the matters of the heart, one might perish.” She lurked around the topic of he who shall not be named. "You need to put yourself out there again, Ange."

“Anyways, I think I'll make it to class today. What if Mr. Freyer starts on that play I love . . . do you remember anything about it?”

She had no clue whatsoever of which play I was talking about and Carrie was the kind of girl who wanted to know everything. It was easy to see her latch on to something as small as this, and knowing that this leads to an incessant buzzing in her head. I drowned in satisfaction of seeing my best friend have her brains fried over course work. I smiled lazily, averting my gaze from her face.

”What play?” She reprimanded me from her walking down the closet and pulled out a sweater for class. She pushed the head of the sweater down her neck and hummed to distract herself. "Did I miss something at our last lecture?"

“Look back in Anger!” I clapped my hands, full of energy. "That's the play we were studying last month, not last week."

“Oh, that John Osborne guy?” Carrie divulged in the subject like he was some guy she met on a Friday night, in some gloomy, local bar, and ended up having a one night-stand with. "Yeah, I know all about him."

“Yeah, what about him?” I gave her a look. "Have you caught up on all of your assigned readings for this class?"

“No, no." She shook her head. "It's nothing like that. It's just that he’s annoying.” She picked out her satchel and started combing through the things inside it. "I couldn't understand this author at all."

“He's not as annoying as John Donne.” I ended up picking up my own backpack and putting things inside it, including my notebook and the curriculum book needed for class. "His poems make me fall asleep every night."

“Angelique!"

“Carrie!”

Carrie was tilting her wrist, still as infatuated with her Gucci watch as the first time I ever met her on orientation day and thought that she was the most pretentious kid I’ll ever meet on campus. Little did I know, she was not even the cherry on the cake. There were a few pompous asses residing down the block with their BMWs and Porsches while they drove them past their driving limits.

A message pinged on my cellphone, vibrating the front of my faded denim jacket. I pulled it out and then swiped right to open it.

SETH: Baby please, I deserve one more chance.

I killed my phone’s power button and fished for my other curriculum books. I threw them inside the backpack that was sitting on the top of my study desk.

“Wanna tell me who just texted you and he texted what?” Carrie’s voice was barely above a whisper. "Is that asshole still reaching out to you?"

“No,” I let out an exasperated sigh. "He is not. I have blocked his number on my phone."

“Okay. Let's go to class.” Carrie swept the matter under the rug. The topic had already perished in thin air. I pulled on my boots and she locked the apartment on our way out. "We don't want to be late, do we?"

“Okay.” I silently wrapped arms with her as we made our way into the unknown lands of literature and mysterious, pale, dark-haired boys. "Let's go."

***

“Lee, will you stop looking behind your back and concentrate?” Carrie chastised me and I rolled my eyes to the back of the lecture hall. She can’t tolerate the rolling of my eyes at her. She was defiant and bossy. "You should take notes."

“What are you thinking about?” Carrie stalled as the professor was busy scribbling the concepts of Romanticism. "Are you still thinking about the text that came in earlier?"

“No. It's nothing.” I blew out a long breath, wrinkling my nose as I nervously pushed some loose strands of hair behind my ears. “Just nothing.”

"Oh. You're definitely looking for that blue-eyed guy whom you lock eyes with, huh?" She laughed. "Is he not here yet?"

“What? I do no such thing! You can either ask your questions or justify your statements.” I rolled my eyes at her this time. "But you can't do both."

“Girls at the back, yes, you two,” Mr. Freyer pointed a finger at us. "What's the first structure of Romanticism?” Mr. Freyer snapped from the front of the whiteboard holding his black marker in hand. He was thumping the small nozzle of the pen against the board in frustration. He was somewhere in his late-fifties but he had amazing eyesight. He wouldn't let anything fly past him. "Come on, we don't have all day."

We both froze in our respective seats. I twitched my fingers as I stood up just to respect him and form an incoherent sentence about how Romanticism works, and about the constant fight between good and bad and conscience and everything else. That’s all I picked up from my distracted state in today’s lecture.

Mr. Freyer shook his head at me and told me to pay attention in class. He went back to lecturing about the values related to Romanticism. Carrie chuckled in her seat because she never got the brunt of the situation. I gave her a glare and she smirked back.

Before sitting back down at my seat, I glanced back to where he was usually seated, but the chair remained vacant, so I sighed and finally averted my attention back to the lecture.

***

”Lee, will you get me a chai latte? I’ll find us a good table.” I nodded at Carrie as I looped my fingers in the backpack I was carrying on my back. It suddenly felt heavy. We both just got piled with assignments that we’re expected to finish and submit by the end of this week. I came face to face with so many lingering deadlines as I stepped out of the lecture hall. "Go on, be quick."

I made my way to the counter in the cafeteria that was inside the university campus. There was a line forming in the front of the counter and I somehow got stuck at the very back of the queue. The queue was long and the cafeteria was bustling with lovers, freshers, people who never attended classes, people living in campus dorms, and people who were visiting someone in the college.

A sudden rush flowed through my right shoulder, as I jolted my hand in response. I saw my blue linen shirt overflowing with coffee. I started cussing and rubbing the spot which felt like it was burnt when two strong hands removed them from the point of assault. The broad muscles were taking me away from the queue. I was trying to protest, but before I could, I was being led away from the sea of masses and sweaty bodies and curious eyes in the cafeteria.

Suddenly, as if I was tethering on the verge of conscience and tripping in my own shoes, I also started checking out the guy in front of me. His aqua green shirt touched his upper body in all the right places and his ripped blue jeans accentuated his long, sculpted legs which helped him in taking really large steps.

I was conflicted and astonished about why I was letting myself be dragged by some guy I didn't know. As if the tall guy can hear my thoughts, he turned around and I saw that we were already in front of the fountain and he was asking me a question, his fingers still firmly placed on my wrist.

“Are you okay? I’m so sorry, that was some real hot coffee.” And it clicked, to be really honest, it had clicked way back when he spilled his coffee cup on my shoulder but it was as if my head was denying the resemblance. It was him. He came. But that didn't mean he got to spill his hot coffee all over me. Not like this.

Did he know that the Styrofoam cup acts as a thermodynamic insulator and keeps the heat intact? Did he? The fact that this could've resulted in a very serious burn. I bet he didn't.

"Slow down, you may have third-degree burns," he said. Then he situated me in his glance. "You could harm yourself further if you rub the spot, so let me handle this."

What did he say?

My head spirals.

"If this is your way of meeting girls, it's a really sad attempt in getting someone to date you,” I said in mock sarcasm. "You need to find better ways to get girls interested in you."

His lips curled upwards. 

“I wasn’t trying to pick you up. I really wasn’t trying to meet you in that way . . . and spill my coffee on your shirt.” I saw that he was frazzled, I was enjoying it. "Well, that's not how I introduce myself to potential dating partners."

“Here.” He handed me his handkerchief to use as a rag and wash my shirt and rid some coffee stains off from it. “Take it please, I’m extremely sorry this happened.”

“Oww, it hurts.” I tried to investigate my burn by peeking on from the collar. "It hurts more than I thought it would."

“Let me see it.” His long fingers were now prying and removing the side of my shirt on the edge of my shoulder when he suddenly stilled in place, looked at me right in the eye as if to ask me if he may proceed. I held his gaze and let myself drown in those blue balls of burning ice. "I'm sorry. May I?” He asked. 

I nodded in answer and that took a whole lot of persuasion from my feverish nerves.

He inspected the wound with his long fingers and saw a splatter of red covering my shoulder bone but no air bubbles.

“I’m again, extremely, extremely sorry. I didn’t mean to harm you like this. I didn't see you coming, but it's not your fault.” He exhaled a deep sigh. "I should have saw you coming."

He wetted the rag in the water fountain and gently placed it on the wound. He said he’ll be back but the moment was fleeting and the words hung in the air.

“Here, put ice on the sore area,” he said after being gone for three whole minutes. "It should help soothe the skin and the wound area."

“Where did you get the ice from? I thought they didn’t give it out here that easily.” I looked around to see if he was with one of those guys from the fraternities on our campus since they were always seen together out in the wild. If he was actually from some legitimate fraternity of guys who rushed their way through the social order by being part of different alpha, beta, gamma organisations of the university that only recruits new candidates under the process of hazing, I would have lost interest in him pretty quick. They were the only ones who had any kind of power to get things done around here.

“I personally know the guy who controls the cafeteria surge because I worked as a server in the cafeteria for the first month when I came to college." Then he ran a hand through his hair. "I told him I needed it urgently, and that I had spilled my hot coffee over some innocent victim. He figured it all out by himself.”

His face contorted into a panic smile as he was gesturing the last words. I thought it was cute.

“That feels so good.” The iciness numbed the shooting pain in my shoulder when I remembered about Carrie and that I should get back to her. He was holding a Styrofoam cup filled with ice, so I took it. “I’ll take this."

“Yeah. Are you going to be okay?” He watched me put three blocks of ice in the handkerchief as I rolled it and placed it inside my shirt. I buttoned the third button back. "I hope you don't hate me for this."

“I guess I'm going to be okay, and I don't hate you.” I tried to smile at him, and turned around to move away from him and back to the cafeteria. “Thanks."

“It was a pleasure. Not the spilling coffee part,” he chuckled, "but meeting you.”

I just smiled at that, not knowing what else to say. I took two steps away when his voice made me stop. “Am I going to see you again?" He asked.

“I guess so.” I turned around to flash a confident, flirtatious smile. I saw him running a hand through his messy black hair again. "We shall see."