Few things catch me off guard, but I have to admit that kind of did. “You are so very wise, grasshopper,” I said, lowering my voice and making a face. “Any other proverbs for me today?”
She laughed. It was a small one, barely two notes, but it was there. “Yeah, here’s one,” she said, the smile evident in her voice. “Get your suntanned butt to class.”
And then she was gone, twisting away and cutting into the rest of the college sorts intent upon their next class where their minds would be filled with useless junk and impossible dreams. I didn’t catch a very good look at her, other than average height, average build, and having an impenetrable wall up to my charm, but I didn’t need to see more.
From that alone, I already knew she wasn’t my type.
Another full day passed in exactly the same way, lounging in the grass, only diverting my attention from the sun to admire the stream of sorority sisters swaying by. Although, come the same time every day, the female droves thinned out to alarmingly low level. Darn those early afternoon classes, preferred by ten out of ten college students near and far.
I felt like I was betraying my rebel stance, but a man’s got to take matters into his own hands at times in life. If the eye candy wouldn’t come to me, I’d have to go to it.
I popped up, shuffling through my backpack that had served as nothing more than an outdoor pillow during my tour of college life. I knew I’d stuffed that course schedule somewhere in one of these pockets.
Fingers scurrying over the bottom, I felt a wadded up piece of paper and pulled it out. Just the way I’d left it. Smoothing it open, I searched over the classes. Whoever had selected my classes for me thought I was a genius or was messing with me. Since I was all but certain Joseph had taken on Patrick Does Stanford enrollment duties, I had my answer.
There it was, my early afternoon class, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Intro to Psychology, complete with a hand penned note from the little brother peanut gallery: Appropriate for a head case like you. Enjoy!
I growled, contemplating teleporting my California suntanned self back to Montana to unleash a nasty noogie on the wiseass. See if he was still laughing then.
“Excuse me,” someone apologized, dodging me where I straddled the sidewalk contemplating. A girl with legs that could turn a man cross-eyed if he stared too long jogged by, tripping my thoughts of revenge. Payback could wait, those legs couldn’t.
Like a magnet, I was pulled after her, not sure if I was heading anywhere close to the right direction the building Intro to Psych, AKA Intro to Pseudo-Science, was held, but I didn’t care.
I had to lengthen my stride to keep up with her, holding myself back from breaking into a gallop after her. I wasn’t used to chasing after a woman, literally or figuratively, and if I was going to break tradition, I wanted to do it right.
She shoved through the door leading into a brick building, and it was all I could do to hang onto whatever dignity I still had and not break into a run after her. I flung the same door open she’d gone through, not even ten seconds behind her, and scanned up and down the halls, keeping my gaze low because I couldn’t tell you the shade of her hair, but I could draw an exact likeness of those legs.
Nothing, nowhere, and nada. Disappearing as instantly as she’d appeared. Who knows? Maybe I’d made the whole thing up in my deranged, sick, screw-loose mind. I was positively mental.
Intro to Psych, here I come.
“Hey, man.” I grabbed the shirt sleeve of the closest passerby. “Can you point me in the direction of . . .”—I flashed my schedule in front of him, pointing at the location because it was three seconds faster than saying the dastardly long name—“the place where they teach you about the id and the ego, killing your mother and macking on your father thing.”
The boy who looked like he’d graduated primary school a year and a half ago looked at me like I was a whack-job. Intuition was right on par. The kid was going to make it far.
“You’re here,” he answered, steering away from me like crazy was contagious.
“Ah, groovy,” I said. “Any idea where Room”—I glanced down at my schedule—“120 is?”
“Down that way,” the retreating boy said, pointing down the hall to the right. “Last room on the left.”
“Thanks, man,” I said, taking a breath of resolution. Time to go get responsible and learn-ed. “Hey,” I hollered after the boy. He turned, half of his face formed into a wince. “You haven’t seen a hot little minx running through here with killer legs, would you?”
The boy took a circumnavigation of the student filled hall. Shrugging, he said, “Take your pick.”
I could have gone into an argument that all female legs are not created equal, but I remembered what it had been like to be a twenty year old boy, an actual twenty year old boy, and women’s legs were women’s legs. As holy and sought after as the fountain of youth. “Thanks again,” I said, loping down the hall and doing my best to extinguish the woman and her legs from my mind.
Other fish in the sea, other fish in the sea, I repeated to myself as I journeyed to the end of the hall. I glided into the auditorium style classroom, and I must have been early because it was only about half way full. My brothers would be so proud. The last time I’d been on time for class had been my first day of grammar school.
My eyes floated through the chairs, row for row, until I made it to the front. No targets of particular interest, so this whole going to class thing was an utter waste. Oh well, I was here now, and I was always willing to try anything once.
I prowled down the stairs, my eyes doing the same, figuring I might as well do the first college class thing all the way. I walked down the front row, taking a seat dead center. Sliding my backpack from my shoulder, I glanced down the row on either side of me. Laptops at the ready, fingers cocked over the keys, eyes forward, backs straight. They looked like German Shepherds ready to pounce on the first word out of the professor’s mouth.
Overachiever was the first word that came to mind.
I didn’t have a laptop, nor did I have a notebook to take notes in. Not that I needed either. I had a memory like a trap. Literally. Whatever went in that I made a conscious effort to retain, stayed right there. So you’d think school would come easy for me, right? It could have if I could have kept my mind focused on school. Instead I found myself focusing on the perks of school. Namely, the women. I had the Immortal equivalent of ADD.
“I don’t know whether to be flattered you listened to me or insulted it took you so long,” someone said as they slid into the seat next to me.
My eyes were already angled down, so when those legs of divine origin settled into place beside me, I almost gave my arm a pinch to make sure I was awake. I was staring, I knew, and I also knew after a few seconds had ticked off without a reply or a turning of my stare somewhere else, the owner of those legs knew what I was doing. But this wasn’t one of those times where I cared about being gentlemen-like.
“Hello, hello,” I said, twisting my smile into just the right place I’d found drove women nuts. Not too high, one side pulled up more than the other, and topped off with a sideways glance with an unmistakable glint in the eyes. Drove them wild.
“Looking good, lady?” she said, pulling the words from my mouth and not in a particularly amused tone. “Yeah, I caught that the first million times you hollered it out on the quad.”
The wince that pulled my face together was as painful as a palm slap to the forehead would have been. “Blacked out by the sun girl calling me out yesterday?” I asked, already knowing the answer as I squinted my eyes open to look into her face for the first time.
When I saw it, I don’t know what had taken me so long to get there. Her legs had nothing on that face. A face that wasn’t perfect, but a face that was compelling—compelling in a way that drew me in and kept me there.
She smiled, not demurely or coyly, a real one. An honest-to-goodness, genuine smile, the rare kind humanity had somewhere along the butt-kissing, brown-nosing, sucking-up way forgotten how to form. “That’s me,” she said, twisting a little towards me. “But my friends call me Emma.” Her smile peaked higher as she extended her hand towards me.
I didn’t know why the burst of perspiration had surfaced, but I made sure to wipe my palm on my slacks before sliding my hand around hers. My hand wrapped around the entirety of hers, and that feeling that runs all the way down to your toes and turns your stomach to mush hit me hard. So hard, it knocked my purchase of the English language off the tip of my tongue.
“And you must be suntanned, cat-calling, god’s gift to not only the world, but the entire universe, boy who likes to play hooky,” she said, filling in the conversation since I’d been rendered speechless. First time in a long time that had happened, but I was almost as talkative as I was charming, so it came back to me quickly.
Nodding, I met her eyes. “But my friends call me Patrick,” I said, clearing my throat, hoping I didn’t sound like a guy that had just been kicked in the crotch.
“You look like a Patrick,” she said, shuffling a notebook from her backpack that had either been run over by a steam roller several hundred times or was as old as I was.
“Thanks. I think,” I said, not sure if the reason I wouldn’t look away from her green colored eyes was because I couldn’t or didn’t want to. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you yesterday for verbally humiliating me in public, but thank you. I’ve never been the kind of guy that gets the message unless someone takes me by the proverbial head and smashes it through a brick wall.”
“Yeah, about that . . .”—she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear—“I’m really sorry. I was having a bad day and used you as my personal frustration outlet. I’ve never even talked to my obnoxious brothers like that, let alone a total stranger.”
I felt my smile dropping. The only reason she’d sat next to me was so she could apologize.
“If I offered a heartfelt apology, would you accept it?” she asked, dead serious, like she’d been agonizing over the stranger she’d given a hard time to yesterday and wouldn’t rest until she’d extended an apology. Incredible. I’d managed to irritate the Mother Teresa of college girls. I had a gift.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, rubbing my chin, noting the perfect amount of stubble I had on display. “It was a grievous offense that has permanently scarred me. I think I can one day forgive you, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to forget.”
Her expression fell flat and color actually drained from her face. She swallowed. “I am so, so—”
I would normally ride this kind of reaction to its end, but I couldn’t with her for some reason. Something about knowing she was tortured, mild as it was, went against everything I’d ever known before. “Emma,” I said, gripping her arm, looking for any reason to touch her again. “I’m giving you a hard time. No worries, you’re forgiven.”