A Little Something Different (12 page)

“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.”

“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.”