First Sight (23 page)

I opened my tiny bottle of travel-sized shampoo and smiled as I breathed in the floral scent.  I
worked the suds through
my hair
and thought about the afternoon. 
I was shocked earlier when Travis had pulled me back up with just one arm. 
I hadn’t ever seen him in short-sleeves, but from the way the rest of his clothes
draped on him
, he certainly looked muscular.
  I found myself wishing that we’d all been on this retreat in warmer weather.

After I finished showering and dried off, I pulled some clothes out of my duffle bag and got dressed.  Quickly drying my hair and spending practically no time styling it
, I sank down into the
loveseat
in my room.  I still had half an hour before I was meeting anyone for dinner, but I was too tired to go out and socialize.  Waking up so early this morning was finally catching up with me.
 
I flipped through the channels and found
a rerun of
Oprah
that
was just starting.
 
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I
knew,
there
was a knock on my door. 
It was slightly darker in my room now, and I realized that the sun had
already
started to set. 
I got up
, turned on the lamp on the nightstand,
and stumbled to the door, still half-asleep.

Travis and
Marissa
stood
there in the hallway
.
 
“
Hi,” I said to them, yawning
despite my best efforts not to
.
  So much for appearing alert and put together.

“Hey sleepyhead,”
Marissa
joked.

“What gave it away?” I
aske
d with a smile.  I ran my hands through my hair, hoping that I didn’t looked too disheveled.
 
I wondered if she was
feeling better
since
she was joking around again.
 
“
How are you feeling
?”

“
Much
better after a nap.
 
Is that a new sweater?”
Marissa
asked.  “I like th
e
color.”

I glanced down at my eggplant
hooded sweate
r, which I’d worn with
dark
bootcut
jeans.  “Yeah, I
ordered it online
a couple of weeks ago
.”

“J. Crew?”

Marissa was definitely feeling better if she was already discussing clothes.  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“
Oh, I saw it in the catalog.  It looks good on you.
”  I noticed then that Travis wasn’t saying anything, but I caught him looking at me
when I glanced up at him.
  His eyes met mine for a moment before he asked if I was ready to go eat.

“
Yeah, l
et me just grab my purse,” I said,
walking back
into
my
room. 
Marissa
followed, but I noticed that Travis stood politely outside.

“I wonder how bad the food is,” Travis said when we were all out in the hall again.

“You think it’s bad?” I asked.

“Jeff said that he’s been here before. 
Some other company that he worked for did a
t
eambuilding activity out here
,
too. 
I guess it’s a popular place. 
Anyway, h
e didn’t
exactly
have anything
good
to say about it
….”  Travis
’s voice
trailed off
, and I wondered what
Jeff had told him and precisely what we’d be eating at
dinner.

We exited the main building and hurried through the cold to the dining area. 
The
conference center only served food cafeteria style
, where you walked through
one long
buffet line and selected what you wanted. 
After one
round
through the line
,
Marissa
and I had picked out absolutely nothing.
 
“This looks really gross,”
Marissa
whispered to me.

“I know,” I said, wrinkling my nose.  “Stuffed cabbage?  Why can’t they have any normal food here?”
  Now I was really wishing I’d known about the mini-fridge in my room so I could have brought some of my own things for dinner.
  Even plain old PBJ was sounding pretty good right now.

I
eventually
headed over to the salad bar
and m
ade myself a large
garden
salad
for dinner
.
 
Looking around,
I saw that
Marissa
was
walking
to
ward
a circular table by the windows,
which looked out into the forest behind
us
. 
I
grabbed a bottle of water then
followed her over
. 
Elizabeth
and Jeff were already there
, talking about the day’s activities
and eating
. 
Elizabeth
and
Marissa
both had gotten pasta with tomato sauce, and Jeff was h
av
ing
a
grilled sausage
with some strange looking side dish
.
  Seriously, why did this place have such weird food?
  I think a simple cheese pizza would have sufficed.

I sat down next to
Marissa
and began eating my salad.
Elizabeth
was
tell
ing
Jeff about
how
her team
did today
, but I felt too exhausted to join in much of the conversation. 
I was half-listening as
Elizabeth
described how one of her teammates had fallen off one of the ropes on the
course and didn’t want to participate much after that, which had caused some disagreement amongst her group members. 
Some people wanted her to just sit out the rest of activities if she wasn’t going to really try, and others thought they should encourage her to continue.  I took another bite of my salad j
ust
as
Travis walked up and pulled out the e
mpty chair next to me.  He set
his tray
full of food
on the table
and sat
down
.

“Hey Travis,” Jeff said, nodding at him.

“Jeff,” Travis said in his deep
voice.
 
Elizabeth
continued talking, and I watched as Travis
picked up his grilled sausage and began eating
.  Although
the rest of us were picking at our food, Jeff and Travis were
acting
as if they hadn’t
eaten
a meal in days.
  Evidently guys
really
could
eat anything. 
I opened my bottle of water, taking a sip, and m
y mind
began to
wander as I thought about what we’d be doing tomorrow.  Today hadn’t been as bad as I thought.  All we’d basically done was walk across ropes that were a few feet off of the ground. 
Nobody in our group had fallen off or gotten hurt. 
But
we’d
probably s
tart
ed out with the easier activities
on day one
—t
omorrow was bound to involve something
more complicated
.

As I tuned back in to
the conversation around me, Jeff was telling everyone about some girl that he had taken out to dinner
last weekend
.  Jeff was about Travis’s age, which I assumed to be
around
30
.  Apparently the girl Jeff had taken out was only
21
and been a little too immature for
him
.
  After they’d eaten
dinner and had a few drinks
, she asked him if he wanted to come to a frat party on campus with her.

Travis laughed out loud, his deep voice echoing around the room.

Jeff looked amused.  “Well how was I supposed to know she was that young?”

“You know, my buddies say that you
always
have to ask a girl if she saw ‘
Back to the Future
’ in the theater.
  If she has, then you know
she’s old enough
to date.
”

“Which
‘
Back to the Future
’?
”
Marissa
asked absently, and Travis laughed even louder.
  Jeff
slowly
shook his head
, but he had a smile
on his face
.
 
Marissa
didn’t appear to notice
either of their reactions
.

“Well, I saw ‘
Back to the Future
’ when it came out,”
Elizabeth
said, smiling.  “I guess I shouldn’t
admit
that, though.  Now you all know how old I am.”

“I saw it,” Jeff said.  “Does that make you feel better?”

“How about you,
Maddy
?”
Travis asked, his dark eyes resting on me.

I looked up at him and smiled.  “Nope, I didn’t see it
then
.”
 
Travis
didn’t look surprised
.  He certainly must have realized that he was older than me, but as I watched his face for any reaction,
I wondered if he still believed in his friends’ theories.

***

My alarm
went off at
6:30
the next morning, and I sleepily l
ooked around the sparse room
,
slowly
remembering where I was
.  I hadn’t slept very well, but
then again,
I never do the first night in a new place.
  The mattress
on the bed
was hard and the blankets too thin. 
In fact,
I remembered
waking
up in the middle of the night and pu
ll
ing my fleece jacket on top of the bedspread to keep warm.

I yawned as I stood up,
thinking about
last
night.  After dinner, we’d
hung out
in the lounge area
downstairs
for a little while
. 
Elizabeth
and I had gone
down
to
gether to
grab a beer. 
A
s
she
had
tried to open
her bottle
, the
cap
had flown
across the room.  Travis had walked in just then and chuckled as he picked it up off the floor. 
Elizabeth
handed the bottle opener to me, and
as I tried to open my bottle, I managed to
simultaneously
knock
the bottle
over and drop the
bottle
opener onto the ground.

“Geez,” Travis teased.  “I can’t take you guys anywhere.”
  He picked up the bottle opener and opened my beer for me, handing me back the bottle.

“Thanks,” I said, laughing.

“You know,”
Elizabeth
said, taking a swig from her
beer,
“
w
e
never did all go out to happy hour.  We should go
soon—real happy hour, not this.”

“Well
,
that’d be safer for me,” Travis joked.  “No flying beer caps or bottle openers.”

“Ha ha,” I said, playfully punching him in the arm as he opened his own beer.
  I noticed he smiled as I touched him.

“Really,”
Elizabeth
continued
, “we should plan a happy hour.”