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I sigh. “Maybe next time …”
“Maybe he’ll be in the audience at your next performance,” she says, sidling next to me as we cross the street off campus.
“Please no. I’d choke.”
“And afterward he’d find you, his beautiful, angelic face stricken with disappointment,” Olivia continues. “I heard you were the most captivating violist in the world, he’d say. But that performance … it was terrible …”
I crack up laughing, nudging Olivia in the side. “How did a fantasy suddenly turn into something so awful?”
Olivia shrugs. “You know me, a natural pessimist.”
I roll my eyes, laughing some more. She’s not totally wrong about that. Olivia and I have pretty distinct personalities, and she does have a glass half empty outlook sometimes.
She certainly doesn’t share my enthusiasm for motivational quotes and mindfulness.
But she’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and we complement each other perfectly.
I let out a tiny squeal of joy as we take a right turn at the end of a block and glimpse our house.
“Oh my gosh, I just love it so much,” I gush as we approach.
This block is lined with rowhomes, tiny but beautiful. Ours is painted a bright yellow with white trim and navy-blue shutters flanking the windows. The heavy wooden door is a matching shade.
In the back of our house, there’s a large, sturdy, gently sloping overhang that juts out from the first story, easy to crawl onto from my bedroom window. At this time in the afternoon, the sun is going to be shining right on it, and I can already feel it beaming on my skin.
I tell Olivia about my brilliant sunbathing plan, and she’s in. Before long, we’re both wearing bikinis, laying on beach towels spread out on top of the tiled overhang, luxuriating in the warm embrace of the sun.
I reach for the copy of the student paper that I brought out with me. Lifting it above me, I spread it open, shielding my eyes from the sun but angling the paper so the warm rays still hit everywhere else.
“Any fascinating news?” Olivia asks.
“Hm,” I muse. “The dining hall is expanding their menu. A Brumehill graduate from ten years ago is opening a new second-hand clothing shop in town.”
“Oooh,” Olivia perks up. “We should check that out.”
“And there’s a new …” my words are cut off by my own gasp.
“What?” Olivia asks, her interest piqued.
“It’s him.”
“Who?”
In the student newspaper, under the headline about the Black Bears hockey team getting a new goalie, is a grainy black-and-white photo of none other than my grumpy seat neighbor, Hudson.
And boy does he look good in grainy black-and-white.
“The guy I sit next to in my English class.”
Olivia gasps, propping herself up on her elbow and angling towards me. “Is he cute?”
Cute?
Not the word I’d used to describe the surly, brooding guy whose hulking, muscular body took up an inordinate amount of space in the seat next to me yesterday.
Timothee Chalamet, that’s a guy you’d describe as cute. Hudson … he was smoldering. Hot like a burning stovetop, hot in a way that makes every rational part of your brain scream don’t touch.
A cute guy would kiss you on the cheek and say something nice. A guy like Hudson would rip your panties off your hips with his bare hands without uttering a word.
