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She was wrapping her sophomore year, too, and the only reason we were in this class together was we had both ended up picking Western Civilization II as an elective. She was a Psych major because she was smart. I was a business major because I needed a degree in something and when playing football, the less involved your course load was, the easier it was to keep your GPA high enough to stay on the team.
Her hair was tied up in a bun and she was in a hoodie and jeans. Two tall coffee cups were sitting on the desk next to her textbook. "One of those for me?" I asked, walking up to her. She jumped at my voice, but smiled when she saw me.
"Hi, baby," she said, holding a cup out. I leaned down to kiss her.
"Hey, were you waiting for me?" I asked. I took the cup and drank deeply from it; it had been standing there long enough to not be too hot anymore. It was just your standard coffee, no sugar, but made with almond milk instead of cow milk. Ron would just get us the same order when she bought coffee. I wasn't even sure I could tell the difference, but it was supposed to be better for you. I just took her word for it.
"I was just thinking about calling you."
"When did you get here?" I asked. The sun was out and the light that was filtering into the room was catching the gold in her blonde hair. It was long and curly when she wore it down. She wore makeup most days, but not today; it would cover the light freckles on the tops of her cheeks when she did. Her eyes were the kind of green that made me think of spring, everything coming up fresh and new after months of freezing temperatures.
"Only about ten minutes ago," she said.
"You drove?" I asked.
"Car refused to start this morning. I walked,” she said as she shook her head. She had gotten her car at seventeen; it had been a piece of shit then and still was now. It practically stopped working during winter and when it did work, it would break down on her constantly. She liked it because she had gotten it herself as her first car, but I wished she wouldn't drive it. Acuras was supposed to be safe, but when they were that beat up, the safety measure had to go down some.
"Why didn't you call me? I would have picked you up."
"It's out of your way," she said, shrugging. "It's not that far walking."
"I'll take you home after class," I said. "I need to use the library anyway."
"Are you gonna be there till late like last night?"
"No. This close to finals, it's going to be packed."
"Good thing finals only last a week."
"Is it me or was this one the longest week we've had yet?"
"It's just you," she said smiling. "We're almost at the finish line, so the wait feels longer."
"Just one more week," I said wistfully. I knew she was right. It didn't change anything, though. I was looking forward to the semester ending, but I wasn't really that hyped about summer this year.
"Excited to go home?" she asked, as if she knew what was on my mind.
I would be if that was where I was going. I shrugged non-commitally. Both our families lived in Aberdeen. Early this year, we had talked about going on vacation together, just me and Ron. I wanted to take her to Glacier National Park to spend our days alone together in the woods while I had time before summer training started.
That really wasn't in the cards anymore. I had told Ron it was because I wanted to spend that time at home, instead. It wasn’t that much of a lie, but it wasn’t really the truth. I didn't like lying to her, but I had been doing it a lot this past month.
Just because you had a good reason for doing something shitty didn't stop it from still being a dick move. It was all for nothing in the end, anyway. We weren't going on vacation together, and I wasn't even going to end up going home.
"Wanna head out?" I asked suddenly.
"What? Now?" she asked. I nodded. "Are you asking me to ditch class?" She sounded like she thought I was kidding, but she had a smile pulling the corners of her mouth.
"Yeah. Let's go."
"Where? We have class."
"It's the last one before finals, we've covered the entire outline already. Beckett isn't going to come in here with new material," I said. A few other people had filtered into the classroom, but it was still mostly empty.
"What do you want to do?" she asked.
"Go to my place?" I suggested. It didn't really matter what we did when we got there. I mostly just didn't want to be in class anymore. I wanted to spend some time with her. We had the class together, but that was her, me, fifteen other students, and Professor Beckett. School was letting out and in a perfect world it would be her and me in a cabin in the woods, but shit was a little different this year. Because of finals, times like this were the only ones we had when we weren't in class or studying. It was not enough. Nowhere near enough.
She shrugged her shoulders and closed her textbook.
