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The path, like the entrance, seemed to be deserted. Maybe other people just weren’t such early risers? It would figure, after all, with a town of college kids, that the whole place only came awake after eleven in the morning or so. During my time at college, I refused to take classes before ten, as there was no chance I’d be up by then.
“C.R.E.A.M.” by the Wu-Tang Clan had just started to play, and with no one in sight, I launched into the lyrics, my eyes focused on the ground, watching my feet fall onto one pile of leaves after another.
“Dollar bills yo—” I muttered.
Smash!
I was on my back, on the ground, and the world felt heavy on top of me, like physically heavy, as if the atmosphere was pushing me down and, and there was something hot against my bare skin—
Oh God. It wasn’t the atmosphere.
It was Catya.
My eyes refocused in a fraction of a second, and I realized they were a hair’s width away from her own. She was on top of me. Catya was on top of me. And I was half naked.
Frantic and confused, we stayed in the position a beat too long, both trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened.
After what felt like an interminable pause, over the blaring chords of “C.R.E.A.M.,” I shouted, “What are you doing here?”
Running, my brain immediately answered. She’s running, you moron.
Catya snapped back into it, as if she had returned to her body after a brief intermission. She rolled off me with the grace only an athlete can muster, the slickness of someone who had been knocked down nine times and gotten up ten. She seemed to, in the same second, realize that I was bare-chested, and looked away at a tree. Well, it certainly wasn’t top-level acting, but I couldn’t fault her. I too had felt the discomfort or rather, frightening lack thereof.
“What are you doing here,” she shot back as soon as she was in a standing position, her eyes firmly unfocused on my pecs.
“I’m running. Obviously.”
“So am I.”
Why was I being so inexplicably huffy? Maybe because I’d come out here to get some peace of mind and sure enough, the very thing that was causing the stress had run right into me. Or, to be specific, had run right into me and then fallen on top of me.
“Why are you running?” I asked, still embarrassingly enough on the defensive. “You have practice today.”
She shrugged and looked askance. “To clear my mind.”
For a split second, I wondered what at that phrasing. To clear her mind… of what? Could it be the exact same thing I’d come out here to be clear of? No, no it couldn’t be.
I searched desperately for common ground, for something innocuous to say that wouldn’t suggest the inappropriateness of my thoughts.
“Don’t overwork yourself, okay?” I said in a tone between an assertion and a plea. “You know the team needs you, and blowing a knee or pulling something before championships — well, it would put the Stallions in a tricky spot.”
Catya nodded. Seemed like she’d heard this same request before.
“I know,” she replied, her head low. Though she’d rolled away, we were still less than half a foot from one another. “It’s just that, between the team, and my sorority, and being pre-med… I don’t have a lot of time for myself, y’know?”
She paused, collecting her thoughts. Something about the way we were talking now, this kind of intimacy, felt right. Catya had a beautiful — and unusual — gravity in her style of speech, which drew me in deeper and deeper.
“All my activities, or commitments, whatever you wanna call them, they’re all group-oriented stuff. I can never just get a second to be by myself. Like, I’m twenty-one and still living in a double room.”
Off my perplexed glance, she clarified, “It means there are two of you in one room.”
“Uh, wow,” I said, grimacing. “Yikes.”
“Yeah. I don’t even spend that much time with just one person. It feels like there’s always this mob of people around me, and they always want something from me. I guess that’s what it means to be a leader.”
She halted abruptly, and lifted her gaze to look upon me. My chest shuddered, the stare was too piercing, as if she saw right through every façade I’d ever thrown up. I felt defenseless beneath her beautiful eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly. “That was too much to… to say. I hardly even know you.”
“That’s okay, Catya. I’m always happy to talk.”
She tilted her head up to the canopy. “Actually, for that matter, this is like the most I’ve opened up to somebody in a while.”
The shudder of confrontation morphed into a shiver of delight. Her confidence meant the world. My next words came before I could put a stop to them.
