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“Let me carry that, it looks heavy.”
“Thanks.”
“Jesus, do you lug this around from class to class all day?”
She giggles, and I must be stupid or something because I’m finding her ridiculously adorable right now. “Wednesdays are my long days.” We turn and she leads me down a set of stairs into a basement cafeteria. “They have decent sandwiches here. I usually get the roasted veggie panini.”
“That sounds good. Are you a vegetarian?”
“No, I eat everything.”
And once the words are out of her mouth, I notice her pulling the hem of her shirt down over her butt as her face colors.
No, don’t do that, I want to tell her.You’re perfect, don’t you see?
“Like a million years ago I dated a girl who used to ask the guy at our local bagel store to scoop her bagel out before toasting it, and she’d only eat egg whites and ask him not to use butter or oil. I mean, whatever floats your boat, but the poor guy was a fry cook and the place was always jammed. It got to the point where I’d see him cringe every time we walked in the door.”
That gets her to laugh. “I should probably go that route, but I don’t think I could eat an egg sandwich if it didn’t have bacon and cheese on it.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
She leads us to a table. “You want to check out the menu?” she asks, gesturing to the list of items written on a blackboard.
“Nah, what you’re having sounds good. I like to eat as many greens as possible when I’m on leave. You do get some really good meals, but as a rule, the food sucks once you’re deployed.”
“Canned beef, stuff like that?”
“The MREs aren’t like they used to be.” I answer her confused look. “Meals ready to eat.”
“Oh.”
“But they’re nothing to write home about.” When I ask her what she wants to drink, she offers to pay with her student meal plan. “Not happening.”
“Aye, aye captain.”
I set her bag down on a chair and stop cold when I see ballerina shoes jammed in along with her laptop and a full change of clothes. “You’re a dancer?”
She blushes. “Getting back into it, I guess you could say.”
“Nice. I’ll be right back.”
Grace takes the bottle of water I hand her and then pauses in the middle of unwrapping her sandwich. “I’m still kind of shocked that I ran into you.”
“Thought you’d never see me again?”
“Kind of.”
“Are you happy you did?”
She nods once. “I didn’t like the way things ended the other night.”
“Neither did I. That’s why I’ve been roaming around campus like a creeper for the past three days.”
She covers her mouth, laughing around the mouthful of food she’s chewing. Eyes wide, she asks a moment later, “You’ve been looking for me?”
“I told you I’d see you around and I meant it.”
“You got lucky.”
