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PROMISES WORTH KEEPING
Liz didn’t see Brady again before school started. The primary was now a week away, and he barely had time to breathe, let alone sneak away to see her. She expected nothing less, though she did find herself wishing more and more that she could be there for him.
The primary made it hard to concentrate on anything else…like school starting, or her new research job, or the paper. Knowing that so much was on the line for Brady made her nervous and irritable.
Liz had tried de-stressing by hanging out with Victoria, but by the end of the day Victoria had claimed to need a Xanax to deal with the stress rolling off of Liz in waves. Even though Liz wouldn’t tell Victoria what was going on, Victoria still loved her.
By the time the Friday before school got there, Liz had totally forgotten that she had agreed to help Hayden move. He had called her that morning and asked if she had still planned to help. Hoping that it would get her mind off of everything, Liz had agreed and headed over to his old place.
The moving process had certainly been a distraction, as it was physically demanding, but it did nothing to clear things up with Hayden. They had hung out and joked together along with his track friends. When they finished the move, the group got lunch and Hayden drove her back to her car.
“I really appreciated your help today,” Hayden said, hopping out of his car and walking with her over to where hers was parked.
“I don’t know how helpful I was,” Liz joked.
“You were great. Everyone thought so. ” He smiled his charming smile and moved closer to her.
“Well, I’m glad I could help. Thankfully I don’t have to move or else I’d be calling up you and all your friends to help me. ”
“You know I’d help,” Hayden said.
He moved forward to wrap his arms around her, and Liz backed up quickly. “I’m in desperate need of a shower,” she said, embarrassed.
She just couldn’t have him touch her. She felt bad enough about D. C. She couldn’t lead him on to believe this was going anywhere as long as she was still trying to figure things out with Brady.
“Oh, me too,” Hayden said, as if he hadn’t been trying to get closer to her.
“I’ll, uh…see you around,” she said, unlocking the door. “We start on Monday?”
Hayden nodded. “I’ll be in Sunday to finalize the first run, but I’ll see you on Monday, unless you wanted to get together sometime this weekend. ”
Damn he was good. He made it seem so offhand…almost as if he wasn’t asking her out. Almost.
“I think Monday is probably best. I have to get ready for school and my new job, but thanks…”
“Well, Monday then,” Hayden said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, with a smile before walking to his car.
Liz opened her door and sank into the car with a huff. She had just turned down Hayden Lane.
She had never guessed she would be in this position. And she had the strange realization that he probably would ask her out again. Maybe he even thought she was playing hard to get or something after D. C. She needed to figure out what she was going to do about that, because she couldn’t keep obsessing so much over what she would do if he came on to her again.
The weekend rolled by undeterred by any other mishaps, and soon Liz was back on campus, walking among the familiar brick buildings with Victoria. She had missed the madness of the beginning of the school year. Students were wandering all over campus. Freshmen were holding out maps, trying to find where their classrooms were, and looking winded from walking up the massive hill on Stadium Drive from the dorms. Upperclassmen milled around the Pit, handing out fliers and trying to cajole freshmen into joining their student organization. It was a madhouse, but with an energy and brilliance that few other places rivaled.
Still, she found that what she had missed most of all was walking over to a newspaper bin, picking up a fresh paper, and seeing all of the hard work her friends had put into the first issue. Liz had written her article for that first week a long time ago…the same paper she had received an A+ on from Professor Mires…the same article Brady had given her the idea for. Hayden had said that he was going to run it the first day, since that had the most traffic, and Liz was eager to see her name in print once more.
“You are much too happy that school has started again,” Victoria said as they walked through the crowd in the Pit.
Liz shrugged. It was probably true. She’d had too much time to herself recently to think, and she was glad to have something to do to get her mind off Brady.
“Aren’t you glad to be in the lab?” Liz asked. “Plus, there are so many more TAs now. ”
“That’s a fair point, but not good enough. I’d rather be out at the pool than in a classroom. ”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Says the woman who is taking eighteen hours, and four of those classes are sciences. ”
“I like science. Nothing wrong with that, Miss Journalism,” Victoria said in a high snooty voice.
“Vic, you’re brilliant,” Liz said, throwing her arm over Victoria’s shoulders.
