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Bryce
Attracting the attention of girls has never been one of the things I’m good at.
At least, that’s what Matt and Dereck say.
But I like girls. No, no. I fucking love girls.
I’m just not as ‘on-par’ with the flirting and the arrogance and the whole ‘be a douchebag and they will come’ motto that my friends seem to hold to a particularly high standard.
Trying to get Rowan’s attention hasn’t proved better for me than any other time I’ve tried to hit on a woman and failed. To be fair, though, brooding Matt and cocky-ass Dereck don’t seem to be having any better luck anyway, so I guess I’m still in the running. Maybe even second place instead of third with the way she looks at Matt, like she’s dreaming of all the ways she could slowly kill him and drop his remains in the ocean.
Me? I’m of the opinion that if you stand back and let them come, they will. Chasing them will only scare them away, and I’m in no position to scare Rowan away before she even knows me.
The real me. The grown up me.
It’s cold outside today, and as I walk through campus, bundled under a thick jacket, my eyes survey the area, observing the activity around me. I love school, I always have. Not just the general atmosphere of school, but I enjoy learning, soaking up every bit of information that someone else might have to offer. The universe, to me, has infinite learning possibilities. I question everything; our mere existence, why things are the way they are. There’s so much more than meets the eye in this life, and I want to be the person that knows about it. That studies it. I want to know things on a whim; amazing, wonderful things that people would never even think about on a normal day.
People are weird. It comes with the territory, I guess. Human beings in general have so many issues, some I may never understand. We’re supposed to be the smartest species, right, and yet we kill each other off in war and vehement hatred and bias.
Religion.
Politics.
Power.
It’s all a fucking mess.
Shaking my head, I reach into my pocket for my vape, the one filled with THC oil. Dereck hates when I smoke. He wants to say it’s because he’s going to be a cop soon and it’s still illegal, but really it’s just because he’s always so paranoid that he’ll have to take a random piss test sometime during football practice and come up dirty because of my secondhand smoke. He doesn’t seem to give a fuck if his coach knows that he’s made an art-form out of black-out boozing on the weekends and has also been known to snort heroine, at least in his wilder days.
Thank God he’s not like that anymore. He might be a douche, but he’s changed, too.
I finally make it to one of the three campus libraries and shove the THC pen back into my pocket before I go in and find a quiet corner to work on some personal art. The library is quiet today, quieter than normal, I mean, and it only takes a few minutes for me to get into the vibe of my artwork. I’m so consumed by the characters on the page that I almost don’t even notice Rowan Bates waltz in, flanked by her friend from the bar, the tall one with glasses who looks absolutely content in a place like a public library. Jamie, I think I heard her name was. They don’t notice me at first, staring up at them from the sheet of sketch paper I’d been hunched over. I watch them in silence, listening to their giggles, noticing the way Rowan brushes hair off her face far too often, as though she’s not used to wearing it down. It doesn’t matter, really. She could shave it all off and be just as gloriously beautiful as she is now.
“Hey,” Jamie whispers in hushed tones, and heat rises under my collar as she elbows Rowan in the arm and tilts her head in my direction.
Damnit. Caught red-handed.
“Bryce Connor.” Rowan turns her body in my direction, hands on her hips, head tilted slightly to the side, scoping me out. “I’m surprised that a man so close to guys like Dereck and Matt knows what a library is.”
“Don’t be fooled,” I say with a grin. “I’m just here to work on my art.”
Rowan glances over her shoulder at Jamie then nods, and Jamie–still grinning–nods back and hurries away to pretend to look busy. Rowan’s arms fold over her chest as she approaches my table, then sits down in the empty chair across from me.
“Still into art, are you?” Her eyes land on the sketchpad under my elbows, and before I can stop her or even respond, she reaches it and tugs it free, sliding it in her direction. Both of us are silent as Rowan’s eyes study the drawing, and for a moment she seems lost in the color, taken with the fine lines and marks.
“Bryce,” she says softly. “Is this me?”
“It’s nothing fancy,” I say as she hands it back. “Sorry if it still looks sloppy.”
“How long have you been working on that?”
“Since the night we saw you in the bar.”
“Why?” She leans forward until her elbows are on the table, palms of her hands supporting her chin. “Why did you draw me?”
“I don’t know, I just …” I trail off, eyes cast down on the paper. “You’re really beautiful, Rowan. It was something I really didn’t have control over. I’m sorry if it offends you.”
For a moment, I think that she’s going to freak out and leave, and honestly, I wouldn’t blame her. That’s what all the other girls do. But she doesn’t. Instead, she smiles warmly.
