Baylor orders a chocolate smoothie and I get my usual coffee. I get sidetracked by a kid from my team, and when I put some bills on the counter, the barista tells me the tab has already been paid. I’m not sure if I’m pissed off or thoroughly impressed. I walk over to where Baylor’s adding some whip cream to her smoothie and say, “That’s the last time you’ll pay for something.”
She dismisses me and walks over to pick out a table by the front window. When I sit down, she takes a pretty big bite out of my ass so that I almost have to turn around to see if I’ve got any left. “I know who you are, Gavin McBride,” she says, crossing her arms and settling in to lecture me. “And I don’t give a rat’s ass if your parents own half of Texas or if your dad becomes president. If you and I are going to be friends, let’s get one thing straight. I pay my own way. I always have and I always will. If you can’t get that through your head because that unruly mane of hair stands in the way, then you can get up right now and go find yourself another friend.” She sticks a straw in her smoothie and stares me down as she takes a long drink that probably has more fat in it than Karen has consumed all week.
Thoroughly impressed it is.
This is something I will have to get used to. Even though Karen’s family is much better off than mine, she still expects me to pay whenever we’re together. Hell, we aren’t even dating and she expects me to pay. At first I thought it was a southern thing, being from Texas. But, I’ve come to learn it’s a Karen thing.
Watching her suck chocolate through that straw . . . shit, I’ve never wanted to be a straw so bad in my life.
“Fine,” I acquiesce. “But, I will pay for myself, Baylor. I draw the line at you paying for me.”
She cocks her head to the side and appraises me. “I can live with that,” she says. There’s that smile again. The one that shows her dimple. And just like that, we’re friends.
“Wait here a sec,” she says, getting up to go talk to the barista. A minute later she comes back with an ice pack. She carefully picks my hand up off my thigh and puts it on the table. Then she places the ice pack on top of my now-swollen knuckles.
I smile and thank her. I took care of her and now she’s taking care of me. She smiles back and I swear she looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“So, Baylor,” I say, rolling her name around on my tongue. “You have a unique name. I’ve never met anyone else with it. Is your family from Texas?” I ask.
I know what her answer will be before she says it. She doesn’t even have a hint of an accent like mine. She’s not from anywhere around where I come from. I realize how bummed that makes me.
She shakes her head. “No. We live in Connecticut, but my dad went to school there. He was a huge fan of Baylor’s football team. Still is.”
Damn. That’s a long way from Texas. “Ahhh, so you’re a Yankee. Despite that, I really like your name.” I wink. “And it could have been worse. Your dad could’ve gone to Clemson . . . or Pomona.” We laugh.
“Pomona?” she gags on the name. “Yuck. They’d call me Mona. That just sounds wrong.” She giggles and immediately I’m searching my mind for something funny to say to make her produce that sound again.
My phone vibrates on the table and I ignore it. Baylor motions to it. “It’s okay, you can check it.”
“Whoever it is can wait,” I say. “Tell me about journalism. You said you were interviewing people for the school paper? Is that where you work?”
She wipes some whip cream from her lips, making me envious of the napkin. “No, I applied, but there’s a long list of students who want to work there. They usually never pick up the articles written by lowerclassmen anyway. It’s really more of an exercise in writing than anything else. I wouldn’t expect to get published until at least next year.”
“I’d love to read your stuff,” I say. She blushes. I smile. We drink.
“So, you don’t have a job?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not a paid one.” Her lips turn up and her amazing eyes sparkle. “I volunteer over at the children’s hospital three days a week.”
My phone vibrates again. Baylor says, “You’d better check it, maybe it’s an emergency.”
I give in and tap the screen to see that I’ve gotten a few texts from Karen, who’s wondering where I am. I quickly type out a text saying I’ll be late and to go without me. My phone immediately vibrates again so I put it in my back pocket.
“If I remember correctly, you are majoring in, but completely uninterested in, Political Science?” she asks.
It’s hard to keep the smile off my face. It was one small conversation months ago when she was sprawled out on the sidewalk. She remembers. Yeah, that’s gotta mean something. “Well, when your dad is a politician it kind of comes with the territory,” I say.
“Why is that?” she asks, her face a modicum of seriousness.
I study her expression. “I guess because it’s expected of me.”
“Oh.” She frowns and I feel as if I’ve let her down somehow. “Do you always do what’s expected of you?”
“Not always,” I say, trying to assert my independence with this obviously independent girl. “I play soccer. That wasn’t expected of me.”
“So you love soccer?” she asks.
“Yes and no,” I answer honestly. I’m not sure she’d let me get away with anything else. “I love the game and it did earn me a scholarship here, but it’s not my passion.”
“Then why do you play?”
“Honestly? To get out of all the other crap that’s expected of me.” I shake my head and realize what an ass that makes me.
“So, you don’t want to go into politics, and you play soccer to avoid having to tell your dad that you hate the life he’s drawn out for you.”
It wasn’t a question. Who the hell is this girl? I drink my coffee pondering her philosophy. My phone has vibrated a few more times and it’s getting harder to ignore. “I’m sorry, do you mind if I check my phone? Someone won’t stop bugging me.”
“Please, go right ahead,” she says. “I’m sure your girlfriend is wondering what’s keeping you.”
I put my phone face down on the table. “I don’t have a girlfriend, Baylor.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Of course I do,” I say. “It’s the truth.”
“Then who is the blonde I see you with all the time?” she asks. “It sure looked like you guys were cozy walking to the game.” She blushes when she realizes she’s revealed she was watching me. I bask in silent victory.
“Karen?” I ask, amusingly. “No, she’s not my girlfriend. We’ve been friends since we were kids and we do hang out a lot, but she’s definitely not my girlfriend.”
“Hmmm.” She eyes me skeptically. “Does she know that?”
I laugh out loud. “She’d better.” I look Baylor square in the eyes and reiterate, “Baylor, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Oh, okay.” She looks away shyly. “But you should still see who’s trying to reach you.”
I turn my phone over to see that Karen has called and texted numerous times, and Dean called me once. “Do you mind if I make a quick call?” I ask her.
“Go right ahead,” she says, digging out her notebook to busy herself.
I dial Dean’s number. “Hey, Dean. I got held up.”
“Gavin, get your ass over here,” he says. “This party is epic. I think half the campus showed up.”
“About that,” I say. “I got a little sidetracked.” I look at Baylor and see that she’s pretending to go through her notes, but I see the corners of her lips curve up. “If I come at all, it’ll be a lot later. Right now I need to go.”
“Oh, I get it.” He laughs into the phone. “Been a long dry spell for you, man. Go get laid so you’ll stop bugging the shit out of the rest of us with your ornery ass.” Then he shouts, “Listen up guys, McBride’s gettin’ laid!” I can hear cheers in the background.
My eyes bug out, but based on Baylor’s demeanor I realize she did not, in fact, hear Dean’s declaration through my phone. “It’s not like that, man. But, hey, do me a favor and tell Karen to quit texting me. I gotta go.” I hang up and put my phone back in my pocket.
Baylor puts her notebook down. “If you need to be somewhere, don’t let me keep you.”
“Baylor, there isn’t any place I have to be,” I say. “I want to be here. What about you? Isn’t anyone waiting for you? What’s-his-name maybe, from orientation?” As if his name isn’t painfully obvious to me.
“Chris,” she says.
“Yeah, Chris,” I repeat. “Your boyfriend, right?”
She shrugs her shoulders shyly and nods almost like she’s embarrassed.
“So, are we talking marriage and babies here, or just passing time with someone until you find ‘the one’?” I ask.
“Wow, direct much?” she asks.
“I could say the same thing about you,” I quip.
She smirks at me. “Chris and I go way back. We’ve been friends for years, but we only recently started dating when we came here. I guess it seemed the next logical step.”
“You mean, you did what was expected of you?” I ask.
“Touché,” she says. She finishes off her smoothie, pulling out and licking the bottom of the lucky straw. I’m mesmerized. I can’t look away. “So, if politics and soccer aren’t your thing, what is?” she asks.
I shake my head at her. “You’d laugh.”
“Why would I laugh if you told me your life’s dream, Gavin?”
My defeated gaze falls to the table. Because everybody does. Or did. So I stopped telling people. But, somehow, Baylor is different. I think she’s the only person who has ever made me feel like I can just be me. Like I don’t have to put on some goddamn face and pretend to be the perfect son of Congressman McBride.
I close my eyes and say, “Film production.” When I don’t hear her laugh at my pipe-dream, I open them again.
She’s simply staring at me. “As in making movies and stuff?” she asks without laughing. Or rolling her eyes.
I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I took a semester of it as an elective in high school and, I don’t know, it just really stuck with me.”
“You do know you can major in that right here at UNC,” she says. “In fact, from what I’ve heard, they have a pretty good program.”
I nod again. “Yeah.”
“Good Lord, Gavin,” she says, holding her hands out in question. “Why aren’t you majoring in that then?”
“You’ve never met my dad, Baylor.”
“No, I haven’t. And I don’t know much about you, except this—you don’t like politics. How will you enjoy a career in politics if you don’t even like studying it? And if you don’t enjoy your vocation, how will you ever achieve happiness in life?” She takes a breath, assessing me before she continues, “You’re good at soccer, but you don’t love it. And doing something simply because you’re good at it won’t bring you happiness either, especially when you’re doing it for all the wrong reasons. So the way I see it, you’re going to go through life doing something that you hate, just to please a man who in a few years, you’ll only see at Thanksgiving or Christmas anyway. So tell me, when you are old and grey and lying on your death bed, what are you going to regret Gavin?”
Holy shit!
I don’t think I’ve ever been stunned into silence before. Another first with this girl.
She sees my reaction and her hand comes up to cover her mouth. “Oh, crap! I’m so sorry, Gavin. I have no right to say those things to you. You’re right. I don’t know your dad.” She sighs. “I grew up with a mom who came from a family that tried to dictate her future. She broke free from them and I guess she just raised me to revolt against oppressiveness.”
I stare at her. She’s gorgeous. Her wavy hair is flowing around her face. Her eyes have taken on the same light-blue coloring as the Tar Heels shirt she’s wearing, even though I could swear they are brown. She looks down guiltily into her empty smoothie cup. I reach over and put my hand on hers. “No, it’s okay, Baylor. Your mom should be very proud. She raised one hell of a daughter.”
I look at my hand where it lays on top of hers and I feel those familiar sparks. That same electricity from the day we met. I didn’t imagine it. Only this time, the sparks don’t go to my groin. They stop in the middle of my chest. They take up residence in my goddamn heart.