2. Jesse
CHAPTER TWO
jesse
I winked at the server as I handed over the cash. “Keep the change.”
The two cups of coffee moved across the counter, and Malcolm took his cup first. “I’m speechless,” he said.
“Apparently, you’re really not.” My cup was warm and heavy with creamy latte. We moved over to the window table and occupied the spot with the best view of Whitmore Street.
“You tipped,” Malcolm said, still speechless. “I’ve known you for well over a week, nearing two, and all you ever say is…”
“Don’t let the bastards suck you dry,” I finished for him. “So?”
Malcolm made a frustrated gesture of utter confusion, his head shaking, hands rising, eyes going wide. He was a tad theatrical, but in a cute and harmless way. “I’d imagine you’d refuse to tip servers out of some weird principle.”
“That guy’s not sucking anyone dry,” I said, then amended it. “Not in the way I’m thinking, at least.”
Malcolm snorted.
“Seriously,” I said, seeing now that my roommate had some misguided ideas about class struggles. “He’s not hoarding wealth by serving pumpkin spice lattes, Malcolm. I’m not at war with the working people.”
Malcolm found something funny, so I let him laugh while I took a sip of my coffee.
It was heavenly. The dramatic foliage of the fast-approaching fall turned the entire Whitmore Street from the withering, late-summer green into a collage of yellow, orange, and red.
The trees lined the street on both sides, their branches almost reaching fifteen feet above the asphalt.
“Tipping isn’t the problem, you know,” I went on. “It’s a symptom of a broken system. That guy over there busts his day in and day out. He deserves to be paid for his work. I’d rather see him get a fair pay, but until then, we gotta do what we gotta do.”
“I guess it makes sense,” Malcolm said after a moment.
I took another long sip of my coffee. The days were still warm, but as the evening was creeping in, a cool breeze came through the windows.
We finished our coffees quickly, then Malcolm raised his eyebrows. “Are we doing this or what?”
“Sure,” I said, draining the last sip from my small cup.
We stepped outside, feeling just light enough to be confident, and broke into a jog along Whitmore Street.
I’d told Malcolm about my evening runs when he’d noticed me leaving our shared dormitory three days in a row, and he’d shared that he’d never bothered running.
He was a fit guy who had no trouble turning other guys’ heads when he passed down the street, but he only ever did five minutes of warm-ups at the gym, and I’d told him about the consequences such a reckless routine could have on his body.
Within ten minutes of our breezy, pleasant jog, Malcolm was hyperventilating, sweating through his T-shirt, and grabbing his chest like he was about to keel over.
“That’s what you get for being a performative gym rat,” I said.
He jogged fast enough for a few seconds to catch up with me, just to punch me in the shoulder. Good punch, too. Well deserved.
We laughed, and I dialed back my pace to keep him company as he huffed and puffed by my side. We followed Whitmore Street down to the river, where both banks were transformed into long, green parks perfect for jogging.
I paced myself according to my years of experience, which was mostly made up of failing to pace myself.
If you wanted a long run, if you really wanted to last to the finish line, you had to know when to slow down.
Not knowing when to slow down was the story of my life.
Everything I started, everything I ever tried, threatened to burn me to a crisp by the end.
I didn’t know how to read a few pages before bedtime.
Instead, I read until dawn, found my guilty ass in the chair, and my eyes red with strain.
I didn’t know how to have a drink with friends that didn’t turn into a spoken political treatise like that meme of Lenin riling up the crowd.
I didn’t know how to study the workload of whatever course interested me without making it my entire world and personality.
I had an obsessive side that would get me killed, but it was a side of myself I loved with unwavering passion.
So I paced myself on my runs as if to prove to myself and all the haters that I could, if I wanted to, put on the brakes.
Malcolm groaned and grunted as his feet thudded heavily against the paved jogging path.
“Yeah, okay,” he wheezed when I promised we’d stop after half a mile more.
“I see why I need this.” His usually pale face was red, and his blond hair was dark with sweat, and the looks he gave me promised that a seed of hatred for me was already well planted in fertile soil. “Wish I’d never met you,” he grumbled.
We reached a wooden bridge where a couple with small kids were throwing breadcrumbs from the edge to the eager ducks below. The ducks quacked loudly in thanks, and the kids laughed, tugging on their mom’s hand to see, Mommy, see the duckies.
Malcolm and I got off the jogging path and dropped onto the freshly cut grass of the sloping riverbank. The evening air was cool enough to keep away most people, but the river sloshed over the cobbles and provided a constant, predictable, calming shush.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
Malcolm kept lifting his T-shirt and wiping his face. “Can’t believe I said no to a date for this.”
I laughed. “Like you don’t have dates stacked for every night of the week.”
“All false starts, all of them,” he said, shaking his head with an almost fond look on his face, like he enjoyed the dating failures of his past. He turned his head to me. “Do you ever feel like you just can’t break through the polite small talk with people?”
I lifted my shoulders in an almost-shrug, then shook my head. “Not really. Sometimes, yeah, but it’s rare.”
“Maybe it’s just me,” he said with something like disappointment darkening his voice.
I sucked my teeth. “Doubt that. It’s probably that dates are such an overblown social construct with tons of expectations and unspoken rules. We’re beyond small talk and we don’t even know each other.”
“When you want to kill someone slowly for making you run four miles, you don’t worry about saying the wrong thing,” Malcolm said.
That drew a hearty laugh from me. He was right. Nothing was as intimate as contemplating murder for fun.
“What do you mean, ‘overblown social construct?’” Malcolm asked.
“Oh, well, let me preach, my friend,” I said, slapping my hand on his shoulder. “Dating is just another way your phone keeps you subscribing to things you don’t need.”
“I love my dating apps,” Malcolm said sulkily. “But go on.”
“It’s not exactly a scientific discovery,” I said. “Every single one of those apps is designed to tickle your balls and leave you wanting more. Just go to a bar, scan the scene, and meet someone you like.”
“Right, because it’s working wonders for you,” Malcolm replied, referring to a conversation yesterday when I’d said I’d never been in a relationship.
The corner of my mouth lifted into a crooked smile. “I don’t want all that.”
Malcolm watched the ducks decide they weren’t getting more bread from the family that was slowly crossing the bridge and leaving them behind. They formed a line and let the current carry them downstream.
I wasn’t trying to be mysterious or cute. I really didn’t want any of that. All those silly expectations, all socially engineered ways to tie you down and hold you back.
“You know what they say,” Malcolm sighed. “Cynicism is the spice that makes life worth living.”
I shot him a semi-murderous look, but he only chuckled and got up to stretch his legs.
Long after we had returned to our dormitory, and after I’d showered and decided I was too restless to go to bed, I walked out of the dorm and wandered around campus, his words echoing in my head.
Elmwood University was a nice change of scenery after three years in Austin.
I was ready to kiss the heat goodbye and fall in love all over again with the New England weather.
The brief and passionate affair with Texas summers only led me to the brink of my sanity.
Such was the life of an aimless wanderer.
I passed a row of bars brimming with students, then the library nearby, made a mental note to check out a few obscure titles on economic theories in the morning, and wondered why Malcolm’s comment about cynicism had gotten to me.
I wasn’t a stranger to being criticized.
In fact, I’d spent years thickening my skin in debate clubs, taking unpopular stands and defending them through educated discussions.
I knew how to reflect on things, or so I hoped.
I knew how to explore a position from all sides before deciding whether it belonged in my soul or not.
Yet I was simply…against it.
Against dating.
Against falling in love.
It had nothing to do with my well-researched and well-supported stance against the transactional nature of marriage contracts. The fact that I didn’t feel the tug of youth and the need to love and be loved the way Malcolm did was a wholly different issue.
Had I always been like that? No. I didn’t think I had. It wasn’t like I’d never been in love at all. I just guarded myself against making the same mistakes over and over. Foolishness was trying the same thing and hoping for a different outcome.
I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes. It came to me in flashes, brief and impossible to retain. The early days, the possibilities, the falling in love with the ideas rather than realities, and the slow decay in the form of constant little changes.
I held my breath for a few heartbeats, then exhaled and looked to my left.
Far, far in the distance, a group of guys walked down the street in the direction of the bars.
They seemed to be all talking at once, conversations overlapping, bodies bumping into each other, laughter swirling out into the universe.
I watched them from a distance, sitting on my bench just outside the pool of light coming from the streetlamp. Over there, moving like they’d conquered the galaxy, the boys were shoving one another, breaking into fits of laughter and having a good time.
And among them, as if surrounded by bodyguards willing to lay their lives for him, was a curly-haired guy whose blue eyes I never could have forgotten. Not in the ten years it had been since I’d last seen them, not in a hundred if it had taken that long.
My heart thudded once loudly, then hurried up as I sat very still so as not to attract attention.
The guys were passing by, their backs now turned to me, but the wild, light brown curls caught the streetlight, and he turned his head just a little to the right, looking at one of the other guys, and I saw his clean, smooth profile like something appearing in your dream.
I used to know you, I thought. A strange fear pooled in the pit of my stomach. It didn’t belong there, yet it sat in me like a guest with no intentions to ever leave.
Finn. Of course he was Finn. And he was here, never far from home and his cozy, comfortable nest.
I couldn’t tell you why my heart was beating as fast as it was.
I couldn’t tell you why I decided to stay so quiet.
And I couldn’t tell you why I didn’t want him to notice me.
All I knew was a strange sort of fear coiling in my stomach, a fear of Finn glancing at me by sheer chance, meeting my gaze, and maybe recognizing me. Or not recognizing me at all.
I didn’t know which was worse.
I just knew I wanted him to pass by, to let me have a clear view of my once-upon-a-time best friend in the whole world.
And after they’d gone into the bar, as I’d suspected they would, I sat for a few minutes longer, a little unsettled, like the world had moved a fraction of a degree right under my feet, and the scales were out of balance for some cosmic reason, and I looked at my hands, not thinking about anything at all.
Nothing. Nothing but the striking green eyes I hadn’t seen in a decade.