1. Watchful Crows
Watchful Crows
LUKE
“ M aking any progress?”
Luke jumped, knocking his glasses half off his face and fumbling with his phone.
He barely caught it before it could crash into the sidewalk.
His heart pounding in his throat, he clutched his precious phone to his chest and thanked whatever shred of luck he had left that it hadn’t shattered.
He didn’t have the funds to fix a broken screen, let alone an entire phone.
When his hands stopped shaking, he resettled his glasses on his nose and turned his head to gaze at the young woman who’d flopped next to him onto the bench, dropping her backpack and a sack of fast food at her feet.
Harper hooked a strand of purple hair behind her ear and grinned at him as if she had no clue as to the disaster she’d nearly caused.
The smell of grease and salt wafted through the air, chasing away the crisp scent of cut grass.
He used to crave fast food like any twentysomething with an unstoppable metabolism, but since he’d begun working at Burger Hut four days a week, fries and burgers had lost their allure.
“You’re going to need to be more specific. Are you talking about my progress with my classes, my research, finding a better-paying job, or finding a place to live?” Luke ticked off each item on his fingers.
Harper paused in the process of bending to dig through her bag of food and winced. “Actually, I was talking about Matteo.”
Just the mention of his name made Luke’s entire body relax and turn gooey like the inside of a chocolate lava cake.
Matteo Zito with the perfect hair, so black it almost had blue highlights.
Matteo with the flawless olive complexion and the warmest brown eyes anyone had ever seen.
Matteo with the perfect smile and sexy voice that held the slightest accent, which had a special way of frying Luke’s brain every time he was lucky enough to hear the man speak.
His friend’s low chuckle and the crinkle of the paper bag kick-started his brain. He blinked and looked to see her peeling the protective wax paper away from a grilled chicken wrap. Of course, his stomach chose that moment to gurgle in complaint. It hadn’t been that long since he’d last eaten.
“I’ve got two more wraps in the bag, along with some fries, if you’re interested,” Harper said prior to taking a bite.
“Sorry,” Luke mumbled as he reached into the bag to snag a wrap.
The poor grad student routine was getting old.
Of course, the poor undergraduate student routine had preceded it.
Actually, he’d just been poor his entire life, constantly scraping by, never having enough and being saved by friends like Harper, who always had a spare twenty or some extra food to share when his bank account was empty.
“What sorry? There’s nothing to be sorry about. I enjoy eating with you, and I figured I’d find you here after Matteo left his last Wednesday class and crossed to the library.”
“Please, you’re making me sound like a stalker.
I simply like this bench. It’s the only time of the day the quad is quiet, and there’s a bobolink that’s been spending a lot of time in that tree over there.
Did you know that an old name for its species is ‘rice bird’ because of its diet of rice and seeds?
It currently gets its name from the unique song it sings?—”
“Luke, eat your wrap before it gets cold,” Harper cut him off.
With a smirk, Luke leaned close to her and took a big bite of the wrap, making ridiculous hungry noises as he chewed that made Harper laugh.
Yeah, she could be annoying, but he knew he was just as annoying with his random bird facts.
That was to be expected of an ornithology student who looked forward to spending his entire life studying birds.
He tried to tame his need to spout useless facts with Harper. She’d been his friend since their sophomore year in college and had picked the same graduate school—Ravenwood University—even though they had different majors.
Luke was studying ornithology and environmental sciences and engineering (as a fallback so he could find a job one day), while Harper was getting her master’s degree in finance.
To him, that didn’t seem like a fit at all, but apparently it was a family tradition, and he was pretty sure Harper was only going because her parents were paying for it.
She’d mentioned something about moving to California or Mexico when she got her degree and opening a surf shop near a beach, which sounded more like her.
“Do you think it’s weird that I have a crush on an undergraduate?”
“Hell, no!” she shouted, drawing the eyes of a couple of people as they passed by. “He’s fucking adorable. Plus, he’s not a freshman, right? He’s at least a sophomore.”
“Junior, I think. I overheard some young women whispering about him. One of them was pretty confident that he’s a transfer and that this is technically his junior year.”
“There.” Harper waved the remains of her wrap at Luke as if it were a wand and she were his fairy godmother granting him a wish. “That means he’s like twenty or twenty-one. And you’re…”
“Twenty-two. I’ll be twenty-three next March.”
“See. Not weird.”
Luke stifled a sigh with another bite of the chicken wrap, his eyes straying to the liberal arts building directly in his line of sight.
No sign of Matteo yet. It wasn’t an age thing, so that mostly left him with the sexual orientation thing.
Was there any chance Matteo could be gay?
Or at least bi? He’d heard whispers, but not so much that he was willing to hang all his hopes on it.
Not that he had much hope. Luke was well aware of his shortcomings, beginning with his perennially empty wallet.
He was of average height and build, though he trended toward the skinny side.
His arms were muscular from doing so much manual labor, but his stomach wasn’t as flat as it could be.
It was hard to eat healthily and cheaply.
Usually it was one or the other. Other than that, his hair was a boring shade of brown, and he was pasty white from too little sun.
Add in black-rimmed glasses, and he felt that he was a pretty unnoticeable package.
Definitely not worthy of someone as sexy as Matteo Zito.
“So, as for your list, I refuse to believe you’re having any trouble with your classes. You ace everything, and the semester started two weeks ago,” Harper stated before shoving the last of her wrap into her mouth. “Research?”
“Fine. Nothing much to report yet. I’m still refining my thesis.”
“Job?”
Luke slumped on the bench and frowned at the remains of his wrap. What he’d eaten was already turning in his stomach. “I’ve got Burger Hut four nights a week, and I’m working four nights a week at Sinful Soaps stocking shelves, sweeping, and doing general cleanup and prep for the next day.”
“First off, you know I’m pretty good at math.” She leaned close enough to bump Luke’s shoulder. “Finance major and all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But that adds up to eight nights a week, and last I checked, there are still only seven days in a week.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “I don’t have any classes on Friday, so I work a double starting in the early afternoon into the evening at Burger Hut, then head to Sinful Soaps.
” And even with that, he wasn’t making enough to get by.
His scholarship didn’t cover all his class and book costs, which were outrageous.
Plus the cost of living in the quaint town of Rookborough was through the fucking roof.
He needed to find a third job during the day on the weekends, but his plan had been to catch up on his schoolwork and sleep those two days.
A person didn’t need that much sleep, right?
“I’m afraid to ask how the housing situation is going…” Harper balled up her empty wrapper and dropped it into the paper bag before grabbing the fries.
Luke forced himself to eat the last two bites of his wrap and added the paper to Harper’s bag.
“Still surfing Jacob’s couch, but I think tonight’s the last night for that.
I overheard his roommate bitching about me while I was brushing my teeth this morning, and I don’t want to put Jacob in the awkward position of having to kick me out. ”
“No apartments with roommates?”
He groaned. “You mean like the mixed-media artist I shared an apartment with, who I caught cutting off little pieces of my hair in the middle of the night to use for his next project? Or the health nut who thought because I was gay, I must spend all my time at the gym working on my perfect ass and abs? Or maybe the asshole who thought I would be his live-in maid since the apartment was in his name, only to find out that we weren’t splitting the rent fifty-fifty, but more like seventy-thirty because he was doing me a favor by sharing with me? ”
“Yeah,” Harper drawled. “You have the worst luck in finding roommates. And school just started. I wish I could help…”
He waved off her comment. There was no way she could help.
Yes, her parents were paying for her education, but they were making her pay for her own room and board, which meant she was sharing an apartment with three other women.
Nothing could convince him to surf on that couch.
If he was desperate, there were park benches, homeless shelters, and he thought he’d worked out a hidden spot in the library where no one ventured that he could sleep in for a few undisturbed hours.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said, his mind already distracted by the trio of crows that had settled on the back of the wooden bench across from them.
They’d been watching him and Harper for several minutes now, their heads cocking this way and that, as if they could understand their conversation.
“Have you noticed that this campus seems to have a lot of ravens?” Harper asked in a low voice, as if she were afraid of the birds overhearing her. “Like, way more than normal.”
“First off, those aren’t ravens. You can tell by the lack of a hook in the beak.
These are American crows, and I wouldn’t say there are more than normal.
There are a lot of food scraps to be scavenged on campus because of the students.
This is a very easy place for them to feed,” Luke murmured.
He put his cell phone into his pocket and began digging in his bag.
“Don’t you think they’re creepy?”
“Not at all. Crows are among the smartest birds in the world. It’s Hollywood that has been determined to make them harbingers of evil and death. Bunch of nonsense. Did you know crows have made and used tools? They can recognize human faces and can even hold a grudge.”
“Lovely. It isn’t bad enough that humans can hold a grudge?”
“They also mate for life.”
Harper huffed. “Okay, that part’s romantic at least. Do you think they’d take a fry?” She held one up as if she were about to throw it to the trio still watching them.
Luke’s hand shot out and shoved her hand back toward her. “Don’t you dare give them that crap! Greasy fried human food is horrible for them. They probably have high cholesterol from all the garbage other humans have given them. I’ve got trail mix in my bag. They love peanuts.”
Only when Harper popped the fry into her mouth did Luke return to his digging. He located the half-empty bag of trail mix he’d been nursing between classes. He plucked out some nuts and raisins and tossed them to the ground near the other bench.
The crows didn’t hesitate to jump down and snatch up the new bounty. As soon as it was all gone, the largest of the crows poked at the others, cawing as if he were bossing the other two around.
“Hey! Hey! It’s okay. I’ve got some more.” He grabbed another handful and spread it on the ground, but the largest crow still bullied the others until one flew off, leaving them to eat the seeds and nuts on the ground.
“Guess it’s clear who’s the boss in that clan.” Harper chuckled.
“Murder,” he corrected. He smirked and pointed at the remaining two. “Actually, now it’s an attempted murder. It takes at least three to form a murder.”
Harper groaned. “You’re such a dork.”
“And you wonder why I haven’t tried to talk to Matteo yet.
” He grunted and grasped another handful of nuts for the two crows.
“No home, two jobs and still broke, and most people on campus have begun calling me the bird weirdo. None of that is a selling point for someone as hot or amazing as Matteo.”
“You’re not a weirdo, and I’ll punch anyone who calls you that. You’re a dork, but you’re a cute, sweet dork. Totally adorkable. Matteo would be lucky to have someone as nice as you to date.”
Nice . Wasn’t that a horrible word? Like he had a nice personality?
Luke was still stewing over how that nasty word likely spelled the end of all his dating hopes when the third crow returned with a piece of paper in its beak.
It landed on the armrest closest to him, causing Harper to squeak and slide even farther away from him.
The crows on the sidewalk excitedly hopped and cawed at him as if they were urging him to take it.
Was this a ‘thank you’ gift for the nuts he’d given them?
Slowly, he reached out and plucked the paper from the crow’s beak. The bird hopped down to the sidewalk and ate up the last of the nuts the others had left him.
“What is it? Oh man, is there any chance these crows know how to get test answer keys? That would be so freaking awesome!” Harper bounced close, appearing to forget about her fear of the crows.
Luke turned it over to find that it was a room rental listing.
Room For Rent!
Just six blocks from Ravenwood University.
Private room for rent with access to kitchen, laundry room, and private bathroom.
All utilities included.
We even have the high-speed Internet!
Only $150 per month
That was insanely cheap and perfectly timed. Maybe a little too perfectly timed. He glanced over the edge of the paper at the crows, who were watching him very closely. So maybe Harper was right that these crows seemed odd.
“Wow! That’s perfect! And so cheap!” Harper cried.
“Yeah, perfect.” Luke tore his gaze from the crows to stare at the listing. “So cheap that I’m sure someone has already rented the room.”
“Maybe, but you’ve got to at least check. With rent this cheap, you might be able to quit one of your jobs.”
“Or get murdered in my sleep by one of my new roommates,” Luke muttered under his breath.
“Are you going to call?”
Luke sighed. The problem was that he was desperate. So desperate that he was willing to risk some crazy roommates yet again. “Yeah, I’ll call.” He forced a smile when he looked at Harper. “Maybe this is a sign that my luck is finally turning around.”