Chapter 3 #2
I packed up my earbuds and could feel my phone buzzing as the bus came to a stop and the driver, looking right at me in the rearview, said, “Mount Pheasant and the Mount Pheasant Ski Resort.” I nodded in acknowledgment and maneuvered my bags in front of me as best I could from a seated position, waiting for the bus to come to a complete stop.
I fumbled off the vehicle with my bags and was immediately hit with a sharp gust of wind, icy pellets slapping my face. Not flurries, then, I thought. Sorry I lied, Mom.
The bus depot was a small brick building whose double doors held two evergreen wreaths with green-and-white striped bows that both looked like they had seen better days.
Between the sad display of holiday cheer and the piercing snow attacking my face, it was an inauspicious start to the winter break.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said aloud, tapping one of the wreaths, which caused it to teeter like it might fall off the door. It didn’t, and I shrugged as I looked around the exterior of the building. The depot appeared deserted, with only one dark-gray SUV in the parking lot.
I fumbled my way inside. A man stood in the corner, looking down at his phone.
His dark hair, which was kept short and neat, with a little length plastered down toward one side, matched his charcoal-gray overcoat.
In the harsh light of the depot, I could see flecks of gray peppered throughout it.
The man wore glasses with thick frames in the same brushed-gray color, and I laughed to myself, wondering if the color scheme was intentional or a coincidence.
I guessed that the gray car collecting snow outside was part of the man’s color board.
I assumed he was the man I was meant to meet. I’d searched social media but couldn’t find a picture of him. My only image of the man was from twenty-year-old pictures my parents had around the house.
My dad’s old friend was well put together, not a hair out of place, the boxy eyewear a match for the chiseled jawline he couldn’t hide underneath his well-kept beard.
Dad never mentioned he was hot, I joked to myself.
I had to be looking at Randall Glenn since we were the only two people there, but the man hadn’t looked up when I’d practically tripped through the door with my bags, remaining instead engrossed in his phone.
“Mr. Glenn?” Dad’s friend startled as he looked up.
He pushed his glasses up his face in the most adorably geeky way, using one finger to slide them up the bridge of his nose.
I couldn’t see his eyes, reflected as they were in the light of the vending machine he stood near, creating a rainbow of colors for a second before he moved and approached me with a smile that held stress behind it.
He had been my dad’s best man, so I’d seen pictures of a young Randall Glenn, when he was probably not much older than me.
My parents had a collage of photos from their wedding day, collecting dust in our guest room.
One image is a group shot of the wedding party, where Randall stands on the end, a little apart from the rest of the group.
I remembered that one because he seemed to have the tiniest of sad smiles on his face.
In another, he and Dad are arm in arm, both beaming.
I always imagined that my dad had told one of his stupid jokes to get the guy smiling like that when he had looked almost forlorn in the group shot.
He was taller than my dad, but you could tell he was scrawny, even in his tux, his hair—shaggy at the time—and the oversized tux the only big things about him.
In the dim light of the bus depot, his smile was soft and possibly nervous as he looked up, and I registered his eyes, a deep, rich brown that reminded me of melted chocolate.
His face was rounded except for his jaw and chin, which were angular, a cleft in his chin and a defined widow’s peak giving his face a confidence the smile didn’t.
They call men of a certain age, with their salt-and-pepper hair and tailored overcoats, distinguished.
I have encountered my fair share of distinguished men in my college town, but I’d never wanted to shove one down and have my way with them the way I did with … Wow, where had that thought come from?
I didn’t immediately smile in return, my crazy thoughts shocking me to stillness.
He’s your father’s age, I thought. For fuck’s sake, he’s your father’s friend.
I’d never thought of myself as being into older men, but one look at Randall Glenn and I knew I could be.
I hoisted my duffle bag further up my arm as I took a few steps forward and stuck out my hand.
“Mr. Glenn. Looks like the weather didn’t get the memo. Thank you so much …”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, a phone call rather than a simple message as the handsome man in front of me interrupted me.
“Mr. Lessand, Austin.” He nodded curtly, and even his serious face was seriously hot. He flashed his phone my way, and I could see the radar tracker swirling violently on the screen. His distraction as I’d entered the depot was explained; he’d been monitoring the weather.
“Have you been tracking the storm?” he asked, maneuvering next to me so that we could both look at the app on his phone.
He’d not shaken my hand, too absorbed in the chaos on his phone screen, it seemed, to be bothered with formalities.
We both watched the rotating pixels, standing shoulder to shoulder as I awkwardly moved my extended hand to adjust the strap of my duffle bag before dropping it to my side.
He didn’t seem to notice. He also smelled really good.
I’d been ignoring my phone, which had stopped vibrating, but then it started up again, so I took a step back, missing that smell almost immediately. My mother was calling, and I was about to answer when both of our cells bleated out a warning simultaneously.
“Oh, shit,” I said as both of us stared down at our own phones.
“An emergency warning already? I thought …” I looked up at my dad’s friend, and he looked at me.
The issue at hand melted away as my mind searched for words to describe the richest, most sparkling set of eyes I had ever seen.
How could eyes be dark and sparkling at the same time?
Obsidian? Was obsidian brown? Could obsidian melt into swirls of liquid chocolate, with small hints of gold flecks?
I was a premed major, and for the first time, I found myself disappointed for not having paid more attention in our required literature classes.
Maybe I’d have been better equipped to describe those eyes.
I may have been drowning in that melted chocolate and my own confusion when he gently drew my attention back to the issue at hand.
“Austin.” His soft smile returned, and those brown eyes clouded over with concern.
“It does appear we may have underestimated the strength of this storm.” I could hear a subtle British accent, which I found fascinating since I knew the guy had grown up in the Midwest and graduated college in New Jersey with my parents.
Dad may have said something about him spending time in London, but he was definitely from America.
I was finding lots of things about the guy both curious and fascinating.
“Mr. Glenn, I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, but my last exam ended this morning. I hopped on the bus right after it was over.”
“Please,” he began, ignoring my apology, “call me Randall.” That accent rippled just underneath the surface as his words flowed out. It seemed so out of place in the sleepy little bus depot in Upstate New York that we found ourselves in.
With a nod, I faced my phone his way even though the screen was back to sleep, and I tried again to take the blame. “I’ve had my nose in a book the last few days, studying for exams. I guess they moved up the timing on the storm. I should have been paying more attention.”
Mr. Glenn, Randall, nodded in return. “Please don’t apologize.
It’s only been since this morning that they’ve changed the forecast. I would have missed it myself, as I had my nose to my computer screen, but your mother called and alerted me a little bit ago.
And now it seems our phones have caught up and are officially rescheduling the blizzard to start . ..”
I had woken my phone back up. “... an hour ago,” I completed his thought with a chuckle.
“Your mom called it.”
Our phones rang simultaneously, not with another alert, but with actual phone calls.
“Speak of the devil,” I said, smiling at Randall as I waved my phone at him. “My mom,” I continued before accepting the call and bringing the phone to my ear to say hello.
With the most adorable little huffy laugh, Randall responded as he did the same, “Your dad.”