2
Jake’s stomach rumbled as he reached the front of the line at the Redtail Cafe, one of several outdoor eateries dotting the edge of campus. The late August sun shone down through the trees overhead, painting a mass of hungry students with its dappled light. The cafe wasn’t usually this crowded, but Taco Tuesday was always the exception.
“Three beef tacos, please, and a Dr. Pepper,” he said, leaning over the counter to be sure the cashier could hear him above the chatter of three dozen conversations.
“Coming right up,” the young woman said. She swiped his student card and then handed him a tray laden with food.
Jake took it and turned to scan the patio, hoping to see a familiar face or an empty chair. He found both, right underneath the giant iron clock that hung against the sun-warmed brick.
Lexie Preston.
Hers was a face he couldn’t forget. It wasn’t just the classic way her features came together beneath tousled blonde beach waves that made him want to reach for his camera. It was the way she always seemed to be tucked inside herself, like the best parts of her were still hidden beneath the surface. Jake wanted to be the one to bring them out, to turn each piece over carefully and examine it until he could sketch the ridges in his sleep.
Just be friends, he repeated to himself as he made his way across the crowded patio toward where she sat alone at a small cafe table. She had a textbook open in front of her, a yellow highlighter poised in one hand, and he second-guessed his plan of attack. What if she resented the interruption?
But another glance around the space confirmed that hers was the only table not already full, so he pressed on. At least he could use that as an excuse if necessary.
“Hi,” he said, coming to a stop opposite her.
She finished the sentence she was reading and glanced up, a look of surprise crossing her face.
“Can I sit here?” he asked with an uncertain smile.
Lexie’s eyes scanned him slowly, as if considering, before she nodded. The chair in front of him slid out as she pushed it with her foot, and he sank into it, reaching up to rub the back of his neck with his free hand. He took a deep breath and went for broke.
“I want to apologize for Friday. I was rude to you, and I’m sorry. It was the noise and the crowd and... just all of it, really. I promise I’m not usually a jerk.” He glanced at her awkwardly, and his chest tightened as he waited for her to say something, anything. Finally, she gave a wry smile.
“I believe in second chances,” she said. “Although, technically this will be your third.”
Jake relaxed, but only slightly.
“The first time wasn’t entirely my fault,” he countered, picking up a taco and shifting it in his hands.
“So, you just want to blame gravity, then?”
Jake winced. “Something like that,” he muttered.
Lexie shrugged and then leaned down to slide her highlighter into her bag. “I’d like to say it happens to the best of us. Although, most people are smart enough not to tip a chair that’s already on wheels.”
Jake chuckled, unable to help himself. At least she had a sense of humor. “I deserve that,” he agreed.
An odd look crossed Lexie’s face, part surprise and part amusement.
“It’s not often I find a guy who can laugh at himself,” she said. “Maybe you won’t be such a pain to work with after all.”
Jake shrugged. “Nowhere to go but up.”
“How does a person get to be twenty-one having never seen Ghostbusters?” Jake asked nearly an hour later, his voice filled with disbelief. His legs were stretched out under the small table, though Lexie noticed he had angled them carefully to avoid touching her.
“Twenty-two,” she corrected, “and I don’t know. I just haven’t.”
“Okay, we have to fix this. Friends don’t let friends live this way,” he insisted, shaking his head.
Lexie studied him in the quiet beat that followed. Olivia wasn’t wrong; Jake Tanner was cute. He gave off a definite cowboy vibe, with broad shoulders under a white T-shirt and dusty boots that peeked out from beneath faded Levi’s. His mop of dark hair matched a beautiful pair of brown eyes, which made Lexie think of melted chocolate on a summer day. She was struck by the notion that a girl could easily sink into them and never find her way out.
She blinked, suddenly finding those eyes trained on her, and Jake cleared his throat awkwardly. He’d obviously caught her staring.
“What about Back to the Future?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“The Sandlot?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Star Wars? Please tell me you’ve at least seen Star Wars!”
“Some of it,” Lexie admitted with a shrug.
Jake shook his head slowly, as if he simply couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“This is so much worse than I thought,” he deadpanned, and Lexie bit back a smile. “We really should start the marathon right now, but I have to get to work. Are you going in today?” he asked as he rose to his feet.
“Yeah, I am, actually,” Lexie said, gathering her long-abandoned textbooks. “I’ll walk over with you.”
“Good, because we have to get to the bottom of this problem. Either your taste in movies is horrific, or you just had an incredibly stunted childhood,” Jake said, waiting as Lexie rose to her feet.
She hiked her backpack higher on one shoulder and tried to ignore the sharp pain in her chest as the truth of his words hit home.
When they reached their office building, Lexie held the door while Jake helped one of the ladies from accounting with a stack of file boxes. He carried them up the short stairs into the building, loaded them onto a waiting handcart and then pulled the whole thing down the hall. The older woman was positively blushing by the time he finished, and Lexie couldn’t hide a smirk as they climbed the stairs to the third floor.
“What?” he asked, returning her smile with a look of confusion.
“Nothing,” she said, and she grinned wider as she shook her head. “I just think Mrs. Atkins might try to take you home if we stick around any longer.”
Jake flushed, rubbing his neck in a gesture she could already tell was a nervous habit. Lexie decided in that moment to consider him “awkwardly adorable.” It was a dangerous combination.
“I mean, come on,” she teased, seeing an opportunity and jumping in with both feet. “I bet you’ve got the market cornered on little old ladies around here. Do they bring you homemade cookies?”
Jake’s blush darkened, and though he kept his eyes straight ahead, Lexie could tell he was fighting back a laugh.
“I’m just being helpful,” he protested. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, nothing! Nothing at all,” Lexie went on, enjoying his reaction. “I’m just saying, if you ever need a date for Winter Formal, I’m sure any of the ladies on the first floor would go with you. Or offer you their granddaughters.”
Jake laughed then, and something about the deep rumble warmed Lexie’s heart. She couldn’t decide what happened to the guy she’d met Friday, but she certainly liked this version better.
“Thanks for coming in on your day off. I could actually use another pair of hands,” Lexie’s boss, Julie, said later that week. She moved a stack of papers off the massive calendar that covered one side of her L-shaped desk and peered down at the notes that marched across it like tiny ants.
“Admissions is hosting a pep rally for the elementary school ahead of this weekend’s football game. Andy’s got the mascot on hand for photo ops, but we need someone to be responsible for him while he’s in costume. You know, to make sure he doesn’t trip over the kids and things like that,” Julie said, looking up. “Do you have time to follow a giant hawk around for a few hours?”
“Anything you need,” Lexie replied, glad for an extra chance to be useful. “I’ve actually never met Ronnie. It could be fun.”
The school’s mascot, Ronnie the Redtail, was a comical seven-foot-tall hawk who could usually be found tossing T-shirts into the stands at home games while wearing the school’s signature colors.
“Fabulous. I’ll show you where he is,” Julie said, reaching for her bag.
A few minutes later, Lexie was directed down a hall off to one side of the alumni gym, where she found Andy waiting beside a closed door.
“So, you’re the babysitter, huh? Oh, you’re going to love this,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Lexie asked, resisting the urge to peek through the door’s small window just above her line of sight.
“Just trust me. It’s a special treat,” he said. He grinned as he rapped sharply on the door and opened it a crack. “Are you decent?” he called.
A muffled voice must have answered in the affirmative because Andy opened the door the rest of the way and gave Lexie a view she wouldn’t soon forget. Pieces of Ronnie were scattered everywhere—extra feet and random feathers, enormous jerseys for both the basketball and baseball teams, two giant hats meant for a massive head, and, of course, the head itself. It looked like someone had blown the poor bird to bits.
“You owe me for this,” a familiar voice said from the far corner, and Lexie’s mouth fell open as Jake appeared wearing Ronnie’s body from the neck down, complete with shoulder pads beneath the custom football jersey. He lifted his gaze from his oversized feet and froze, locking eyes with Lexie across the room.
Her hands flew to her mouth but failed to stop the stream of laughter that poured out.
“Ta-dah!” Andy shouted.
Lexie’s giggles grew until she sank to the floor, her arms clutching her midsection. Every time she thought she had herself under control, she’d look at Jake standing there as half a bird and start all over again, tears streaming down her face.
“Why are you here?” Jake said, his face clearly pained. He shuffled forward, looking down at her over the edges of the costume.
“Oh, you haven’t heard? I get to make sure you don’t squash small children with your giant bird feet,” Lexie answered as she rose to stand, her wide grin still running wild.
Jake groaned and looked at Andy, who was obviously enjoying the exchange.
“Put on your beak,” Andy said as he lifted Ronnie’s gigantic head from the floor and placed it over Jake’s tiny one. He tightened the fasteners around the sides. “Let’s go over the ground rules again. What is mascot rule number one?”
“No talking while in costume,” Jake recited, his voice coming through the mesh that made up Ronnie’s mouth.
“Yes, strike one for breaking that already,” Andy said, grinning. “And you should be sure to...?”
“Take extra big steps,” Jake said, and Lexie could hear the scowl in his voice.
“Good, and also never . . . ?”
“Lean too far to one side, or I will fall down and not be able to get back up,” Jake supplied, earning another burst of laughter from Lexie.
“Great,” Andy replied. He consulted a list in his hand and then ran through another check of his photography bag. “Just walk around for a few minutes and get used to the weight of it all, then we’ll get you through the door.”
“This is a one-time thing, I assure you,” Jake grumbled to Lexie. “The real Ronnie is sick, and I happen to fit the costume.”
“Oh, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said gleefully. “If you want to moonlight as a giant bird, you go right ahead.”
Jake made several slow treks across the room, and Lexie pulled herself together long enough to help him make the turn at the end of each pass. Getting through the door was a bit difficult, requiring Jake to turn sideways and crouch to keep from knocking Ronnie’s head off, but they managed it on the second try.
“Alright, kids. I’ve got to get in there, but you hang around the back doors until you hear your intro, then let him loose,” Andy instructed, grinning at Lexie. “Don’t let the kids climb on him.”
When he was gone, Lexie turned to Ronnie and stretched up on her tiptoes to put her face in front of his giant beak. She could barely see Jake inside the dark costume, the only light coming from the mesh opening.
“Can you see anything?” she asked.
“Only what’s right in front of me. No peripheral vision,” he said.
“Okay, well, I’ll be your eyes, then,” Lexie replied. She ran her palm down the thick wing that covered his arm. “Where’s your hand?”
“Almost at the end, there’s a hole,” he said, raising his arm to show her where a brown glove peeked out just under the wing tip. Lexie grabbed his hand and, after a moment, felt his fingers close around hers in a tentative grip. For some reason, it felt like she was holding on to an electric fence.
“Feel good?” she asked. “About going out there?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, his voice faint from inside the costume. “Feels great.”
There was an awkward silence before someone with a megaphone called for a drumroll.
“Sounds like your cue!” Lexie blurted, grateful for the distraction. She tugged Jake toward the double doors, choosing to believe that the heat creeping up her neck had everything to do with the crowd and nothing to do with him.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ve been doing my laundry,” Jake said, pacing in a circle outside the administration building, his phone pressed to his ear while his mother verified that he was actually a responsible, functioning adult. Even though he was barely half an hour from home, sometimes it seemed like Kathleen Tanner thought her only son had gone to live on the moon.
He stopped to lean against the warm brick, only partially listening as he watched several groups of students pass through the quad. He nodded politely to a few before catching sight of a familiar figure approaching through the afternoon sunlight.
“Hey, Mama, I’ve got to go,” he blurted, feeling only slightly guilty for interrupting what he was sure was a riveting story about his Uncle Rob and a goat that got stuck in the fence.
“Oh, well, alright, honey. We’ll talk soon,” his mother said. She blew a kiss into the phone, like she always did, and Jake returned it quickly before hanging up. He slipped his hands into his pockets just as Lexie made the turn up the sidewalk toward where he stood.
“Hey!” he called, and her eyes darted in his direction, though they didn’t warm as he’d hoped they would. Instead, she looked crestfallen, like someone had sneezed on her last cookie.
“What’s wrong?” he asked when she reached him. There was a moment when he thought he saw truth flicker in her eyes before she shuttered them, pasting on a practiced smile instead.
“Just having a long day. How about you? Important phone call?”
She nodded toward his pocket, where his hand still gripped his phone, and Jake realized she must have seen him before he saw her. He liked the idea that she’d been watching.
“Oh, no, not really. Just my mom checking in. You know how that is,” he quipped, reaching out to open the administration building’s heavy outer door for her. Another shadow passed across her face, as if he’d said something wrong. Lexie went inside and crossed the wide entrance hall toward the stairs.
“Did you tell her they made you be Ronnie?” she asked a moment later, starting up as Jake followed behind.
“No, I forgot. It wasn’t so bad, actually, once I got used to it. It was sort of fun being a celebrity for a while,” he admitted as they climbed to the top floor. Plus, I got to hold your hand for two hours, he thought, remembering the way his whole arm had gone fuzzy.
“Maybe next time you’ll get to walk with a cheerleader. Wouldn’t that be something?” she added, though her voice was flat.
Jake shrugged, not at all interested. “Sounds like a step down, honestly,” he admitted, following Lexie out of the stairwell and down the hall.
She stopped near the door to the marketing office and looked up at him with an odd expression, like she was trying to solve a puzzle without the box. He cleared his throat and took an awkward step toward the doors of the photography studio.
“I’ll see you later, alright? If you’re still around when I get done,” he said, backing away.
“Yeah. Later,” she echoed, still watching him with a thoughtful crease between her brows.
Jake wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was thinking.
But three hours later, he was still wondering.
What did she see when she looked at him? Was he just a guy who sometimes made her laugh, or did she see something more? If he wasn’t her type, could he change her mind?
Editing Andy’s pictures from the day before didn’t help his train of thought. It was bizarre to see photo after photo of himself holding Lexie’s hand, even if nobody else knew it was him. His palm itched with the memory. If only they’d been alone, maybe he could have come up with a reason to tuck those wispy blonde strands behind her ear and breathe in whatever made her hair smell like strawberries.
Jake sighed, rubbing his hand across his forehead. He couldn’t be more pathetic if he tried.
“Jake?”
Lexie’s soft voice came from beyond the partition between him and the door, as if his thoughts themselves had summoned her. Jake jumped slightly and quickly minimized the photo on his screen.
“Back here,” he called. He heard her footsteps come closer until she appeared in his doorway.
“I’m finished for today, but I thought you might need some help before I go,” she said, looking around his workspace. She picked up a small acrylic award from a shelf above his desk and turned it over in her hands.
“Association of Photographers Student Competition, Third Place, Southeast Region,” she read, her eyebrows rising as she looked at Jake. “That’s impressive.”
He felt his neck get hot, and he automatically rubbed his hand across the back of it.
“I’m pretty proud of that one,” he admitted, and Lexie nodded as she replaced the award on the shelf.
“You should be. You’re good at what you do,” she said. There was a trace of bitterness in her voice that Jake didn’t like.
“Do you think you aren’t?” he asked. “I read your stuff; you’re a fantastic writer.”
Lexie scoffed and was silent, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the warped edge of his plastic floor mat. The same unhappiness he’d seen earlier crept across her face, and Jake stood, intending to say something encouraging. But the words disappeared when her face tipped up and her emerald eyes met his. There was sadness etched along the edges of her mouth, and his fingers tingled with the need to reach out and brush it away.
He wondered what she would do if he touched her, if he leaned down and showed her exactly what he thought of her and everything she did. The image in his mind involved backing her up against the wall, and the urge was so strong he had to shove his hands into his pockets just to keep them to himself.
The sudden motion caught Lexie’s attention, and she shook herself, stepping away and creating distance where there had been none.
“What can I help you with?” she asked, changing the subject and breaking the tense silence all at once.
Jake looked past her into the studio, taking a deep breath he hadn’t realized he needed. He mentally catalogued the equipment in front of him.
“I’ve got the volleyball team coming soon, so if you’ll pop open those reflectors, I’ll set up the diffusers and stands,” he said, pointing toward the open studio space. They worked together for a few comfortable minutes, Jake giving instructions as Lexie unzipped cases and handed him what he needed.
“Sit on the stool and let me get the settings right,” he directed, taking a test shot of the empty chair. The strobes flashed quickly, momentarily flooding the backdrop with extra light, and Lexie obediently took a seat. Jake stood a few feet in front of her and took several more shots, adjusting the settings on both the camera and the strobes.
After a few minutes, Jake started to study the angles of her face and the shadows along her throat as if she were a still-life subject and not the main character in so many of his daydreams. He looked long and hard through the viewfinder, taking advantage of the silent permission she gave. Her green blouse made her eyes twice as vibrant, and her hair fell in effortless curls around her shoulders, yet her face was still nervous, as if she were expecting to be judged.
“Think about me,” he said, the thought becoming words before he could stop it. Lexie cocked her head slightly, confusion flickering in her eyes, and Jake cleared his throat. “In the bird suit,” he clarified.
As he’d hoped, her eyes lit up and her face split into a smile that brightened the room.
There she is, he thought, snapping the photo before the glow could fade.
“I will never forget that, not as long as I live,” Lexie said, and Jake smiled, every bit of her reaction warming something deep inside him.
“I hope you don’t,” he said, letting the camera rest low against his chest. Lexie’s eyes darted toward a point over his shoulder, and Jake turned to see a young woman in a crimson sports uniform leaning through the doorframe.
“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Is this the right place for team pictures?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jake answered, a little too brightly. He glanced at his watch. “You’re right on time. If you would, just put your name and details on the form by the door.”
Several other team members appeared in the hallway a moment later, and Jake got caught in a jumble of questions and instructions. When he looked up, Lexie had slipped away, and he felt a physical pang of loss in the otherwise crowded room.
Lexie scrolled back through her text messages as she crossed the quad. There wasn’t any point in torturing herself, yet she couldn’t seem to help it. Her father’s words stung every time she read them.
Lexie:Have you seen my article on Dr. Henry Thornton’s new dementia trial? It’s my first alumni feature!
Dad:Did you help him collect samples or analyze his trial data?
Lexie:No, of course not.
Dad:Then what good is it? Anyone can write words.
Lexie stuffed her phone back into her pocket as she reached her car. If nothing else, she’d at least thought her father would be impressed that she’d met the man who was revolutionizing neuroscience as they knew it.
“Thanks for the encouragement, Dad,” she muttered. “No time like the present to make your only daughter feel useless.”
In truth, Dr. Garrett Preston III had never passed up that kind of opportunity.