“He’s going to ask you out again
today,” Mallory said.
“No, he’s not.” Annie pulled off her hat and smoothed down
her hair. It wasn’t quite as cold as she
expected. “Saturday wasn’t a date so there’s
no again, and I brought my little
brothers. I think that was a good hint
of where I stand.”
“But you had fun.”
“We did. As friends.”
“So you’d agree to do something
with him again?”
Annie sighed and opened the door to
the library. “Not the way you say
it. You make ‘do something’ sound like a
betrothal. Besides, he’s not going to
ask me out in the middle of the study group.”
“It’s just going to be four of us
today. Aaron is taking Hannah out for
her birthday.”
“Oh, yeah. Still… we’re here to study.”
Mallory snorted. “You don’t have any homework this week. You’re here to hang out with Jake and make
him fall for you even more.”
Annie issued a playful shove in
response. She wasn’t going to argue
against a relationship with Jake yet again.
He and Carlos were already at their
usual table. They sat at opposite
corners. Carlos had his back to the
girls as they walked up and was laughing at something Jake said before Annie
was close enough to hear. She took the
seat next to Carlos and was about to ask what was so funny.
Mallory leaned close and made a
sniffing noise in Annie’s ear. It was a
jab about her obviously smelling Carlos, which she hadn’t even been thinking
about. She gave Mallory a look that she
hoped conveyed significant displeasure with her mock sniffing.
Jake smiled at either the sound
effect or the reprimand. There was a
lack of amusement in his eyes though that made Annie uneasy. She felt a sudden need to explain that she’d
only sat next to Carlos out of habit.
The thought caused several others to trip into a pile in her head. First was the knowledge that she had in fact
taken the seat next to Carlos out of habit.
Next was the idea that she wanted Jake to share that knowledge. Last was the dawning understanding that
something had changed.
Somewhere between giving her mom
flowers and treating her little brothers like friends, Jake had formed a
connection to Annie. It wasn’t anything
like a lifelong bond, but it was enough to make Annie curious about a stronger
connection. Curious and… interested. She unzipped the backpack at her feet and
started pulling things out to cover her unexpectedly flustered state.
“What are you doing?” Mallory
asked.
“I’m… getting ready.”
“For what?” Mallory was sending her a concerned
look. “You said you didn’t have any
homework tonight.”
Annie was going to say she was
getting ready to study. Surely she had
something she could review. But Carlos
spoke first.
“You don’t have homework?” he
said. “Great. You
can help me with this awful poem.”
Jake groaned. “Well, she’s got to be better than me.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said. “He wanted me to rhyme sunset with not yet.”
“What?” Annie laughed and looked at
Jake. So did Mallory.
He shrugged. “You didn’t give me much to work with. Tell them what you have so far.”
“I’m supposed to write couplets
about something in nature,” Carlos explained.
“I have ‘I’m sitting by the window to watch the sunset.’”
There was a pause before Mallory
said, “That’s it?”
“I’m not a poet,” Carlos said. “Do you think if I wrote a few more random lines
I could get half credit for half couplets?”
“Yet could work.” Annie gathered some thoughts. “I’m sitting by the window to watch the
sunset. I realize it hasn’t started yet. The sky is still blue. Uh… lots of things rhyme with blue. Someone help me.”
Mallory tried. “The sky is still blue. The grass is covered with dew. I guess it’s still morning.” She looked around the table for a suggestion.
Jake said, “How about… This very
long wait will be boring. But if I sit
all day I bet… I might get to see the sunset yet.”
“We already used yet,” Mallory
said, trying to keep a straight face.
Annie was also working to swallow a
laugh. It wasn’t only awful because
they’d used yet, and Jake’s face said he knew it, too.
“We did.” Jake winced again. “That was so terrible.”
Carlos was writing it all
down. “But it’s pretty close guys. I’m just going to change the last two lines
to ‘But I have nothing else to do, maybe I’ll watch the sun rise, too.’”
Annie didn’t think that was much
better. At least it was something Carlos
wrote himself.
He closed that binder and opened a
different one. “On to statistics,” he
said. “That class always has the most
homework.”
When he shifted to a new subject, Annie caught
a whiff of that nice cologne. She still
enjoyed the scent, but it was like smelling cookies. Nothing personal. She asked Mallory if she wanted to study
Geology, the one class they had together.
Jake finished the assignment he’d brought and took Annie’s textbook to
let the girls compete to guess vocabulary words.
Carlos finished his statistics, and
they all began to pack up. The four of them
walked away from the table together.
“Wait one minute,” Mallory said.
“I want to check out a book while we’re here.” She disappeared between two shelves of
fiction.
“See you next week.” Carlos kept walking towards the exit.
Jake stopped next to Annie.
She felt her stomach turn sideways,
then inside out. The idea that this was
a chance for Jake to ask her out was now less unsettling than the idea that he
might not take it.
“Are you going home again this
weekend?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Any plans here?”
She continued the side to side
movement. “I don’t know what I’m going
to do.”
“They’re doing the first outdoor
movie of the year on Saturday,” he said.
“Already? It’ll be cold.”
“Probably. People will bring blankets.”
“Do you know what they’re showing?”
Now Jake shook his head. “Would you be interested in finding out? I mean, you and Mallory could both come with
me to find out.”
Annie smiled at the way he saved
her the trouble of inviting another person.
“Will you carry our blankets for us?”
“No matter what year it is.”
She smiled again, more
self-consciously because of his reference.
“Okay. I’ll tell Mallory.”
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