I rang up her drink and she handed over her card – the one I’d used to swipe her into the dorm. The smiling girl beneath that protective laminate was incongruous with the expressions I’d seen her wear over the past few days.

‘Doing okay today?’ I asked, not recognizing the cryptic meaning until the words were between us. Damn.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, her voice still warbled.

When she took the card and receipt, my fingers grazed over hers of their own volition. She jerked her hand back as if I’d burned her, and I recalled how Saturday night, she’d made sure we didn’t touch when she moved past me into her dorm.

Was it me she feared touching now, or every guy?

I wanted to be the one to relax and unravel her, to show her the gentleness and respect she’d not received at the hands of the would-be ra**st or, frankly, her ex.

I would never be that man for her, and I was all kinds of idiot to hunger for it.

‘Thanks,’ she said, her eyes confused and wary.

The girl behind her leaned too close, stating her order over Jackie’s shoulder, though I’d not asked for it yet. Jackie shied away from the physical contact. Biting back a retort to the impatient twit and taking the order, I reminded myself that I was at work, we were busy as hell, and as much as I wanted to make all of these people disappear, there was no doing it.

Our eyes met once more before she was swallowed by the crowd on the other side of the barista counter, where Eve worked her magic with manic speed and narrow-eyed ire towards anyone who grumbled about the wait time. When Jackie picked up her drink, she left without a backwards glance, and I began to wonder how many times I would lose sight of her, certain it would be the last.

8

Landon

The day started out for shit and went downhill from there. I was halfway to school when the humid morning morphed into an unforecasted thunderstorm. One minute, my clothes felt like warm, damp rags in the clammy air, and the next minute, a mass of clouds rolled in, opened up and dumped rain on my stupid ass the rest of the way to school.

When I pushed through the double doors, I cursed myself for not having turned round and headed home the minute it started raining. I couldn’t have been more lock, stock, and barrel soaked if I’d jumped into the ocean, shoes and all. The ends of my hair fixed into dripping points, like a faucet that wouldn’t turn off. The drips became streams pouring from the hem of my saturated hoodie, and from my jeans into my Vans. They squeaked and squelched as I slogged down the hall.

I blamed my bad judgement and yeah, desire to go to school – a first in the past year and a half – on Melody Dover.

The first two weeks of our project, we’d only worked together in class. And by together, I mean we sat next to each other. We barely spoke, not that I could blame all of that on her.

I had a cell phone, but not a computer, so she’d pencilled PowerPoint under her name. While we read up on climate patterns and geographic distribution individually, I began sketching maps and she scoured the Internet for images. Finally, we needed to get together to begin combining our individual sections, work on the written portion and practise the presentation.

Last night, she’d grudgingly invited me over to her house. I showered and changed clothes before setting out down the beach. The wind whipping off the gulf was cold and dry, swirling my still-damp hair into cowlicks and tangles. It riffled the pages of the sketchpad I’d used for topography sketches, threatening to tear it to pieces and fling my work into the water. I hunched into my hoodie, arm locked over the sketchpad and hands in pockets, hating Mrs Dumont and Melody Dover and whatever jackhole decided geography should be part of ninth-grade curriculum.

Melody answered the door in pink sweats and fuzzy white socks.

‘Hey. Want a Coke or something?’ Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the door closed behind me and walked into the house.

I followed, wondering at the word PINK spelled out across her ass. I arched a brow at the redundant label while eyeballing her slim hips, swinging smoothly, drawing me along until I realized we’d entered a bright kitchen the size of my grandfather’s entire house. She bent to pull two cold sodas from a lower shelf of a huge fridge and I pulled to a stop, staring. PINK was my new favourite word.

Leading me towards the granite countertop, she handed me a can and plopped her perfect ass on to a leather-topped barstool. Turning her laptop towards me, she indicated the adjacent stool and I sat, struggling to shift gears. Geography held even less allure than it had before. I hadn’t thought that possible.

She said words, and I didn’t understand them. The wind must have scrambled my brain. The wind, or the word pink. ‘Landon?’

‘Huh?’

‘Let’s see your maps.’ Her tone said she was anything but excited at the prospect. I opened the sketchbook to the first map. Her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, my God.’

‘What?’

Her lashes swept up and then back down as she turned the page. ‘Wow. You’re … you’re an artist?’

I shrugged, releasing a relieved breath.

She turned another page. ‘Oh, my God,’ she repeated. ‘These are amazing. Are these figures tiny little people? And trees? Wow.’ She flipped slowly through the rest of them, until she turned to a blank page. Then she did something I hadn’t expected her to do. She turned back to the front of the notebook and opened it.

I reached for it, unwilling to snatch it rudely from her, but apprehensive of her examining sketches I’d never shared with anyone else. ‘Uh, that’s all the maps …’

Her mouth had fallen slightly open again, and she shook her head a little, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. I felt my face heat as her finger ran over a detailed sketch of a seagull cleaning its feathers, and then one of Grandpa, sleeping in his favourite chair.

Returning my hand to my lap, I waited while she examined each drawing, until she’d come back to the first map.

‘You should do me.’

I blinked and cleared my throat, and she reddened slightly.

‘Uh. Sure.’

‘Who’s this?’ a woman’s voice said then, startling both of us. We sprang apart and I nearly fell off my barstool.

Melody’s jaw set tight but her voice was all passivity. ‘This is Landon, Mom – he’s my partner on that geography project?’

Her mother’s gaze swept over me, and I was acutely aware of my recycled clothes, my shaggy hair, the cheap leather-banded watch on one wrist and the faded grey bandana I’d wrapped round the other. ‘Oh?’ One brow arched as her eyes, the same pale green as her daughter’s, turned back to Melody. ‘I thought Clark was in your geography class.’