“Absolutely. What do you want to do?”
We ended up going to a nearby park and strolling along the paths as we continued to talk. Now that we had found our stride again, it was really easy talking to him. He was funny and put me at ease. I could feel the connection growing stronger, but I couldn’t let it. I had to keep it under control.
15
Tyler
I walked into the library wondering if it was really the right plan. I knew I was older than most college students, but like Becca said, a lot of them were even older than I was. Working at the bar, while enjoyable at times, and certainly something I was good at, just wasn’t satisfying anymore, and getting a little more information about what I might want to do other than being a barback would be smart before I jumped in with both feet.
Ostensibly, the plan was just to grab a few introduction to tech workbooks, research the difficulty level, my own aptitude as it was already, and gauge if there was something more specific I wanted to do. I already did a little bit of coding and was pretty sure that the conceptual ideas weren’t going to be a problem. But a little more information never hurt anyone.
When I arrived at the library, I walked right into the nonfiction section and began looking for the area of computing and tech materials when I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. Someone that made my stomach clench and my heart tick up a few beats a minute.
Lo and behold, Becca was standing in the fiction section across from me, bent over and looking at a row near the bottom. For a moment I was dumbfounded, incapable of moving my feet or my eyes as I stared at her round, perfect ass, but when she stood, the spell was more or less broken, and I regained the control of my faculties again. I walked up to her and poked her on the shoulder, and she turned around surprised.
“Oh, hey,” she said, laughing. “Seriously, are you stalking me?”
“Looks like it,” I said, eyeing the books in her hand. “What do you have there?”
“Oh,” she said, looking down into the books in her arms. “Just some stuff I’ve been meaning to read for a while. You?”
“I think I might take your advice, actually,” I said. “I was here looking for some books on some subjects I was interested in learning more about. Perhaps through some college courses. Getting ideas on where I might want to go with all that.”
“Great!” she said. “Hey, would you want to sit with me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just let me grab a couple books and I’ll meet you over there,” I said, pointing at a table in a far corner.
I turned and went back to the section I had been in, grabbing a few books that looked promising and heading back to the table where Becca sat. She had opened one of the books she’d picked up and was sitting cross-legged in the chair. As I walked up, she looked over the edge of the book and smiled at me. I put the books down in front of the seat across from her.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Two creamers, two sugars, please.”
The library had a complimentary coffee station, with one of those pod machines.
“Here you go,” I said as I sat her cup down in front of her.
“Thanks,” she said.
We spent a little time hanging out, enjoying each other’s company and reading mostly quietly. It was nice just to be near her, to be within touching distance of her even if I didn’t give in to my baser instincts and do so. I had gotten some pretty helpful information from a couple of my books when Nick walked around the corner to stand at the end of our table. He looked noticeably suspicious.
“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
I pointed to the stack of books still unread on the side of the table. “Research,” I said.
Nick pulled out a chair and turned it backward to sit in.
“You plan this?” he asked, motioning to both of us. I looked over at Becca, and we made eye contact before both breaking into laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“No, we didn’t plan this,” I said.
“It’s just funny,” Becca said. “We keep running into each other.”
Nick didn’t seem to buy that explanation and was visibly irritated. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. How much did he suspect? It was starting to worry me that perhaps my best friend knew how I was feeling and wasn’t happy about it.
“It’s time to go,” Nick said to Becca.
“Sorry, he’s my ride,” Becca said, closing her book and gathering her things.
“Sure, yeah,” I said, trying to act like it was no big deal that my best friend was suddenly acting like I was bothering his sister. “I’m going to finish what I’m doing here.”