Liam Davis & The Raven (Love Inscribed 1)

Taking out my notebook, I scribbled some notes. Rooms large with dim lighting. Half the guys wear black-and-red striped pullovers. Some have fake hands with long, sharp fingers. . . . Nightmare on Elm Street is projected in the living room, and the slashing terror lights up the wall.

I twisted away from the grim images. There was a reason I’d always been sensible enough not to watch it.

A girl in a white dress at the bottom of the stairs twirled. She lit up the dim foyer and her smile lifted with a laugh as she followed her Freddy boyfriend around the corner. Her laugh continued, making me think of Linda. How long was it? A year since she’d broken up with me? Time really flew by.

Doesn’t have a life. How can he give the column life . . .

The pop rock thumped louder. Freddies swam around me and I blinked. Refocusing on the notebook, I slowly let go of a breath. Why couldn’t I get Jill, or the Man Dead a Week in Central Pittsburgh Apartment, out of my head? I struggled to gulp down a fresh lungful of air and push back the vision of myself dead and rotting.

Maybe I should get a cat.

Yes, I’d go to the shelter tomorrow. Then all will be good. Great, even. Perhaps the cat’s fur will help soak up the nasty echo. . . .

I clicked my pen, a habit Hannah found irritating when I did it at the office. But pen-clicking soothed me and brought out the creativity in me. The frustration built until there was nothing left for me to do but make my pen gush everything and anything out.

Click. Click. Click!

Angle. My angle. What could it be?

Click. Click. Click!

A girl in dark pants, shit-kickers, and blue streaks in her chocolate hair walked in the front door.

My stomach clenched and my finger paused at the top of the pen. There it was, over the girl’s shoulder.

My angle.

My pen hit the paper, and the ink flowed.

Jock. Big-boned. Broad shoulders. Tall. Runs fingers through hair as though he’s attractive and knows it. Walks into party like he has all the time in the world, slow but oddly graceful. Ears look like they’ve had a serious clubbing. Lashes like a girl’s, long and dark—suggesting his blond hair is unnatural. Laugh lines around the mouth, a deep crack in his skin where a dimple might be. Casual jeans, dark green T-shirt, beat-up leather jacket. Bag slung over shoulder. Black, non-descript. Wears so much Axe body spray, it’s detectable across the room.

His gaze clasps on a male making out in the foyer. Hurt flashes in his eyes. A raw, pained look. But he swallows it back as if he doesn’t care. Or isn’t entirely surprised by what he’s seeing. He stops in front of the slighter male who has his tongue locked in—

I pushed my glasses further up my nose. Huh.

—another guy’s mouth.

I paused my pen on the page as I stared for a moment. Then My Angle spoke, and I was back to pushing the pen. I shouldn’t have left my recorder at home. And I really should take a shorthand-writing course.

“Wow. I really do always go for the wrong person.” His voice was heavy and creamy, edged with the same hurt his eyes reflected.

The slighter man, long bangs swept over his forehead, pulled out of his kiss, looking to My Angle and then glancing to the side, toward my brown canvas shoes. Reproachfully, as if My Angle were the one in the wrong, he said, “What are you doing here?”

“What are you?”

“I was going to tell you,” Long Bangs said.

The music grew louder, and I slipped down a step to hear them better. My Angle glanced at me briefly, his jaw twitching. Green eyes.

“Well, Chris, seems now you don’t have to.”

I transcribed the rest of the argument, the idea for the column piece articulating in my mind. Yes. It would be about breaking the illusion that college parties are superficial. Raw, real, uncensored emotion lived here. I’d call it University of Party, Lectures in Life.

A thrill rushed through me as I envisioned the column, complete with insignia in the form of a keg.

I clapped my notebook shut and zipped it in the inside pocket of my jacket. My pen went back to my pocket, and I strode out of there, leaving the party, the booze, and the breakup behind me.

I had my angle. I was done.

I sucked in the fresh night air and made my way down Shady Ave. A few drunken students roamed the street, some dressed in black and yellow, cheering for the Pirates; others—like myself—quietly slipped through the shadows.

At the lights on the corner of Shady and Fifth, someone stumbled to my side. He was a guy about my age, with dark coppery spiked-up hair and much higher cheekbones than mine. He smoothed his tight, net T-shirt to his flat stomach. “Could I borrow your glasssses?”