“Yeah, the ‘funniest person I know’ club.”
“Oh, right.” I shrug. “Okay.”
Getting right back to the subject at hand, she asks, “What’d they say?” I start to speak, but she interrupts with “Then what did you say?”
I pause for a second to be sure she’s going to let me respond. “They called asking for Maxwell Quinn….”
“You already said that.” Gesturing wildly for me to get on with it, she adds, “What else?”
“I was half asleep.”
She squeaks. “Do you think they were calling from the UK?”
“No idea. But”—this is going to blow. Her. Mind—“they were shirtless.”
Slapping my arm, hard, she shouts, “Shut up! Were they built? How large were their arms?”
“Ouch.” Stepping back out of harm’s way, I nod. Patsy has a thing for muscly arms, but if she’d heard their sexy English accent, she’d have gone bananas. “I think they had nice arms. I’m not sure. I was only on the line with them for a couple of minutes. Enough for them to figure out I wasn’t the person they were seeking.” Far from it.
Moving closer, she places her hand on my forearm. “Oh. Em. Gee.”
Her excitement is getting me excited, sort of. Well, as excited as one can get at seven thirty in the morning. On the morning of my first biology class.
Ugh, science.
“Did you get their number?” she asks, chewing on her unpainted middle fingernail. I should offer to do her nails sometime. It’s the least I could do to thank her for letting me live here.
I’m sure I could call them back if I looked at the recent call log, but “Why?”
“Just curious.” She shrugs. “Maybe we could drink some wine sometime and call them back.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“So?” Her bottom lip juts out just a bit. “I can look.”
“Sure, sure. You can look. But there’s no way I’m calling them back. As soon as they realized their mistake, they hung up.” Abruptly. They took one look at my messy head of hair and heard my croaking sleepy voice and wanted nothing to do with me. I shrug again. I can’t blame them. I’m scary with bedhead.
“Still.” Taking a bite of her breakfast, she smirks. “It’d be fun.”
“Uh-huh.” Checking my watch, I realize I’m going to be late for my first class. “Gotta go. See you later.” I grab my bag and start for the front door.
“Think about it,” Patsy shouts after me.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.”Not.
* * *
Once I’mout the door, I pull the keys from the zipper pocket on my backpack and unlock the trunk of my scooter to get to my helmet. I smile down at my awesome wheels made possible by my oldest brother, Steve, who’s extremely talented when it comes to mechanical things. He rebuilt it from the frame up on the cheap. I’ve dubbed my moped Frankenscooter since it’s made up of a bunch of parts from other scooters. It’s also multicolored for the same reason. The gas tank is lime green, the frame is red, the seat is a dirty shade of white, and the trunk, the place that holds my helmet, is yellow. It’s a mishmash of lots of things, and that’s okay. Me and Frankenscooter understand one another. We’re both misfits. And thanks to my big brother’s talents, I’m not forced to ride Cy-Ride, our city bus system, every day. Don’t get me wrong, Cy-Ride is a great option on rainy and snowy days, but it takes twice as long to get places on the bus.
Placing my helmet on my head, I press it down onto my topknot hard enough to latch the chin strap in place. With the key in the ignition, I press the Start button and silently pray that it will turn over. When it purrs to life, I smile and head off to my first and favorite class of the day, Ceramics 2. I take the neighborhood streets to campus to avoid Lincoln Way, Ames’s main thoroughfare. This time of the morning, it’ll be packed with people trying to get to work and class. Taking the back way will save me time in the long run, which is good since I spent extra time talking to Patsy this morning. I don’t want to be late or else someone will snag my favorite potter’s wheel. I learned that the hard way last spring when I took Introduction to Ceramics. And we can’t have that.
I get lucky and find a spot right in the ISU Design Center parking lot. That never happens, trust me. Stowing my helmet, I jog down the back ramp that leads to the shipping dock, a shortcut to the basement where the ceramics classes are held. Well, lots of art classes are held on the lowest level, including painting, jewelry making, textiles, and woodworking. It’s a hub of artistic-ness. Wait. That’s not a word.
It’s official, my brain is mush. Probably due to that phone call last night.
As I grab a few things from my locker that sits only a few doors down from my classroom, I pause to give those guys one last thought. How can you blame me? The two men on the screen were gorgeous, but the one who did most of the talking was the hottest. In all of my twenty-one years, I’ve never seen anyone like him. Okay, maybe on the cover of a fitness magazine or a romance book. I only saw him from the chest up, but that’s all I needed to give me a lifetime’s worth of material for any future fantasies. He was blond and tan. His eyes seemed like they were light, almost golden. He also had a big toothy smile the entire time that made me speechless. In a word, the man was perfect.
That’s enough!There’s no room in my life forthatfantasy man. I’ve already got one of those. Andhelives in Ames. Nope, I need to get my head out of the clouds and into class.
