Harper sat back in his seat a little, giving Banks a gentle once over.His strong, compact body, that firm chin, those hollowed cheeks, the dirty blond curls beneath one of the Piedmont Panthers ball caps they’d all been handed on the way into freshman orientation that morning.
“Guess not,” Harper surmised.“I mean, not if you remember.”
“I remember,” Banks confessed, avoiding Harper’s eyes as he reached for his clear plastic cup of black cold brew.“It was hard to read the names of some of the bands on your t-shirts, with the flannel flopping over this way and that, but every once in a while, I’d catch one and listen to them when I got home later that day.”
Harper nearly fell out of his chair.“Bull.Actual.Shit.Banks!”
They shared a conspiratorial chuckle, the café mostly empty as the day dwindled along with the coffee in their cups and the campus, all but deserted outside the big plate glass window by their table.“I’m serious.There was this one, Shadow Puppets?”
Harper arched his eyebrows, impressed.“Go on...”
“I liked that one song they did, Axe Face?”
Harper snorted with sheer mirth.“Hatchet Head?”he prompted, still impressed.
Banks enthused as if they were sharing dueling sports stats during Fantasy Football season.“That one!With the guitar solo, it was like three minutes long.And there were some other groups I got off your shirts, with decent enough songs.I made a little playlist from them, used to listen to it when I worked out.”
“Wowza.”Harper sat back, truly amazed, struggling to picture Banks, sweaty and fatigued, muscles straining as the guitar solo from a metal banger like “Hatchet Head” pounded his poor little jock eardrums.“This is ...mind blowing.”
Banks was vaguely blushing, lips turned up in an almost secretive smile.“It’s funny, I just ...remembered that.Just now.I haven’t listened to that playlist in months, not since we graduated, maybe not even since last football season ended but...”His voice trailed off, their eyes meeting furtively over the cluttered table between them.“I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Was it a secret?”Harper knew what Banks meant.Or, at least,hopedhe did.He just wanted to hear his old classmate say it out loud.
Banks didn’t hesitate to nod.“Yeah, kind of.I mean, the other guys would ask what I was listening to, and I’d pretend like I discovered it on my own.”
Harper was suddenly enjoying himself.“So, you’re a musical plagiarist then?”
Banks smirked, not really laughing.“Kind of.It just would have been awkward to explain that I watched your t-shirts every morning in Mrs.Harmon’s Social Justice class, that’s all.”
“You could have said something, Banks.”Harper marveled at the revelation, wondering how his life might have been different, in so many ways, if Banks had merely said something to him in all those years.
“Shit, with your headphones in and a stupid comic book in front of your face at all times?You didn’t just wear a disguise back then, Harp.You built a brick wall around yourself and carried it with you everywhere you went.”
Harper started to protest, an almost automatic response when his mother said the very same thing over breakfast most mornings.Then he stopped himself.This wasn’t his mother.It wasn’t even the old Banks, the Banks he thought he knew.“I suppose,” he admitted, perhaps even to himself.
“You weren’t always like that, though.”
Harper merely shook his head.“No, Banks.I wasn’t.”
“Or maybe you were, inside?You always were aloof, but you at least dressed mainstream until you quit swimming.”
Harper glanced up, as if reading his coffee companion’s face for hidden clues.“I was leaning that way before swimming ended,” he admitted, if vaguely.“But quitting just kind of shoved me all the way in that direction.”
Banks paused only briefly before asking the inevitable.“Whydidyou quit, anyway?”
Harper chuckled.“We don’t know each other like that, Banks.”
Banks smirked, little dimples popping out in his smooth, jock cheeks as he leaned slightly forward, all compact muscles and stretched sinews and nearly inescapable charm.“Not yet, Harper.”
Harper merely shrugged.He was at war with himself, struggling not to fall for this surprisingly quick, witty, observant, revelatory jock in the clingy rugby shirt and sexy ball cap.“Still...”
