My dreaded Instrumentation class takes place in the University of Oklahoma City’s Department of Meteorology. One of the newest buildings on the otherwise aged campus, the Meteorology Hub looms both tall and long, copious amounts of glass coupled with brick. I elbow my way through the double doors that lead directly down to the main lecture hall, already packed with just under eighty Meteorology students. Our programme is small but prestigious. We started with full lecture halls of two hundred plus freshmen, and in unfortunately typical STEM major fashion, have come down to fewer than a hundred seniors getting ready to graduate this coming spring. Like most science-basedmajors, rough weed-out classes, and later on, upperclassman research projects, are designed to thin out the crowd.
I toss my bag in front of me and push my seat in the third row with an overly dramatic squeak. At first, I think it’s the fact that I’ve come in rattling and thudding that causes a couple of people to glance my way.
But as I unzip the backpack and pull my laptop and tablet from the big pocket, stragglers from the row ahead of mine start to turn around with not-so-hidden looks that’d make you think I’d sprouted horns.What the hell?
Before I can even start to theorize about what’s going on, Dr Stearns starts the lecture with a curt, ‘Good morning,’ and the class starts scribbling down notes. I replay all my movements from the last twenty-four hours. What could I have done? Practice. Chores. Bar. Home. And now class. No room for committing any serious crimes.
I make it through Stearns’s monotone lecture before packing up my stuff at the end of the fifty minutes, hustling out of my row to avoid any more weird stares. Unfortunately, I’m not fast enough.
‘May!’ Hailey, one of the girls in my research lab team, rushes towards me. I have a great amount of respect for Hailey Marrero, who rightfully earned her nickname ‘Hailstorm’ by driving straight into an EF-2 tornado and capturing some sick data for the lab while she was at it. The look of surprise on Hailey’s face right now, though, doesn’t look to have anything to do with research. ‘I can’t believe it. You know, he’s basically alegendout here …’
‘Who?’ I feel my jaw go slack and my legs go numb as I start to register just what might be going on. ‘What?’
‘Girl, you didthat,’ gushes Hailey. ‘You guys aresocute.’ She turns her phone my way, and my horror is pretty damn immediate.
On the screen is a shaky video clip from last night. Colt and I kick and step to ‘Copperhead Road’ and, as the dance ends, he holds his hands up, and we high-five. Except that our high-five turns into a moment. I don’t remember the elongated period for which our hands stay in one another’s, and I definitely don’t remember our eyes meeting the way they do in this video, but they must have, because it’s unmistakable. And clearly, to everyone else, the eye contact wasn’t the only thing that was unmistakable.
Unfortunate. The man could have chemistry with a plank of wood.
‘That’s not—’
‘Can’t wait to see him cheer you on at the game tonight!’ Hailey grins, waving as she walks around me to leave the lecture hall.
Oh, no.
It takes me a moment to get my bearings, but as soon as I do, I rush out of the Meteorology Hub and immediately call Jordan. This cannot be happening.
My heart thuds against my sternum. The dial tone drones.Pick up. Pick up.
There’s a crackle, and then my friend’s voice, no hi, no hello, just, ‘You didn’ttell me?’
‘Jor, Iswear, it’s nothing—’
‘Oh, girl, it sure looks like something, and I’m afraid the entire internet seems to think so.’ There’s a heavy pause before she speaks again. ‘You gotta talk to him, dude. This is going to blow back on him, too.’
‘Onhim?’
‘May … you gotta understand. Whatever you’re feeling right now – pissed, confused – that’s probably also what he’s feeling. And as much as you don’t like the guy, it’s not fair to leave him to deal with that PR mess on his own. Y’all have to decide how you’ll take care of this.’
Jordan and her big mouth. Sadly, she’s as wise as she is yap-happy. I groan, tossing the phone in a pocket of my jacket and popping in an earbud while I walk to my next class. ‘He’s got PR people. This is gonna be my mess to clean up, not his.’
‘They’ll clean up the mess,’ says Jordan with a sigh, ‘but they definitely won’t clean up whatever feelings were obviously running loose in that video, May.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘I amnotkidding.’ I can practically see my friend’s interventionist expression, eyes wide and brows raised inI-told-you-so, lips pursed. ‘We’ll debrief at practice. See you later, girl.’
‘See you.’ As I queue up my spring playlist, I try to tell myself this will blow over just like everything does in this flat, stormy state. Unfortunately, every attempted reassurance only makes me realize just how wrong I am, and how right Jordan is. Wedefinitelyneed to talk.
The first words out of Colt’s mouth when I run into him before the game are, ‘Coach told me about your season.’
To be honest, that’s not what I expected to hear. I stop dead in my tracks in the hall of the dingy locker room built outside the field.
He clears his throat awkwardly and shifts the cones he’s holding to set out for warm-up from arm to arm. ‘She told meabout last season. Your place on the team. The scholarship. Her looking to get you a spot on the MLL. All that stuff.’
I make a mental note to terrorize my coach about this later. For now, it’s damage control. The things that happened during my junior season were more than just a bad run. I’d rather it didn’t make the rounds. I’dreallyrather this guy had never found out. And as for the MLL … what Coach wants is one thing. What I want, I don’t even know. ‘How much did she tell you?’ I ask through gritted teeth.
‘Only that.’ He looks confused but plods on. ‘The thing is … May, I’m willing to do whatever you want to do about this.’ He gestures between the two of us.This. ‘Your career is the priority here. You know?’
