“I’m going this way.” I point to my right. “Patrick and Ellie’s dorm is that way.” I point to my left. “I’ll see you when I see you.”
I walk away as Madison cries, “How the hell do you know what dorm they’re in?”
“You told me,” I lie.
“Pretty sure I didn’t.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I walk out, breathe in the warm fall air, and approach Alex.
“Those things’ll kill ya,” I remark as he takes a drag of his vape. I don’t wait to be invited before I sit down across from him like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He doesn’t reply for a long moment, just takes me in. I do the same.
His wavy black hair is a couple inches longer than he’ll wear it in the future; his brown eyes are warm and rich in the light of the sun. His skin is a few shades darker than my own, probably because he does things like sit outside reading on Saturday afternoons.
The right side of his mouth curves up in something that is not quite a smile. “That so?”
“Vaper’s lung is no joke.”
“Vaper’s lung,” he repeats, trying it out.
“It’s like smoker’s lung only less cool.”
“I’ll have to look into that,” he says, closing his book and setting hisvape on top. He regards me like I’m a puzzle to figure out.Ha. Good luck, buddy.
“There won’t be much written about it for a few years. But you can trust me.”
“You pre-med or something?” he asks, leaning forward. His eyes gleam with intrigue.
Oh, there’s a shade of Alex I’m familiar with. Alex the flirt.
I never noticed when we were younger, but he looks a few years older than he actually is, five-o’clock shadow in full force. He would probably have no problem getting into a bar with a bad fake ID.
“Or something,” I say.
“So psychic, then,” he says.
Ignoring him, I push forward. “It’s really rude of you to vape here, right outside our windows. Secondhand smoke and all.”
“Smoke?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Secondhand vapor,” I amend lamely.
“Are you asking me to leave?” he asks. I shrug, because now that I’m down here, sitting in front of this boy who hasn’t actually, technically,doneanything to me yet, telling him to leave feels a bit harsh. In my silence, he begins to gather his things. I glance down at his book and groan: It’s1Q84by Haruki Murakami. Of course it is. “God, youwouldspend your Saturday reading Murakami.”
He pauses and perks up. “You like Murakami?”
Does liking movie adaptations of his short stories count as liking Murakami? Because other than that, my only Murakami experience is that, while I was dating a guy who liked him, I picked up one of his books, made it fifty pages in, and gave up.
And the movie adaptations I liked haven’t come out yet.
“Not at all.”
“Oh,” he says, sounding only slightly disappointed.
“The women he writes tend to be plot devices to help the men on their journeys,” I say, recalling a criticism I read online to assure myself it was okay to DNF a modern literary classic.
“Possibly a fair point. I’ll take that into consideration.”
