“Your parents must have whopping empty-nest syndrome with all four of you away now, huh?”
“It’s just my father at home. My mother died when we were all pretty young. A brain aneurysm. Totally random. No way to see it coming.” Chris sits up, and his shadow travels across my stomach. “So we have something in common.”
“Dead mothers.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “Dead mothers.”
So he understood what was happening to me while we were standing in the water together. That was the connection that I felt.
“I’m glad that we don’t have dead fathers in common,” I say. “At least you still have one parent.”
He says nothing. I roll onto my side and tuck up my knees, and Chris does the same so that we are facing each other. I don’t shy away from studying him, letting my eyes travel over his body. I am relaxed, thoroughly relaxed. And exhausted. I drowsily ask him anything that I can think to ask because I want to keep him talking. His voice is soothing and beautiful, and his face is all I see as I drift off.
I sleep without dreaming, and when I wake up, Chris is still beside me, leaning back onto his elbows and looking out at the water. Slowly I sit up and he smiles at me.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” I busy myself with brushing sand off my jeans and redoing the knot holding my hair back so that he can’t see how embarrassed I am. It’s disorienting to have zonked out so completely. “How long was I asleep?”
“A few hours.”
“A few what?” Oh my God. “I’m sorry. You didn’t have to sit here while I slept. I’m sure you have things to do.”
Chris shakes his head. “Why would I want to leave? Beautiful day, happily snoozing girl? Did you sleep well?”
“I did.” It’s an almost nonexistent occurrence, and I am positive that I slept so peacefully because of Chris. Asking him to sit next to me every night so that I can sleep without nightmares is probably unreasonable.…
“Know what?”
“What?”
Chris bounces up so that he is looming above me. “I’m fucking starving.”
“Oh. Okay.” I squint up at him. He likes to curse, too. “I should probably get going, too.”
His hand stretches down to me. “Let’s go to lunch. I know a great place. Actually, that’s not true. It’s not a great place, but it’s an interesting place.” He picks up my backpack as he grabs my hand and pulls me to standing. “You’ve got to be hungry, too. It’s way past lunchtime and I bet you didn’t eat breakfast.”
He’s right, and I am starving, but I’m hesitant to push this day anymore. The safety that I feel with him by the lake can’t possibly hold up if we leave. “I don’t know. I have studying to do, and—”
“Nonsense. C’mon.” He pulls me forward and then drops my hand as he again walks backward.
Our walk back toward campus is quiet, but not awkward. It’s a rare thing to be with another person and not feel an obligation to fill every second with talk. Chris shoves his hands in his pockets and lifts his head into the sunlight as we stroll. Eventually the local businesses come into view, and he points to a blue flag waving in the slight breeze. “Have you eaten here? You must have, of course. Everyone has.”
I look up. Artemis Piccola. I shake my head. “Odd name for a restaurant. No. I haven’t been here.”
The truth is that I rarely leave campus. My life follows a direct path from one place to another with virtually no wandering, except for nights that I get drunk enough to want a second party that might have more booze. Dorm to class, class to the cafeteria, back to the dorm, a quick trip to the library when vitally necessary, a stop at the union for coffee. If there’s no keg involved, I’m not one to linger or stray. Well, until today. Today I am breaking all the rules.
“What? You’ve never been here?” Christopher’s jaw might as well have fallen open. “Good Lord, girl, we need to fix that right away. This is practically a rite of passage. You certainly can’t graduate this spring if you haven’t eaten here. C’mon. I’m buying you lunch.” He swings open the door and waves me through the entrance.
After grabbing a menu from the rack on the wall, he leads the way through the maze of tables. The way that he moves is clean, almost stealthy, and soon we are sitting at a table buried at the back of the restaurant. The room is all wood and brick with no windows, and it’s incredibly dark despite the perfect weather outside. The hard bench that I sit on gives me a good view of the space, but because I have my back to a wall, Christopher has only me to look at. I spend a full minute wishing we were sitting in opposite seats.
He holds the menu in his lap and smiles playfully at me. “So, Miss Blythe, what part of the world would you like to visit today?”
What is he asking me? I assume I am missing out on a joke that most people would get. “I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.” I feel incredibly awkward.
“Pick a country. Where would you like to go?”
For God’s sake, I barely leave my dorm room on most days, so the idea of foreign travel is not exactly at the top of my fantasies. “Greece?”
