“A sandwich,” I automatically reply.
He chuckles. “Of course, why did I even ask?” He grasps my hand and we walk out to his car.
He drives down toward the beach and we stop at sandwich shop to pick up some food. I feel so self-conscious dressed up in an informal restaurant. Everyone is eyeing us and I know they are talking about us amongst themselves. I’m relieved to take our food and leave instead of eating there.
When we get back to Cole’s house, he walks me back home so we can eat. I’m really happy that Cole is making an effort to make himself comfortable at my house. We greet everyone that is hanging back in the living room and take our food into the kitchen. After setting up our food at the counter, I change my mind and tell him to follow my lead as I lead him to the outside patio. There is a look of relief on his face.
“Sorry, I wanted more privacy while we ate. It felt a little weird having them watch us,” I tell him.
“I’m grateful,” he admits. “I’m not used to the whole ‘meeting the parents’ routine. It feels strange.”
“Yeah, I got the impression,” I tease him before sinking my teeth into my Asiago Roast Beef sandwich. “Mm…almost as good as your sandwich.” I watch as his dark eyes twinkle at my remark.
We sit in comfortable silence for the rest of our meal. And then I sit back, stuffed and just stare into the night for awhile before Cole remarks, “So, first day back at school tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I huff out. “Don’t remind me. But at least it’s senior year. It’s almost over,” I encourage myself, like the ‘Little Engine that Could’, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
“What’s your schedule like?”
“Um… Let’s see. I have AP English, Calculus and World History this semester. No fourth period but on Mondays and Thursdays, starting next week, I have to drive across town for a college art class at three o’clock. And its volleyball season right now, games start this Friday so I have to meet up with the girls for practice at least twice this week.” I sigh out a huff. It sounds like a lot but it’s really not. I didn’t even tell him about the school clubs I belong to or that swimming starts next month. He doesn’t know that most of my nights are free. “What about your schedule,” I tease him and push his leg with my foot because he is staring at the ground in deep thought.
He chuckles lightly. “Not as complicated as yours.” He ticks off his fingers as he tells me, “A freshman class, um, a sophomore class, a junior class, and I think a senior class.”
I laugh at his joke. “Wow! Sounds tough. How are we ever going to have time for us?”
I walk over to him and sit in his lap, resting my head on his chest.
“I don’t know. That’s what I was thinking.”
“We’ll have the afternoon and nights and weekends and school breaks,” I assure him. “Also, I will be practicing with Mrs. Senett on Wednesdays, during her freshman class, so we’ll see each other then. Though not like this.” I take his hand and start playing with our fingers, entwining and untwining them.
“You’re right. We’ll have plenty of time,” he admits with relief and I nod my head in agreement.
“Oh, and we have astronomy club on Friday nights. You should volunteer. Alex loves your telescope and you know so much about it,” I gush.
Instead of answering he just replies, “So, Friday nights are a no date night?”
“We don’t meet every Friday. I usually have a game that night that ends around seven, so Fridays are still good. And who says we have to wait till Friday to go out?”
His smile grows big. “Good.” He hugs me tighter to him before telling me, “I got to head out. I’m beat.”
I extract myself unwilling from his lap and walk him to the door in silence. When I have the front door open for him he turns to me and gives me a quick, sweet kiss that holds everything he wants the kiss to be but doesn’t feel comfortable portraying in front of my family. “Good night,” we whisper to each other and then he is gone. And I go to my room to get ready for bed and tomorrow.
Chapter 9
School starts in a fury of greetings, gushings, and acknowledgments that we are final seniors. Everywhere I go all I hear is, “Oh, my gosh, how are you,” “how was your summer,” “you cut your hair,” and “can you believe we’re seniors now.” It’s rather comical, how cliché it is.
Almost as soon as Alex and I get to school, I see Cole talking to Mrs. Senett in the hall outside their classroom. I smile to him and he smiles back with a nod and a little wave.
“Who’s the new guy?” My friend Clara walks up beside me and nods her head in the direction of Cole.
“He’s not a student,” I inform her, trying to hide the possession and jealousy in my voice. “He’s a new teacher and our new neighbor.” I keep it simple. No intimate knowledge. Just speaking the bare minimum facts.
“Is he the one…” she swings her fingers back and forth directing a connection between the two of us.
I freeze mid-step as she stumbles in her walk to come back over to me. “How…” I start to ask her how she knew.
But she sees the fear on my face. That I’m worried the story will get out. She cuts me off. “Don’t worry,” she consoles me. “No one is talking about it publicly.” She sees my next question written on my face and answers, “Nathaniel and Hope overheard Alex and Kaitlyn talking about it the other night. Don’t worry. It’s only our group that knows.” She refers to at least fifteen people in our inner circle of friends. My mouth drops open. “Don’t freak, please.” Clara cringes as my face turns a mean shade of red. “Really, hon, no one will purposefully give the two of you away. We’re your friends.”
I breathe a small sigh of relief. She’s right. Besides we all know so much dirt on each other that if one of us let a secret out, all the secrets would pour out. Clara links her arm with mine. “Come on. Let’s get this first day over with.” She pulls me to class, talking nonstop about a new guy she met at the beach.
We ignore the guys who catcall out to us. Men are so immature. When I was a freshman the guys were relentlessly slapping my butt in the hallways. I learned fast that if you hit them upside the head with a five hundred page history book, they’ll back off. It doesn’t stop them from calling you licentious names from across the hall though.
Ethan comes up to us as we are about to walk into our English class and gives us both a pinch in the butt. Clara squeals at him and I swing my bag around and hit him in the gut, making him release a gush of air with a grunt. My guy friends apparently haven’t learned a lesson about it yet. Clara laughs at him and we walk into the classroom as Ethan continues down the hall rubbing his stomach.
*
The rest of the school day goes by pretty normally. The routine was nice. At lunch I had bought some cafeteria food and went straight to Mr. MacBay’s AP World History classroom for our first history club meeting and we decide to study the dark ages until next quarter, picking up where we left off last year which was ancient civilization. This year we would cover the fall of Rome up to the Plantagenet reign in England.
Most of my friends dread history, correlating it to a math class full of only a bunch of memorization of dates and landmarks instead of equations and theories. But I love the aspect of imagining how life was like back then. I often daydream of the beautiful dresses of all the periodic times, watching beautiful monuments being erected, listening to the voices and cadences of normal speech and walking the streets of busy markets. I think I would like the simplicity of the old world living to the hectic way the world has become now.
After the World history class is over I leave to go home, making sure to pass by the music classroom and glance through the window as I pass by. I note that Cole is doing exactly what he said he was going to end up doing. He’s walking through the seated students, listening to them practice and tuning their instruments when he hears one that needs adjusting. He looks so bored. I wonder for the millionth time why he would choose this career choice when h
e had such a promising one before.
Mrs. Senett is conducting at the front of the class. Her eyes are closed as her hands wave to the tempo of the music. That woman is loony.
“Hey, Lexi.” Ollie walks up to me after I walked away from the music classroom. I hope he didn’t see my interest in the class even though it was just a quick glance, I would hate to start the rumor mill on the first day of school.
“Hi, Ollie. How have you been?”
Ollie gives me his dimpled smile. “Good. Good.” He looks at the floor bashfully. “How about you?”
“Things have been great,” I say with a satisfied sigh.
His smile melts a bit. “That’s good to hear.” I should have said good. I hate the fact that I flirted with him one day and then started seeing someone the next. I feel like a monster at this moment.
I try to bring the subject back to him. “How do you like the American schools?” I tease him.
His smile brightens a little bit. “They’re… different.”
I’m getting frustrated at this back and forth, short dialogue. This isn’t how Ollie and I were before. “Why does this feel awkward?”
Ollie laughs. “Yeah, it is.”
There is uncomfortable silence for a few heartbeats before we both start talking at the same time. Ollie starts to say, “I’m sorry about…,” while I tell him, “I’m going to head…”
“I’m sorry, go ahead,” Ollie tells me.
“No, you first.”
“I just wanted to apologize for my behavior at your house, the day of the party. I thought we had hit it off pretty well and you told me you weren’t seeing anyone and…”
“Ollie, don’t,” I stop him. “I admit I may have led you on. And under different circumstances…that sounds really bad.” I cover my face with one hand before I continue, “I think you are such a sweetheart and I have fun hanging out with you and talking to you but I get the friend vibe when we are together…”
“I feel something more.” Ollie takes my hand from my face and holds it between us.
I stare down at our hands for a minute before removing my hand from his. “I have to go, Ollie.” I walk past him and call out, “I do hope we can hang out sometime.”
I roll my eyes at myself as I walk out of the school and to my car. Way to go Lexi. That’s how you make it clear to a guy. I’m such an idiot!
*
I’m so tired when I get home from the stress and anxiety of the first day back at school that I abandon my calculus homework for passing out on my bed facedown. When I wake up at an unknown amount of time later, I feel something warm pressed up against the side of me. I lift my head and turn to see someone lying in the same position as I am with their face turned to me. It’s Cole.
I turn onto my side so I can press my body closer to him and I give his shoulder a kiss before lying my head back down.
“Is it morning already?” His voice is sluggish from sleep and his eyes remain closed.
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s still afternoon,” I answer him.
He drapes his arm around me and finally opens one eye to check the time on his watch. “It’s only five thirty?” He sounds really exhausted. He turns onto his side and pulls me in. I rest my head on his arm and we just lay there for a little while. “This is nice,” he finally breaks the silence.
“Mm…hmm,” I agree.
He stretches his arms above his head and rocks his body up out of the bed. “How was school?” he gives me a teasing smile like he thinks it’s so funny that I’m still in high school.
“Good. Routine. The usual,” I reply in monosyllables. I don’t really have much to say about a process that was a simple routine and drama free. I also don’t want to scare him off by informing him that at least fifteen people know about us. “I smell mom’s cooking.” I deeply breathe in the aroma of chicken. “Want to stay for dinner?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “If your parents don’t mind.”
“My parents never mind,” I instruct him. We take off to eat dinner with my parents and Alex.
It seems really successful for Cole’s first time eating with us. My parents bombard him with questions and he answers them with sincere politeness. The only questions that he is resistant to answer are ones about his past, but after I inform my parents that his parents have passed away, they stay clear of further inquiries about his history.
Cole leaves after dinner, unwillingly, but I have to push him out so I can get my homework for the week out of the way. I’m not the type of person who spreads completing a task over several days or waiting to the last minute. If I can, I’ll finish it all in one night because I never know what the rest of the week will hold.
I finish my calculus homework and my English and World History papers by midnight. Then, I quickly take a shower and get ready for bed.
*
I enjoy the rest of the week by hanging out with Cole between volleyball practices. We seem to have settled into a nice routine. When he gets out of work he comes over to hang out or we go somewhere. On Friday night he comes to watch my first volleyball game and cheers me, or my team, on as he sits with some of the school’s other faculty members that have come out to the game.
After winning the game, he takes me out for some congratulations ice cream and we walk the boardwalk, enjoying the fact that the tourist season is dying down. That weekend we hang out at his house and by Monday morning I realize that I haven’t seen much of Alex or my other friends in the past week. I apologize to Alex and try to make up excuses when we are on our way to school on Monday.
“Its okay, Lexi,” Alex assures me. “Don’t you remember how me and Kaitlyn were when we first started dating?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I mumble, remembering being mad the first couple of weeks as my two best friends in the entire world had abandoned me for each other.
“Eventually, you guys will steady it out and you won’t want to spend so much time together. You’ll need an escape,” Alex says knowingly. I just nod my head in agreement.
*
Tuesday, I leave school and head towards one of the local community college’s campuses for my art class. I am so excited to start a college art course! The high school’s program is too mediocre for me. I have to hide my cringe when I see my peers’ artwork and then feel guilty when they compare theirs to mine. But now I’ll be in classes with others who are at the same level as me, learning more complicated techniques than the high school teachers can provide.
When I get to the class, several other students are already present, collecting supplies from the art closet and setting up at a few of the drafting tables. I look around the room and notice the professor isn’t there yet but there are instructions on the whiteboard to pick up a new sketch book and some pencils and erasers. This class is drawing 121, that means I won’t get the chance to paint this semester, which is disappointing, but it was a requisite to start with this class before jumping into a 200 series class.
I gather the needed supplies and pick a table no one else has sat at yet. I’m hoping the people that are already here are the only ones in this class and I can have the table to myself.
I glance around at the others, who are already sketching on the first page of their new book. There is only five other students in here besides me. They are a range of different ages, me obviously the youngest, two look like they just got out of high school, there is a military guy about twenty-five years old (he’s in a uniform), and the other two students look like they are in their thirties.
I start to pick up my pencil and start a sketch when I notice someone has walked through the door. I look up in interest and then my mouth drops open when I recognize who it is. He walks into the room and over to the computer desk at the front of the room. Everyone looks up expectantly as they realize our professor has walked into the classroom. He looks around at his students and then his eyes settle on me, like he was expecting to see me, which I guess he could have been since he has a class roster.
He turns around and addresses the class, “I am Mr. Kakabel.” He makes the point to distinguish the pronunciation of his name slowly, making sure people understand to call him ka-kabel with the second a sounding like ay and not a. “I will be instructing you on the different methods and techniques of drawing for the next eight weeks. As I’m sure you are well aware of, this class also meets on Thursdays and the duration of the classes will last two hours instead of the usual one.” He pauses to make sure no one dissents. “Every artist starts with a sketch before turning it into a painting or sculpture. We will begin with the rudimentary ‘fruit bowl’ sketch, focusing on lighting before moving to the human body by the end of the semester. Your final will be graded on your attention to details, spatial illusions and the ability to create a two-dimensional space on your drawing of the human body.”
He places a full fruit bowl on a stool centered in the front of the class. “You may begin,” he instructs and then moves to his desk. He turns on the projector and starts to draw the same fruit bowl from his perspective. The drawing is projected on the white board and he talks about different techniques as he demonstrates them to us in his drawing. The class gets busy on their own drawings, looking up from time to time to watch one of his demonstrations.
After forty-five minutes, he gets up and walks around the class, giving each student tips and advice on their drawings. He comes behind me and watches while I shade some outlines with my finger, but doesn’t say anything to me. Then, he proceeds to the front of the class and removes the fruit bowl, replacing it with a bouquet of daisies before starting his previous instructions over again, providing the class with new tips and techniques.
This time when he makes his way through the students, he remarks to me, “You don’t even have to try, do you?” He doesn’t say it in begrudging way but as if he is pleased.
Lunangelique (The Lunangelique Series) Page 10