CHAPTER 2

FOUR YEARS AGO

"Are you going to show up at Mr. Freyer's class?" Carrie was sitting on the couch beside me, running her fingers down her golden auburn hair. She looked like a Disney princess done right.

"Is he going to give another sermon on John Donne? Because all man now is an island," I rolled my eyes when Carrie shot me a look. She gets boisterous and sassy when it comes to Literature.

Carrie has always been in love with Dante and metaphysical poetry. She wanted to revel in the darkness and the spirituality behind the human existence. She had this constant gleam in her eyes whenever she sits in Mr. Freyer's class like she was in awe or something.

I wanted to ask her what Bertrand Russell once said. Day after day, man is accumulating knowledge, but is the man getting any wiser?

I felt my inner Virginia Woolf fist thumping when I looked at her. What's all this passion for?

Carrie hummed a low growl like a dog in heat, getting all pissed. She ran a finger under her chin as she fought for my soda can. "You know that pale skin, dark-haired guy is also going to be there?" she asked.

"Who guy?" I averted my gaze, suspicious that I've been caught.

"Kid me not, woman," she chided, "I know the way you look at him. Something is definitely fishy. Do you know him or something?"

"Nope. He," I look at her embarrassed, "has the most beautiful eyes. It's just the eyes. I'm not sleeping with him or anything." I mused as if I'm just getting to learn how to get lost in those blue eyes of his. He does have them good.

"That's the thing. It's easy to give away your body sometimes, but, in the matters of the heart one might perish," she lurked around the topic of who shall not be named.

"Anyways, I think I'll make it to class today. What if Mr. Freyer starts on that play I love. . . remember?" She had no clue whatsoever of which play I'm talking about and Carrie was the kind of girl who wanted to know everything. It was easy to see her latch on to something as small as this, and this leading to an incessant buzzing in her head. I drowned in satisfaction.

"What play?" She reprimanded me from her walking down the closet and pulled out a sweater for class. She pushed the head of the sweater down her neck and hummed to distract herself.

"Look back in Anger!" I clapped my hands, full of energy.

"Oh that John Osborne guy?" Carrie divulged like he was some guy she met on a Friday night in some gloomy, local bar and ended up having a one-night-stand with.

"Yeah, what about him?" I gave her a look.

"Nothing. It's just that, that, he's annoying," She picked out her satchel and started combing through the things inside it.

"Not as annoying as John Donne," I ended up picking out my own backpack and putting my notebook inside of it.

"Angelique!"

"Carrie!"

Carrie was tilting her wrist, still as infatuated with her Gucci watch as the first time I met her and thought that she was the most pretentious kid I'll ever meet on campus. Little did I know, she was not even the cherry on the cake. There were a few pompous asses residing down the block with their BMW's and Porsche's.

A message pinged on my cellphone, vibrating the front of my faded denim jacket. I pulled it out and then swiped right to open it.

SETH: Baby please, I deserve one more chance.

I killed my phone's power button and fished for my curriculum books. I threw them inside the backpack that's sitting on the top of my study desk.

"Wanna tell me who texted and he texted what?" Carrie's voice was barely above a whisper.

"No," I let out an exasperated sigh.

"Okay. Let's go to class," Carrie swept the matter under the rug. The thing had already perished in thin air. I pulled on my boots and she locked the apartment on our way out.

"Okay," I silently wrapped arms with her as we made our way in the unknown land of literature and mysterious pale, dark-haired boys.

"Lee, will you stop looking behind your back and concentrate?" Carrie chastised me and I rolled my eyes to the back of the lecture hall. She can't tolerate the rolling of my eyes at her. She was defiant and bossy.

"What are you thinking?" Carrie stalled as the professor was busy scribbling the concepts of romanticism.

"Nothing," I blew out a long breath, wriggling my nose and nervously push loose stands of my hair behind my ears.

"Oh. You're definitely looking for that blue-eyed guy whom you trance eyes with, huh?" She laughed.

"What? I do no such thing! Either you can ask your questions or justify your statements," I rolled my eyes at her this time.

"Girls at the back, yes you two," Mr. Freyer pointed a finger at us. "What's the first structure of romanticism?" Mr. Freyer snapped from the front of the whiteboard holding his black marker in hand. He was thumping the small nozzle of the pen against the board in frustration. He was somewhere in his late- fifties but he's got really good eyesight. He wouldn't let anything fly past him.

We both froze in our respective seats. I twitched my fingers as I stood up just to respect him and form an incoherent sentence about how romanticism works and about the constant fight between good and bad and conscience and everything else. That's all I picked up from my distracted state in today's lecture.

Mr. Freyer shook his head at me and told me to pay attention in class. He went back to lecturing the values related to romanticism. Carrie chuckled in her seat because she never got the burnt of the situation. I gave her a glare and she smirked back.

Before sitting back down at my seat, I took a glance in the back where he was usually seated, but the chair remained vacant, so I sighed and finally averted my attention back to the lecture.

"Lee, will you get me a chai latte? I'll find us a good table," I nodded at Carrie as I looped my fingers in the backpack I was carrying on my back. It suddenly felt heavy. We both just got piled with assignments that we're destined to finish and submit by the end of this week. I came face to face with so many lingering deadlines.

I made my way to the counter in the cafeteria that was inside the university campus. There was a line forming and I somehow got stuck at the very back of the queue. The queue was bustling as well as the cafeteria with lovers, freshers, people who never attended classes, people living in campus dorms, and people who were visiting someone in the college.

A sudden rush flowed through my right shoulder as I jolted my hand in response. I saw my blue linen shirt overflowing with coffee. I started cussing and rubbing the place which felt to be burnt when two strong hands removed them from the point of assault. The broad muscles were taking me away from the queue. I was trying to protest, but before I could, I was being led away from the sea of masses and sweaty bodies and curious eyes in the cafeteria.

Suddenly, as if I was tethering on the verge of conscience and tripping in my own shoes, I also started checking out the guy in front of me. His aqua green shirt touched his upper body in all the right places and his ripped blue jeans accentuated his long, sculpted legs which helped him in taking really large steps.

I was conflicted and astonished why I was letting myself be dragged. As if the tall guy can hear my thoughts, he turned around and I saw that we were already in front of the fountain and he was asking me a question, his fingers still firmly placed on my wrist.

"Are you okay? I'm so sorry, that was some real hot coffee." And it clicked, to be really honest, it has clicked way back when he spilled his coffee cup on my shoulder but it was as if my head was denying the resemblance. It was him. He came. But that didn't mean he got to spill his coffee all over me. Not like this.

Did he know that the Styrofoam cup acts as a thermodynamic insulator and keeps the heat intact? Did he? The fact that this could've resulted in a very serious burn. I bet he didn't.

"Slow down, you may have third-degree burns," he said.

What did he do? My head spirals.

"If this is your way of meeting girls, it's really sore," I say in mock sarcasm.

His lips curled upwards, "I wasn't. I really wasn't trying to meet you in that way. . . and spill my coffee all on your shirt." I saw that he was frazzled. I was enjoying it.

"Here," he handed me his handkerchief to use as a rag and wash my shirt and rid some coffee stains off from it. "Take it please, I'm extremely sorry this happened."

"Oww, it hurts," I tried to investigate my burn from peeking on from the collar.

"Let me see it," his long fingers were now prying and removing the side of my shirt on the edge of my shoulder when he suddenly stopped, looked at me in the eye as if to ask if he may proceed. I held his gaze and let myself drown in those blue balls of burning ice.

"May I?" He asked. I nodded and that took a whole lot of persuasion from my nerves.

He inspected the wound with his long fingers and saw a splatter of red covering my shoulder bone but no air bubbles, "I'm again, extremely sorry. I didn't mean to." He wetted the rag in the water fountain and gently placed it on the wound. He said he'll be back but it was fleeting and the words hung in the air.

"Here, put the ice on the sore area," he said after being gone for three whole minutes.

"Where did you get the ice? I thought they don't give it here," I looked around to see if he was from some legitimate fraternity of guys who rushed their way in through hazing. They were the only ones who have any kind of power to get things done around here.

"I know the guy who controls the cafeteria surge. I told him I needed it urgently and that I spilled my hot coffee over some innocent victim. He figured." His face contorted into a panic smile as he was gesturing the last words. I thought it was cute.

"That feels so good," The iciness numbed the shooting pain in my shoulder when I remembered about Carrie and that I should get back to her. He was holding a Styrofoam cup filled with ice, so I took it. "I'll take this."

"Yeah, are you going to be okay?" He watched me put three blocks of ice in the handkerchief as I rolled it and placed it inside my shirt. I buttoned the third button back.

"I guess so," I tried to smile at him, and turned around to move away from him and back to the cafeteria. "Thanks."

"It was a pleasure. Not the coffee spilling part," he chuckled. "But meeting you."

I just smiled at that, not knowing what to say. I took two steps away when his voice made me stop. "Am I going to see you again?" He asked.

"I guess so," I turned around to flash a confident, flirtatious smile. I saw him running a hand through his messy black hair.

"Where were you, Lee? What happened to you?" she said, pointing at my shirt. "I've been waiting for you. My lunch is almost over. I don't have a free period next." Carrie was looking me up and down, ready to fire her inquisitive questions at me.

"I got sucked in some drama, sorry," I mumbled as I took the seat next to her on the table. I put the backpack down as it was weighing my shoulders down, and took a deep breath.

"What happened to your shoulder? Your shirt looks drenched," She tried to pry my collar down to take a look.

"Yeah, someone spilled their coffee on me," I gently put her fingers away, peering a look at my red shoulder.

"What? You mean hot coffee? Who?" Her mouth opened in an 'O', which she ultimately closed tsk-ing.

"Someone," I whispered, annoyed.

"Actually, I saw him with you. Spill! Wait, he spilled his coffee on you?" Carrie was giving me her tell-me-everything-right-now eyes.

I traced the edges of the table with my shoe, "Uh huh."

"Shit." Carrie gasped.

"Uh huh," I stretched the sentence to a lull when Carrie decided to put her cellphone down again.

"Did something scandalous happen?" She piped up, looking around us.

"Like what?" I started to get frustrated.

"Like he said your first name or made a conversation?" She deadpanned with a straight face.

"You would like that? Wouldn't you?" I narrowed my eyes into slits, lips thinning into a sharp line.

"Yeah, anything more than you breathing the same air as him." Her sassiness was irritating me to no end.

"Well, FYI, we talked. He was sincere," I finally spilled the beans, to get her off my back. I folded my arms, closing on my chest.

"Like he asked how you felt after he spilled his coffee all over you?" Carrie was now slitting her eyes on me, irritated that I won't tell her everything. Her need to control everything knew no bounds.

"Carrie!" I finally broke into her constant glare.

"Lee, be smart," She was back to reprimanding me like a little child like she knew everything.

"I have nothing more to add to this conversation," I walked away from the FBI treatment my friend keeps giving me. I knew she cared but sometimes she was a huge pain in the ass. I won't be subjected to this emotional drainage.

"And bring me a chai latte this time, will ya? Without falling for someone or in someone's cup of coffee!" Carrie's voice boomed in the middle of the cafeteria, as I walked out of it.

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