The Beautiful Truth

// 2

Here, take this," he had told me that night at the end of his driveway, pulling out something shiny and black from the back pocket of his jeans.

I'd frowned and reached out for it, taking a second to realize it was a brand new iPhone. "Wh—what?"

Talyn laughed, digging back into his pockets. "Ah, I ended up with two of them," he said, as if it was of no consequence—like getting four hundred dollars worth of phones happened every day.

"Isn't that illegal?"

He just shrugged. "I guess not, the Conference gave one to everybody. Besides, it's not like I'm getting paid to carry it around. They just gave me the phone...I still have to pay the bill."

He knew why I asked—when he was being recruited by every AP Top 25 school in the country, I was the one reading through all the NCAA rules for him, making sure he wasn't being taken advantage of, or getting himself into trouble without meaning to...which, he would be the first to admit, he had a knack for. Granted, his dad probably should have been doing that, but he put a lot of faith in Talyn to figure things out for himself. I wasn't quite so confident.

I didn't drop the expression of concern from my face, though if the Conference gifted them to all the football players, I supposed it was OK.

He grinned. "My roommate already had one, so he gave me his freebie, and...happy going away to college, Sawyer Fitzgerald. Now you have no excuse not to keep in touch with me, even after you start dating some scenester, punk-rock band drummer."

My expression morphed into some combination of disbelief and amusement. "You put a lot of thought into that, didn't you?"

He laughed a little. "It's pre-programmed with all my numbers," he explained. "Dorm, cell...home, field house, you know."

"Field house?" I laughed, crossing my arms over my chest, the air outside having grown cooler since we'd walked in for cookies.

"Well yeah, I'm there more than my dorm," he had told me, as if that made perfect sense.

That was night before last. I'd hugged him one last time before turning for home, the light from my dad's office at the west corner of the house the only sign of life from within. This morning, my dad and I got up with the sun and boarded a plane for Northern California. Or well, I got up with the sun...I wasn't so sure my dad had slept at all, but that wasn't unusual.

Berkeley, California had been my destination for as long as I could remember. It was, yes, my parent's alma mater, but that fact did little more than plant the idea of going to college there in my head at a young age. Given my less than perfect family situation, and my mediocre high school experience, it seemed that all I'd ever dreamed about was going far, far away...and San Francisco's East Bay definitely fit the bill.

Neither of us being much on goodbyes, my dad left right after taking me out to breakfast on Saturday morning. I walked from the restaurant on Durant, back to my dorm a few blocks up the hill. My new phone vibrated in my back pocket.

Talyn – Cell displayed on the front of my phone, complete with a goofy picture of him pantomiming a phone to his ear with his jaw dropped, his dark hair poking out from under the backwards white hat he was wearing. The background looked like someplace in the middle of USC's urban campus. I smiled, and answered.

"I have been away from you for less than 48 hours," I stated.

"Do you miss me?" he laughed.

"Oh, terribly," I joked.

"So...how is it?"

I grinned. "It's awesome. Gorgeous. Ah..."

"Have you met your roommate?"