The Beautiful Truth

// 26

The last few days of class before Thanksgiving break were torturous. I had two exams, and a massive paper due...on that stupid book, nonetheless. It was enough to make me want to throw myself out the window like I'd once daydreamed of doing to Micki—before I met her and came to love her.

With her help, I pulled through—the two of us helped motivate each other to study, and to stay on task. As much as I usually liked to study in the library, I found that my mind wandered a lot easier when I was there.

Actually, my mind had been wandering a lot lately, and not just because I was trying to procrastinate studying. Barton Black was quickly becoming my favorite daydream. Even better, once I was done daydreaming about him, I could often turn whatever it was that I had been daydreaming about into reality. There's something to be said for having a boyfriend who didn't really have a day job...other than to write songs and plan his upcoming national tour.

Maybe that's why I had been daydreaming so much lately—it was getting closer to the time when I knew I'd have to tell him goodbye, even if it was only for a few months. Michael's Mistress was hitting the road with Jack's Mannequin on February first. They'd make 75 stops in 100 days. Coincidentally—or not, I wasn't sure how much influence he had over making such decisions—the tour stopped in Norman during Cal's Spring Break. I hadn't put much thought into doing anything other than going home for that week before I read the tour schedule, but now I had concrete plans.

At least I had something to look forward to after he left me alone in Berkeley for almost four months. But, I didn't want to think about him being gone, yet. Especially since I had so much to look forward to while he was still here.

As much fun as our weekend had been, those weekends alone were rare. Seth and Alex usually stayed pretty close, but they didn't seem to mind me. Alex and I had grown to be good friends. Seth was simply tolerable.

Speaking of Alex, he and Micki seemed to be acting as usual—nothing had changed since the bar the night Talyn came to visit...as in, she said she liked him, but she hadn't made any moves. Neither did he. I figured, either he was very patient, or Micki was playing hard to get.

And, speaking of her, I was glad, for her sake, that football season was almost over. She was about to waste away to nothing. One more game after Thanksgiving, and then it was bowl season. Cal had recovered from their loss to USC at home, but then went on to lose again in Eugene at Oregon a few weeks later. Despite their two losses, the Golden Bears were holding strong at number 16, but surely wouldn't make it to a BCS bowl at this point in the year.

Talyn, on the other hand, continued to impress, week after week. His numbers were one thing, but the way he played (with the one minor exception here at Cal) showcased his love and understanding for the sport. He looked like a super-human out there. If I didn't love him so much myself, I would gag every time Chris Fowler or Desmond Howard started to gush about what a natural he was, or what a perfect delivery he had, or how he seemed to, unassumingly, be the leader of this experienced Trojan team in only his true freshman year. The word 'Heisman' had even been thrown around a few times, but with that guy over at Alabama running 700 yards a game, I was pretty sure Talyn was a long-shot.

OK, 700 yards might be a stretch, but that's beside the point.

Yeah, Talyn was on top of the world. He tried not to let me know how much fun he was having, he'd always been a little reluctant to be that proverbial big man on whatever campus he presided over, but I was kind of interested to see him in his own environment. I'd made plans to visit him the weekend after Barton left town so I'd have something fun to look forward to after something else that would inevitably devastate me otherwise.