Bits and Pieces

Sixty-forty

"HEY!" ALEX!" I chased after him down the hallway, until I finally caught up with him. Our teacher had finally granted us our long awaited break from study hall, and it was time to settle this Alex deal once and for all.

I had been trying to play guitar with Alex for three months in counting, now. It had been a painful endeavor, full of many changed plans and a lot of mixed signals coming from his end.

It was time for me to get to the bottom of it.

"Before we try to make plans, I was just curious, what did you mean that you 'couldn't make promises' about being free?" I asked him.

We walked down the hallway towards the quad, my heart hammering in my chest at real, live conversation between us. It was a weird experience getting nervous around Alex, especially since I hardly knew him and definitely didn't have a crush on him.

At least not one that I was aware of.

"Oh, yeah," Alex said, watching the ground. I watched his face for expressions that might give him away. "I just mean I can't really make plans until I know my weekend better."

"Um, well I need to make plans, since I'm pretty busy and if you can't hang out, then I need to know so I can make plans with other people."

A sense of dread was filling my stomach. This was my last resort, and it turning out to be just that.

"Alright, well I can't really make plans right now."

I stopped waking. He glanced behind him to see where I had went before stepping back into line with me.

"Look, Alex, I'm trying so hard to make this work out. Like, surprisingly hard. I don't usually work this hard to try and hang out with someone. But if you're sixty-forty about this, I don't want to keep pushing you to do something you don't want to do. So I need to know now: are you sixty-forth about this?"

Alex gave me a funny look. "Sixty-forty?"

"You know, sixty percent not wanting to do this, and forty percent kind of wanting to do this."

He sighed, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked out toward the quad. A cold breeze cruised by and played with the ends of my hair. The sky was fading colors of white and blue of sky mixed with clouds. Bits and pieces of leaves floated up into the air. I studies Alex's face, waiting and watching to see what he was thinking.

Finally, he looked back over at me, an unreadable expression on his face.

"I-I'm...I'm sixty-forty," he said.

—-

A conversation I may have sometime in the next twenty-four hours.