The Ginger In The Alley And Desi Winters

Chemistry

I only noticed Linda was pissed off when I felt a weight on the couch lift. She already had her books gathered into her arms and was stalking out of the campus coffee shop where we frequently sat and studied together or otherwise shared lunch. It wasn't the first time I had pissed her off, but it was the first time I had been completely oblivious to my actions in my doing so. Her being angry was completely warranted and understandable. After all, I'd probably been ignoring every word she was saying, but I genuinely didn't know. A story in the paper on the table had pulled my eyes and attention away. Odds were I was making random noises of acknowledgement towards whatever she was saying, but not actually giving her the answers she wanted. It was a bad habit of mine. A damn rude one, too. 

I stood up to chase after her as soon as I noticed her stalking away, but she was out of the shop and into the crowd of people outside by the time I had gathered my books to properly run after her. Properly invisible once she had crossed the little courtyard. I wouldn't find her until we had a shared class or until I went to her dorm room like I did every night. Next to no chance of just bumping into her unless I followed her quickly. 

Against my better judgement, I started nudging by people carefully to keep from spilling my haphazard armload. None of the notes were in the right folders and my textbooks weren't all properly balanced. One wrong nudge would send them all to the ground, where they'd get trampled by all my fellow students and Linda would be gone until the evening, at which point, she'd have either calmed down or gotten mad enough to finally break up with me.

Not that that was what I wanted. I liked Linda a lot. In a different world, I could have loved her easily. We could have had a long and happy life together. Grown old together. Deep inside, I knew that couldn't happen, even if I hid who I was from her until the day I died. She would know eventually.  But the self-denial was fairly sturdy. It kept me away from the thoughts that had driven me to drink. But after seeing that story about Charles in the paper?

I hadn't thought about him in months, purposefully distracting myself from anything that could remind me of him. The drinking was getting less frequent on the days where he didn't pass my mind at all, and but not even nearly as bad as it had been in Texas on the days when I did think about him. Seeing his picture looking back at me from the arts section was making me crave a stiff one like nothing else had in a long time. Damn him and damn his book, too. 

I knew Charles had been working on a book while we were in school. He was always writing whenever Violet wasn't around and sometimes even when she was. He refused to show anyone a word except her. Throughout all four years, I never really thought he was doing anything purposeful with it, let alone an entire epic of a novel that would be one of the best-selling books of the year with him being one of the youngest authors ever to sell so many copies. People were calling it genius; a work of art. I'd read it at some point, but for now, just seeing his photo in the newspaper was enough to make my heart start beating funny and my hands get wet. 

The haphazard stack in my arms was beginning to shift around in my grasp as I continued my speedrun-and-weave through the crowds, trying to follow the path I thought Linda had taken. I only paused for a moment to take the rolled newspaper out from under a textbook and shove it under my arm to make the stack more steady, but in that split second, the crowd had shifted enough to disguise the path I was taking. Completely gone. Even going on the tips of my toes to peer over everyone's heads wasn't sufficient. Linda was just so short and so much like all the other California blondes that populated the school. 

Only seconds had passed between the moment I had almost caught sight of her and when I decided to switch my route, but it was just enough to make me second-guess the route I was taking and look over my shoulder. Therefore, just enough for me to finally lose my victorious streak of crowd avoidance and take a fellow student down with me and my stack.