I ease back up from hunkering down, peeking over in his direction. Dayum. I sigh, taking in the tall body with a trim waist that tapers to muscled legs.
He leans over, breathing in great gulps of air, and I wonder how long he’s been running. Campus is quite a ways away from here, at least five or six miles, though that’s probably nothing to an athlete like him.
He yanks off his hat and shakes out his hair, running a large hand through the strands. A gust of cold air stirs through the morning air and he leans back against the brick of the storefront, his head tilting up to the sky. He drags a hand over his face, and I suck in a breath at the vulnerability that flashes over his features.
What’s he thinking about?
With a deep inhalation, he throws his hat and gloves down on a bench outside the Quickie-Mart and pushes his way inside. The movement is done without thought or worry, as if he’s put them there a hundred times and knows nothing will happen to them. He comes here a lot, I think.
I need to get on the road—I have classes today—but I don’t start my car.
I’m on the second donut when he bursts back out of the door with a pack of Marlboros.
Well, well, well. Mr. Athlete smokes? He doesn’t seem like the type, but then what do I know?
“You only had sex with him,” I mutter under my breath.
With a long stride, he heads to the alley of the building, which I have full view of. Propping himself back up against the brick, he twists the pack open, pulls out a cig, and lights it with a lighter from his jacket.
I study his face, surprised he doesn’t feel me looking, because the man seriously has a sixth sense.
He holds the cigarette with taut fingers and takes a drag, blowing the smoke up in the air. He closes his eyes and rubs at his forehead, lines etched on the skin there and around his mouth.
I swallow, frowning, feeling a tug toward him, an answering call of sadness, perhaps. My chest rises, and part of me wants to get out of the car and go to him—but I think he wants to be alone.
The red light from the cigarette glows as he sucks on it until he stubs it out with his fingers. With a heavy breath out, he puts his hat and gloves back on then jogs over to a trashcan where he tosses the entire pack of cigs. Okaaaay.
He does a few stretches and then takes off, running out of sight toward the street and, of course, I get out of the car to see where he goes.
Southern girls are better than the FBI.
He crosses the street and heads into the entrance of Memorial Park, a large and rather grand cemetery with huge oak trees, a stone entrance, and purple and yellow pansies in the flowerbeds. An interesting place to run, but it does have paths.
I get back in my car, finish my donut, and crank up the engine. No way am I following him there. As far as I’m concerned, my days of trying to get Zack Morgan to notice me are done.
“Urgent” by Foreigner rings out from my phone and I snatch it up.
“Yeah, I’m on my way,” I tell Mara.
“You’re fine. Don’t rush and drive too fast.” Her voice is dry with a slight Southern drawl that’s been fading for the past twenty years she’s lived here.
I sigh. “I won’t.”
“Did you get me a churro?”
“Two.” I smile, picturing her in her purple velour tracksuit in the back office of the Boobie Bungalow, counting the weekend’s take and preparing a bank deposit. Her dyed blonde hair will be in a softly curled Marilyn Monroe style, and she’ll be wearing bright pink lipstick and lots of eyeliner with fake lashes.
After my mom died when I was eleven, she was the first person to arrive at my front door in Alabama. Mama’s good friend since high school, she arranged for her memorial, packed up the trailer, and flew me back to Minneapolis with her. My daddy wanted nothing to do with me. Heck, his name wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Sure, Mara and I could have taken him to court, but if there was one thing I knew for sure at that age, it was that I didn’t want anything to do with the man who’d ruined my mama.
“So what’s up? Did you need something else? I can pop by Costco later if you need cleaning supplies, but if you want more churros, I’m still here.”
“No, just checking on you.” She pauses, and I picture her settling into her leather seat and propping her tiny feet up on her desk. “You seemed down this week. You okay?”
“Mostly. There’s nothing to be done.” My tone isn’t optimistic. Very few waitlisted students manage to secure a spot. I have to accept the truth. “I’m a reject.”
“You’re not a reject.” I hear her rustling papers and imagine she’s looking up at the poster of Clint Eastwood on the wall. Whenever she doesn’t know what to say, she always looks at him for guidance. I smile. She loves that man, swears she ran into him at a bar one night and they had a thing. It’s possible. She’s a beautiful woman.
“It doesn’t have to be Vanderbilt,” she says, and emotion tugs at me.
“I know.” My voice is subdued.
“Fuck a duck with a bowtie. It’s because George went there, isn’t it?”
I sigh, cringing at my father’s name. “I just want to prove I’m just as good as they are.”
“You have nothing to prove!” She exhales, obviously pulling out a smoke by the sound of the click of her lighter. “Want me to make you a cake? Or pie? You love that lemon icebox one.”
A smile ghosts over my face. Mara thinks the cure to all my ailments is sweets. She’s not far off, and I don’t blame her. Mama did the same. I cried a lot when I first moved here, a whole new world for a girl from the trailer parks of a small southern town. Kids made fun of my accent, and even the teachers didn’t know what to make of my sadness. I didn’t fit in here, and even now I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land. I chew on my lip. Perhaps that’s a tiny part of the reason I want to head back to the South for law school. Even though I don’t have any family to speak of, it’s still…home. It reminds me of Mama.
“Sugar? You there?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
My brow wrinkles as I recall reading Zack’s bio online last week where he mentioned his favorite things. An idea stirs around and takes hold, and for the first time since I woke up this morning, I’m thinking there might be a way to thank him for returning my coat.
“Hey, do you have the stuff to make a cherry pie at your place?” She lives with her longtime boyfriend Luis in a small apartment above the club. “And do you happen to have a good recipe for cherry pie?”
“Not really, honey. Cherry pie is disgusting. It’s just gloopy fruit salad mixed with some dry crust. No thanks.”
I grin. Mara is firm about her pie opinions.
She takes a hit of her cig and I hear her blowing the smoke. “I thought you liked lemon icebox. That’s the one I make better than that Pioneer Woman everyone raves about.”
“No, I do, but I know someone who likes cherry, and I was thinking maybe I might whip one up. He…I…kind of…we had this thing…and then…” My voice peters out. I can’t exactly tell her how I had hot sex with a potential future fake boyfriend.
“Bennett?” Her voice has sharpened, and I grimace. She never liked him—although I didn’t know that until we broke up and she confessed to it after a few too many glasses of wine.