As a matter of fact, it takes her fifteen minutes to notice me.
“Yes?” She looks up from her canvas and stares at me from across the classroom. “May I help you with something, Dean? You’re not in the art club.”
“I’m aware.” I smirk, looking around the empty classroom. “But it doesn’t look like anyone is in art club...”
She rolls her eyes and sets down her paintbrush. “We’re currently accepting applications for membership,” she says. “What can I help you with?”
“You know, I did come here for something.” I shut door. “But, now that you claim that you’re accepting applications for your club, can I fill one out?”
“We don’t accept douchebags. Your application wouldn’t make it past round one.”
“Douchebag?” And is she blushing right now?
“Yes, douchebag. Would you like me to give you the definition?”
“I’m well versed on the definition, Mia Gray.” I stare at her for a while, still trying to figure out if the red in her cheeks is blushing or anger.
She’s definitely blushing...
She clears her throats and looks away from me. “You said you came here for something? Can you hurry up and tell me what that ‘something’ is so I can get back to addressing my art club? Today is a very important day for us.”
“I can see that...” I decide to get the inevitable over with. I take her notebook out of my backpack and hand it to her. I almost tell her the truth about it, that I took it just to get her attention, but decide to take another approach, to see if she’s as easily affected by me as I am by her. If finding her alone is just what I needed to see her with her guard let down.
“I found your notebook this morning,” I say. “I wanted to find you and give it back. I tried to give it to you after Physics class but I couldn’t get your attention.”
“Where exactly did you find it?”
“It was in the ‘Lost and Found.’ I saw it on top of everything in there when I got here for practice earlier.”
“You know, that’s funny.” She narrows her eyes at me and crosses her arms. “Because I’ve been checking’ Lost and Found’ every single day and in between every single class for weeks and it was never there.”
“Maybe you just didn’t look hard enough.”
“I even checked it this morning, and it wasn’t there. It. Was. Not. There.”
Okay. She’s easily affected.
I smile and flip through her notebook’s pages. “You have a very pretty handwriting. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Where did you really find it, Dean?”
“You take pretty detailed notes, too.” I can’t stop looking at her.
“Did you steal my fucking notebook?”
Yes. I fucking did. “Maybe. Depends on how you define stealing.”
“WHAT?” She somehow looks even sexier when she’s angry. “I had to rewrite the entire thing in one night! The night before our midterm!”
I walk over and set the notebook on the window sill, catching a glimpse of what she’s been painting. It looks like the skyline of Seattle, or maybe Portland.
“Well,” I say, “Good thing you somehow managed to still get an A, right? If it wasn’t for me, you probably wouldn’t have known that you were capable of rewriting a whole notebook in a night. I helped you push your boundaries, so I think I deserve a thank you.”
She glares at me for a long time, and I can feel something between us. Half of it is her wanting to bash my head in with the closest blunt object, but the other half is something just as strong, something I can’t quite figure out.
Before I can tell her that I really am sorry and explain what happened, she rushes past me uttering curse after curse.
I follow her out to parking lot and catch up with her, trying to apologize yet again, to make it up to her with a ride, but she refuses. She rushes away from me and heads to the bus stop, apparently not knowing that the last bus has left for the day.
I take my time walking to the parking lot and slip into my Camaro, the only thing I can honestly be thankful to my father for over the past few years.
Driving straight over to Mia, I tell her that she’s wasting her time waiting for a bus that’ll never come and that I’d like to make up for stealing her notebook by giving her a ride home.
She starts walking. In the rain.
I’m not sure why I chase her, but I do. I trail her every step with my car, make U-turns when she goes down a one-way street, and I speed up whenever she does.
When she finally gets stopped by a pedestrian light, I roll down my window and stop.