“Scholarship schmolarship. This is an investment in your future. I’ll give you the money myself if I have to sell my body.”
Jessica would be aghast if she didn’t understand her best friend’s manner of speech better.
Finally, with a flourish, Lyla tied a red scarf around her neck for embellishment.
“Oh, you look good enough to eat!” Lyla clapped her hands happily.
“I hope not.”
“I’ve honestly never seen you more alive before, Jess. I’m so happy for you.”
“I know.” I can only hope it will last, Jessica thought. “Now what do we do? We have one whole hour and I haven’t caught a wink of sleep last night.”
“We’ll talk some more about him,” Lyla suggested.
“Good idea!”
They were all talked out by the time Kyle drew up in his black Mustang. Jessica did not want Lyla to wait downstairs with her.
“He’ll be wondering what we’ll be up to. Please Lyla, I’ll let you meet him . . . but right now, it’s too soon.”
“Of course, I understand.” Lyla sounded a tad disappointed but she quickly masked it. “Go . . . now. Can I watch him from upstairs?”
Their room faced the road.
“OK, but don’t make it obvious.”
Just like last night, Kyle got out of the car and opened the passenger door for Jessica. He was smiling broadly.
“I was thinking of you last night,” he said as he helped her into the car.
Me too. All night. Thinking and talking about you. Jessica attempted a nervous laugh.
“All good, I hope.”
“It’ll make your toes curl, but hopefully in a good way.” He winked, got into his side and drove off.
Jessica stole a look back at the window of the room she shared with Lyla. Lyla was waving frantically and giving her a very obvious two thumbs up. Jessica had to suppress a laugh.
“Roommate and best friend?” Kyle said knowingly.
“Yes. She’s dying to meet you.”
Jessica was expecting him to say “I’m dying to meet her too after everything you’ve told me about her”, but Kyle merely said, “All in good time. I prefer to get to know you really well before meeting your friends, if you don’t mind.”
He said this winningly with a smile that was like a slice of heaven, so Jessica didn’t think anything of it other than what she wanted it to be.
He wants to get to know me better! It was so exhilarating and mind-bogglingly terrifying at the same time.
If she was afraid they had run out of things to talk about since last night, she needn’t be. Kyle was a superb conversationalist, steering their conversation to what he went through in college and his professors and stuff. His stories were all wildly interesting too, ranging from the mundane (“So I told my professor to shove it up his ass in a very nice way, because my essay was clearly an ‘A’ if I ever wrote one”) to things Jessica had never dreamt of (“and so we streaked throughout the campus in midwinter. Apparently, it was a rite of passage for freshmen”).
They went to Brandt’s Park, a large reserve of forestry and sprawling grassland with a lake in the center. There were different kinds of walks designed for people who wanted to do different activities – jogging paths, bicycle paths, an aerobic area with crossbars and trampolines, a reflexology area where you could walk barefoot on a large mat with raised bumps to massage your soles. The lake was also filled with little boats and extremely tame swans who were not allowed to be fed. Vendors selling ice-cream, hotdogs and souvenirs called out to passing people.
It was a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon in.
“So which walk do you want to do first?” Kyle said. “A hike through the forest? The long one or the short one? The long one will take about an hour and the short one about thirty minutes.”
Jessica had done neither. Whenever she came to Brandt’s Park, she was more used to taking a slow walk around the lake and sitting beside it to watch the happy couples stroll by amid the honking swans.
“The long one,” she said bravely because she didn’t want him to think she was a wuss.
“You sure?”
“Totally.”
They went on the long hike.
At first, Jessica found the going easy. The trees were broad and provided much shade from the sun, and the path was even.
“You OK?” Kyle said.
“No problem.”
Then the path ascended and got narrower.
“Let me go first,” Kyle said. “This way, I can watch out for potentially dangerous areas.”
She liked the way he took charge and she was content to follow his lead. She was glad too because the path did get steeper and more treacherous as it wounded up the hill. She started to get winded because she wasn’t that fit, really, and she tried to keep her increasingly harsh panting to a minimum so that he wouldn’t hear her. Now and then, a hiker would pass them going up or coming down.