“Music,” she said, not certain why she felt comfortable admitting that to him.
“What?”
Keira shrugged, tried to hide her quick blush by not looking him, returning her attention to the keyboard. “I don’t want to be a teacher. I want to write music.” The blush was there not because she was embarrassed to admit what she really wanted out of life, but because she was admitting it to him.
“Seriously?” Kona pulled on her sleeve to make her look at him. “But you’ve got a hard on for all this English shit.’
“I also have a mother who pays my tuition that doesn’t think music is a suitable major. But, I like words. I like stories, just not as much as music.” Another quick glance at him and Keira felt that blush deepening. But Kona didn’t laugh at her like she expected. He didn’t start to tease her for having a pipe dream. And so she felt relaxed, something that had been happening more and more frequently when she was around him. “Words and music, that’s my passion.” She laughed to herself when his smile got bigger, when he looked at her as though she’d just unveiled another piece in the puzzle he thought she was. Kona’s eyes were intense, moved over her face, landed on her mouth and Keira became uncomfortable, nervous at how he focused on her, how he seemed to be dissecting her expressions with that long, level gaze. “Um…” she started, trying to break his concentration, “what’s yours?”
“My what?”
“What are you passionate about, Kona?”
The smile left his face and Keira saw his lips move, she thought he was mouthing the word, “passion,” but she couldn’t be sure. When she nudge his arm, Kona’s grin disappeared. “Only one thing at the moment,” he said, recovering from that truthful admission with a shrug of his shoulders. “Playing the game.”
“Ah. The chase, I see.”
Kona opened his mouth, seemed determined to argue with her, but then Tonya Lucas, a rail thin blonde that lived three doors down from Keira, retrieved something from the printer. Her shirt was too tight, skirt barely covered her thighs and Kona noticed. Tonya’s gaze honed onto him and the low squint of her eyes, the way she barely pulled her bottom lip between her top teeth, told Keira that with Kona, there really wasn’t a chase.
When Tonya passed their table, gave Kona a wink, the linebacker smiled, watched her until she returned to her seat. Keira didn’t know why this bothered her. She didn’t know why she felt somehow slighted. But she didn’t mention it, didn’t let that overwhelming feeling that she was somehow less-than, somehow not enough, consume her. Instead she shifted her chair, pulled it closer to the table and the scratch of the leg against the floor, brought Kona back to her.
“Just so you know, I wasn’t talking about that game, smartass.” He nodded in Tonya’s direction. “Chasing ass isn’t a game for me, no matter what you think. I’m talking about football.”
“I guess everybody has to have something.”
“Exactly what I mean. You don’t get me playing, doing something I love and I don’t get why you’re so into a bunch of stories written a billion years ago.”
He wouldn’t understand, she thought, convinced that Kona didn’t see the world like she did. He was beautiful and strong and clever, but he was all action, all grit and movement. She wasn’t. She liked the deeper meaning and believed that not everything in life was about the flux of motion. For some reason she didn’t understand, she wanted Kona to get that about her. She wanted him to open his dark eyes just a bit further and see her, really see her.
“Because it’s life.” Keira’s voice was low, but steady and she turned away from the monitor, twisted her body and her eyes to stare right at him. “Because it’s history. Stories, words, how they fit together, how they flit through time, how they connect people separated by generations, it amazes me.” She was gesturing with her hands, moving her fingers and Kona followed the movement, watched every expression that she made as though he’d never seen anything like her before. “There’s one big story working through this world, and we’re all a part of it. I love that. It makes me feel like I’m part of something greater than myself. Maybe one day I can write my chapter in the big story.”
She expected Kona to laugh at her, maybe tell her what a dork she was. But he didn’t do that. He only stared at her, let his eyes soak her up.
After a moment, Kona blinked, nodded once as though processing her words and organizing them into files of Crazy Things Keira Says in his mind. “I get that. You want to be part of something. I totally get that.” He sat up, came close to grabbing her hand, but then just rested his elbows on his knees. “It’s why I play. It’s the team, the work we have to do to get our win.”