“So you dating Jackson now?” Mike asked me, almost before I could sit down.
“No, we’re just friends. Why do you ask?” I said, trying to keep the moroseness out of my voice.
Mike shrugged. “Saw you holding hands the other day.”
“Oh, he just drags people around if they don’t walk fast enough.”
“Have you been to one of Noah’s fights?” Mike asked in his gossip reporter voice.
Mike wasn’t looking at me. He was throwing a ball up in the air. I grabbed at it on its way down. “Hey, I was playing with that,” Mike yelped, but settled back in his chair when he saw me glaring at him.
“Tell me about the fight,” I encouraged.
“It’s mixed martial arts. They use their—”
“Hands and feet. I know. They fight in an Octagon. Josh loves that stuff. Tell me about Noah’s fight,” I ordered impatiently.
“It wasn’t a sanctioned fight and they held it in some warehouse downtown this summer. I couldn’t see very well, but I heard he broke some guy’s eye socket in three places,” Mike said excitedly.
I couldn’t reconcile the picture of Noah pummeling someone’s face into tenderized meat with the guy who opened doors for me and carried my backpack.
“So he’s never brought it up?” Mike asked, curiosity coloring his voice.
“No, not a word.” If I sounded disgruntled, who could blame me? I felt like I was supposed to know him better than anyone, but here was Mike, a stranger to Noah, who knew secret things about him that I didn’t.
“Weird,” Mike replied. “It’d be the first thing I would bring up if I was hitting on a girl. He’s like a mini-celebrity in town. I was here over the summer, and when he walked in to The Circus, the DJ announced him.” The Circus was one of a couple dance clubs downtown. I didn’t ordinarily go there because it required someone to be the designated driver and I hate driving.
“There isn’t anything going on between us,” I insisted and tossed Mike’s ball back to him.
Bothered by Noah’s silence on the subject of his fighting, I turned away from Mike and picked up my book. After a few seconds of fruitless reading, I asked, “Mike, when did you pick your major?”
“Sophomore year. I took French Revolutionary History because I didn’t want to have any Friday classes, and it was the only one that worked out with my schedule. I ended up getting hooked on history.”
“What are you going to do with a degree in history though?”
“Teach, I guess. I’m going to grad school, and then I’ll do my doctoral dissertation on peasant munitions during the 18th century.”
“All that from one class?” I gaped at him.
“Yup. Are you worried you haven’t picked a major yet?” he asked, tossing the ball toward me.
“Kind of. My Uncle Louis, who pays for this gig here, told me I had to have a major picked out by Thanksgiving or else,” I said and threw back the ball.
“What’s the ‘or else?’”
“Dunno. I’m not sure I want to find out.”
“Are there any classes you’re taking this semester that you enjoy a lot?” Mike asked.
“No. I kind of dislike them all,” I confessed.
“Brutal,” Mike said tossing me the ball. I fumbled it a little but managed to hold on. “What about your pictures?
I groaned, “Taking pictures is a hobby, not a vocation.”
Mike moved back several paces and motioned for me to throw him the ball again. “Okay, then, what about being a reference librarian?”
“Because look at us. I don’t want to throw a little red ball around all day in between shelving and sorting journals,” I whined.
Mike just laughed. “I don’t think real librarians spend all day throwing balls around.”
“I guess I just feel no passion for this. What if I committed to it and then it didn’t work out?” I had to stop myself before I sounded like I was a whiny six-year-old.
“So you do something else, then,” This time, when he threw me the ball, the velocity increased, and I missed it. The ball went sailing over the brick half-wall and into the common area below. We both rushed over to see where it had landed.
Noah was holding it and looking up.
“Nice catch,” I said weakly. Mike and I both pushed off and went back to our chairs.
“At least we didn’t break anything,” Mike said, rooting around in his bag.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something else to throw.” He brought out a power bar. “How about this?”
“Mike, seriously. A power bar?” I shook my head.