“Who?” I asked, as if I had the right to know. If it was Mike, I was going to go out there and make it physically impossible for him to walk for three days, let alone drive a couple hundred miles.
“Don’t know. Friends of someone who knows Josh, I guess. He arranged it.”
I couldn’t believe this. She was going off with some strangers in their car? “How do you know that they aren’t going to try and make a skinsuit out of you?”
“Um, because they are Central students.” She looked at me as if I was insane. Maybe I was. Being near Grace and not having her was turning me inside out. “I’m pretty sure Josh wouldn’t send me off with a couple of ‘Natural Born Killers,’ but I promise that if one of them looks even remotely like Woody Harrelson, I won’t get in the car with them on Saturday.”
She patted my leg like I was five. I wasn’t going to be able to see her until she got back from the game on Sunday, then. Thursday night I was scheduled to meet with some scouts from a fight management team who were going to watch me spar a guy from a neighboring gym on Friday. There was a lot of potential money riding on the outcome of this week, and I couldn’t afford a Grace-like distraction in the gym.
“I should get back,” Grace said and stood up. I followed her out of the stacks. I cast around for some excuse to see her before she left.
“Hey, do you mind if I use your shower in the morning? I want to run on campus before classes.”
Grace turned to me with a skeptical look on her face. “Why not just use the locker room?”
“Grace, do you shower in the locker room at the Phys Ed Center?”
She made a face and conceded my point. “Sure, I guess. That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Right. When are you done?” As soon as we’re done here, I’d go and find the dictionaries and start defacing the word“ friend.” I hated it and worse, I was the first to use it. I felt like I was getting slapped in the face with that stupid, shit-ass letter I wrote two years ago. Did I just come out and admit what a fuck-up I was? The whole point of waiting to come and see Grace was to present a non fucked up version of myself.
“I close.” Her face was down. I couldn’t see what she was feeling. I wished I was better at reading people or really just at reading Grace. Instead, I nutted up and said, “Cool. I’m going upstairs to study, and then I’ll come down at closing and walk you home.” We were almost back to the reference desk by then.
“No need, man,” Mike called. “I’m closing, too, so I can walk Grace home.” Like hell you will.
“I need to walk Grace home,” I said slowly. “To drop off the clothes I’m going to be storing in her closet.” Mike’s mouth opened as if to say something, then it closed. Yeah, what could he say to that? Grace turned to me, beet red, her mouth slightly open as if she was shocked. Did she really care if this guy thought we were sleeping together? I didn’t. I wanted him to spread the word far and wide so that no one else would think it was okay to hit on her.
Grace turned toward Mike. “Oh, Noah just keeps clothes in my closet so he doesn’t have to drag around the extra change of clothing he needs after he’s done showering.” I hid a smile. That was a poor-ass explanation if she was trying to make it seem like we were just friends.
“So,” I said, turning back to Grace and dismissing Mike. “I’ll come down when the library closes. If you have a break, I’ll be in the same place where we studied before.”
Grace just nodded, and I reluctantly left her. I heard Mike say, “I thought you were just friends.”
Her response was, “It’s a long story.” One she hadn’t shared with Mike.
When I came down after the warning bell sounded, Mike was gone, and Grace was alone. On the walk toward her apartment, I asked, “Is that guy hassling you?”
“Mike?” she asked, looking confused. “No, not at all.”
I was unconvinced. “He seems like a punk.”
“A what?!” she laughed.
“Am I going to have to take him out back and teach him some respect?” It was more of a literal question than a hypothetical one.
“Mike’s a good guy. There are a lot of girls who work there, and I think he just feels responsible, like a dad.”
“Or a lecher.” Dad, my ass. Mike probably stroked one off every night he worked with Grace. That’s what I’d do. After nearly an hour of unproductive studying, I had decided that I was going to play it straight with Grace. No more of this friend shit. I was going to mark my place in her life, and she’d come around.