CHAPTER SEVEN: HOT CHOCOLATE CONVERSATIONS
Somehow at some point Trent and I exchanged numbers. It started with some questions about philosophy readings and funny pictures. Somehow at some point he texts me about trying that damn hot chocolate again. Somehow at some point I end up saying yes, really, all I said was sure, but it sure was enough, and somehow at some point I ended up here.
When you walk into the student center, Starbucks is in the back-right corner. It has its own little nook with a window divider wall that separates the line to order and the crowd that waits to pick up. It's lined with crisscrossing orange wood that matches the three small wooden tables and one-sided bar. I prefer tea, but even then, the smell of warm coffee and caramel that wafts through the air is always tempting. The line can get long sometimes, especially during the lunch rush between morning and afternoon classes, but the limited seating keeps the number of people that linger in the area for a long time limited. That's why if I opt to go to the student center during the day, I'm more often swerving to the right.
But today, I swerve left. It feels funny. It feels like my legs want to go one way, muscle memory, the right way, but the rest of my body leans in towards the left, and my feet scramble to catch up.
I willingly head into the maze that is the food court slash student lounge. The allure of the comfortable coffee bean smell is traded for lunch meat and waxy floor cleaner. All the food options and lines of people give way to a bunch of light grey rectangular and circular tables. None of which are filled to the brim at this time of day, but most are occupied. The usual hustle and bustle of lunch time has quieted down and given way to late afternoon whispers. I inhale and exhale and look around as if I've been here a thousand times, but social Darwinism kicks into high gear. Every gaze that reciprocates mine feels like laser eyes that see through my façade. The lions, the tigers, the bearsâoh myâthey know I never come in here. I'm a fish out of water. They have to know, but really, they don't know. They don't care. They could probably care less. It only takes a split second for them to look up and look back down. Sometimes it just feels like survival of the fittest. One look snaps your confidence like a twig. When really everyone's mind is just swirling with their own to-do lists and funny memes.
But it doesn't help that the second I left my dorm, my heart crashed in at full speed ahead. No seatbelt, or air bag. Just pure collision against my ribcage again and again and again. I'm almost mad when I spot Trent because it's all too easy. It's all too much. Him and his long grey t-shirt. Him and his spiked up dirty-blonde hair.
I slowly maneuver my way around people's chairs.I may be walking at a normal pace, but on the inside it's all slow-motioneffects. Every bend of the muscles in my foot. Each inhale and exhale throughmy chest. Each curl of my fingers as they tighten around my cross-body bag.
He's sitting on the end of one of the rectangular tables and the closer I get the more I notice that his jean cover leg is bouncing up and down to the same erratic beat inside my chest.
"Hi," I say the second my stomach hits the edge of the table.
"Hey." He looks up and everything is still, but the slow-motion wears off the second my butt hits the bottom of the plastic chair. There are only two brown paper cups sitting between us that have yet to have their plastic lids cracked.
I glance back up and another twig snaps. It might even be my rib from one final pound against my chest because in my periphery, Trent is just a blob of color. But here he is up close and completely saturated. No overcast sky or umbrella, or movie theater darkness to filter him. My sister has always blamed me for inheriting all the green in my eyes, leaving her nothing but a light brown, but if only she saw his. She'd yearn for his DNA instead. My eyes look as dull as the table in front of us compared to his.
"Are you ready?" One simple question, one simple tip of his lips, and there he is. The fidgeting guy from my periphery. He rubs his hands together like a master magician. "So, the only issue I have is that it's usually too hot to drink right away, so . . ." He pops the lid off the cup closest to him before reaching over and doing the same to mine. "We just have to wait."
Steam flutters out of the dark brown liquid, and I cup my hands around the cup. All I can think about is convection. Warm air rises, cool air falls.
"This is my favorite part about hot drinks," I voice my thoughts. "It's like my own little bubble of warmth."
Trent's fingers circle around his own cup. "Is that your favorite part about biology?" He wiggles his eyebrows. "Heat transfer."
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. "I think that's chemistry."
"But I thought the sunâ"
"More earth science." I scrunch my nose before we lock eyes. He seems torn between his amusement and the train of thought I just put to a screeching halt. This is far from a competition, but I'll take the lull in the dialogueâI'll take the win.
"So." His lips finally part again. "What do you like about biology then?"
"That," I say.
This time his eyebrows furrow. "What?"
My lips quiver. "That conversation we just had."
"You like making people confused?"
"No." I laugh. "I like that it's an umbrella, or no, more like the soilâyeah, the soil that all the other sciences essentially grow out of."
His amusement returns. "I thought that was earth science."
"Yeah, but we wouldn't be studying the earth if we didn't exist. If plants and animals didn't exist. There would be no chemical reactions and transfers if things weren't living and acting and changing and growing. Physics is only the way things act biology isâ" I stop mid-sentence as Trent's eyes remain over my shoulder.
He flicks his hand out in a quick wave but ends up sitting up straighter and providing the person with a more energetic one.
"Sorry," he says when he slumps back down. "Please continue." He waves his hand in a circle before wrapping his fingers around his jaw.
"No, it's okay. I was kind of rambling anyway."
"No, you were making sense." His lips tilt upward, but he hides the expression behind his hand as he continues to rub the light stubble on his jaw. The light blonde stubble that I've never seen before and am probably only seeing because for the first time we are truly sitting face to face. No pen tapping in my periphery, or height difference. "But you were starting to sound just a little Professor Collins-esqe." He straightens his posture while I sink further down against the back of my seat.
"Sorry," I mumble.
"No, don't apologize. It's your major, and it would be weird if you weren't passionate about it."
Another beat of silence passes between us, only this time with some halfhearted smiles before I sit back up.
"Well, what about you? Why did you choose physical education?"
He smiles down at his hands before using them to scratch the side of his face. "I've been working at this summer camp since I was sixteen, and it's like an outdoor gym class every day."
"That sounds fun." I nod.
"It is." He flashes me with his teeth. "I mean, sometimes it's way too hot, but I like playing with the kids. I like seeing the kids outside and interacting with each other." He chuckles a little. "You know before and after the cootie-phase." My nose scrunches up a little, making him continue. "You know the time before and after girls have cooties. At first everyone can be superheroes, and then eventually we get "no girls allowed" and cliques and wolf packs. You know, biology."
"Wolf packs?"
He waves his hand. "You know what I mean."
I find myself sitting up a little straighter on a laugh. "I hate to break it to you again, but that's also not biology."
"But you know, it's just like a natural thing I guess as we get older.".
"I don't know about that." I laugh again. "As far as I know boys are the ones that still have the cooties . . . and the wolf packs."
Trent leans forward. "Am I not allowed to talk about girls and bathrooms?"
"No, you may not."
He holds his hands up. "I'm just saying."
"And I'm just saying . . ." I raise my brows as I lean back in my chair. "Boys and locker rooms."
"Girls and brunch?"
"Brunch?" I laugh. "Boys and gyms."
"Girls and the mall."
"Harsh stereotype. Target. Boys and sneakers."
His mouth opens and closes. "Sneakers aren't a place."
"Still a cult."
"Wolf pack."
"Wolf pack. Whatever." My head rolls back as if I'm annoyed, but my lips continue to quiver, showing otherwise.
Trent seems to be having a similar problem, fighting off his own smile. We level our gazes for a beat. The amusement only makes his eyes burn brighter. It's easy to forget where we are, the fact that we are still surround by a dozen other people, too easyâso easy that it's easy to forget my earlier unease. Once again, it's not a competition, but right now it sort of feels like it. After weeks of communicating through mumbles and notebook paper scraps, this feels like testing the water, filling bottles, and shaking them up to make sure the pH is balanced. Too red, means too acidic, which means clashing and wearing out, but too blue, means to basic, not enough to keep us coming back.
It takes low laughter and the scraping of some chairs for our contest to be over.
Trent halfheartedly puts his hand up again. "Point taken." He combs his fingers through the spiked-up front of his hair a few times. Each time it immediately springs back up, but I blame the gel and comb he must use instead of any natural tendencies. "But that's all I really want," he continues after dropping his hand back down to his lap. "To promote kids staying active and having fun. And if I don't become a gym teacher, I would love to open a recreational camp like that."
"Sounds cool." I'm nod. "At leastâ"
Trent stretches back. His shoulder blades pull together behind him before he freezes. "Hi!" He laughs at more people over my shoulder. "I see you, Josh. You too, Asher." He sends them a wave.
It'd be more awkward if I turned around, so I don't, but I can't decide if all these commercial breaks seem too calculated, or too comical to be real.
"Sorry," he mumbles again, slumping back down in his seat, repeating the same jaw rubbing and smiling behind his hand process. "What were you saying?" he offers from behind his hand and pulls me back into reality. My numb butt and all.
"Oh, nothing." I cross and uncross my legs. "Just at least you have a plan. You could probably even do both, you know? Gym teacher and recreational center."
Trent straightens back up in his seat and waves his hand. "We'll see, but you also sounded like you knew what you were going to do."
I huff out a laugh through my nose. "I don't know about that. I mean, sure, I want to do something in my field, but I don't know what I actually want to do."
"That's okay," Trent's voice softens, but I can only bring myself to shrug. "No, seriously, it's okay not to know. You think Zack knows what he's doing half the time?"
Now that makes me laugh even though I truly doubt that it's entirely true.
"I don't know." I shrug again after our laughter trickles away. I pass a glance at the time on my phone from inside my bag. I have my late lab today, but we still have time. The student lounge has only gotten louder though, and that makes me lean forward in my seat. "I guess it's justâ" I hesitate, but Trent's forearms are leaning against the table again and his eyes don't stray from mine, so I continue. "I guess what really bothers me is that we are expected to know. Like, the second someone finds out your major, they automatically ask, "So, what are you going to do with that?"
"That's true." Trent chuckles, but my train of thought continues to spill out into the open.
"It just bothers me that they say we don't have to have it all figured out, yet they expect us to have it all figured out. How they say it's not all about money, yet they also want us to show them the money."
"Yes." Trent's breathes out another laugh as he nods. "And that's why Professor Collins said the world is all a bunch of bullsh*t."
The mention of the tangent from one of the philosophy lectures makes me smile. "But I think that's why Socrates and all the other philosophers kept calling bullsh*t in ancient society too."
Trent holds up his pointer finger as his lips part, but my eyes dart up on their own accord.
"Hi, Trent," a group of four or five girls coo at the same time. Some of their eyes flicker down to me as they pass around his shoulder to get to the line forming a few tables away. There's no social Darwinism in their gazes. No jealously or snarl. Rather just genuine curiosity, like the casual observers of a brand new species, fascinated and enamored with every movement, and yet it still makes me squirm just the same.
Trent lifts his hand up in a wave before folding it back over his chest, while they seamlessly all go back to their conversations, forgetting my very existence.
"Sorry." He doesn't hide his unease this time as he scratches at his elbow before reaching for his jaw again. "I blame Zack." He pushes his fingers into his skin and pulls it forward. "He dragged me into a bunch of clubs our freshman year."
I laugh. "He must know what he's doing then."
"Yeah, bothering me." Trent's eyebrows raise. This face to face thing got me thinking that he's more like a puppet. His eyebrows, his lips, his hands are all always being pulled up and down. Forward and back. He leans forward again as if to prove my point
"He's your best friend," I say it as more of a question than a statement.
"My worst friend." He feigns a groan before pausing as his eyes glue to the table. A memory seems to flash behind his eyes that makes him smile. "Nah, he's cool."
"Cooler than you?"
"Hell no." He shakes his head as he wraps a hand around his cup again. "Okay, fine. A little."
"That's what I thought." I laugh and pass a glance at my phone again, but too quickly to really absorb the time.
Trent rubs his hands together again before I catch on to more eyebrow wiggling. "Ready?" he asks when our eyes lock.
"Ready."
We gently tap our cups together in cheers before I bring mine to my lips.
There goes the puppeteer, pulling his eyebrows up to the ceiling. "So?"
"It's good," I say after I swallow. "But I think we waited too long."
He grimaces a little as he takes another sip. "True."
"I guess we talk too much." I breathe out a laugh, but there goes the puppeteer, this time lifting his lips up to one side.
He tips his cup in my direction again. "Who said that was a bad thing?"