I make my way to the back of library like it's become a daily routine and Tre is already sitting down with his notes and laptop spread out over the table. He's wearing a short sleeved black v-neck and there's clear wrapping tape that peeks out the fabric underneath from where his new tattoo is. I wonder what he got? Our class was cancelled today so I haven't gotten a chance to ask him about it yet.
"Hey," I say as I walk up to the table and set my backpack down on the chair next to me.
He looks up from his laptop and smiles that handsomely devilish smile that makes the butterflies in my stomach always flutter in madness. "Hey." He looks over me like he's assessing my body for something. "You look nice today."
I smile and look down at my casual burgundy sweater dress that goes down to my knees, my grey knit-style tights, and my black leather boots that go to mid calf. It was casual, but this was one of my favorite outfits to wear. Tre is the first one to ever compliment me on it. "Thank you."
"I mean, you always look nice." Tre corrects himself and then rubs the back of his neck and bites his lip. "But today you look really good."
I smile bigger and try to tone down the redness going to my face. "Thank you Tre. That's very nice of you."
"I felt like being nice today." He shrugs, smirking.
"When was the last time you were nice?" I chuckle and sit down in the chair across from him.
He lifts his chin and thinks for a moment. "Last month." His smirk turns into a full grin that shows off his bright white teeth that I feel like I have seen a lot more than others.
"That's funny." I shake my head at his joking and get out my own laptop from my bag and my notebook that's filled with all of our work so far. We have had our outlines for both the essay and and a few general slides for the presentation done with all of our research we will use, we now just have to start writing our argumentâMost of the aspects can still apply to our lives now about humanity, but as humanity evolves, the lesser we start to get from those foundations.
"Are you a good writer?" I ask Tre as I open up a word document and type both of our names.
"Yeah I guess," he grumbles. "I do alright."
"Okay, cool. I'll share this document with you and we both can start writing in it," I say as I'm typing.
"Kay."
"Do you want to split up the paper so you do half and I do half? Or we can switch on every other paragraph?"
"Doesn't matter," he replies.
I cock my head to the side. "That doesn't help any."
He just shrugs and smirks.
"And I thought I was the indecisive one," I remark.
He shakes his head and sits up in his chair. "Whichever will be easier to do."
"Let's do every other paragraph then," I state. "So it's evenly fair. You can write the introduction and I'll start on the first main paragraph."
Tre and I don't talk a lot once we start working. I don't feel awkward because I'm too busy trying to get my coherent thoughts out in a way that makes sense and is backed up by our research. When we work, there's usually not a lot of conversations, only typing. Every now and then I'll glance up from my laptop and look at Tre. He's usually looking intensely at his laptop screen typing away, but one time he looks up the same time I do and he puts that half smile half smirk on his face. I can't help but smile back and then quickly look back down at my laptop to avoid blushing.
We work for a solid 25 minutes before I look back at what's already been done in our document. I'm 3/4 of the way done with my long paragraph and when I scroll back up, I see Tre has written a big introduction. I quickly read through his words and I am filled with shock.
"Oh my gosh, Tre."
He looks up from his screen confusingly. "What?"
I pause for a second to collect myself and my mouth off the ground. "Nothing, just your introduction is really good. Not just really good, it's amazing. You said you were alright at writing, not excellent."
He shrugs nonchalantly. "So I like to write a little bit. So what?"
I can't believe what I'm hearing. I didn't pick Tre to be the writer type. He's surprising more and more every moment I spend with him.
"You're very talented," I compliment, our essay long forgotten about now. "What kind of writing do you do?" I now have a million questions I want him to answer.
"Um." He bites his lip and looks conflicted as to whether or not to talk about this with me. From the look on his face, it seems like he's never revealed this to anybody before. "I write a lot of poetry mostly. Sometimes prose pieces and spoken word."
"Who's your favorite poet?"
"I have a few that I like," he replies and starts listing them off. "Suli Breaks, Langston Hughes, Christopher Poindexter, and Claude McKay."
"All men," I point out and raise my eyebrows in questioning.
"They're the ones that speak to me the most," he shrugs and crosses his arms. "I can relate to them more."
I nod. "I understand that."
It's silent at the table for a moment and then I look directly at him and smile. "I dream a world where man, no other man will scorn, where love will bless the earth, and peace its paths adorn."
Tre's eye widen in astonishment when hears me recite the first four lines of a Langston Hughes's poem. He obviously didn't think that I knew any poetry, much less the poetry that he likes to read.
"I dream a world where all, will know sweet freedom's way," Tre recites the next lines of the poem and I smile, listening to his deep voice. "Where greed no longer saps the soul, nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth, and every man is free."
I can't believe Tre and I are reciting poetry to each other. If you had told me during the first week of school that we'd be having a conversation in poetry, I wouldn't have believed you. Tre has really surprised me. He knows his poetry. I didn't think I would ever meet someone who could recite poetry with me. It's amazing to know that Tre can recite as well as I can.
"You may write me down in history, with your bitter, twisted lies, you may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise." I send another poem his way to see if he knows his Maya Angelou, one of my favorite poets.
My mouth drops again in amazement as he recites off another part of the poem that I didn't think he would know.
"You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise."
"You really know your stuff," I say after he's done, extremely impressed by his ability.
"Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words," he simply replies.
"Edgar Allen Poe," I point out the author of the quote. "I love his work. It's very dark and delirious, but also extremely vivid and dynamic."
"I'm surprised you know Poe."
I raise my eyebrows. "And why is that?"
"Didn't think shy Eva would know something so dark."
"I didn't think you would know poetry," I retort and sit back, crossing my arms defensively.
His usual smirk is plastered on his face. "We both learned something new about each other."
"Well, apparently we learn something new every day." That's what I've always heard, anyways. I think it's true though. I learn a lot just from the simple everyday things that surprise me.
"You're the first person I've met that can recite poetry," Tre says, his eyes locking on mine.
"Me too." Is all I can say. My mind gets jumbled when I look into Tre's eyes and I can't think clearly. It's like the world around me gets blurry and all I can see is the brown pools that have a depth to them that I deeply want to explore.
"Do I make you nervous?"
I blanch white at his random question. "What?"
"Do I make you nervous?" He repeats his question.
Yes.
"Why, why would you ask that?" I stutter out.
"You just always seem nervous like you can't handle looking at me."
Of course he's right but I don't want to admit that to him.
"You don't make me nervous," I chuckle nervously and look away from him, turning my focus back towards my laptop.
"Bull shit," he smirks like he knows everything.
"So what if I am?" I question out at him and shrug.
He leans back with his hands up like a surrender. "Nothing. Just wanted to know why you're always so shy around me."
"It's just how I am," I loosely justify, but it's not completely true. I have always been a shy and nervous person, but Tre heightens that by a thousand percent. I don't think there will ever be a time where he doesn't make me nervous. It's not a nervous in a bad way, but in a way in just that I don't want to mess anything up with him. My life is so organized and orthodox and Tre disrupts that. I'm out of my comfort zone with him and I don't know when he'll get past my nervous barriers. If he'll even be able to get past, and if he even wants to get past them.
"You may be something, but that doesn't mean you have to let it define you," he says, again looking right into me like he's forcing his words right down to my very core.
"Easy for you to say Tre." It's easy for him to say that. He doesn't have to worry about being socially awkward and nervous around people. He's very outgoing and has no filter. He's blunt and doesn't care what other people say or feel about him. He's confident, a little too confident a lot of the time, but he knows who he is. I thought I knew who I was before I can here, but now, I don't think I know Eva at all. I seemed to have lost her when I moved in this semester. I don't know how to find her again, but when I'm around Tre and talking to him, letting our voices and deep words penetrate each other, I feel like I'm starting to get to know Eva again and what she wants. Or rather who she wants. I just wished I had the guts to ask Tre about this. Guts is the one thing that I know Eva doesn't have.
"Hey," Tre says after a while of us getting back on track and working on our essay again.
"Yeah?" I look up from my computer screen.
"What are you doing tonight?"
I look at him in questioning. "I don't know. I don't think I'm doing anything. Why?"
"Um," he rubs the back of his neck and then scratches his head. "Would you want to go get some food later?"
I freeze. "You want to go get food with me?"
He nods. "Yeah, if you want to."
Oh I want to.
"Sure Tre, we can go eat later."
He smiles really wide. "Cool. I'll hit you up later about it."
I smile back and try to control my inner thoughts that are going crazy. "Sounds good."
Did Tre just asks me on a date?
~*~
I received a text from Tre at 6:30 that just said to be ready by 7:30. I finish putting on my converse and I do a double take in the mirror to make sure I look alright. I'm wearing a new pair of leggings I just got last week and a long sweater cardigan that's over my grey blouse. I smooth out any of the hairs that are escaping my neat bun and then spray on a little of my perfume and I am now ready. I check the time on my phone and it's 7:17. 13 minutes.
I sit on my bed and get out my bible to read for a few minutes until I go downstairs and wait for him. Reading gives me comfort and calms my nerves down. I can escape from my own thoughts and allow for something else to come into my mind instead of my constant over-analytical thinking. I'm always thinking and over thinking. I can't ever put my mind to rest.
My phone buzzes and I look at the message from Tre telling me he's outside.
I smile, nervously but also excitingly. I wish Sam was here so I could tell her about this, but she and Trell left earlier this afternoon to go to Chicago for the weekend.
I set my bible down on my desk and grab my purse and jacket from the closet. I breathe out deeply and I can tell already that my palms are getting sweaty. I wipe them on my leggings as I step out the door and lock it quickly. I walk pretty fast down the hallways to make sure Tre's not waiting for too long. When I step outside, he's standing right off to the side of the building.
He turns towards me when he hears me walking out and he smiles, quickly looking me up and down. He makes it very obvious that he's looking me over and my cheeks flush red. It's almost like I can feel every inch his eyes travel on me.
I take a moment to look at him too and he's now wearing a dark grey jacket with a maroon shirt underneath and black jeans that lead to his all black Nike's. He looks good.
"You ready?" He asks me and I feel the butterflies in my stomach churn.
Ready as I'll ever be.
I've been ready for this moment since I first saw him at that party. I never actually thought that this would come. But now that it's really here, I feel like I have to pinch myself so I know it's really happening.
"Yeah, I'm ready."