-SCARLET-
OKAY COLLEGE. Let’s do this thing.
It felt good to be striding into the September sunshine on the way to my very first lecture. Thanks to Labor Day, the first day of classes was a Tuesday, so I navigated to the hall where Statistics 105 would be taught. The course was a requirement for the pre-med major, and I was a little afraid of it. Setting my pack on the floor beside a vacant chair, I glanced around at the other students filing into the room, as if inspecting them would reveal whether or not I was smart enough to keep up in the class. Would there be other nervous-looking freshmen? Or would they all be hardened math whizzes?
The results of my search were not encouraging. I saw a lot of skinny boys with rumpled hair. There was not a Katie to be seen for miles.
My sweep of the room ended when my gaze fell on a set of broad shoulders two rows ahead of me. They were attached to an exceptionally handsome guy, with a thick head of dark red hair. As I admired him, he turned his head, catching me in the act. Too late, I dropped my eyes to the notebook open in front of me.
Luckily, the professor began speaking then. All eyes turned to the front of the room, where a thin man in a stiff white shirt introduced himself. “We’re going to dive right in with the concepts of estimation and inference! Let’s get to it.”
With a white-knuckled grip on my pen, I began taking notes. Within a half an hour, it became very clear that statistics was a course requiring coffee as a side dish. As the professor drew yet another graph on the white board, my gaze wandered back to the only interesting person in the room.
His hair was a lovely warm tone — like dark caramel with a hint of cayenne. He looked strong, but not hulking like a no-neck football player. His was a chest you could lay your head upon. I was busy admiring the twitch of muscle in his arm as he took notes when he looked up again to meet my eyes.
Ugh. Busted twice! How mortifying.
I stapled my gaze to the professor for the rest of the hour. The moment that class was dismissed, I snatched my things and bolted outside. My next lecture — music theory — was three buildings away, and I had only a few minutes to get there. But the lecture hall didn’t seem to be where I’d thought. So I dug the campus map out of my bag feeling just like the idiot First Year that I so obviously was. Reorienting myself, I ran off in the right direction. When I finally reached the door, someone held it open for me. “Thanks,” I panted.
“No problem,” said a deep voice. The hint of amusement in it made me look up.
It was him — the hottie with the auburn hair. He gave me a quick grin. I took a tiny fraction of a second to admire the freckles on his nose before darting past him into the lecture hall.
This time, I sat in the front of the room, where I wouldn’t be tempted to stare.
-BRIDGER-
For the first twenty minutes of music theory, I was doing fine. The professor began by explaining how sound waves vibrate the human eardrum. Science had always appealed to me, and the material was easier than the graduate level chemistry courses I’d been taking. Giddyup.
But then the lecture veered in another direction. “When sounds are organized into music, and that music is played slowly, and in a minor chord, the listener will often become sad,” the professor said. He hopped over to a sound system and hit “play” on a three-minute segment of Mozart’s Requiem Mass.
The music began low and soft. As it began to build, the sound waves vibrating off the wooden desks and the leaded glass, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
“Close your eyes,” the professor commanded from the front of the room.
I complied, letting those violins and the choir’s Latin chorus wash over me. The mood of the piece was dire and dramatic. There was no arguing with that. And my heart bought into it. I began to feel overwhelmed, and all because of a recording of a song that was first performed over two hundred years ago.
If I’d taken this class a year ago, maybe it wouldn’t have hit me like that. But I was having a rough time. If my life were a movie, the sound track to this year would be written in an ominous key. And there was nothing I could do about it. My role was to suck it up and stay the course.
The song ended, and the professor began to talk about tempo and rhythm. I took notes, trying to tame the unfamiliar jargon on my notebook page. I’d never been interested in classical music. But there weren’t any better options for the time slot, and I needed more arts and literature courses to graduate. Harkness was picky like that — they wanted me to be more than just a science nerd. And a hockey player.
A former hockey player.
At the end of the week, my teammates would all sharpen their skates and report to the rink. They’d go back to practicing their shooting drills, and arguing about which toppings to order on their pizza.
What would I be doing? Eating ramen noodles and tinkering with the spreadsheet I’d written to keep track of my grueling schedule. This year was going to be a gauntlet of classes and part-time jobs and studying. And childcare.
And keeping secrets.
I couldn’t even count all the ways that I could crash and burn. I could lose my part-time job, or I could get sick. My little sister could get sick. My mother could get into legal trouble. The list was a mile long. And even if none of that happened, I was still vulnerable. The college could discover the secret I was keeping — a sixty-five pound, red-haired secret — and show my ass the door.
So even though I was sitting in an opulent old room, in the dusty hush of one of the oldest schools in America, I was on edge.
A couple of rows ahead of me sat the girl who I’d caught checking me out during statistics. Now she tipped her head into one hand, causing her glossy hair to tumble to the side. The creamy skin of her neck was exposed, and if I’d been seated closer I would have been tempted to reach out and test its smoothness with my fingers. On the notepad in front of her, she wrote notes as if her life depended on it.
With that sort of first day diligence, I clocked her as a First Year. No question.
Last year at this time, I’d been looking over the class of freshmen girls the way a guy eyes an all-you-can-eat buffet, wondering which flavor to sample first. By the end of the year, my teammates had a running joke. “What’s Bridger’s type?” The punch line was, “He likes ‘em breathing.”
Say what you will, but there was a reason I was such a hedonistic… well, slut if you didn’t want to mince words. On some level, I’d already known where my life was headed. It’s not that I’d predicted my situation exactly. It’s just that I could tell that things were going south — that my mother had bought herself a one-way ticket to hell. Last year was my last shot to be a carefree drunk. And I took it. I don’t regret it for a second.
So you’ll forgive me a few lingering looks at the pretty girl seated two rows ahead. Because a look here or there was all I would get.
After class, I headed over to the newly renovated student center to buy a sandwich and do a little reading. Only First Years and ubernerds started their schoolwork on the first day of classes. But this term was about to become the most difficult of my life, and I was going to have to change my ways to make it work.
I sat down at the last empty table. Before I got a chance to dig in, I saw the hottie from this morning’s classes weaving through the crowd, looking for a place to sit. She had that deer-in-the-headlights expression typical of First Years. The campus map was sticking out of the back pocket of her skirt, too. As her gaze swept in my direction, I leaned down all the way to the floor, unzipping my backpack and pulling out my music theory textbook.
I counted to ten. Then I sat up again just in time to see the girl gunning for my table, which she’d assumed was unoccupied.
Worked like a charm.
When I popped up in my seat, she pulled up short, only a few feet away. Her neck turned red, and she blinked at me, trying to figure out how to play it. Her face said: Damn it. Him again!
“Well, sit down already,” I chuckled, putting my book and my sandwich on the table, and pointing at an empty chair.
After a beat, she slid a salad container and a Diet Coke onto the table.
“I don’t bite,” I said. “Unless you’re a turkey and coleslaw with Russian dressing on rye.”
With her face flaming, she did as she was told. “I swear I’m not a stalker.”
Smiling, I unwrapped my sandwich. “No kidding. Stalkers don’t usually look so horrified to see the person they’re stalking.”
She shook her head. “It’s just… never mind. Weird coincidence.”
“So…” I said, taking a bite. She looked cute with her cheeks pink. I wondered what else I could say to make her blush like that.
“So…” she picked up her fork.
“Are you going to stick with both the statistics and the music?”
“Probably,” she said. “But one of those two classes will be a joy, and the other one will probably kill me.” Her eyes were an interesting hazel color. She was really attractive, but not in a bombshell way. There was something a little more serious in her expression than the sort of girl I usually went for. But it worked on her.
Not that I was sizing her up or anything. What would be the point?
She took the first sip of her soda and then licked her lips, her pink tongue darting out distractingly. And for a moment I forgot what we had been talking about. Classes. Right. “That’s where I stand, too.”
“Right?” she agreed. “Statistics is going to be tricky, but I need it for pre-med. I thought I’d get it over with.”
“Ah,” I smiled at her. “You’re a First Year, then. How’s it going so far?”
“Well, this is day number two. So I’ll have to let you know.”
“Roommates okay?”
She made a face. “I suppose it could be worse.”
“Look on the bright side. In two years you can have a single.”
“Something to look forward to.” She picked at her salad. “So are you going to keep both classes?”
“Sure. Statistics is a no brainer. I just haven’t fit it in until now. I’m not so sure about the music theory. My schedule needs a Tuesday and Thursday class. And I thought it sounded easy. But now I’m not so sure. All that talk about intervals and semitones. It’s like he forgot to speak English.”
“Um, seriously?” She leaned back in her chair, which made her top ride up a little bit. I tried not to peek at the strip of smooth skin exposed at her waist. “How is it possible to understand stats and not music?”
“I’m worried that music is one of those things that you can ruin with too much examination. Like astronomy. I used to love to look at the stars. And now when I do, I have to wonder whether I’m looking at a red dwarf or a white giant.”
“It won’t be like that,” she said. “You won’t suddenly hear your favorite song and think — ‘this would be so much better in C minor.’ The opposite is possible, though. You’ll hear things you didn’t before. You’ll understand why the key change makes you feel differently about the middle of the song.”
“Fair enough. But some things are beautiful whether or not you understand them.”
She smiled then, and the effect was powerful. It took her from seriously pretty to dazzling. “Okay — beautiful whether you understand it or not… You mean like art?”
“Sure. Or, the female body.” I grinned, waiting. And there it was — another flush in her cheeks.
She swallowed. “Okay…But aren’t those things even more beautiful when you do understand them?”
“I’m going to have to think about that, Stalker.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Please don’t call me that.”
“But I have to. Because you haven’t told me your name.”
That made her blush even deeper. “Right. It’s Scarlet.”
Just like her face. I reached across the table to shake her hand. I could at least pretend to be a gentleman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Scarlet. I’m Bridger.”
“Bridger…” she frowned as we shook. “Are you a hockey player, Bridger?”
“Maybe I used to be.” But the question had surprised me. It wasn’t like I was the star of the team or anything. “Why? Are you a fan of hockey?”
Her face closed down then. “Maybe I used to be,” she said, echoing me. “Hockey hasn’t been good to me recently.”
I picked up my sandwich. “Maybe you mean that a hockey player hasn’t been good to you recently?”
She gave me a funny smile. “Something like that.”
“Fair enough. Listen, I’m thinking we can make a deal here. If I’m drowning in music theory jargon, you can throw me a rope. And if you need any help with stats, I’ll see what I can do.”
That killer smile lit her face again. “You have a deal, Bridger. But I think I’m getting the better end of this bargain.” She stabbed an olive with her fork.
After that, Scarlet loosened up a little. I gave her part of my story — the nice part. I told her I was a junior, and doing concurrent bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology. “I wanted to go to med school, but I don’t think I can swing after graduation.” Of course, I didn’t share my ugly reasons. “I’m hoping the master’s degree will help me get a job.”
“Sounds smart,” she said.
“We’ll see. The course load is kicking my ass.”
She told me she was from Miami Beach, where I had never been. Naturally, she asked where I was from. “Sunny Harkness, Connecticut,” I said.
“Nice commute,” she offered.
“Sure. But at least you get to leave here once in awhile. I seem to be a lifer.” Hell, that made me sound like a whiner. I was grateful to have a spot at Harkness College. Most townies never even got a tour of the place.
My watch beeped, reminding me that I had to pick up Lucy from school. “Duty calls,” I said, balling up my sandwich wrapper. “I’ll see you in class on Thursday?”
Scarlet gave me a smile — a big one, like the sun coming up over the beach. “I’ll be there,” she said.
Now I had something to look forward to. “Awesome. Later.” I picked up my stuff and jogged out of the student center.
