Potentially You and Me (Two Truths and a Lie)

CHAPTER SEVEN: HOT CHOCOLATE CONVERSATIONS

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 bears—oh my—they 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.