By the time Del was walking up the sidewalk toward Palace Pizza, he had convinced himself she wouldn’t be there. She had been put on the spot back at her locker and felt obligated to offer him help. But after she’d had time to think about it, she’d change her mind. It was one thing to smile at him in the halls; it was another to spend an afternoon alone with him.
She’d come to her senses by the end of the day, he assured himself.
But as he reached the glass door of the pizza parlor, there she was, sitting with her back to him in one of the booths and twirling a strand of hair as she read something in her notebook.
After a baffled second he walked in; Lauren turned when she heard the bell ding above the door, and when he hesitated, she waved him over.
“Hi,” she said as he sat across from her.
“Hey,” he said, still feeling caught off guard. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
She pulled her brow together. “Why? Didn’t we say we’d meet here?”
He looked at her then, and he saw that she genuinely didn’t understand why he thought she wouldn’t show up.
“Can I take your order?” the waitress asked as she approached their table with a pad in her hand. Del pulled his attention away from Lauren to look at the waitress as he gestured for Lauren to go first.
“Um, I’ll just have a plain slice, thank you.”
“Me too, but make it two,” Del added.
“Three plain. Got it. Help yourselves to a drink,” she said, motioning to the beverage refrigerator on the far wall as she walked back toward the kitchen.
Del slid out of the booth, walking over to the glass doors of the fridge. “What’s your poison, Red?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Iced tea, please,” she said, and he grabbed a can of iced tea and a can of root beer before he sat back down and placed it in front of her.
“Why do you keep calling me Red?”
He blinked at her for a second before he leaned over and took a strand of her hair in between his fingers and held it up in front of her face.
“Yes, I get that part,” she said with an eye roll, and he couldn’t help but grin as he let her hair fall from his fingers. “Do you not know my name?” she asked.
He felt his smile drop, and she quickly added, “It’s no big deal. People don’t really know me. And I mean, it’s not like we’re even friends or anything, so…” She trailed off, busying herself by digging in her backpack.
“Why do you call me Michael?” he countered, and she froze, glancing up at him.
“Isn’t that your name?”
“No one calls me that. Everyone calls me Del. I don’t think anyone even knows my real name is Michael, except for the principals here. How did you even know that?”
Lauren bit her bottom lip, and if he didn’t know better, for a second she almost looked guilty. “I can’t remember where I found out,” she said, looking down and going through her backpack again. “Do you want me to stop?”
He spun the can of root beer in his hand and looked at her. “You don’t need to ask anyone’s permission for anything in this life. You can do whatever you want.”
At that moment, the waitress brought over their slices, and Lauren glanced up and thanked her as she slid her notebook to the far side of the table to make room.
She opened her iced tea before looking up at Del, tilting her head as she watched him lift his slice and turn it around, taking a bite out of the crust first.
“The crust is the best part,” he explained around his mouthful of food. “If they made an all-crust pizza, I’d be a pig in shit.”
Lauren took a delicate bite of her own slice. “I’m pretty sure they do. It’s called bread.”
He stopped chewing as he looked at her, and a smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. She’s a wiseass, he thought with equal parts amusement and appreciation, and she smiled to herself before she took another bite of her pizza.
“Okay,” she said after she’d followed it with a sip of iced tea. “So, did you get the notes on the evolution of microbial life?”
She seemed so at ease with him. It didn’t make sense. He found himself watching her face, her movements, constantly appraising her. If it was an act, he would have seen through it by now.
“I don’t know what I got,” he said, leaning down to grab his notebook from his bag. “I definitely don’t have all of them, though. That man is a goddamn lunatic.”
Del placed his notebook on the table between them and flipped it open, and she leaned across the table to get a better look, bringing herself closer to him in the process.
She didn’t even flinch. Not the slightest hesitation.
The words were out of his mouth before he’d even decided to say them. “You’re not afraid of me.”
A beat of silence passed before she spoke. “Why would I be?” she asked, her eyes still on his notebook as she tried to decipher his notes.
“Most people are.”
She didn’t react to his words at all, and he found himself wondering if it was possible she hadn’t heard about him, that she didn’t know the rumors. But even if she didn’t—and the chances were small—she should still have her own reasons for being uneasy.
“And I mean, after what I did on the first day of Health…”
She looked up at him, her expression smooth before she looked back down at his notes.
“You know why I did it?”
He watched her take a small breath as her tongue darted out to wet her lips, but her eyes remained on the paper in front of her. “No, I don’t know why you did it. But I know you’ve had some bad things happen to you.”
So she had heard the stories. She knew all about him: no father, dead brother, angry kid with a vendetta against the world. And God only knows what other embellishments. And yet she was still here with him, calm and casual.
He didn’t understand.
People either kept their distance from him or grilled him for information about his ugly past, information he had no intentions of sharing with anyone. Avoidance or scrutiny, that’s how people handled him.
But she did neither.
And he hadn’t expected to like it as much as he did.
“Anyway,” she said, her voice indicating she was changing the subject. “Wendt always adds more notes after the fact. He’s totally unorganized. I swear, I think he plans his lessons at the stoplights on the way to school,” she said with another one of those eye rolls that made him grin. Instead of looking annoyed, she looked adorable. An angry kitten.
“I just leave a few lines in between the notes as I take them,” she went on. “This way when he starts skipping around, I can go back and fill them in where they actually belong. Otherwise, your notes end up as unorganized as he is.”
She tilted her head, looking back down at Del’s notes as she absently tore the crust off her pizza.
And then she reached across the table and handed it to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He glanced down at the crust and then back at her; her eyes were still on his notebook as she flipped a page and began reading again, and he felt something settle in his chest. It was pathetic, but that was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for him in a long time.
“Here,” she said, reaching to pull a pen out of her bag, “let’s just rewrite these so they make sense before we start trying to figure out what you missed.” She spun his notebook so it was facing her fully before she flipped to a clean page and began to write.
He watched her with a small smile of appreciation. “I like how you act around me.”
She lifted her eyes, and when she looked up at him that way, he noticed her lashes were so long, they brushed just beneath her eyebrows. “How do I act around you?”
He shrugged. “Normal.”
Lauren stared at him for a second before she smiled softly. “Hand me that textbook,” she said, nodding toward the book sitting on the booth next to him.
As he placed it on
the table, Lauren squinted at the page in front of her, pointing to his notes. “What’s this?”
“What?” he asked, tilting his head to see what she was pointing at.
“Pair-a-ballis?” she asked, sounding it out slowly like a child learning to read.
He pressed his lips together, fighting a smile. “Parabasilids,” he said. “I think pair-a balls is a different unit.”
She looked up at him for a second before she cupped her hand to her mouth and laughed. He brought his can of soda to his lips, trying to mask his own laughter and failing miserably.
“God,” she said, shaking her head as a slight blush lit her cheeks. “I think after we work on your note-taking skills, we might need to do something about your handwriting.”
“You’ll have your work cut out for you there,” he said, and she continued laughing as she returned her attention to his notes.
A sudden raucous laughter combined with muffled voices from outside caught his attention, and he lifted his eyes and looked over Lauren’s shoulder through the glass front of the pizzeria.
Instantly, he felt the heat build in his stomach as his teeth came together.
The guy outside was named David. He couldn’t remember his last name, but he didn’t give a shit what it was. What he did remember was what David had done to him when he had come back to school after missing a few days for his brother’s funeral. He had said the most awful things, hurtful things about his brother that had made the other kids laugh. At the time, Michael had only been eight. David was two years older, and Michael was too sad to do anything about it and too young to know how to stop him even if he had it in him to try.
But now, things were different. Now, he knew how to hurt the people who hurt him.
By the time he had figured out how to do that, David was long gone, having transferred to the local Catholic school, and Del had forgotten all about him.
Until today.
He shifted in his seat, his knee bouncing furiously under the table and his eyes on David’s profile outside.
Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Lauren was looking at him, having obviously noticed the change in his behavior. This is it, he thought. This is the moment she’s going to realize who she’s with and run out of here.
Lauren watched him, evaluating him for a second before she glanced behind her.
“Problem?” she asked, and although her face and posture were calm, her voice shook slightly, betraying her.
“That kid’s a piece of shit,” Michael answered, his jaw tight as he shifted again, bringing his hand to his mouth and chewing his thumbnail just to be doing something.
Lauren turned again, looking outside, and David held up his hand and waved to someone across the street before he began to cross.
“It doesn’t look like he’s coming here,” she said softly, turning back toward Del.
He shook his head slightly, knowing if he opened his mouth, no good would come of it. He wished David had come in there. He wanted to bash his fucking head in.
Would he have done that in front of her?
It only took a second for him to come to the conclusion that he would have. He wouldn’t have been able to help it.
“Besides,” Lauren said softly, pulling his attention back to the present, “even if he did come in here, you wouldn’t have been able to turn this table over. It’s nailed to the wall.”
He stared at her, stunned, and she stared back at him, her expression completely innocent.
And then he broke, his grin quickly followed by the first genuine laughter he’d experienced in a while. He watched the corners of her mouth turn up as the slight tension left her shoulders.
Del sat back against the booth and folded his arms as he tilted his head at her. “You know, you keep your head down and your words soft, but shit, there’s some fire in there too, huh?”
She shrugged, still fighting her smile as she picked up her pen and went back to writing in his notebook.
“I like that,” he said. “In fact, I think I’m gonna bring that out of you more often. And you can help me keep my head.” He picked up his soda and took a sip, appraising her one last time before he nodded. “You know something, Red?” he said after he had swallowed. “I think we got a good thing going on here.”
She laughed softly before she glanced up at the clock, and her expression dropped.
“Shoot,” she said. “I have to go. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry,” he cut her off. “I can rewrite these. Thanks for the tip.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly, beginning to pack up her things. “If you want, we can meet to fill in the blanks before the test next week.”
“Cool,” Del said with a nod.
“Here,” she said, reaching into her pocket before offering him money, and he waved his hand and shook his head. “My treat,” he said. “Thanks for helping me.”
“You don’t have to do that—”
“Go. You’re gonna be late for practice,” he said, cutting her off.
She stood there for a second before she nodded and smiled. “Okay. See you soon. Thanks, Michael.”
She swung her backpack over her shoulder and turned, shoving her money back in her pocket as she walked toward the door.
“Hey, Lauren?” he called, and she stopped so abruptly, her bag slid off her shoulder. She caught it at the last second and turned, her expression taken aback.
Del smirked. “Don’t be so surprised that I know your name. You’re not as invisible as you think you are.”
She closed her mouth, looking at him.
“I’m not gonna stop calling you Red, though,” he added casually, picking up the crust she had given him and taking a bite.
She smiled then. Not one of those timid, friendly smiles she’d been giving him for the past few weeks, but a wholehearted smile, one that lit her entire face, before she turned and walked out.
After she had rounded the corner and was out of sight, he looked down, pulling apart the crust she had given him as he replayed the afternoon with her. She was actually funny. And smart. And trusting.
And pretty without trying to be.
She was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met, and he knew at that moment that if he did nothing else in his life, he wanted to be friends with Lauren Monroe.
“Del? I can’t believe you, Lauren! What were you thinking?”
Jenn and Lauren were warming up before gymnastics practice, helping each other stretch, but at that moment, Jenn’s first priority had become reprimanding her.
“You know,” she huffed as she grabbed Lauren’s hands and began to pull her into a more thorough hamstring stretch, “I ignored it when you said hi to him, but to leave campus with him? He could have done anything to you!”
“Stop it,” Lauren scolded. “He’s nice.”
“Yeah, I heard that’s what he got suspended over a hundred times for. Being nice.”
“It has not been over a hundred,” Lauren said wearily.
“You know what I mean,” Jenn said, letting Lauren out of the stretch. “He’s crazy! Um, hello? Were you in Health that day? What if he flipped out on you? Or even next to you?”
A brief flash of Michael fighting to maintain his composure in the pizzeria flashed across Lauren’s mind, but she quickly shook it off.
“Well, he didn’t. It’s really not a big deal,” Lauren said, taking Jenn’s hands as they switched her into the stretch.
After a minute of silence, Lauren released Jenn, and she sat up. “So are you like, friends with him now or something?”
“I don’t know. I guess so,” Lauren said, standing as she reached above her head to stretch out her arms.
Jenn shook her head. “You’re out of your mind,” she said under her breath as she stood and mirrored Lauren’s pose.
As the two girls continued to stretch in silence, Lauren couldn’t help but wonder if Michael would have to endure a similar conversation with his friends, if they would give
him the same appalled reaction.
“You hung out with that girl? The freshman loser who gave you the notes?” she could hear them say. She could picture them laughing and saying her name like it was a four-letter word. “Lauren Monroe?”
As if on cue, Jenn sighed. “I mean, Del? I think you’ve officially lost it.”
But then Lauren thought of his voice in the pizzeria: “You know something, Red? I think we got a good thing going here.”
And she smiled, because regardless of what their friends said, she thought so too.
September 2011
“So, how’s my favorite patient?”
Lauren glanced up from the magazine she was reading to see Adam wearing his trademark blue scrubs and boyish grin.
“You say that to all your patients,” she said with a smile as she stood and put the magazine on the small table.
“Hmm, I might,” Adam said, stepping to the side as he gestured for her to enter one of the exam rooms. “Health insurance companies don’t cover what they used to, and a man’s gotta make a living. But if it makes you feel any better, with you, I mean it.”
Lauren laughed and shook her head as she walked through the door of the exam room and sat on the table facing him.
“So,” he said, closing the door behind him as he approached her. “How are you feeling today?”
“Great,” she responded, and she meant it. In fact, she was floored at the difference only a few weeks of chiropractic adjustments had made. It made her realize how ridiculous she had been for not doing it sooner.
“Excellent,” he said, standing beside the table and holding her shoulder as he ran the palm of his other hand down the curve of her back. “Nice,” he said with a nod, pressing into the muscle on either side of her lower back with his thumbs. “This tender?”
“Not really. The right side is a little worse.”
He nodded as he stepped back and opened the door. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
“Go?”
He ran his hand through his tousled blond hair and smiled at her obvious anxiety.
“Where are we going?” Lauren asked hesitantly as she slid off the table.