“Where you get that weave at?”

“Weave? Girl, you better hush. This ain’t no weave. I am all natural goddess.” I watched the two girls a few tables away. This was not going in a good direction.

“Girl, you the one better hush. Tellin’ me to hush. They got them so tight you can’t even blink. Go ahead and try. That is, if you can stop slappin’ your all ‘natural’ head long enough.”

“OOOOO, that was a burn for sure. She got her good with that one, Mac.”

I stood and put my backpack on my shoulder. “I’m out of here. They’re going to fight and I don’t want to be anywhere near it. Besides, I have a paper to research.”

My Italian-American baseball scholarship best friend wasn’t taking the hint that he should go too. “You go ahead. I’ll record anything that happens and post it. If it’s good, that is.”

“Don’t get caught in the middle of it or coach will eat you alive.”

He glanced away from the girls and up at me. “You worry too much. These are the last years we get to enjoy ourselves before being adults for real. Lighten up man. Find a girl. Go on a date. Kiss her. Do something. All books and no play makes Mac a depressed watch dog of a friend. Besides this is a girl fight. And you know what that means.” He put the sly smile on his face. Why did I choose him as my best friend?

I cast a last look toward the girls and saw the signs a fight was about to happen. Each was standing, had one hand on a hip, the other hand up with a finger working in the face of the other, and the head was going. I’d tried to do the head thing myself, for fun, but it was too painful. Men weren’t supposed to do that. Maybe it had something to do with women and their ability to look after children and families so well. They needed to see in all directions at the same time.

“See you later.” I zipped my jacket and headed away from anxiety central. There was always something going on here.

The air was crisp when I stepped outside the student center. Fall on campus was one of my favorite times. Light filtered through the orange and gold leaves and speckled the ground in front of me. Now where should I go?

I told Tony I needed to research so I could get away from the mayhem, but I did need to get that paper done. I couldn’t afford to burn the one lowest grade drop Dr. Goddard gave us for the semester. With two tests left before finals, I needed to do my best on something I had complete control over, just in case. I did not want to lose my 4.0. That meant, library time, and my date.

An hour passed with my head bent over a book. I loved history, a lot, but I wasn’t sure why I needed to know that old Louis didn’t want to conceive with Marie Antoinette, and her brothers showed up to get him drunk and circumcise him. Okay, so I know why I needed to know, but after almost four years of study, the details were beginning to play on my nerves. But the class was better than the Bosnia & Serbian class last semester. I never wanted to know the exact details of impaling and now I would never forget them. The guy Dracula was based on was one sick puppy.

My neck and back felt the pain of study or maybe I was having a sympathy pain in the neck for old Marie. Rotating my head to relieve some of the pain, a flash of silver caught my attention. The real reason I was in the library sat one table in front of me.

I didn’t know her name, was too scared to ask. She arrived every day at this time, sat at that table, and studied. She was beautiful, brainy, and real. But she was unreal at the same time. The necklace she wore seemed to signal me of her presence every time. I wasn’t even sure how the light reflected off it, but I was happy it did. That reflection had caught my eye that first time last semester.

Her hair was that dark brown so dark it looked black, and she was the most delicate looking creature I’d ever seen. But there was something strong about the look in her eyes as she read, and the way she sat. The way she moved between book and paper and drinking her bottle of water told of her determination and intelligence. I’d never seen her with anything other than water to drink. That must explain her skin.

Her head moved and I looked back down at my book. She almost caught me. My ears were beginning to burn. I hope she didn’t notice. If she did then she would know I had been staring at her.

~*~

Why doesn’t he talk to me? Does he not like me? Is it because I’m not from here? Americans can be so weird sometimes. I’ve been here every day since I saw him that time. Maybe I’m not pretty enough or he thinks I study so much because I’m not smart enough. Couldn’t he just say hello once? It must be warm in here, his neck and face are flushing. He should take that jacket off.

For my Friday Fiction Prompt Challenge.

(For those who may wonder if I am trying to stereotype people during the beginning exchange, just ask women who have a weave done what happens. They have to have it done tightly so it lasts and you can’t scratch your head at that point so you pat your head to stop it from itching. If looks funny because if you don’t know what’s going on it looks like they are slapping themselves.)

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Ronovan Hester is an author, with his debut historical adventure novel Amber Wake: Gabriel Falling due out in December of 2015. He shares his life as an amnesiac and Chronic Pain sufferer through his blog RonovanWrites.WordPress.com. His love of poetry, authors and community through his online world has lead to a growing Weekly Haiku Challenge, a Weekly Friday Fiction Prompt Challenge, and the creation of a site dedicated to book reviews, interviews and author resources known as LitWorldInterviews.com.

@RonovanWrites

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