TOO LATE : CHAPTER 1 – 10
Chapter 3
Carter
Sloan,” I repeat, letting her name roll off the tip If my tongue.
“This is usually the point during introductions that one would reply with their own name,” she says.
I glance back up at her and she pulls her hand away, looking at me inquisitively.
“Carter,” I reply, keeping in character with who I’m supposed to be. It’s been hard enough calling Ryan by the name of Dalton for the past six weeks, but I’ve gotten used to it. Calling myself Carter is another story. I’ve more than once slipped up and almost referred to myself by my real name.
“Mucho gusto,” she says in an almost perfect accent, turning her attention toward the front of the room.
No, the pleasure is mine. Believe me.
The professor instructs the class to turn to the closest partner and state three facts about the other person in Spanish. This is my fourth year of Spanish, so I decide to let Sloan go first so I won’t intimidate her. We turn toward each other and I nod my head at her. “Las Senoras primera,” I say.
“No, we’ll take turns,” she says. “You first. Go ahead, tell me a fact about myself.”
“Okay,” I say, laughing at how she just took control. “Usted es mandona.”
“That’s an opinion, not a fact,” she states. “But I’ll give it to you.”
I tilt my head in her direction. “You understood what I just said?”
She nods her head. “If you intended to call me bossy, then yes.” She narrows her eyes, but a tiny smile forces its way through. “My turn,” she says. “Su compañera de clase es bella.”
I laugh. She just complimented herself by telling me one of my facts is that my class partner is beautiful? I nod in unabashed agreement. “Mi compañera de clase esta correcta,” I say.
I can see the blush rise to her cheeks, despite her tanned skin. “How old are you?” she asks.
“That’s a question, not a fact. And in English, no less.”
“I need to ask a question to get to the fact. You look a little older than most sophomore Spanish students.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“23? 24?” she says.
She’s not too far off. I’m twenty-five, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Twenty-two,” I say.
“Tiene veintidos años,” she says, stating her second fact about me.
“You cheat,” I reply.
“You have to say that in Spanish if that’s one of your facts about me.”
“Usted engana.”
I can tell by the arch in her eyebrow that she wasn’t expecting me to know that one in Spanish.
“That’s three for you,” she says.
“You still have one more.”
“Usted es un perro.”
I laugh. “You just accidentally called me a dog in Spanish.”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t an accident.”
Her phone vibrates, so she pulls it out of her pocket and gives it her full attention. I lean back in my chair and grab my own phone, pretending to do the same. We sit silently while the rest of the class finishes the assignment. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she texts, her thumbs flying quickly over the screen of her phone. She’s cute. I like that I’m looking forward to this class now. Three days a week doesn’t seem like enough all the sudden.
There’s roughly fifteen minutes left of class and I’m doing my damndest to keep myself from staring at her. She hasn’t said anything else since she referred to me as a dog. I watch as she doodles into her notebook, not paying attention to a single word the instructor has said. She’s either bored out of her mind, or she’s somewhere else entirely. I lean forward, attempting to get a better look at what she’s writing. I feel nosey, but then again she did read my text earlier, so I feel justified.
Her pen is frantically moving over the paper, possibly a result of the energy drink she downed. I read the sentences as she jots them down. I read them more than once, but they don’t make a lick of sense, no matter how many times I read them.
Trains and buses stole my shoes and now I have to eat raw squid.
I laugh at the randomness of all the sentences sprawled across her page, and she glances up at me. I meet her gaze and she grins mischievously.
She looks down at her notebook and taps her pen against it. “I get bored,” she whispers. “I don’t have a very good attention span.”
I normally have a great attention span, but apparently not while I’m sitting next to her.
“Sometimes I don’t either,” I say. I reach across the desk and point at her words. “What is that? A secret code?”
She shrugs her shoulders and drops her pen, then slides the notebook closer to me. “It’s just something stupid I do when I’m bored. I like to see how many random things I can think up without actually thinking. The more they don’t make sense, the more I win.”
“The more you win?” I ask, hoping for clarification. This girl is an enigma. “How could you lose if you’re the only one playing your game?”
Her smile disappears and she glances away, staring down at the notebook in front of her. She delicately traces her finger over the letters in one of the words.
I wonder what the hell I just said to change her demeanor so drastically and so fast. She picks her pen up and hands it to me, shaking away whatever thoughts just darkened her mind.
“Try it,” she says. “It’s highly addictive.”
I take the pen from her hand and find an open spot on her page. “So I just write anything? Whatever comes to mind?”
“No,” she says. “The exact opposite. Try not to think about it. Try not to let anything come to mind. Just write.”
I press the pen to the paper and do exactly what she says. I just write.
I dropped a can of corn down the laundry shoot, now my mother cries rainbows.
I lay the pen down, feeling slightly stupid. She covers her mouth to stifle a laugh after she reads it. She turns to a fresh page and writes, You’re a natural, then hands me the pen again.
Thank you. Unicorn juice helps me breathe when I listen to disco.
She laughs again and takes the pen from my hand just as the professor dismisses class. Everyone throws their books in their bags and slides out of their seats in a hurry.
Everyone but us. We’re both staring down at the page, smiling, not moving.
She puts her hand on the notebook and slowly shuts it, then slides it down the table and into her backpack. She looks back at me. “Don’t get up yet,” she says as she stands up.
“Why not?”
“Because. You need to sit there while I walk away so you can determine whether or not I really am a fine piece of ass.” She winks at me and spins around.
TOO LATE : CHAPTER 1 – 10
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