"Thank you for going with me to the exhibit," she says. She pauses, looking down at her keys that she's playing with nervously. "I'm really glad I found you here." She lets out an airy laugh, maybe a little embarrassed at how cliched that sounded. "I spent a lot of time going out alone before we met. Now I find myself more interested in going with you than when I was doing it on my own."
I can't help but look at her with the warmth she has brought into my life this semester. "I'm always glad when you invite me. Really, I should be thanking you. Getting to hear your fanciful and, frankly, insane takes on the works turned what would have been an intellectual curiosity into one of the better evenings I've had this semester." I smirk at her, holding in a laugh.
She's looking at me, skeptical. "I'm pretty interesting, aren't I?"
"Oh, you absolutely are," I reply, quickly. "Why else would I put up with you?"
We both lean against her front door. A foot separates us. Maybe. My hands in my pockets. Her fumbling with her keys. Silence falls between us, beautiful and full of tension. It's only made awkward when she breaks eye contact to look down at her hands nervously playing with her keys.
I slowly reach a hand up and lay a finger across her soft cheek. "Lana, I-"
"You know we can't," she says with a frail pain in the back of her throat.
"You know I'm crazy about you," I say softly. "Just tell me you don't feel the same way. Tell me something other than we can't." I'm desperate for her to answer. Lectures. Movies. Symphonies. Art exhibits. We're together more evenings than not over the last few months. And here we are, again, timidly standing at her door after another evening enjoying each other's company.
"He's not here," I continue, with a soft exasperation. "He's eight hundred miles away." I shake my head. "When was the last time he even visited you?" I ask with too much contempt.
By all rights, he's the smart choice. He's better looking than me. He's no doubt going to make more money than me, given my proclivities to eccentricity. But isn't that exactly why we are here? Besides the fact that he's not here. I want her to tell me that she enjoys her time with him more than me. And — honestly — I'm tired of being a stand-in for a boyfriend going to school several states away. Don't get me wrong. This evening has been wonderful. And so have our countless other evenings together. If she could tell me she doesn't have feelings for me, I'd leave it be. I'd be by her side at any play, any author reading, as nothing more than her friend. But...
"You could have said goodnight and gone inside when we got here," I continue. "But you didn't." I pause for a moment. "I know why I'm standing here. What's keeping you?"
She's gorgeous. And smart. And fun. And bothers to think about things that wouldn't occur to most people. She's insightful. And has cute freckles on her cute little nose. And... I want to say she's kind. She is, but she freezes when she's forced to make a decision. I know it's my fault. I know I don't deserve anything from her. But it breaks my heart a little bit more every time we are here.
Her eyes turn cold. "It's my porch."
"It is," I say, agreeing with her immediately. I take a step back and say, as casual as I can manage, "And the choice between lamb and chicken korma was yours this evening. But you let the waiter decide." She glares at me. I let a silence linger. "He asked you out before we met? Is that it? The deciding factor? You can't go your whole life avoiding decisions, Lana..."
"I think you should go," she says with ice on her breath.
I nod, sadly, knowing I didn't have to push like that. I take a couple steps toward my car, then turn around, still slowly backing away. "It was a wonderful evening," I say, almost slurring the words together trying to choke back my regret. "I wouldn't give it up."
She looks at me for one last moment, with sadness in her eyes, she walks inside and closes the door behind her.
* * *
It's a few hours short of two days later as I walk into the student radio station. Lana and I were supposed to go to a play last night, but she hasn't returned my calls. In the music library, which doubles as our general purpose room, Jason, Brandon and Lana are sorting through the new albums that arrived this week. In the studio, to the right, two young women talk animatedly and silently to microphones. To the left Clark sits in the shared office working at the computer. There's another office, which we keep locked, for the business manager. This semester, Lana drew the short straw on that job. Last semester it was me. It's a thankless job.
"Good afternoon," I say. Everyone responds with a distracted greeting, except Lana, who doesn't even look up.
Great. I really shouldn't have said any of that. I shouldn't have pushed. I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, I know what I was thinking. That's she's beautiful and smart and sexy and I wanted her to kiss me, not go inside after our evening together and tell her boyfriend about the exhibit while strategically leaving my presence out of the description. But I shouldn't have hurt her. I knew what I was doing.
"Anything for me?" I ask, trying to carry on.
Jason hands me a CD. "Some band called Tullycraft. The album releases in two weeks. I need your review by next Tuesday."
"New band?"
"Third album."
