I was back in town after a long spring semester at college. It was refreshing to be home, and away from the city and its mindless pressures. College was turning out to be much more than it appeared to be on TV dramas and movies, but being a top student in high school kept me prepared for whatever my professors threw at me.
That said, I had not really had much time to form any relationships with anyone. The only people I was on regular speaking terms with were my roommate at the dorm and my boss, a doctor in the Bio department where I worked ten hours a week. My conversations then were limited to toilet paper situations, alarm clock warnings, and dinner invites with the first, and instuctions and feedback concerning lab matters with the second. College had not made me a social animal.
It is important then to mention that I was not very social in high school. I was in all of the honors classes with the "in-crowd," and everyone knew who I was. But I wasn't an athlete, a club president, a cheerleader or spirit crew member. I didn't throw parties, and rarely attended. I never even had a girlfriend in high school. Or college. I was six months away from age 20, and I was still a virgin. Still had never been kissed.
So despite these small feelings of incompleteness and lack of progression in my life, it was refreshing to be home. My hometown was small, free of traffic, four hours away from the city where most of my high school class (including myself) chose to go to college. Football was important in the fall, gardening in the spring, and little league in the summer.
I had driven to the strip mall in town, one afternoon in the middle of that June, to check the bookstore for any textbooks that my professors had told us we would be needing in the fall. I thought about stopping and getting some lunch while I was down there, but I wasn't sure at that point how long I'd be.
I had been browsing in the bookstacks for a few minutes when my eyes happened to fall on a girl in the same asile as me, and it was a girl that I actually knew from high school. My breath became a little short to come by. It was Laura Gerdes, and for four years she had been my Helen of Troy.
Laura was beautiful. She was 5'2", with pale, ivory skin that contrasted sharply with the fire-red of her hair, which flowed in straight, smooth waves across her shoulders. She was well built, about a 28C-20-30. She had huge, wide eyes that were green; long, thin eyelashes; a small, cute nose; and full, pouty lips that always seemed to smile. She had been an honors student as well, and I used to have almost all of my classes with her for four years. I had never once thought of asking her out. It didn't seem worth it, since she would just say no.
"Wade?"
I snapped back to reality. Lura had come up to me, and spoken my name.
"Wade Wilson?"
"Umm... Laura!" I managed to get out. "Laura, how are you?"
She smiled - ah, that smile - and ran a hand through her hair. "Oh, you know. Back from the city for the summer. I saw you at school a few times, never had a chance to come by and say hey, though."
That's right, Laura had gone to college in the city. It wasn't a big surprise. I didn't was to end this experience, so I quickly said, "So, what have you been up to?"
"Just killing time. I like the coffee shop in this store, and it give me a chance to catch up with my reading." She waved a small stack of magazines slightly: Cosmo, Rolling Stone, and Newsweek. "What about you?"
"Oh, just getting some work out of the way before the fall. Checking up on the texts that they told us about ahead of time..."
"Wade!" Laura punched me lightly on the arm. "It's summer! You should be... summer-ing!"
"Summer-ing?" I said, smiling slightly.
"Yeah, summering." Laura smiled, more at me for using a made-up word than at herself for making it. "C'mon, come get some lunch, lounge around for a while, and don't worry about this stuff until August."
"I had been thinking about getting some lunch," I said, as I had.
"Well, I was going to Flack Bell's Diner after I came here. You should come along."
