Page 28 of The Wallflower and the Running Back

“Lucky girl,” the cashier says, giving me a wink.

“Oh, the flowers are for me,” I joke. The woman chuckles but shakes her head.

“Honey, you can keep those. All we want is the damn ice cream.”

I nod and grin.

“Well, all right then. Noted,” I say, wishing her a good night then hopping back into my truck to zip straight to Rachel’s dorm.

I didn’t get a great look around the place the first couple times, and it was dark last night. But with the sun still up this afternoon, I’m able to scope out what these honors facilities are all about. The buildings aren’t anything special, but when I walk by the cafeteria, I understand completely why Rachel never veers far from her quarters.

“Damn, they get real food,” I mutter to myself. I scan the tables as I pass by the windows, and I’m pretty sure I see fresh veggies and whole chickens on plates. I’m pissed.

I charm the same resident assistant I met the first time I snuck into Rachel’s dorm. I pull out one of the flowers and hand it to her, and she doesn’t seem to mind that it’s slightly wilted. “I’ll put it in water,” she says, waving me toward the stairs.

I take them two at a time until I get to Rachel’s floor. When I make it to her door, it’s cracked open, so I rap on it lightly.

“Hello?” I push it open tentatively and inch my way into the room, catching a glimpse of her roommate, Claire, sitting on her bed with massive headphones over her ears. I’m too far in not to scare her, so I wave a hand. The second she sees me she screams and throws her headphones at me. I clutch them against my chest, along with the flowers and ice cream.

“Shit. Sorry,” I say, handing them back to her. She grabs them with a scowl.

“You seem to say that a lot when you randomly show up here,” Rachel’s voice answers from behind.

I spin around to find her clutching a laundry basket filled with clothes.

“I do, don’t I. Probably because I’m a massive fuckup who needs to apologize a lot.” I lean toward self-effacing with her. I’m not quite sure the reason, but it always seems to disarm her.

“You’re not that much of a fuckup,” she says, pushing past me and dropping her basket on the floor at the end of her bed.

“Is that because you mean it? Or because you saw the ice cream?” I hold out my gifts and her eyes bounce between the bouquet and the Ben & Jerry’s.

“Who says it wasn’t the flowers that got me all . . .” She flattens her hands over her heart and makes a swoony face.

I hold up the bouquet and four petals drift to the floor. We both follow their path and stare at them on her blue carpet. The bright pink isn’t even a color made in nature. Finally, we both laugh.

“Yeah, those are weeds. And I think they might be dead,” she says, taking the bundle from me anyhow and marching it over to a large cup sitting on her desk. “It’s not water. It’s an energy drink. From yesterday morning. So, science experiment?”

“I’m in!” her roommate pipes in, slipping off her bed and joining Rachel by the desk, both of them looking into the cup with an odd intensity.

“Oh, you weren’t kidding about the science thing?” I move toward Rachel’s bed, perhaps presumptively, but she lets me take a seat without questioning it.

“We don’t joke about science,” Claire fires back.

“That’s fair,” I say, now myself a little curious about the outcome of this experiment.

Rachel leaves the flowers on her desk, her lamp turned down so it’s lighting stems. I hold out the ice cream and she grabs it quickly, pulling off the lid and rummaging through her desk drawer for a spoon.

“Not sharing?” I pout.

“Wait your turn,” she scolds, taking a seat right next to me, our legs touching.

She’s wearing dark gray sweats that match my lighter ones minus the fact hers are skin-tight and bunched at her calves. Her shirt says Southern Iowa State Football, and I keep glancing at it as she continues to take slow, languid bites of the ice cream.

“My brother,” she says, twisting toward me more and holding the shirt out as if I couldn’t read it before. “He graduated our freshman year. Tight end. He was good.”

She builds another scoop and holds it in her mouth, letting it melt away slowly as she smiles around the spoon.

“Ah, the football thing. That’s why,” I say, pointing a finger.

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