Page 1 of Study Games

1

WAVERLY

Tiny wings buzzed frantically as the bee completed its infinite circuit around the tight bud, and finally settled on a bloom nearby. The pale yellow petal dipped under its weight, swaying as the worker collected its burden and flitted to the next flower. I traced its invisible path with my fingertip, letting it continue on its daily duties while I observed and scratched as many notes as I could through its flight of fancy.

Supercharged midday sun heated the back of my exposed neck, and I wished that I’d put on more sunscreen before I left my shared dorm room.

Just a few more minutes.

Minutes of peace I’d have to give up the moment I closed the hive and return to student life.

I’d traced the bee’s passage for the last few weeks, observing the hive until I dreamed of tiny zipping insects and their constantly changing paths in my sleep. Something about the way they moved drew me to them. I couldn't help zoning out to their personal in-flight program, the focus of my second semester at California’s Rippton U, home of the Rippton Hails ice hockey team and offering a bespoke biopsychology major designed for science nerds just like me.

“Of all the places I've gone to pick up a girl, this has to be one of the weirdest.”

A long shadow fell over me, obscuring the bee’s path and my peace. I closed my eyes, willing the insurgent away but when I opened them, his shadow still closed out my sun.

“No one asked you to be here.”

“Actually, you did.” Jaxson Jax Palmer, or so the Indie online art community proclaimed him, huffed a laugh to my back.

My brain reacted to that slight with a silent snarl for breaking into my slice of peaceful pie, but my mentee didn’t give a honey bee’s whit about simple things like screwing with other people’s mindset.

Two can play that game.

Geek I might be–pun intended–but that didn’t make me socially useless, just awkward as all get out. Positioning my pencil between my fingers, I tracked the insect’s path again and again until it became second nature. Which made ignoring the body blocking my light all too easy. Hyper-focus was my jam.

I lowered that same movement to my page, ghosting the precise pattern on my sketch pad in a series of tiny dashes to convey both direction and movement until I immortalized the bee’s life work on my page.

A puff of breath hit the back of my neck, doubling the heat of the afternoon sun and cooling it at once. Unable to process the sensation, gooseflesh and shivers broke out all over my skin, racing along my spine in an uncomfortable roil that broke me out of my reverie.

“I thought you left,” I said grumpily, pretending I hadn’t just managed to forget he was there at all.

Jax didn’t move or back off. Personal space bubble, anyone? “Cute. Shouldn't you actually have the bee in the drawing?”

My concentration shattered to the nth degree, I snapped my drawing pad shut, leaving the rings at the top of the binder zinging. “If someone left me alone long enough to get my work done, maybe the bee would get to make an appearance one day.” I closed my eyes and tried not to let the wave of insta-nausea that swept through my gut during my outburst overwhelm me. “I'm sorry. I'm never rude like that.”

As soon as the apology left my mouth, I regretted it.

Jax half-snorted, needing nothing else to express his extreme disdain. This was Jax. Bad boy extraordinaire, incredibly gifted artist which even this geek girl could see with one eye shut, and the student I was meant to be tutoring who never turned up for our sessions on time.

I apparently wasted his time, and he thus impinged on mine, and my space.

His breath brushed my cheek as he leaned back in. Case in point. I repressed another shiver, unsure if I wanted to screech at him or punch him. Not that I’d ever punched anyone before. Why bother apologizing to someone who hated every moment he sacrificed to be in my company, for crying out loud? We only spent enough time together to get what we needed done, and went our separate ways with gratitude that those scant minutes expired in an appropriate fashion.

Until today.

What the hell was different about today?

I twisted on my little piece of plastic that protected my rear from ending up soaking wet on the biology gardens grass and looked up into the yellowest pair of eyes I'd ever seen.

Lime and black streaks decorated a long fringe that flopped over his eyes in a you can’t be as cool as me cut fresh out of highschool but somehow it hit all the right rockstar/elite artistry vibes to make it edgy enough for college.

Just like him, his smile had a sharp edge to match his brittle sense of humor laced with a heady dose of quick-serve sarcasm I appreciated. I’d learned that over the last few weeks, usually when he aimed that weapon at me.

On the very rare occasion that same self depreciative humor was directed at himself.

It didn't make either of us like each other any better.

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