Page 18 of Dire Straights

“Hey,” he greeted me.

“Hey.”

“You ready to go?”

“Yep!” I said, taking a step forward. “Oh! I also have this.” I pulled a folded up sheet of paper out of my pocket. “So I went on this website and they have a layout of all the different, like, shops and restaurants and games and stuff.” I handed it to him, watching as he looked it over. “And, um, I highlighted the stuff I want to try. But we can look at the stuff you want, too!”

“Did you print this out?” He asked, raising an eyebrow as he glanced up from it at me. “Like, with an actual printer?”

“Yeah! At the library.”

“And you’ve just been carrying it around in your pocket?”

“Um, pretty much, yeah.”

He laughed, shaking his head as he handed it back to me. “Ren, you are really just the supreme nerd.” I shrugged, not entirely sure if it was a compliment or not. When he noticed my expression, he tilted his head. “It’s not a bad thing,” he assured me. “You’re just different than what I’m used to.”

“What are you used to?” I asked, as we started our walk. It was only a few minutes down the road. We’d walk through the tail end of the historic downtown district the university was placed in, through a small chunk of neighborhood, and then we’d hit the beach where the boardwalk was.

He blew out a breath, stretching his arms over his head for a second. I took advantage of the moment to quickly dart my eyes to where his shirt would lift up from the hem of his shorts, like I always did when he did that. I hoped that didn’t make me a creeper.

“Uh, I don’t really know. My friends in high school were just guys from the team.”

“The swim team?” I guessed.

“Nope. I didn’t really swim until I got here. I mean, I swam for fun sometimes, but not competitively.”

“But you said you’re one of the best on the team, right?” I remembered him mentioning that when we’d chatted at the library.

“Yeah. But it’s just natural advantage or luck or something,” he admitted. “In middle school and high school, I played basketball and football, and I was in a baseball league in the summer. Little League before that.”

“Wow, you must really like competing and all that,” I said, surprised. I knew he was getting his degree in sports medicine,but I hadn’t realized he’d been devoted to playing pretty much his whole life.

“Ah…” He hesitated, looking a bit grim. “I love sports. I catch every game I can.”

“You don’t like playing as much?” I asked, trying to understand. “Is that why you’re going into that field instead of some kind of athlete?”

“That’s basically it, I guess,” he admitted. But he looked embarrassed, like he’d confessed some terrible shortcoming. “I’mgoodat playing sports. I know that. And I know some guys would kill for the natural ability I have. But I don’t want to do that for my whole life, you know?”

“I mean, you don’t have to explain it to me,” I told him. “Strenuous physical activity is not really on my list of favorite activities. I want a job in the air-conditioning, where I don’t have to sweat all day.”

“You’re definitely on your way,” he said, but he seemed kind of relieved to have the conversation off him and his non-existent sports career. I made a mental note to try not to bring that up again. “What does a software engineer even do, anyway?”

“Well, basically when you’re a software engineer, you work on a team that solves problems for your client. Like if they want you to develop a business app or an operating system, or if they want customers to be able to order stuff from their website. You have to use, like, engineering principles and programming languages and stuff to make everything work.”

“That sounds hard,” he said.

“Well, not really,” I said. “It’s just a lot of math and coding and stuff.”

“Math is hard.”

“I like math!”

He glanced sideways over at me, smirking a bit. He looked criminally handsome when he was smirking. “I bet you do.”

I laughed a little. “Well, I don’t really get football and stuff, so… To me, understanding that kind of thing is hard.”

“Football is simple,” he informed me. “If we turned on a game, I could teach you everything before it’s over.”