Page 15 of The Baller

“How do you plan on finding out?”

I shrugged. Maybe if everyone stopped asking questions and started coming up with solutions I’d get there quicker.

“Well, you’re running out of chances, my friend,” Parker nodded over to the bar. “Looks like she’s leaving.”

“Uh oh.”

My neck cracked from the speed at which I side-eyed my best scowl at Tanner and another of his unhelpful comments as I found her in the crowd. My gaze stayed trained on her back, while my brain stayed focused how the fuck I was going to get her name, let alone her number. After two run-ins in one day, the chances I’d see her again were slim.

But then she reached the door, right before she disappeared out of sight. She turned around.

The thud in my chest paused. Air caught in my throat.

I got a flash of those golden eyes as they immediatelylocked into mine.

But that’s all it was, a flash, and then she was gone.

I pushed out of my chair. “Drink up, we’re leaving.”

“What?” asked all three boys in unison.

“Drink the fuck up.” I took off for the exit without waiting for the rest of them.

“Jeez. Wait a second!” Parker cried, jogging after me, followed by Ace and Tanner, who was downing the rest of his beer as he did so.

By the time we made it through the bar, fighting against the crowds of even more undergrads and reached the street, she was out of sight.

“Great,” I grumbled, spinning around left then right, squinting into the darkness and the relatively quiet, sparsely lit sidewalks running alongside the sprawling Columbia University buildings. I threw my hands in the air, linked them behind my head, and pulled hard. “Now what?”

Tanner was next to me, focusing along the same stretch of road I was, while Parker and Ace were covering the right. We saw nothing, except for a small group of students making a lot of noise as they left another bar a little further up the street; a guy on a bicycle with another dude running alongside him, someone walking a dog… but not her.

An empty can of Diet Coke, which had been discarded on the sidewalk, found itself launched into the air, courtesy of my right foot.

“Is that her?”

I turned in the direction Parker was pointing. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at, but then a shard of light separated the shape I thought was one very large person, into two smaller ones and… yes. YES. I was looking at two girls, their arms linked together.

My heart rolled around my chest, and skipped a happy beat. I roped Parker into a hug and noogied him hard. “It sure is. Well done, Sunshine.”

He grabbed hold of me before I took off in a dead sprint. “Wait, you need a plan.”

“My plan is to get her number.”

“You already asked her, and she said no. You need something better.”

My teeth ground while I waited for him to tell me what the ‘something better’ was, but then Ace smacked me in the arm.

“Shit, look.” He jabbed a finger in the same direction the girls were almost disappearing out of sight. I was going to lose them again. “It’s that weird guy.”

We all focused on where he was pointing; thirty yards behind the girls, a man walking in the shadows. Ace was right; it was the weirdo from Brown’s.

This time when the caveman woke in my chest, he wanted to break something.

“There’s no way this is a coincidence, right? Is he following them?”

“We should stop him. Maybe he’s a campus creeper.”

The three of us turned to Tanner. Parker did the honors. “A what?”

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