Page 56 of The Baller

I shook my head, and pushed thoughts of Lux and his muscles away. “No thanks, I’m good.”

She swiveled in the booth, searching for the waitress. “Oh look, there’s Delaney.” She stuck her hand in the air and waved while I worked on removing Lux from my head.

He wasn’t going anywhere; he’d been in my head for weeks.

When I turned around, Delaney was heading for our table.

Since the day she’d gotten Billy Kerchinsky moved to the front, she’d sat with Millie and me whenever we were in the same class. She was in a different college to us, and had made the basketball team, so we rarely saw her outside of the English buildings, but I liked her a lot. With her sleeves of tattoos and pink dipped ends of her blunt bob, she summoned the energy of someone who gave zero fucks, so naturally I was both intimidated and totally fascinated all at the same time.

“Hey, guys, are you coming to class?” Delaney asked as she reached us.

I nodded. “Yeah, once Millie’s ordered coffee to-go.”

“That’s what I came in for.” She yawned to prove a point. “How did you make it to breakfast? I could barely drag my ass out of bed this morning.”

“Millie already went to the gym too,” I smiled, doing my best to appear like a normal, functioning human being, while Millie waved her hand about for the waitress to get the check.

“Nice work. Hey, are you two coming to the game tonight?”

“What game?”

“We have a game against Harvard. You should come.”

“Oh. Um…”

Fuck fuckfuck. Why did any new plans always fill me with panic? Whether Delaney sensed it or not she didn’t say anything, she just smiled.

“It’s at 7:30 if you’re free.”

“Thank you. We’ll try.”

The waitress finally appeared with the check, and I handed over the cash plus a healthy tip. Millie stood up, and pulled on her jacket. “Come on, let’s go. It’s Chaucer and we need to get our heads in the game, otherwise it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on.”

“Yeah, and this class is two hours,” Delaney added, taking the coffee she’d ordered.

Two hours.

That’s how long I had to concentrate and not drift off into thoughts about how I could get Lux to kiss me.

Sound hard? Yeah, it waswayharder.

TWELVE

LUX

“Have eitherof you seen my earbuds?”

I turned around to Parker and Tanner who’d been permanently glued to the couch for the past three days, and what looked like the castle they’d built in Minecraft.

It was impressive, more so because they seemed to be concentrating so hard they’d lost the ability to speak, or more importantly, be annoying. It was a toss-up on whether I wanted to disturb them, but I was leaving anyway so they could continue being annoying without me.

“Earbuds? Have you seen them?”

I knew they were here. I’d put them down somewhere yesterday when I’d come in from running errands and collecting lunch from the deli down the street.

I’d already searched my pockets, emptied out my bags, and flipped up one of the cushions. Nothing.

Goddamn earbuds I was always losing. Someone needed to invent a GPS for them.

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