Page 28 of Between the Blue
I fling my locker open as I reach it, grabbing my bag from inside. I unzip it, digging through my things to see if the little old camera I think I might have with me is actually in there.
When my fingers brush across the familiar combination of plastic and metal, I sink my teeth into my lower lip. Before I can stop it, I have an entire vision painted in my head.
Bennett James.
He’s certainly out of my comfort zone.
And, suddenly, I know exactly how I plan to complete this assignment.
seven
HER
The last thing I expected when walking into the gym this morning was to find Bennett James waiting for me.
But, actually, he’s not.
Because when I wave at him as I begin my way down the stairs, he has no reaction. He just stays standing there at the fork in the locker room hallway, his hands in his pocket and headphones on his head.
And when I drop my hand awkwardly to my side, he still doesn’t move, his eyes just staying forward.
I swore they were trained on me, but now I can tell he must just be looking through me.
Shocker.
Deciding I’d rather not spend the rest of my walk down the stairs avoiding his eye contact, I choose to check my email.
I let out a heavy sigh when I open the email app on my phone and see nothing new in my inbox. Just in case, I refresh the page. Then I nearly drop my phone when I see a new email appear. After I take a second to read it, however, my shoulders fall slightly. It’s not from COBO.
But itisfrom Tiffany, my academic advisor.
I open the email and quickly scan through it, seeing that Tiffany is asking me to stop by after class this morning and that she has news regarding COBO. And, just like that, my heart starts racing all over again.
This is it. She had to have gotten ahold of them.
It feels like a weight has been lifted off my chest, like I can breathe properly for the first time in a month. My internship with COBO is supposed to start next Monday, and I was beginning to fear the worst as I still hadn’t heard any information about it. Every other student’s internship was set to start at least a week or two earlier than mine, so if this were to have fallen through, I would probably be screwed. It would be too late to find a new position and begin it before the deadline at the end of next week.
I already know I’m going to be tapping my foot all the way through Mr. Hartmann’s class, anxious to hear the good news from Tiffany.
I stick my tongue into the side of my cheek as I read over the email one more time.
It has to be good news. Right?
I click back to my inbox, deciding to search through it one more time to make sure I didn’t miss anything from COBO, when my phone is suddenly yanked from my sight by the force of a hand being hooked around my elbow.
I stumble back a few steps before I catch my footing enough to spin around. And when I do, I find my face inches from Ben’s.
“Hey,” he says. And even though it’s not in a friendly way whatsoever, I still rear back, completely caught off guard.
“What?” I question him. When he just glares down at me, not answering for several seconds, I add, “Are you here to tell me now that you actually have a third name?”
His dark brows knit together. “It’s pretty common to have three names in America the last time I checked.”
My head tilts as I blink at him. It’s the first time I’m registering–which isn’t surprising, given the extremely limited amount of words I’ve heard out of him– that he has a hint of an accent to his voice.
It sounds almost…Midwestern?
I’m not sure, but it definitely doesn’t strike me as the accent of a native Texan.
