Page 5 of Ten Years and Then…
She knew something else, too. He lived in West Hall, so he had to be a sophomore, at least. Probably not a senior, though. It was hard to be sure just from a voice, but she didn’t think he sounded old enough for that.
So: smart. Responsible. Helpful. Friendly. Respected. Sophomore or junior.
Not bad for less than a minute of overheard conversation, plus where he lived. All that, and she’d knocked out two pages about The Great Gatsby and the Tragedy of the American Dream. Nora considered that a very successful outing.
Should she push her luck and try to actually speak to Daniel?
It wasn’t to be. When she poked her head out the door of the word processing room and into the main computer lab, all she could see was the backs of two young men, both bent over the innards of a computer. Which one was Daniel? The dark-haired one in what might be a polo shirt, or the redhead in a ratty T-shirt?
She didn’t wait around to find out; she’d learned enough for one afternoon.
Next time, though.
Next time, she’d catch him alone.
Or maybe the time after that. It had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it?
Daniel, October 13
He hadn’t seen—well, overheard, anyway—Nora in two weeks. The last time he’d been in the same room with her had been at the used bookshop. Daniel had been back three times since then. He told himself it was in hopes of another lucky find like the mint-condition copy of The Hobbit, but he wasn’t very convincing, even to himself.
Regardless, she hadn’t been there on any of his visits. Nor had she returned to the computer lab.
Or maybe she had. He had no idea what she looked like, only how she sounded. He could’ve walked past her a dozen times these last two weeks and never known it. Knowing his luck with girls, it wouldn’t surprise him. It felt like exactly the kind of cruel joke the dating gods would play—dangle the possibility of a smart, funny, wonderful girl just out of reach and out of sight.
And if he ever did see her? That might be the cruelest joke of all. It would be like the Looney Tunes cartoon where the Coyote finally catches the Road Runner, except the Road Runner was fifty feet tall and the final shot was the Coyote holding up a sign reading “Now what do I do?”
Daniel shook his head and turned back to his cheeseburger. He didn’t like eating alone precisely because it usually led to thoughts like that. Not even a piece of cherry pie with whipped cream could lift his mood.
Maybe he could train himself to think more positively? The brain was sort of like a computer, wasn’t it? And after all, that’s what he was majoring in. If he started giving himself instructions to focus only on good, uplifting, encouraging thoughts, that’s what he’d get. His cousin Bianca told him the same thing nearly every week—without the computer analogy, which she would mock relentlessly.
There! He saw his face reflected in the window. Smiling. It was already working. So what else could he be positive about?
The cheeseburger was really excellent. The Green Lantern Café always did a good job, but whoever was on the grill today had nailed it. Yesterday, Professor Maddox had praised him in front of the whole class—that had felt fantastic. And hadn’t he beaten Bob and Phil in that brutal game of Battletech yesterday that went until nearly midnight?
There were plenty of good things in his life. It was just a matter of reminding himself.
His reminders were interrupted suddenly by a voice.
“I’ll pay, Kim. You sat here for an hour reading over ten pages of nonsense about The Great Gatsby, it’s the least I can do.”
Definitely her voice. Nora.
He sat up straight, searching for where it had come from. There was only one booth it could be, right by the front door.
Two girls sat there. One was a redhead, dressed in a school sweatshirt and jeans. The other—it was hard to tell from across the café—maybe had dark blonde hair, and she was a little taller than her friend. She was wearing a frilly orange blouse and a skirt. Both of them were smiling.
Both of them were pretty.
But the blonde girl was more than that. Even from twenty or thirty feet away, her smile was entrancing. That was the only word that came to mind. And her eyes, blue or green, it was impossible to tell from here, but either way, they sparkled.
“Thanks, Nora. But you have to let me pay next time, deal?” It was the redhead.
Nora was the blonde. The girl who was as beautiful as she was funny. The girl who was smart and read out loud in the middle of the bookstore. The girl who even knew who HAL-9000 was.
Now he knew.
Now he’d seen her.
