#Score (8 page)

She does this thing where she giggles at an unusually high pitch, glancing around behind her and making sure no one’s watching. Why the hell is she so paranoid?

If this is how she wants to be, then fine. I get it. “Biggest size you have. Creamer, no sugar. Thanks. Oh, and the name’s Benji . . .”

All right, I might be a little salty, but come on. It’s one thing to not acknowledge a night that I thought we had some fun, but to act like you don’t know me at all? Oh hell no. I don’t play that mind game mess with anyone, much less some girl I met one night.

If my harshness hurts, I would never know by the way she keeps a good poker face. “Benji, got it. We’ll let you know when your order’s ready.”

I see her write the name Keith on the cup that’s just been handed to her, pretending as if I’m not standing here anymore.

Fuck, what the hell’s her problem? And here I was, thinking of ways to tell her how cute she looked in her apron. God, she does have my mind twisted. Glad to know that was only just a phase, and now I can get back to work dealing with real life and not wondering about weird occurrences and what they may or may not mean. I can go back to being
me,
finally.

I want to sit down and relax, to enjoy my cup of coffee once it’s finally ready, and some other random dude hands it to me, Ramona having walked off somewhere. But I’m just so fucking mad that I don’t want to stay here anymore. This is bullshit, and she knows it.

Dammit, she’s got me all riled up. Nothing gets me down. I don’t let anything touch me, ever. Back at Clemson, Coach McPherson used to call me Benji the unflappable. It’s a weird fucking word to be sure, but it’s the truth. Except for right now, right now I’m just ready to put my fist through the wall. Ramona is wanting to play hard to get or she’s being downright bitchy. Either way, I’m not cool with it. Goddamn coffeehouse, I should’ve never come in here today.

I mean really, who rejects me? No one. Not once, ever. And she’s trying to act like I don’t matter? Like I didn’t get her all wet when we were this close to fucking in my hotel room? No, I’m good at what I do, there’s no question about that. And she has the nerve to reject me? I don’t even know how to feel right now. Angry, but not just because of her, but also because this whole rejection thing is fucking me up. I need to get out of here, to go back to my place and let off some serious steam.

R
amona

I
don’t know
how long I’ve been standing here, staring at the canvas on the wall. It doesn’t matter how many times I go out for a walk, or the free trips to the local museums to get some motivation, trying to break through to my inner creative. It just doesn’t matter, I’m stuck. Like
really
stuck.

Every time I go to stand in front of it, I get closer and closer until my nose is practically touching the canvas itself, but I can’t see it, I can’t feel it. It’s just not there anymore. And I want to know why.

Brie is gone for the day, having gone out with her parents to the country club ironically enough, and I’m sitting here for the third hour in a row wondering what the fuck to do. I could go pick up an extra shift at the Laundromat, but that isn’t exactly an inspiring setting. The walls are all this ugly bright yellow, and the old washer and dryers all match with this ugly beige. Who decides to make a machine beige, anyway?

I sit down on my floor, crossing my legs and pushing my bangs out of my eyes. Brie wasn’t kidding when she said I needed a haircut. But that was the last thing on my mind, the absolute last thing in fact. All the other preceding things are big things that are freaking me out.

Like running into Benji last week.
The
Benji, the one who had my heart racing and knew all the right things to say and even though he was a jock, he was different.
That
Benji. What did I do? I did a very me thing and acted like a total bitch because I didn’t know what else to do. I was at work, he caught me off guard, and I retaliated by pretending I didn’t know who the hell he was. Who does that?

I could tell I pissed him off royally, and I don’t blame him. It would’ve pissed me off even more if he had done it to me, but I guess I figured that since he was the All-Star and I’m just me, maybe it wouldn’t affect him so badly. But the way he stomped out of the coffee shop, yeah, he was mad.

Which led me to wonder if he had been thinking about me as much as I have been thinking about him. All I wanted to do was get immersed in my painting and finally finish the damn thing, having found the right voice after spending that crazy night out with him.

Everything seemed to be going okay, I had been adding bits and pieces here and there to the overall composure of it, but after that morning with Benji I was just . . . I don’t know. There aren’t any words because now I feel like utter shit for being the brat that I was, and maybe my muse is just getting back at me by clogging the pipe, so to speak. And it figures, too. I wanted to finish this up before the showcase next month, but that’s not going to happen. My friend Eliza owns this awesome art gallery in San Francisco that’s been getting a lot of press lately and she offered to show off one of my bigger pieces of work, hence why I’m working with this giant ass canvas to begin with. It needs to be massive, needs to stand out from the rest of everything else. If I can’t get this to the showcase and I don’t hurry up and finish it soon, I won’t have any money coming in aside from my jobs. If I ever want to get the hell out of L.A., I need to do something, dammit.

I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, not tonight. I may have been trying to get out of here for practically my whole life, but I’m so close I can taste it. I have confidence in what I do, something that maybe no one knows about me. But I just have to get it done, I just have to put paint on canvas to make it work. I know someone will buy it if I do, but only if I do.

And that’s not the only problem . . . not when my parents are asking me to work every other day practically, and I’m already working thirty hours a week at Doubleday. Because they’re my parents, I don’t ask for them to pay me, something they’re glad for. They pay Jasmine when she works there one or two nights a week, but they don’t pay me, nope. I only get paid from my real job, if you could call it that. And what I make? It’s chump change compared to what I could be making if I could just get myself together and paint these things to sell. The ironic thing is that I’m making the money to help save up for getting out of L.A., but it’s harder for me to paint when I have less time because I’m working. It’s just a vicious cycle, over and over again.

And add a ridiculously sexy guy to the mix, and it’s chaos.

Fuck, I haven’t really had much me time to myself lately, now that I think about it. No wonder I’m starting to suffocate from everything. When I get like this, when everything starts pressing in on me, creating all this pressure on my chest and on my brain? I lose it, I can’t help it. The last time that happened, it wasn’t a pretty thing. I try to tell myself that it won’t happen again, that keeping these things to myself is better than letting them all out constantly, and part of the painting helps with that. My medicine helps too, but it’s hard to stay on course. It’s hard to not let the anxiety get to me.

I throw my paintbrush at the wall, the tears welling up in my eyes. I need to just let it go, let myself relax and stop thinking about everything so intensely. “
Ramy, sugar, you never let your brain breathe,”
my mom always says.

She has no idea how right she is.

I shake my hands out, letting my thumb touch each of my fingertips in order and back again just like I’ve always done when I’m trying to slow down when I start having a panic attack. I take in deep breaths, letting them out slowly, and pay no attention to the reddish blotches behind my eyelids. They’re nothing, I’m nothing. Everything is nothing and all it is, is pure nothingness.

It sounds crazy, I know. My head is a weird place to be pretty much all the time, so I organize my thoughts by paint, one color at a time.

Reaching down under my bed, I pull out my big flat portfolio folder from college. I know plenty of people who hate looking at their older work, but all it does is soothe and validate me. To me it says
I have talent, and here’s proof
.

I run my hand over the first item on top, a mixed-media piece I did in my senior year. I’ve never liked doing mixed-media anything, it creates too much chaos in my mind and although I know a lot of people who like that, I’m not one of them. Paint has always been my thing, will probably always be my thing, but I have a fond respect for the other visual arts. The sandpaper I used in certain spots is rough on my fingers, taking me back to that frustrating moment in time when I was a kid and working on my first portfolio to get into a special art school for kids. I was trying to be cool and different and decided to use sandpaper as a means of roughing up part of my textured image, but ended up destroying it and ruining my chances of getting in.

Beneath it is the bright vivid colors of the jungle painting I did based on one of my favorite paintings, Tiger in a Tropical Storm, by Henri Rousseau. I tried to do it with bright colors and I think I pulled it off pretty well, but I still laugh every time I see it, the tiger’s eyes wide, sort of like a caricature instead of a real tiger.

I flip through the rest of the portfolio, smiling at each page for different reasons, touching everything and remembering all the moments that led me to where I am now. It helps, if only a little bit.

And when I go to stand up in front of my huge wall of canvas again, I’m sure that this time when I pick up my paintbrush I’ll know what to do with it.

I pick it up and nothing. Fucking zero anything. The right half of the wall is covered in what I thought was an abstract look of time, what I decided to do right after the night with Benji. It was supposed to represent how time controls us all, an outline of a man under an umbrella with time raining down on him. But I need more, something more to make this less abstract and more realistic. I don’t know what kind of story I wanted my painting to tell other than the bad timing theme.

Frustrated, I calmly put down my brush this time and let out a sigh to myself. Clearly I’m not getting anywhere, so I might as well leave and go do something productive.

* * *

“
Y
ou’re still not finished
with that thing?” Brie asks, smoothing down her pleated tennis skirt as we take a seat at the nearby bench.

I pull out my croissant from the bag, my only lunch for the day while working the extra shift at Doubleday. The flaky buttery crust melts in my mouth and I enjoy it for just a split second before I come back down to the real world. “No, Brie, I’m not. Something’s wrong with me.”

She purses her lips at me, pushing her blonde hair out of her way. “Something’s wrong with you, really? You’re just now noticing that?”

If we’re about to have this kind of conversation, then I’m ready to leave. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

Brie is brutal at times but at least she’s honest, never worrying about whether she’s going to offend or hurt someone’s feelings. “For someone so talented, you’re pretty damn dense. It’s that guy, Ramona. The soccer star dude? Your wannabe boyfriend?”

“Benji? What the hell would he have to do with it?” I never told Brie about the run-in with Benji, just that I found out he was living in L.A. now. And of course she told me I needed to immediately find him and fuck his brains out, but that’s her for you.

My friend throws her hands up in the air, laughing out of frustration. “Oh my God, sometimes I can’t
even
with you. Benji is like the catalyst here, you know what I mean?”

I stop in mid-chew, looking over at her as if she’s lost her mind. She has if she thinks that’s the case.

And then it hits me. Bad timing. Benji.

How the hell did I not realize this before? Benji. He’s the reason why I’m stuck. He has to be, especially since he was the main encouragement for my muse to take on the canvas finally. And now I’m stuck because of him and what I did. God, could I be any more of a moron? I could, I know I could. But I don’t want to be, not anymore.

I need to find a way to clear Benji from my mind. I simply can’t be distracted.

B
enji

I
end
up stopping by Diego Park, knowing there’s a good spot to warm up before I go on my run. I have to admit, it’s been a rough ass day and I could use getting lost to the run.

It’s a little warmer out than I would like, but I get over it quickly and stretch out on the bench. I’m stressed out to the max. I never stress out, I never let shit like this get to me, but dammit if it hasn’t been happening since I moved. I thought I’d be in better graces with the guys, but even though they respect my skills, they still treat me like I’m some kid. It’s bullshit, especially when you go from being the top of the game to the bottom of the totem pole. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. But no, I’m not going to let that drama fuck with my brain right now. All I want to do is run and not think about anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

Coach’s voice booms in the back my head. “Lundgren, get your shit together, man. You got to make sure you watch for your teammates. This isn’t a one-man show, and you should already know that. I know your coach didn’t teach you that way, so what the hell are you thinking?”

I lie back on the bench, set to do my fifty sit-ups before I go. With each sit-up, I think of running faster and faster. That has been one thing that I’ve been able to improve on—the running. I already outran everyone on my team when I first got here, but now it’s by way more. No one can touch me when I’m on the field, not unless I want to pass to them or want to block them. Apparently I’m too good for the team and I need to learn more sportsmanship. Sorry, I didn’t realize they cared more about being nice and less about winning . . .

Whatever. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine . . . fifty. I lay back though, not wanting to get up just yet. Man, moving out to L.A. is so much different than I thought it would be. I thought I’d have all this time to explore and party, revel in my new celebrity status, but no. Coach has us working day and night, always staying on top of us. Between that and trying to keep my anger at bay from previous incidences . . . not that those certain previous incidents shouldn’t even matter.

The universe has a funny way of slapping you around when you’re down, I’ve come to realize. I never gave much thought to it before, but it really does. And when I look up over the crowd of people gathered around the outside of the basketball court fence and see the reason behind those certain past occurrences standing there staring at me from between the chain links in the fence . . . I just have to wonder if someone is in screwing with me right now.

I do a double take carefully, not wanting to let on that I see her. And yes, it’s definitely Ramona. That girl from that one time that meant nothing to me, honestly.

It’s kind of funny that I recognize her that quickly, because from what I can tell, from what she’s told me anyway, she always tries to hide herself so that no one sees her, even when she does it unintentionally. I don’t know why people do that, because I like being out where everyone can see me. I have no problem admitting that, so how come she does?

She’s got her arms crossed across her dark green hoodie, looking kind of suspicious if you ask me. Did she follow me here? Or is this just another one of those freak occurrences that the universe just loves playing on me? I don’t know her all that well, but I have a feeling that she wouldn’t do something like trying to find me, especially since she wouldn’t know where to start. The idea of her stalking me is sort of funny in a weird way.

I think about the way she acted toward me in the coffee shop, pretending not to know who I am. It stung, I’ll finally admit it. And yeah I didn’t do the thing where I forgot about her, even though I should have. I kept thinking about it for the next few nights easily. It was the last thing I thought about before I went to bed and that was in the middle of our first friendly scrimmage. I should’ve been focused more on soccer, but instead my mind kept wandering off to her every night. It stopped after a while, but I have a hunch that it’s going to start back up tonight.

I stretch from one side to the other, trying not to look like I’ve seen her. I don’t want her to know that I’m paying attention. She switches her weight to her right hip, pulling her body around her even tighter. What she’s looking at exactly? I can’t tell from way over here, but it almost looks like she’s debating something.

I shouldn’t care. She fucked up and maybe now she wants to make up for it—why, I don’t know. It’s stupid to want to talk to her or see her. I don’t play games like that.

But . . . it would be pretty funny to sneak up on her and scare the shit out of her. And the more I think about it, the more I’ve decided that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I do one more stretch, my arms reaching toward the sky before I fake check my phone and jog off in the opposite direction. But instead of heading down past the court, I sneak around the outside bush line where thick green bushes cover my way. I slowly creep around the edge of them, skirting through the next row of bushes until I’m only ten feet away from her back. I know I look like a total psycho standing here crouched down right behind a young girl, but I’ll accept the risk in order to get a good laugh any day.

One thing people learn about me quickly on the field is that not only am I fast, but I’m silent too. I have a way of walking on my feet so that you can’t hear me coming, even if I’m walking across leaves. I don’t know how to explain it. Weight distribution, maybe? Either way, I’m right up behind her now, only a couple feet away. She’s still standing there looking out the fence as if she’s thinking.

“Hello, Ramona,” I whisper loudly right behind her.

And just as I suspect, she jumps a foot in the air, shrieking before turning around and clocking me right in the damn jaw.

“Holy shit, girl,” I groan, feeling at the lump that’s already growing along the side of my jaw. I didn’t know I was working with Holyfield here.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me like that?” she practically screeches at me. “I hate it when people do that.”

I shrug, not knowing how this could go so badly. “It goes both ways, Cinnamon. I’m pretty sure stalking is illegal,” I say, pointing over to where I was only a minute ago. “You didn’t have a problem being sneaky and watching me.”

She drops her head, looking at the ground. “Sorry. I was honestly just walking to work and I saw you running over into the park here. I —“

“Yeah? And you thought you would watch me warm-up, huh? I see how it is. You only want me for my body. Typical.”

At this Ramona blushes deeply, the pretty dark crimson spreading evenly across her cheeks and filling in the spaces between her freckles. She looks like she’s about to sound innocent, looking at me with those brown doe eyes, but this is Ramona. “Yeah. I want your body so badly, ooh baby, ooh baby. How did you know?”

There she is. There’s the girl I met that night. “And she returns. If you don’t mind,” I say as I start to walk away.

“Wait —” she says, pulling out my shirt before thinking better of it and letting go. “Look, I just want to tell you I’m sorry. For last week, I mean. I was being a huge bitch, and I don’t exactly know why. In case you haven’t noticed, I have this really weird tendency to be incredibly socially awkward and I thought maybe . . . I don’t know what I thought, but I am sorry.” It all rushes out of her mouth fast, like going down a waterfall.

The best part is when she finally looks at me with a small smile and sticks out her hand. It’s kind of corny but at the same time kind of cute too. “Hi. I’m Ramona. It’s nice to meet you.”

I let myself shake her hand, because it’s easier to be happy and way more my speed than to hold some stupid resentment and grudge because of a bad day. “Ramona, huh? I like that name and all. But I think I’m going to call you Cinnamon. It’s nice to meet you too, Cinnamon.”

And although she rolls her eyes so hard that I’m pretty sure they’re going to fly out of the back of her head, she grins at the same time. It’s the grin that I’m pretty sure I’ll always remember. “If you can call me Cinnamon, then I should get to call you something. How about
mon chou
?”

Say what? “What does that mean? And wait, you speak a different language?”

She laughs, twisting her hands inside of her hoodie pocket. “French. My dad’s originally from
Côte d’Ivoire
. Uh, the Ivory Coast.”

I don’t know why, but I find it incredibly sexy that she could hold an entire conversation with me and I wouldn’t even understand a word of it. “You learn something new every day. Wanna teach me some French over lunch?”