Star Crossed (9 page)

“I have to get back to my studies actually and we can hang out later when you don’t have as much going on.” Chris hurriedly replied. Maybe calling her wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

“Oh, okay then, I guess I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

“All right, bye.”

Chris hung up the phone and sat there wanting to die a little. How juvenile was that? What made him think that he would have any time to spend with someone else in the first place? Lord, he had worked so hard to get here and he didn’t want to lead Skylar on when he couldn’t commit to plans he might make. He couldn’t even make it to Tuesday night wings and he was sure Steve would be at his door again before he even realized he had missed the next wing-outing. If he hadn’t missed one or two of them already.

Also, he was babbling in his own head.

“Oh this is just great. Badly timed and great.” He said to the empty room.       

Chris sat up and decided to dive back into his thesis with Skylar still on his brain. The hardest part of writing anything for him was tying everything together. Much like his life, Chris thought much to his chagrin. What would he do when he was done with classes and studying. He had been so busy writing papers, reading, and apparently fawning to decide the exact direction he wanted to go in life and what all this work had been for anyway.

Then, like a blow to the chest, it hit him. How to fix his problems with Skylar, with his thesis,
and with his undetermined direction. Well, his thesis first. He couldn’t believe the now seemingly unnecessary emotional distress he had put himself under and was determined to face and solve all of his problems. With that thought, Chris began typing like a madman, while an ever-widening smile stretched across his face as he worked.

            “Okay, life,” he chuckled to his computer, “I’m going to get you back in order again. No funny business, nobody gets sued. The mess you’ve become begins and ends here.”

Chapter Four

“Woah, Nellie, slow down!” Skylar scolded as the mischievous border collie knocked into her knees excitedly to greet her. “Down, no, down!” she said as she bopped her nose to startle her out of her excited prancing. “That’s enough!”

“You don’t have to scold her that harshly,” her mother said.

“I do when she freaks out like that. She forgets she’s a puppy sometimes and it’s not okay, Mom,” she complained.

“Who’s the animal? Give her some credit. She’s just happy to see you.”

“Well she can be happy on the ground,” Skylar replied as she went to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cereal for herself. “Do you have any plans for the day?”

“No, not really. I’m off to work soon but have a shorter shift today. You have the day off, right?”

“Yeah, I was going to go down to the lake with Grayson later. Did you need me to get anything from the store?”

“Maybe some milk since that’s really the only thing you’ve been using up. Are you sure that you eat?”

“Mom,” she said mildly as she ate. She arched a brow at Nellie when the dog laid her head on her thigh and stared up at her pathetically. “No begging.”

Nellie sighed dramatically and curled up at her feet so that Skylar would have to all but kick her in order to stand up again. She peered around the table to give her a reproving look but Nellie was too busy staring out the window to notice.

“She seems pretty content with her life,” Skylar said as she checked her phone for a text from Grayson.

When her daughter started grinning at her cell phone she gave her a mild look. “I don’t think Nellie is the only one,” she commented wryly.

“Hm?”

“Nothing. Have a good day, don’t forget to let Nellie out for a while before you leave. If you’re going to be gone more than a few hours please put her in her kennel. She’s been getting antsy when left to her own devices lately.”

“Aww, are you a nervous lady?” she asked as she reached down to fluff the fur around her ears. “Yeah, it’s no fun to be stuck at home. Not sure why being stuck in your kennel is better.” Skylar rolled her eyes and did her dishes before going upstairs to get ready.

She was vaguely puzzled as to what to wear to go to the lake and ended up putting a swim suit on under her clothes just in case. She startled when her phone began to ring and answered it distractedly.

“Hey, Skylar, is this a bad time? It’s Chris.”

“Oh, hey! No, it’s not a bad time. What are you up to? I haven’t heard from you in a while. I kind of expected another call after you asked me to catch up the other day.”

He laughed self-consciously. “I guess it’s been a minute. I was in kind of a weird place mentally because Steve was a moron and kidnapped me to the mountains for a while.”

“What? Are you okay? Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” he said, sounding somewhat as though he was frustrated at himself for some reason. “When I came home everything just started to fall together and I finished my thesis just about all at once. I guess I got caught up in that and forgot to mention the kidnapping thing.”

“You’ve finished it? Has it been that long since we actually talked? It seems like last time I heard from you you had no idea when that was going to happen.” She fluffed her hair as she thought about what she had been up to lately and was mystified that she had not made nearly enough time for her friends. The last time she had talked to Tara was at least a week ago, and it had been nearly a month since they’d had that double date at the movies. Or had it been longer? She’d been spending nearly every minute of her free time with Grayson so it was difficult to tell.

“I guess I just made a breakthrough. I was just thinking about where I was in my life and what I wanted out of it and suddenly a lot of the things I had been looking at and thinking were really convoluted actually made a lot of sense.”

“Um, that’s good,” Skylar said, feeling rather confused for her part at this change of heart she was seeing in him. Wasn’t he so worried about the world that he wanted to be a scholar forever? Chris was shy and reclusive, not at all like her charismatic Grayson, and she never saw much of him even before he disappeared into his books. Sure, she could understand him being a little out of touch with the world after his father died, but he’d taken it to an extreme that had worried her. “I’m glad.”

“Did you get my text about my graduation party?”

“Um, I think so. I’ll have to dig through my inbox and find it. Is that coming up soon?”

“Yeah. I was wondering if you might like to get some coffee today so I can tell you about my thesis. Maybe let you know some of what I’ve been thinking about. That is, unless you’re still too busy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Chris, but I have plans. Maybe we can have lunch or something after your graduation party?”

“Oh. Sure, yeah, sorry to bother you. Hope your day is great,” he said quickly.

“Yours, too. Bye!” Skylar frowned briefly at her phone but did not spend too long puzzling over why he had wrapped the conversation up so quickly like that. Again. Anyway, she had too much to do to get ready since today seemed like it might be a big deal of some sort and she had to be prepared for anything. At least, she could only guess that it was going to be special because Grayson had sounded so excited when he’d asked her out.

Not that he wasn’t excited to see her anytime, but today... she could feel it. Today was going to be special.

~~~

Chris spent the better part of the morning spinning his phone around between his fingertips. With his thesis submitted and nothing to do while he waited for his mentor to read it he found that he had more than enough time to pay attention to the world. He knew it was Thursday, that Steve had gone on one of his road trips and so had missed getting wings with him, and Chris had no idea what Skylar was up to. Not that what she was doing was any of his business but he found that he could not stop thinking about her now that he had realized that she had been on his mind.

It was incredibly frustrating to him because he couldn’t simply acknowledge that there was an elephant in the room and then go on with his day. Since he hadn’t been able to talk to Skylar he had not been able to figure out why she was on his mind so often. It seemed odd to him that she suddenly always had plans when before it seemed as though she would frequent certain areas in the hopes of being visited by random friends.

He tapped his finger on the phone as he mentally counted out how many times he had turned her down for a lunch date or had just missed having coffee with her. Now that he was making a tally of sorts it felt as though all those lost opportunities had only multiplied the longer he had kept to himself. If he had just made more of an effort to get to know her and to keep her friendship then he wouldn’t be wondering about her all the time.

Chris opened up the inbox on his phone and stared at the text messages that had been sent to him. He didn’t really understand how people could carry on texting conversations since he’d never engaged in one. Aside from a quick message here or there he had no need to use his phone for anything other than calling people or simply reassuring his mother that he hadn’t fallen prey to a raving monster made out piles of books and notepaper.

He was an intelligent human being and therefore the puzzle of how to approach a social interaction should not be this overwhelming. Chris studied Skylar’s message saying she would be at his graduation and wondered if he was being foolish. After all, one didn’t send a friend as many smiley faces as she had put in the texts she had sent to him, did they? Perhaps it was possible that she had noticed that he was going to be out of school soon and was busy with work now but keeping him in mind as an option still.

That seemed a bit presumptuous but he hoped that it was the case. It didn’t seem all that unlikely since he had seen a spark of interest in how she had sometimes looked at him. He was fairly certain that he hadn’t imagined it and the last he had heard she was waiting around on guys like Joey to notice that she was an interesting, sweet, sensitive person in need of someone to fall in love with.

He was an absolute idiot for being one of those guys, not involved in her life when he could have been.

Chris got up and put the phone on his nightstand and started to walk to the kitchen before realizing that he had too much nervous energy to do much of anything. He didn’t want to make lunch just yet since it was too early in the day for it and he really wasn’t all that hungry. He didn’t want to watch TV and he’d only been able to concentrate for a few paragraphs when he had cracked open a book.

“You’re the kind of kid that needs something in your hands to distract you,” his father had told him as he handed Chris a wrench. “Come on and help me tighten a bolt or two and maybe everything else will start to make more sense. I’ve learned that bikes are like problems. They can spin you out when you least expect it but as long as you keep your head and know yourself you can get back on target. It helps if you know what went into keeping the bike together in the first place.”

Chris smiled as the memory struck him but the thought of going home to fix up his old bike to make it able to hit the road was painful. His mother would want to know what he was doing and would disapprove and he shouldn’t upset her so much over something that may not even help. He wanted to be doing something with his hands and that was it but she would take his working on the bike as some sign that he wanted to pick up the habit of riding it again. That would cause her all sorts of worry even if he never touched the ignition or moved to get on the bike.

He sighed and decided to look up a complicated recipe for something to make for dinner. Perhaps if he had something that he could shop for and had to spend most of the day making then that would help keep him from pining away all day.

There were far more people on the beach of the lake than Skylar had expected there would be. Grayson seemed to know several of them and would stop every so often to strike up brief conversations with them. On such occasions she would trail behind him and listen to him talk until he introduced her. It thrilled her so much to be introduced as his girlfriend that she didn’t mind all of the time on their date that he spent talking to other people.