“Enh, it was dumb. Believe me, I would have rather spent it with you,” he replied, walking down the hall with me. He pointed at someone walking in the other direction. “Yo, my man, good work today! But remember, you got lucky.” He met my eyes and shrugged as we kept walking. “Debate club buddy.”
“I don’t even know how you remember all of these people,” I mumbled to myself.
“Not gonna lie, Quinn, I kinda envy your life sometimes,” Kevin admitted. “Sometimes, the more people you know, the more shit you get sucked into.”
“Yeah, I think I’m starting to get that,” I mumbled, holding the school door open for him.
He walked through, then looked at me for a bit. “This isn’t still about you thinking I started the school thinking you and Taylor fucked, is it?” he asked exasperatedly. “Because I even checked the grapevine for stories about Taylor, and-”
“No, no, I’m not blaming you. You’re good,” I replied, the two of us moving to the sidewalk. “Just… the smallest things suddenly mean so much. Like, Taylor and I are just hanging out to study, but suddenly, to everyone in her friend group, and I mean every single one of them, it’s like the biggest event on the planet.”
Kevin stared straight ahead to the clouds. “I bet every guy in high school feels that way. We’re getting better at talking to each other but we’re not perfect. So, we miscommunicate. We’ve never had miscommunications with such high stakes before, so we feel like this is the biggest thing. And it happens to all of us, but it feels so silly that it feels like it can’t happen to us, like we’re the only one. I bet there’s like a dozen you’s running around right now, going all, ‘Why is this being treated like such a big event? Why’s this only happening to me?'”
“Wow, Kevin. Deep,” I said, half-jokingly, half impressed. “I mean, just because it’s happening to a dozen people right now doesn’t make it any less impactful. Or any less stupid.”
“No, but it does make it more commonplace,” he retorted. “I think it’s just a part of growing up.”
“What, so this kinda stuff is happening to you?” I asked.
“Ohhhhhh yeahhhh,” he replied with an exaggerated voice. “You said it yourself. The more people you know, the more shit you get sucked into.”
“…You were the one who said that,” I pointed out.
“…Oh. Well, I was right,” he declared. We didn’t say much more for the rest of the walk home, mostly talking about small stuff like assignments and video games. My mind was somewhere else anyway. It didn’t help that shortly after I got home, I’d need to prepare for work.
When I got home, I dropped my stuff off, ate a quick snack that Mother had prepared for me, and caught her up on my life, leaving out as I always did, any and all adventures with Taylor. In fact, I took lengths to make any interactions worth mentioning to her as banal as possible. The last thing I needed was for her to think the girl with a popular jock boyfriend was my girlfriend, in case Taylor had to come over for an emergency or something. That would have ended disastrously.
Taylor occupied all of my thoughts as I walked to work, and even for the first hour or so of my shift. Was I obligated to end things with her now that I knew she had a boyfriend? Wasn’t she the one that had to tell me? More importantly, if we stopped, would we stop being friends? We didn’t exactly have much common ground.
I would have kept overthinking, but after a bit longer standing around and giving people vague buying advice, who else but Morgan walked back into the store. The mood felt a lot lighter this time – it helped that it was sunny instead, but mostly it was because she was looking up instead of anywhere but at me.
She addressed me first, waving in a reserved fashion. “Hey, Quinn,” she opened casually. “So I was thinking, maybe this game wouldn’t be the best fit for him,” she held up the copy of Uncharted she bought a few days ago in her hand. “Am I allowed to return this?”
“Uh, yeah, we give you a thirty-day period,” I replied. “Did you want money back or did you want to return it for another item? Since you probably want to get your brother his gift and all.”
It was clear my choice took Morgan by surprise. “I, um, I guess I’ll exchange it for something else…” she replied slowly. She was looking at me the whole time, but only then was she looking into my eyes.
Why was my heartbeat getting faster? I instinctively looked away from her and cleared my throat. What was wrong with me? Morgan was just giving me her usual Morgan look – a blank, non-emoting face, probably getting more annoyed with me by the second.
“Okay, what would you like?” I asked, still looking in the opposite direction of her, pretending to look at a shelf or something.
“I’d like it if you could look in my direction so you’d know when I point to a game,” Morgan softly replied. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Right, yeah, of course,” I mumbled, bringing my face up to look at her, but not really wanting to.
“Are you blushing?” Morgan asked me.
Backed into a corner. “Yeah,” I admitted.
“Why?”
I shrugged, staring straight ahead at the shelf in front of me.
I felt a hand touch my arm, and instinctively shuddered. I looked from Morgan’s hand, down her arm and into her eyes. She was staring back at mine. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked, her voice reflecting slight concern.
Her face told me she was only slightly weirded out and concerned, but… she was slightly blushing too. It was the first emotion I’d seen from her in a while. I nodded and then she followed suit, letting go of my shoulder.
I had no clue where this came from. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I couldn’t even say today was the first place this feeling had started, just… the first time I had actually felt anything. I didn’t even know what it was I was feeling. Or maybe I did, but it felt too silly and dumb to say it out loud.
Morgan and I talked about video games for a little bit longer. She wasn’t kidding, she really knew nothing about them, and much like with Taylor, I discovered quickly that I had to modify how I approached the subject to even get her to begin getting the ‘language’ of what I was talking about. Weirdly enough, without those data management lessons, I doubt I could have had this talk with Morgan.
I eyed my watch after having what felt like a ten-minute talk with Morgan. “Oh my gosh,” I blurted. “It’s five minutes to the end of my shift. We probably should wrap this up.”
Morgan nodded, also looking at my watch. We had talked for over two full hours. “Yeah, I should probably get home soon. This was helpful though. Thanks for having this talk with me.” She paused and looked at my face again. “The end of the semester is coming up. Are you still tutoring Taylor?”
“Yup, probably until final dates. She’s really worried about the final,” I replied.
Morgan was probably trying to hide it, but some bitter disappointment splashed across her face for a fraction of a second.
“…Why do you not like that I am? I thought you said you were okay with me,” I replied in confusion.