The Romantics(28)

(Gael was so far gone by this point that he didn’t even realize how sad that type of logic is.)

As the mammoth players sunk basket after basket, Gael stopped thinking about his dad and his family. He felt good. He felt alive. He felt like the world could go on, even though it wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

And that’s when he looked at Cara and saw she was looking at him, her eyes inviting, her face flushed from yelling, strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail delicately framing her face. And that’s when he thought to himself, screw November. Why in the world does it matter if we wait for November?

And that’s when he guessed she was thinking the same thing.

(And that’s when I saw my moment.)

The horn blew, signaling a time-out, and Gael and Cara were shocked out of their secret little world, just as Cara’s ex-boyfriend, Branson, came walking up the steps in search of his own pulled pork sandwich.

Their eyes locked, and I could almost feel the instant ache in Cara’s belly, the hurt that washed over her, head to toe.

I knew it could have gone a few ways, as these things always do. She could have smiled and waved and struck up a conversation with him and tried to act like everything was normal while practically ignoring Gael and downplaying their whatever-it-was.

Or she could have looked down at her feet, waited until Branson walked by, head filled with the thoughts of how much she still cared about him, of how clearly she did not care about Gael.

Or she could have done what she did. The one thing I’d been hoping and praying for her not to do.

The band burst into a rendition of “Carolina on My Mind” and Cara jumped to her feet, grabbing Gael’s hand and pulling him up with her, snaking her arm around his back in time for Branson to see.

I’d underestimated Cara’s bitterness, her desire to make Branson jealous, no matter what the cost to Gael.

Cara wasn’t a bad person—please don’t judge her—it’s just that people do crazy things when it comes to me.

Of course, Gael didn’t see any of that. To Gael, the girl he liked had her arm around him and was swaying back and forth as his favorite song filled the stadium.

To Gael, a place that was filled with painful family memories would now have a new memory—a memory of her.

“You’re the best for getting these tickets,” he said. And he meant it. With all his heart.





when cara met sammy


The next morning, I abandoned my post monitoring Gael and his ever-vacillating emotions to launch a special mission, part of what I was calling Operation Get Gael’s Love Life Back on Track.

Just after 9:00 A.M., I headed to the campus dining hall where I knew Sammy Sutton would be.

What most people didn’t know about Sammy was that she was obsessed with chocolate. She even found Gael’s Snickers habit endearing, as much as she made fun of him for it. It was the kind of thing she would do. Scratch that, it was the kind of thing she did do. Her chocolate-chip waffle habit actually began on September 4, to be exact, the day John dumped her, during the second week of school. (Fun fact: The first two weeks of college are breakup city, no matter where in the world you are.)

However, because her mom used to tell her that the stuff would make her fat, she sadly associated chocolate with shame and therefore hid her love well. But on Saturday mornings, just a few minutes after the dining hall opened, while her hallmates were still sleeping off their hangovers, she religiously made herself a big Belgian waffle loaded with chocolate chips, enjoying her guilty pleasure all on her own.

Cara was also a waffle-lover. But she normally got to the dining hall a good bit later. Of course, normally, her alarm didn’t mysteriously go off at eight forty-five on a Saturday. And so when she would usually be sleeping, she was lying in her bed, cursing herself for somehow not turning off her weekday alarm, and trying to go back to sleep.

By 9:15 Cara was begrudgingly throwing on her Birks and heading to the dining hall in attempt to get on with her day, since she clearly wasn’t going to nod off again.

The two strangers got to the waffle station at exactly the same time. (I swear I’m like an award-winning orchestra conductor sometimes.)

Cara poured a ladleful of regular batter onto her machine, while Sammy poured her own ladle and grabbed the container of chocolate chips.

Wait for it . . .

Wait for it . . .

“Shit!” Sammy stared at the mountain of chocolate now piled up on the batter. The cap of the container had come off completely and rolled along the floor right into Cara’s feet.

“Oh my god, let me help you!” Cara sprung to action, as I knew she would, grabbing a broom and dustpan that I’d placed nearby and cleaning up the chips on the floor.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Sammy stammered. “I’m sorry—I don’t know how that happened.”

Cara swept the chips into the dustpan and surveyed Sammy’s half-cooked waffle, which was now completely coated in messy, gooey chocolate. “I mean, I love chocolate as much as the next girl, but even that’s a little much for me.”

Sammy laughed, then fiddled with the container in her hand. “I think some dick unscrewed the top so they’d all fall out.” She rolled her eyes. “College boys.” (Or metaphysical entities. Either one.)

“Wow, what an *,” Cara said. “People are such idiots.”