The Romantics(47)

Mason leaned forward in his chair as soon as Gael threw his backpack down, the legs making a powerful thunk.

“So who was that?” Mason asked gleefully.

Gael felt himself blush. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Mason said.

Gael shrugged. “She’s just a friend.”

“Right,” Mason said. “A friend who you go out to dinner with on Friday night and hold hands with.”

Gael bit his lip and lowered his voice as more people shuffled into class. “I actually met her on my birthday after I left the restaurant, but she’s just out of a relationship, too, and she thought we should just be friends until November.”

“November’s just around the corner,” Mason said, moving his eyebrows up and down comically.

Gael took a deep breath. “I know.”

“Well, I’m happy for you, dude. And Anika is, too, even if she was a little awkward.” Mason’s face looked a little hesitant, but Gael didn’t ask why. It seemed safer to not talk about Anika right now. Well, not too much, at least.

“I gotta say, though,” Mason said, just as their teacher, Mrs. Ellison, came in. “I don’t know why, but I thought you and Sammy were going to end up together.”

Gael blushed again.

And he felt his heart beat a tiny bit quicker at the prospect of seeing Sammy that night.

But Mrs. Ellison quickly began her lesson, so he didn’t have time to ask Mason why he said it. All he could do was pretend to pay attention to chemistry and try not to get ahead of himself.

They were friends. That was it.

It was exactly what he wanted from her.

And even if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, he was pretty sure that that’s what she wanted, at least.





it wouldn’t be a good love story without at least one scene in the rain


On monday night, Gael found himself sitting in a hard chair in a dusty lecture hall, watching the ubiquitous vomit clip from The Exorcist, and pretending not to obsess about Mason’s offhand statement (or potential truth-bomb?) while Sammy sat straight up in her chair so she didn’t miss a thing.

The professor rambled on about absurdist horror and the heyday that was the seventies and early eighties as he cued up clips from Re-Animator, a psychedelic Japanese flick called House, and, of course, Poltergeist (which Gael had never found scary at all).

It all would have been very enlightening and thrilling if he hadn’t spent most of the lecture trying to remind himself that, no matter what Mason had said, he was well on his way to dating Cara. Halloween was in two days. November 1 was in three. Now was not the time to be wondering about his romance potential with his little sister’s babysitter.

Not to mention with someone who had become a good friend.

He’d lost his friendship with Anika to dating. He didn’t want that to happen with Sammy, too.

The professor finished up with a clip from Phantasm, and then the lights flickered on and people shuffled out.

Sammy grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. She was wearing a vintage-y dress with polka dots, green tights, and a denim jacket. He couldn’t help but think that she looked great.

“So awesome, right?” she asked. “I mean, the way he connected seventies horror to German Expressionism? It seemed so obvious once he said it, but I never thought of it that way before. Totally makes me want to rewatch all those slasher films.”

Quite frankly, none of it sounded very obvious to Gael, but it didn’t matter. He liked the way she got so excited about nerdy things.

“Very cool,” he said, as he followed her out of the lecture hall and into the crisp fall evening. The lamplight cast an eerie glow over the UNC lower quad, and he zipped his jacket up all the way to block the wind. It was one of those fall days that feels like winter, that reminded you of what was to come.

Gael wondered where his life would be by the time winter arrived. Would he and Cara be properly in a relationship by then? Would they be sharing nachos and hunting for non-“weird” movies to potentially enjoy together?

A Christian campus group had set up a stand and was handing out hot chocolate, and Sammy ran ahead and grabbed two cups without even needing to ask if Gael wanted some. (I may have urged the organizer to plop her table right outside Murphey Hall.) When she came back, her cheeks were strawberry red and the lidless cups were steaming.

“For you, good sir,” she said, giving a mock curtsy.

“Thanks.” Gael nodded up the path. “Which way are you going?”

Sammy glanced back behind them. “I should probably get back to my dorm, but I’ll walk as far as Franklin with you. I love campus at night.”

So the two of them followed the brick pathway of the lower quad, walking slowly while they waited for the hot chocolate to cool.

“So what’s your favorite horror movie?” she asked.

“Easy,” Gael said. “The Birds.” Not even its recent association with Anika could quell his love for the masterpiece.

“Umm, The Birds totally doesn’t count as horror.”

“Of course it does!” Gael ventured a sip of his hot chocolate, but it was still too hot. “What are you talking about?”

“No one even dies,” Sammy protested. “You can’t have a horror movie without at least one death.”