Side Trip(10)

Joy laughs lightly and glides her thumb across his full bottom lip, wiping off the lipstick. She’s surprised there’s still tint on her lips given the amount of champagne she’s consumed. A circle of lipstick dirties the rim of her champagne flute. It’s an irritating side effect, and the main reason she forgoes wearing any brand of lipstick aside from on special occasions. It leaves its mark everywhere. She’ll have to address that with Vintage Chic’s long-lasting lipstick line’s product manager. Their eighteen-hour wearable shades wear off in less than seven. It’s one of their customers’ chief complaints. The line needs to be rebranded or the formula reworked. Unless Joy comes up with a new formula first. Hmmm, she thinks. She can present the solution to the department head. The promotion from lab technician to junior cosmetic chemist she’s had her sights on would be hers.

Mark twirls her and draws her into his chest. “What do you think would have happened if your backpack didn’t leap from the chair, hmm?” Mark rubs his nose against hers, pins her with his gaze.

Joy gasps in mock horror. “Backpacks don’t leap. Someone . . .”—she taps his chest—“tipped the chair.”

“You have no proof.”

Joy pinches his ribs and he laughs.

“Cheater. I was pushed,” he adds.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Joy teases.

But he’s right. Mark had been pushed, and Joy assumed he tipped the chair and her backpack slid off the seat. Though she didn’t see it happen. Her attention had been on Mark’s impressive coffee-balancing skill.

She’d met him midway through her sophomore year at UCLA. He was in the master’s program studying business analytics. Joy was majoring in chemical engineering and had just nabbed the last table at an off-campus coffee shop to study for her physics final. The café-style tabletops barely had space for her coffee cup and textbook, let alone room for someone else’s mug and their study material.

Joy settled into a chair and dropped her backpack on the empty seat beside her so that she could easily access her notes and pencils. She launched her laptop, textbook open in her lap, and started working through a practice exam when a shadow fell over her table.

“Is this seat taken?”

Joy looked up into a pair of warm brown eyes. It was the guy who’d been behind her in line. Cute and of average height, just shy of six feet. His broad shoulders tapered to a lean waist and muscled thighs. He wore a Bruins rugby sweatshirt.

Joy glanced at the chair with her backpack. “It’s occupied.” She didn’t want company. Company was inclined to talk. She didn’t have time for chitchat. She had to focus on her studies. The answers didn’t come easy for her, not like they had for Judy. Joy had to work ten times harder in high school to earn her 4.2 GPA to get into UCLA, and she had to work even harder to pass her college courses. Chemical engineering wasn’t a turtle, a surfing technique she perfected early on where she’d roll her board in front of an oncoming wave to get under it. But she was determined to play by the rules and make up for the years she hadn’t.

“Expecting someone?”

Joy shook her head, eyes locked on her notes.

“No one’s sitting here, then?”

“My backpack is. That a problem?”

Joy knew she was being a bitch. But she’d been up most of the night studying because Gale, who lived across the hall at the sorority house and who’d finished her finals, decided to host an impromptu party. The noise had been distracting.

She should have gone to the library, where she wouldn’t have been disturbed. But it was too late now. She’d waste precious study time crossing campus—exactly what Mr. Rugby was doing, wasting her time.

No, you can’t have my seat, she wanted to say. It’s taken, go away. But a lopsided grin spread on his handsome face.

Oh, wow.

Energy zinged through her faster than caffeine. He was cute.

“I need to cram in another chapter for an analytics exam. All right if I set this by your feet?” He started to lift her backpack.

The energy fizzled and her focus snapped back to the chair he wanted to commandeer. She grabbed the strap and he let go. “The floor is really gross.”

His expression confirmed her initial self-assessment: she was a bitch. His mouth parted, and she was sure he was about to tell her exactly what was on his mind. But the guy at the table beside hers abruptly stood. His foot twisted in his backpack strap, which he’d dumped on the sticky floor.

Off-center, the guy toppled into Mr. Rugby. With lightning-fast reflexes, Rugby dude looped one arm around the guy’s shoulders and, legs braced, stopped them both from falling on Joy’s table. In his other hand he balanced his coffee mug. Joy didn’t see one drop spill. She also didn’t see the chair her backpack had been on tip over. Her bag now rested at her feet.

Once the commotion settled, Mr. Rugby set down his coffee on her table and took off his sweatshirt. He laid it on the floor beside her feet and set her backpack on top.

“You don’t have to do that.” She flushed with embarrassment. She didn’t want him to stain his sweatshirt on her account.

Ignoring her, he sat in the chair her pack had just occupied.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said with a small smile and slight shrug.

How could she? That was one of the nicest gestures anyone had done for her backpack.