Page 14 of Head Under Water

“Happy birthday, short stuff.” Will trudges up the aisle of our statistics class, stomping a little too loudly, eyeing me a little too hard. He flicks my hair as he moves past, brushing it off my shoulder with finesse. “Would you look at that? Guess you got a pimple for your birthday.”

I scowl, turning around to find him sitting in a seat at the table directly behind me. “What do you think you’re doing?” He never sits behind me. He’s always far, far away. Thank god.

A muscle twitches in his jaw as his hard expression falters for a millisecond. Then he leans forward and lowers his voice, like he’s telling me a secret. “Trying to decide if I should stick gum in your hair or dip it in ink first.”

I growl, turning back around just as a group of his jock friends appear, moving like a cloud of dust with just one brain cell between them. They join Will at his table, their voices carrying across the room.

“Dude, if Gene the Mean says ‘in essence’ one more time, I swear I’m dropping out, shaving my head, and becoming a farmer,” one of his idiot friends says.

“In that order?” Will teases.

“Bro, you wouldn’t last one day as a farmer. You think eggs come from PostMates,” another says.

I squeeze my eyes shut, groaning internally.

“Hey, they do that now. Groceries and stuff,” the guy says defensively. “Tell ’em, Ryan.”

“It’s true.”

“Why are we even here? He just posts the slides after class anyway.”

“Because attendance is half the grade.”

Please. Please kill me.

“Capitalism.”

More insufferable laughter.

“Dude, that’s not what ‘capitalism’ means,” Will says. If Will’s the smartest person at that table, we’ve got issues.

“Still feels like capitalism.”

I open my eyes when I hear the sound of a chair scraping next to me. Someone is joining my table. I’m prepared to see Will, but instead, there’s a stranger standing next to the empty seat. He’s got dark-blond hair, nearly brown until the light hits it just right. Handsome, but not in a hot way, if that makes sense. Like…bookish. He looks like an accountant, but an accountant I totally want to make out with.

Oh, and now I’m staring.

He’s saying something.

My cheeks burn. “Sorry. What?”

“I asked if this seat’s taken.” He’s already looking up and around, like he thinks I might send him away.

“Oh, no,” I say, way too loudly.

“Oh, no,” one of Will’s friends mocks me in a whiny voice from behind us. There’s a scuffle. I glance back and just barely catch sight of Will elbowing him in the stomach. It might be sweet, and I might think he was defending me, if Will didn’t look just as amused the second he noticed he’d been caught.

I turn back, ignoring them as the guy sits down.

“I’m Banks,” he says.

“Opal.”

“Opal,” he repeats, weighing it on his tongue.

“It was my grandmother’s name. I know it’s…not great.”

“I like it.”