Love Story(35)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Why do you always go first?” I hollered before Manohar could say anything else.

He looked around. “Because I’m in the chair of being first.”

I turned to Gabe. “Why does Manohar always go first? It’s not fair.”

Gabe put his hand over mine and said, so quietly I wasn’t sure he meant the rest of the class to hear, “It’s not a game.”

He had no idea.

“Here’s my concern,” I said, and I did mean the whole class to hear. “Manohar announces that my story is unrealistic. He’s put that idea into everybody’s head, and now the rest of the comments will follow along those lines. I wonder if anybody else honestly thought my story wasn’t realistic, or if it’s just Manohar being Manohar.”

“I thought that, too,” said a guy on the other side of the table, half raising his hand.

“Me, too,” said Wolf-boy.

“But this story is set in the same place as my first story,” I pointed out. “Everybody’s comment about the first story was how realistic it was.” Or maybe only Hunter said that.

“This one is realistic as far as setting,” Manohar explained. “What’s so unrealistic is the over-the-top drama. In your first story you had a young couple going behind the bushes to do the nasty.”

Summer threw her pen across the table at him. “Pig.”

Manohar ducked. “At least the first story wasn’t far-fetched. But this time you’ve got a love triangle, and a midnight tryst, and a tragic death. It’s like a made-for-TV movie.”

“What’s wrong with made-for-TV movies?” I asked, bracing myself on this slippery slope. “They employ a lot of people—a lot of actors, and a lot of writers.” I was so worked up now I didn’t have the wherewithal to write INTERNSHIP on my notebook.

“I just think you can do better than that,” Manohar said.

“How?” I demanded.

“I think you can write a story more realistic than that.”

“How do you know this didn’t happen?” I thought I heard my voice ringing around the ceiling, which meant it was way too loud, but the challenge from Manohar had gotten personal.

“This couldn’t have happened,” he said.

“How do you know?”

Hunter cut both of us off. “Manohar, did you ever think the story might be real?” He laid his hands flat on the table.

“And how do you know?” Manohar asked Hunter. But he slowed as he said this, and I could see on his face that he was registering the fact that Hunter and I had known each other before, Hunter knew my story, and Hunter knew this story.

“I can see she’s upset.” Hunter gestured to me, then turned back to Manohar. “I put two and two together. I have more highly developed social skills than you. Look at her!”

Now the remnants of Hunter’s voice rang around the ceiling. The silence that followed was heavy and dark, like the skies outside the window. Tension sped underneath like the traffic zooming by on the street below.

Whoever spoke next and broke the silence could change the mood of the class and take the floor. I should do this. I should claim agency in the discussion of my own story. This would show Gabe how serious I was about my craft.

I could not. I kept my eyes on “Anything Is Possible” in front of me, my stomach tied in slipknots.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter burst out. “Manohar, what I said was out of line. Gabe, I’m sorry for speaking out of turn. And Erin

”

He paused, waiting for me to look up. He would not go on. The silence would descend again until I acknowledged him.

I peeked out at him from beneath my bangs.

“I’m sorry, Erin.” He flashed a confident smile at me, and angry blue eyes. “I know you can defend your own story.”

“Are you okay?” Isabelle put her hand on his wrist, comforting, as if they were dating.

“No,” he mumbled. “Tired.” He looked down at the table. “Now I’ve lost my pen.”

Isabelle and the three other people nearest him ducked their heads under the table to look for it.

“Brian?” Gabe said suddenly.

“Me?” Brian blinked at Gabe. “Oh, my turn! I loved this story. It’s a cross between Danielle Steele and National Velvet.”

The class tittered uneasily and never fully recovered from Hunter’s outburst. Now that he’d planted the seed of the story as real, they tiptoed around my feelings and didn’t say much. I wasn’t listening anyway. I gripped the edge of the table with white fingers and tried to slow my breathing, staring down at my story but hyperaware of Hunter’s presence just beyond my peripheral view.

I JUMPED UP WHEN GABE DISMISSED the class. “Erin!” Summer called.

“Can’t stay,” I threw over my shoulder. “I’ll get fired. My boss says seven strikes and I’m out.”

Gabe opened his mouth as if to speak to me. I hurried past him, out of the classroom building and onto the sidewalk.

Sharp, cold wind scented with diesel blew into my face. I paused to juggle my book bag and shrug on my coat. Then I hurried toward the coffee shop, past two mounted police officers at the edge of the park, the horses nickering to each other. I tried to shake off my story and the sick feeling I got when I thought of Hunter at the foot of the table. I was making us both sick. We were in New York, starting new lives. There was no reason for us to circle each other slowly, throwing Kentucky in each other’s faces. As I stepped through the employee door, I vowed to bring a smile to customers’ faces for the next few hours, and think of nothing but serving a damn great cup of coffee. There was a first time for everything.

But when I stood behind the counter to take orders, the table next to the window where Hunter and I had sat was directly in my line of sight. Each time I served a customer and waited for the next one to step up, I stared out at that table, those empty chairs.

Finally, when there was a lull, I pretended to need chocolate syrup from the storeroom, and I brought my copies of “Anything Is Possible” up front with me. Held my breath while I thumbed through the stack and found Hunter’s copy. Infuriatingly, he’d scrawled his name across the title page without making another single mark.

Gabe wrote in pencil at the end of his copy,

Erin,

I think you are going in the wrong direction.

Don’t you?

And then Manohar, Brian, and Summer stepped up to the counter.

“A latte, please,” Summer said, loudly enough for my boss to hear in the back room, “and draw a little heart in the foam. You’re so good at that.” Under her breath she asked, “It wasn’t really a true story, was it?”

I nodded, glancing sideways at Manohar and Brian, who were crowding the counter and listening in.

“But not about you, obviously,” Summer said, “with you being alive and all. Your mother?”

I nodded.

All their eyes widened. Summer asked, “Is she—”

The look on my face stopped her.

It did not stop Brian. “But

your dad is her husband in the story?”