Faster We Burn

chapter Twenty-nine

Stryker

“So I think I should pick a major,” she said as she lay naked in my bed and I drew a sunburst in the middle of her back. I’d kept my promise from earlier, and she’d reciprocated, so we were both worn out physically. “Don’t you think?”

I shrugged one shoulder and looked up from my drawing to meet her eyes.

“Do you want to pick one because you want to, or because there’s all this pressure from other people to?”

She thought about it for a second.

“I think it’s both. I just…I want to know…what I want.”

I laughed a little.

She smacked my shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because that’s the human condition. Nobody really knows what they want. They just know what they think they want and then they get it and they realize they don’t want it anymore.”

“Like what?”

“Money, power, prestige. Mostly money.”

“I don’t care about money that much.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I love about you. I don’t really care about it either, except that it’d be nice to have enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about paying the electric bill.”

She yawned. “I should probably get a job now. Mom and Dad mostly footed the bill for everything, and I’ve been living on my summer babysitting money, but that’s almost gone. I don’t want to take more money from Mom, because she needs it more than I do. I’ve thought about dropping out,” she said, which made me look up at her again.

“To save money?”

“Yeah, and to take care of her. She’s all alone.” Katie spent every weekend at home, and it was taking its toll on her. She always came back reluctantly, and it took a day for her to recover emotionally. Kayla had gone back to Africa, and had decided to postpone her wedding for a better time.

I stroked my fingers down her spine.

“Is that what you want?”

She sighed heavily.

“It’s not about what I want.”

“Fine, then what do you think your dad would want?”

“He’d want me to finish school.”

“Then I think you should do that.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell me what to do.”

“I’m not. Just suggesting.” I’d said the same thing when I’d told her not to go see Zack.

“Okay, then. If I’m staying, I have to pick a major.” I had an idea. If she wanted to pick a major, we were going to pick her a f*cking major.

“Stay right there,” I said, standing up to get my laptop.

She pushed herself up. “Where are you going?”

“Just a sec.” I grabbed it from the kitchen, booting it up on the way back to my bedroom. I went to the DU website scrolled down until I found the list of majors the university offered.

“Okay, how do you feel about accounting?”

“What?” She rolled over and saw me holding my laptop.

“Accounting, yes or no?” I sat down and she moved closer to me.

“Um, no. Not big on math.” I went down to the next option.

“Okay, how about Animal Science?”

She shook her head.

“Anthropology?”

“Put that in the maybe column.” I grabbed the marker I’d been using to draw on her back and wrote ‘anthropology-maybe’ below the sun.

“Art education?”

Another head shake. “But that would have been a good one for you, if you weren’t already doing your genius thing.”

I went down the entire list of majors and she nixed almost all of them, except for a few that I wrote on her back. When we were done, I put the cap back on the marker and admired my work.

“Well Miss Hallman, I think we’ve got a list. Why don’t you make an appointment with a guidance counselor and they can help you out. They’re professionals so they know what they’re doing.”

She made a little snorting noise. “You want me to go in to the guidance office, take off my shirt and say that this is the list of majors I’ve narrowed my choices down to?” She pointed to her back.

“I meant that we should probably transfer this list to paper and then take it in,” I said, kissing ‘anthropology’.

“Good plan,” she breathed as I kissed my way lower on the list before flipping her over and making us both forget about majors for a while.



***



The following Tuesday Katie came back from her meeting with the guidance person with a sad look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I’d been working on a lab, but I threw it aside, even though I was halfway through a tricky calculation.

Her face split into a smile.

“Gotcha. It went fine. Basically they told me that if I’m really not sure, I should just take a bunch of classes for things I’m interested in and go from there. So, I’m signing up for art history, another anthro class, British lit, vocal performance, and food science and nutrition.” She flopped down next to me, giving me a quick kiss.

“That’s very…eclectic.”

“I would have taken more classes, but that’s a full schedule, and I wasn’t sure if I could do more.”

She definitely could. I’d seen what she could do when she put just a little effort in. Katie was one of those girls who didn’t have to try too hard to get good grades, so she’d just done just enough for years and gotten by.

“So my life makeover is in full swing. Now I just have to find a job.” She mimed shooting herself in the head.

“I could always use an assistant. You could hold the flashlight for me,” I said, pulling her onto my lap.

She giggled. “Not that that isn’t tempting, but I gotta do my own thing. I just don’t know what that is. I started looking online.”

“You want to make another list?” I stroked her arm.

“I think I can do this one on my own, but there is one part of my makeover I would like you to be with me for.”

“And what’s that?”

“I was thinking…” she said, twirling some of her hair around her finger and staring at it. “I was thinking I’d like to do something with my hair. Like, maybe put some pink in it.” She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, searching for my reaction.

“Pink, huh?” I grabbed a few strands and ran them through my fingers. I could picture that. She’d look so cute with pink hair, especially with her glasses.

“You don’t think it’s dumb, do you?”

“Sweetheart, I would never think you were dumb, and even if I did, I’d never tell you. I might call you an idiot, but I’d never say you were dumb.” I kissed her nose. “No, I think you would look beyond adorable with some pink in your hair.”

“Okay then.” She relaxed against me.

“I have some…changes I’d like to make as well, involving you, that I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. It was now or never.

“And what might those changes be?”

“I was thinking…” Now it was my turn to be nervous. “I was thinking that since you’re here so much anyway and Lottie and Zan are thinking about getting their own place, that maybe you might want to move in. Here. With me.”

She sat up and turned around. “Move in with you?”

“I know it’s really soon, but I thought I would throw it out there. I mean, you already have tampons stashed everywhere, and my bathroom looks like a cosmetics store blew up in it. Not that I’m complaining.” I was still at the stage where seeing her stuff around made me happy instead of annoyed. I was sure I’d get to the annoyed part eventually.

“Move in with you.” She said it as a statement, not a question. “I…Are you sure? I’m just afraid that you’ll get sick of me, or find something you don’t like about me, and I don’t want that to happen.”

“What about me? What if you find something you don’t like about me?” That was the first thing that had crossed my mind and the reason I’d put off asking her in the first place.

“I guess that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take,” she said, leaning into me for a kiss. “I would love to move in with you. You and me.”

“No space.”

“Nope, it’s going to be our space, and it’s going to be covered in pink.” Her eyes gleamed maniacally.

“God help us.”