“Mine too. I’ll meet you here and we can go get something to eat.”
While I was no longer suspicious of his motives, I still wasn’t sure that us hanging out alone was such a good idea. He raised his eyebrows while he waited for me to respond.
“I know you’re not asking me out like that, but I have a boyfriend and I don’t think I…...”
“AJ, right? Your dad mentioned his name like twenty times that day I helped you move in.” He laughed a little as he remembered Daddy’s behavior. “It’s up to you. I’ll be here either way.” Without another word, he turned and walked back down the stairs.
Maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I went. After all, we’d be in public and I’d definitely tell AJ about it as soon as I got back to my room. On second thought, maybe I’d tell him before. I glanced down at the time and quickly realized that it would have to wait. I was already five minutes late thanks to Terrell slowing me down.
Although my high school had nearly 2000 thousand students, there were still no more than thirty to a class. So imagine my surprise when I entered the lecture hall packed with close to two hundred. My instructor didn’t seem to notice me as I eased into an empty seat in the back row. He was going over the parallelism between Shakespeare’s King Lear and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. I’d read both books my sophomore year of high school, so I found the lecture to be pretty boring. My thoughts drifted and I thought back to a couple nights ago when I’d seen Antonio at the store. AJ still had yet to find out that Antonio was in fact living nearby. I could only imagine how he’d feel about it. As long as Antonio kept his distance, there wouldn’t be a problem. But if I know Antonio, it’d only be a matter of time before he’d make his presence known.
Thank God Terrell was with Deanna and me that night. Antonio definitely would have noticed us otherwise and I wasn’t ready for that. I wondered what he could have possibly expected to come of all this. Did he really think that he’d swoop in and steal me back from AJ? Maybe he didn’t know like I knew that it was an impossible task. If it weren’t for the fact that he was really starting to get under my skin, I’d probably feel bad for him. After all, I ended things with him at the height of our relationship, so it was easy to understand why he didn’t have closure. Our break up was really hard on him became it came as such a surprise. Then again, if someone had told me a week before I actually fell for AJ that I was going to leave Antonio, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
My mind shifted to wondering what AJ was doing at that moment. His classes started the day before mine and he didn’t have to go again until 4:00 pm today. So, my guess was that he’d probably be out running – which he usually did with his shirt off. That thought made me instantly anxious. I was more secure in our relationship than I was during the spring, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t still worry a little about girls trying to persuade him. No one knew better than I did the power that he could have over a woman without even trying. It wasn’t hard to fall under his spell.