Last Round Romance

He sat down at the table with Zach, who was already giving him an odd look. “So,” he said to Curtis as he sat down, “Elliot tells me that you and Kaylie were hanging out yesterday?” Curtis laughed as he pulled out the homework he had neglected to do the night before, “Yea, we hung out for a little while yesterday. Why?” Zach shrugged, “Oh, just wondering. Because usually when I guy hangs out, alone, with a girl that he’s had a crush on for years he tells his friends. But you know, no big deal.” Curtis laughed, “I haven’t had a crush on her for “years” dude. You’re crazy.” Curtis knew that he was lying to Zach, but he didn’t like people knowing that kind of stuff. Zach gave a sarcastic laugh, “Oh please, the whole world could see that you liked her. What with the way you guys would always hang out together on weekends and how you guys would joke around and stuff all the time.” Curtis looked at Zach with a look of confusion and shock on his face, “Dude, you and Elliot did that too!” Zach chuckled at how worked up Curtis was getting, because it was only proving his point even more, “Not nearly as much as you though. I mean you guys always rode to the park and back together and everything,” he paused and looked at Curtis again, “Look man, I’m not saying it was a bad thing. I mean, she obviously liked you too. But what I am saying is that there were definitely feelings between the two of you. And therefore you should have told me that you two were hanging out yesterday.” Curtis leaned back in his chair with an exhausted laugh, “I didn’t even plan on anything happening with the two of us okay?” Zach’s eyes widened in interest, “So something did happen with you two? Oh come on man, you gotta tell me now!” Zach was beginning to sound like a little kid again, like he was back in the first grade and they finally realized that girls didn’t really have cooties. Curtis ran his fingers through his hair, “We just kissed and stuff alright? Jeeze, calm down, it’s not like I fucked her or anything.” Zach’s pierced eyebrow arched in curiosity, “You two kissed and stuff? Care to elaborate on that last part?” Curtis smiled, “Dude, it’s just an expression. Nothing more happened alright? We kissed. That’s it I swear.” The look on Zach’s face betrayed how unconvinced he was by Curtis’ statement, but he knew that there was nothing that he could do to force it out of him.
He looked at Curtis with a joking glint in his eyes, “Was she good?” Curtis gave Zach a playful shove, “I’m not even gonna answer that one man.” Zach laughed as he straightened up all of his papers again, “So she was?” Curtis leaned onto his elbows on the table, “I’m not even going to man…not even gonna go there.” Zach shrugged and laughed as he tossed Curtis a copy of the math homework that was due that day, “Whatever man. But I know what that silence means.” Curtis just shook his head as he put his earphones in and started to copy Zach’s homework into his own notebook.
A few minutes before the end of the period, Zach turned to him and tugged at one of the earphones that Curtis had in. Curtis turned to him and raised his eyebrows in interest, “What’s up man?” Zach shot him a sly smile, “You gonna shoot hoops after school today? Or are you and your lady-friend going back to your place again?” Curtis chuckled as he handed Zach his paper back, “I’m free to shoot man, as far as I know.” Zach nodded, “Fair enough man.”
The bell rang a few minutes later and they both started to head out of the cafeteria when Maria flagged Curtis down. He stopped and waited for her to catch up to him, “Hey, what’s up?” She smiled at him as she fixed her bag on her shoulder, “I was just wondering if you were doing anything after school today?” Curtis looked quickly at Zach, and Maria picked up on it before he could recover. “Oh,” she said with a shrug, “if you have plans with the guys that’s fine. I won’t intrude on your man-date haha. I was just wondering if you wanted to hit the gym again so I could finish teaching you everything.” Curtis smiled at her as they walked down the hallway, “Nah man, that sounds good. I shoot hoops with the guys practically every day. One day without me won’t kill ‘em.” She gave him a warm smile and pat on the arm, “Well, if you change your mind just let me know. If not, I told Andy to pick me up right after school so just meet me out front okay?” Curtis nodded but before he could say anything to her she had already turned around and caught up with one of the girls that had passed them a few seconds before. He smiled as he watched her do hand motions and laugh as she told the girl some story.
He drifted through his next few periods until he was able to go to study hall again. He dropped his bag off in the room and told the teacher that he had to go talk to his English teacher about making up an assignment and she let him go. He went down the hallway to Kaylie’s locker in hopes that he would catch her there before she went off to lunch. He bumped into her as she turned around from closing and locking the door to her locker. She smiled at him and gave him a quick kiss, “Hey what’s up?” He grinned and shrugged, “Nothing, just wanted to see you.” She held her arms out, “Well, here I am haha.” Curtis slid his hands into hers as he stood in front of her, “Hey Kay, can I ask you something?” She nodded, “Sure, what’s up?” He looked down at the ground for a moment before looking at into her eyes, “What’s the deal with us? Like, are we dating or…?” Kaylie bit her lip and looked down at the ground, “I…I don’t know. I thought that we were just having fun.” Curtis loosened his grip on her hands, “Kay, you know me better than pretty much anyone. I’m not good at the whole relationship thing, but you should know that I can’t deal with the whole in-between thing. I just can’t.” Kaylie took a step back, “Well, can I have a little time to think about it?”
Curtis reluctantly nodded, but said nothing more to her. That wasn’t the response that he had been hoping for, although it was the one he knew that he was likely to get. He knew that dating her was too good to be true.
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” and with that, she walked to her lunch. Curtis was left there looking at the floor, kicking himself for being stupid enough to believe in any of it. He slumped back into study hall and went over to the table that he usually sat on and just laid flat out on his back without saying a word to anyone.
Maria looked up from her sketchbook and looked at him; she was hoping that maybe he’d give her a clue, but at this point she knew that hoping for that was feudal. She watched him for a moment, drew a few more lines onto her paper, and then lightly closed her book and gently touched his arm. He turned to her but didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, he could see it in her eyes that she wanted desperately to know what was wrong, but he also knew that it wasn’t just something that he was going to announce in the middle of study hall.
Maria bit her lip anxiously, “Walk with me?” He sat up a little bit, “Huh?” She gave a small, warm smile, “I have to go to my locker, walk with me?” Curtis sighed, but slid himself off the table and put his feet on the floor. He followed Maria out into the hallway and she turned down to where the stairs led up to the science wing. He looked at her confusedly, “I thought you had to go to your locker?” Maria shrugged, “I do…eventually.” Curtis gave an exasperated sigh but Maria did catch the slightest hint of a smile creep across his lips. They wandered down the hallway together in silence for a moment before she turned to him and asked, “So, what’s wrong?” Curtis just shook his head, “Nothing, I’m fine.” Maria reached over and slapped him on the arm, “Don’t give me that. You were fine the last time I talked to you this morning. So what happened?” Curtis leaned back against the wall and let his arms hang limp at his sides, “Just relationship bullshit. It’s no big deal.” Maria felt a strange sharp pain go through her for a moment before responding, “What’s going on? Like, is it between you and the girl that was on the bus with you yesterday?” He nodded but didn’t say anything. She leaned on the wall next to him, “Come on man, what’s going on? I may not have the answers but anything has to be better than keeping it all bottled up the way you are.”
He began to tell her about how close he and Kaylie had been for as long as the two of them could care to remember. They went everywhere together, and they never seemed to get sick of each other. Which, looking back on it, was the thing that Curtis had found the most interesting. Most of the time, after you spend enough time with someone you just want a break from them, but that wasn’t the case for the two of them. They had always enjoyed being around each other, even when one of them was in a bad mood. He told Maria how he and Kaylie had kind of been forced apart during eighth and ninth grade, but he didn’t tell her why. “That’s a story for another day,” he thought to himself as he explained the rest. He told Maria about what had happened the day before and about the conversation he had had with Kaylie a few minutes before he walked into study hall.
“So,” he said slowly, “that’s the deal with my relationship…or lack thereof.” Maria looked at him with an expression that Curtis couldn’t quite discern. It was almost like a mix between pity, love, and understanding. “Well,” she said as she gently nudged him with her shoulder, “if it means anything, I think that she doesn’t realize what she’s missing out on by even considering the thought of not being with you. She could be passing up the chance of a lifetime. It’s not everyday girls just so happen to bump into guys that care about them the way you care about her. That’s something special. She’d be lucky to have you.”
Curtis couldn’t help but to laugh a little bit, “You’re used to giving these kinds of pep-talks aren’t you?” She smiled at him, “Honestly, this is the first time that I’ve ever really talked to someone about stuff like this. I’ve never really had any relationships to talk about, and my friends talked about theirs, but they never really asked for my input on it.” Curtis looked at her, “Wait, you’ve seriously never had a relationship?” Maria simply shook her head, “Nope. Not-a-one. Why?” He shrugged, “I dunno, I guess I just assumed that you usually had a trail of guys following you around everywhere.” She laughed and shook her head, “Yea…not so much. But I thought that you’d be one of the guys to have all the girls drooling over him. But I knew that if I said that to you you’d probably slap me haha.” He smiled at her, “I’d never slap you Hon. But you’re very wrong about the whole girl thing. They tend to stay away from me.” Maria shrugged, “I don’t see why. I mean, you’re really nice and funny and cute and everything. I guess they’re just too fucked in the head to realize it haha.” Curtis chuckled, “Oh, they’re definitely fucked, just not exactly in the head area.” Maria laughed and playfully slapped him arm, “You’re so bad Curtis.” He shrugged and pretended to pop a collar on his shirt that wasn’t really there, “That’s just how I roll babe, that’s just how I roll.”