flushed cheeks

(x.)

"flushed cheeks"

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(x.)

Come Monday, it was nothing for me but school and preparing for finals. I was unfortunate in that all the classes I had to take that semester were all ones that were required to finish up my major: two of them literature courses—one over Shakespeare and the other over folklore—and the third a linguistics course about the history of the English language. I had large projects due for all three of them, research essays to be more exact, and finals I needed to prepare to study for.

So, I did. All I did for a while was go to class, go to work, study, and sleep whenever I could. With all of that, I was lucky if I had gotten five hours of sleep at night. I had no time to go to the café as usual. Thus, I did not see Lucas or Jillian for at least two weeks. I was only able to eat anything because my mom was worried and started making food for me to take to school with me.

I was outside the campus library, enjoying the nice weather before the rain came in later in the day. It was a little chilly, the clouds having already started to roll in, but it was nice, and I had a cardigan on to keep me warm. Not too warm, though. I needed the chill in the air to keep me awake. Coffee could only keep me awake for so long, and I absolutely refused to try energy drinks again.

My fingers shook as I typed some more notes out on my laptop, filling in the outline for the essay for my Shakespeare course. I was almost finished, just needed to add in some of the quotes from the play itself, format the outline into paragraphs, and interpret what I already have written down further into my own words. I blindly reached for my coffee, flinching when the chair across from me screeched over the concrete and knocking the plastic cup off the table. A strange noise escaped me as I jumped from my chair. The cup was empty, lid popped open so that the ice was falling into the grass.

"Shit, I'm sorry."

My gaze jumped from the cup to the person who had startled me. "Lucas?"

He grinned, hand going to rub the back of his neck. "Hey-a, Kody," he said. He stood there a moment, just looking at me before he stooped down to pick up the fallen cup. "Sorry about scaring you. I didn't mean to."

"S'okay," I mumbled, looking him over. He was dressed in jeans with rips at the knees and a T-shirt that looked old and too big for his frame. He was a broad man, but it still hung loosely from his shoulders. The tattoo on his arm was mostly visible, a thickly lined butterfly with an indiscernible script underneath. My gaze travelled up, over his neck where the chain of a necklace glinted, over his face where another surprising bit of metal glinted. There was a silver ring at the corner of his lower lip. It wasn't until he turned around that I noticed that there was yet another surprise in store: his hair. It was pink!

I gaped at him long enough that he had time to toss the cup in a nearby trashcan and walk back. "What? Do I look funny?" He laughed, crouching down to my height.

I blinked. "I—uh." He was much too close, and I could feel my cheeks warming by the second. I stuttered out the first thing that came to mind. "Pink."

He laughed again, ruffled his hair, and stood up straight. "Oh, yeah. I completely forgot that happened." The laughter immediately left his face, his eyes hardening. "Cause you've been overworking yourself and you haven't come to see us. At all. In. Two. Weeks." He turned to face the table, broad back to me, seeming to survey the mess there. Two notebooks were sprawled open, papers falling out of both, pens left half-heartedly atop them. Another empty cup, the ice having long since melted, my laptop, and my bag were also on the table.