Black Mirror by Nancy Werlin

Author:Nancy Werlin [Werlin, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101640142
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2003-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

We had reached the end of the cafeteria line. “You wanna find a table?” said my amoral love.

James was willing to eat lunch with me? And, presumably, to talk to me? I required nothing more. “Sure,” I said dizzily.

“Any preference where?”

“No.” I was reduced to words of one syllable. It was all I could do to speak. I followed James, eyes on his shining fall of hair, on his strong shoulders, on his hips in their faded jeans as he threaded his way through tables. All my other problems suddenly seemed like so much accumulated dust. While this one … or maybe it wasn’t a problem?

I didn’t feel like it was a problem. I felt wonderful! Spring was in the air! Flowers blossomed where I stepped! And at any moment the soundtrack would swell. I couldn’t help wondering what music would be most appropriate. Something classic? Bonnie Raitt? Edith Piaf? No, it should be strange and new and lovely. It occurred to me that love was the root of the word lovely, and this seemed a miraculous discovery, a fact of immense significance.

I was going to read that book Beloved. Soon. Today.

But even as I had these thoughts, I knew I was nuts. I knew it was unlikely that James would love me back. I wasn’t pretty, or sexy, or witty, or popular, or anything desirable. And drug dealer or not, he was far above my social station. I didn’t have a station at all, come to think of it. But … I hadn’t heard that he was going out with anyone, not once since he’d started school here in the fall, in fact. That was something. Unless he was gay, which he couldn’t be, not the way he looked at girls. Even at me, just now.

And he was always nice to me. Always said hi, how are you. He’d defended me at the Unity meeting. In fact, he’d been practically my knight in shining armor there—he’d taken on Patrick Leyden himself. Imagine that.

The full extent of James’s extraordinary nature was now clear to me. Except for the drug dealing part. But everyone had faults.

And suppose by some miracle James did like me? Could I get him to abandon his evil ways? Of course, I would need to give up marijuana myself, or I wouldn’t make a credible reformer. It was a good thing I hadn’t had time to get to like it too much. I resolved to flush the remaining weed down the toilet just as soon as I got back to my dorm.

Ahead of me James had found a table that had two empty seats facing each other at one end. He put his tray down and pushed it across the table, moving around the edge to sit across from the empty seat that was for me. Happily I put my own tray down and sat. We would talk. I would try, delicately, to get a sense of whether he felt anything for me …

“Hey,” James said easily to the table at large.

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