The Girl, Episode II

"TS?"

He looked over his shoulder in the line at Starbucks, thinking he had heard his local nom-de-guerre beneath the cacophony of whiny-voiced rage and furiously distorted guitars in his headphones. A dark haired girl stood behind him, talking on her phone, her face full of piercings. Behind the girl on the phone stood a tall, smiling blonde wearing a loose grey wool-knit hat. She brushed curls out of her cool blue eyes when he recognized her, beamed brighter as he offered for the girl on the phone to cut him.

"How was the Heinlein?" he asked.

"Insane," she responded curtly. "It wasn't much of an adventure at all."

"Yeah, I know. I tried warning you that it was political."

"It was still good, gave me a new respect for soldiers."

He laughed. "Well, I think that's what he would have wanted."

She nodded, also laughing, and he ordered his coffee. She quickly ordered her own, and she asked him what he was doing in the area.

"Well, I only live a few blocks away and I've got class in like fifteen minutes."

"Oh," she said, "you are kind of a local, then. I thought that because of your accent you were just down here on vacation or something."

"Well, I do summer at a Barnes & Noble whenever I get the chance," he replied, sipping his drink.

She laughed. "Where are you going to school?"

He looked at her somberly, and slowly raised a thumb to point over his shoulder, out the store's front windows. Across the street, a university's campus sprawled to the south and east.

"Oh, I am so dumb." She blushed.

"Nah, at least you asked where I went. Although the next nearest school is, what, on the north end of town?"

"Yeah, that'd be a hike in fifteen minutes."

"It really would be." He pulled out his personal media player and checked the time. "Crap, I'm probably already going to be late. I assume you're super local, too, so I'll see you around?"

"Yeah," she said, watching him open the door.

"Awesome. Maybe next time one of us won't be in a rush."

"Hopefully not." She kept smiling as he waved a final goodbye and leapt through traffic to the university, and hustled away down paved paths.