Rob gave a perfect match of his first what the fuck?
"I’m not taking a girl, girl. It's a decoy that's a girl. They'll pay attention to her, not me."
"Then you…" Rob raised an imaginary rifle, "nail her."
Max and Justin looked at each other, but then Justin seemed to shrug in agreement. "My dad says there are girls you take home to meet your mom, and there are girls you..." he cleared his throat.
"Pizza and a six pack girls." Rob shot for the garbage can again and the basket was as loud as the miss had been. He grinned. "You fuck ‘em and then you wish they'd turn into pizza and a six pack."
Max sighed. "Yeah, I think that’s exactly what Justin’s dad said."
Rob nodded and bounced the ball with enthusiasm, but Justin looked a little pissed. "Most girls… some girls out there are so… everything. They're the girl you want your mom to meet, and they're the girl you want to see naked every minute of every day for the rest of your life."
Rob stopped dribbling.
Max nodded towards Justin. "He is the only one getting it regularly. He may know more than you think he does."
Rob bounced the ball again. "Shit."
"Alright." Max figured he had a day. One day before the required homecoming, and he needed a girl, a girl to meet the folks. He considered the ones he knew from the dorm, from the first day of classes. There were some hard classes where the smart, focused girls sat in the front row, knocking down the credits before they sailed on to law school. He could ask one of those, but the one that came to mind was the girl from the bar. The screw that hadn't been a screw after all.
She'd taken him by surprise for a minute when she'd licked it. God, she'd just lapped at it, and he'd gone hard instantly. But she had nice girl eyes and dressed like a nice girl and the tongue had to have been from the empty drink glasses all over the table. Even nice girls could loosen up with enough liquor. Didn't guys count on that? He'd always had good enough luck to talk a sober girl into at least a little something. Yeah. Screw girl would be perfect. Smart. Even half-drunk he could tell that. And nice. She'd save his ass Sunday night.
Back to U…
The crush of students on the sidewalk should have made her uncomfortable. What was she doing among the mostly young who all seemed to know where they were going? But she couldn't stop seeing Max’s face, not just the aching familiarity of it even twenty years later, but the expression, something she hadn’t seen him wear before. He’d been the one to leave first. It seemed unlikely there was much pain for him. Maybe there had been. She did and didn't want to think so. His expression was probably just the smugness of someone who’d predicted something accurately. Maybe he'd known all along that she’d be a woman who’d take the path of least resistance right into the middle of her life.
The sculpture stopped her. She stood and looked up at all ten feet of it. God it was still so ugly. The seventies might not have been the best decade to commission public art. The squid-like shape had begun to oxidize the first time she'd been on campus. According to the artist, it was supposed to do that. The metal lump also took up a big chunk of real estate, and the cement base it rested on was streaked with dried rust. The artist was probably still trying to defend himself. "You were a risk taker. What good did that do you?"
She realized she'd spoken out loud when several students skirted around her as they would any potentially crazy person on campus, so she tried to move into the flow of foot traffic. On the other side of the squid, she spotted a sign for the arts building. That explained how the sculpture found a home. Artists would have a higher tolerance, a kindness, she supposed, for even failed attempts. And Ty had suggested she check the building out, hadn't he? Nice Ty. Unlike Max, Ty gave her the friendly face. But in Ty’s case no one had bailed on anyone yet, had they? She headed into the arts building before she could do anything else that might alert campus security.