worry about you sometimes. Remember what I said about dating Leos and especially Geminis. Anyway, I’ll let you get going. Drive safe.”
I hang up and turn my attention back to the road.
I don’t mind long drives, in fact I find them enjoyable. There’s time to think. Time to listen to music. Time to meditate.
I groove to this CD from a group Finn turned me onto called A Place in My Heart. It’s sappy love songs with this retro, eighties feel, and it totally nails the mood I’m in currently.
Joyful. Happy.
Almost like love is in the air.
I mean, even Luke Rutledge—a senior we thought would be the last man to ever settle down—proposed to someone during our baseball team’s spring break trip in Florida earlier this month.
I figured he was crazy, especially given how fast that whole thing came on.
And then I saw Maya at the campus café the other morning, and I was reminded what it’s like to be attracted to a woman so hard you have difficulty focusing.
Not only is she drop-dead, deliciously sexy—I could not stop staring at her in those black yoga pants when she was lying on my bed—but she has this energy bubble around her that changes everything about me when I’m in her presence. I feel so focused, like I want to be both her protector and kiss her like a savage all at once. It’s a feeling I’m still trying to figure out, because whatever it is, it’s overpowering.
But it makes me understand this music I’m listening to. Some people call love songs silly. Hell, I’ve been the guy making fun of them many times. But as I listen to a song called “The Joy of Loving You”, and my truck whirs down a two-lane highway with cornfields on either side, I can’t help but smile.
Look, I admit it, I do have a little crush on Maya.
I’m so damn happy she’s back and enrolled in school. Something about seeing her face always lifts my spirits.
And I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t wait to see her in action on the track.
I haven’t been able to put my finger on why I dig her vibe so much. Maybe it was the game of “Never Have I Ever” we played in her dorm during fall term and how she was the person who was hardest to knock out.
It could also be her smile.
Fine, by now I can admit the way she looked in yoga pants the other morning when she was sleeping in my bed could have something to do with it.
I wanted to take a nap next to her. I absolutely did. But how is a guy supposed to nap when he has a boner reaching straight up to the sky like a sunflower plant? I’m just thankful she was sleeping so she didn’t notice it.
Besides, I got plenty of sleep the night before, and she looked like she needed the shuteye. Maya seemed damn stressed and I wanted to help her out in any way I possibly could.
Ten-thousand dollars? How the hell is someone supposed to come up with that in four weeks?
I mean, shit, if I were clearing ten grand per month already, then what would be the purpose of college?
I’ve always prided myself on being a problem solver though. Even when I was in middle and high school, people called me “The Sage”. They would come to me with their problems and I would help them sort out what they were going through. The funny thing is, sometimes I have the feeling like I get more pleasure by solving problems for them than they do from the relief of having their issues resolved.
I’ve always loved thinking, driving, and listening to music. And some people might find the cornfields of Iowa boring, but I love ’em. Maybe it’s the baseball in me, but these fields make me think of the movie Field of Dreams and how anything is possible if you can visualize it like Kevin Costner AKA Ray Kinsella did in the movie.
To think creatively, you need monotony and boredom. That’s the funny thing about our social media dopamine high driven culture that has my generation just looking for the next hit of gossip or outrage. I’m lucky I have old-fashioned parents, and I grew up out in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota. I was mad about it for a few years in high school when my friends all had cable TV and Netflix and I didn’t. Now, I