Page 35 of Twice
Still we never started a relationship. Quite the opposite. A few weeks later, I saw her on the campus lawn, lying on a blanket, reading a book. She wore a cropped blue top and tight yellow shorts. Some shirtless guys were playing soccer on the nearby grass, and Gianna was watching as I stepped up behind her. I couldn’t help but stare at her bare, tanned legs as she loosely kicked them up and down, her small feet moving like flippers.
“You know it’s creepy to stare at a girl’s butt,” she said. She spun her head around. “You’re not a creep, are you, Alfie?”
I felt a flame of embarrassment shoot up my spine. As her eyes locked on mine, I actuallyyelledthe word “Twice!” and was instantly back in my earlier class, breathing so hard, the guy next to me whispered, “Hey, man, are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Fine.”
When class ended, I exited the building and reminded myself that Gianna knew none of my previous behavior. I saw her again on the lawn. I took a deep breath. This time I approached from the front, determined to be aloof. I stared at a book as I passed by her.
“Hey, Alfie,” she yelled. “What are you reading?”
I looked up as innocently as I could fake it.
“Oh. Hey, Gianna.”
“What’s the book?”
I had to flip it over. I didn’t even know.
“The Divided Self.”
“Any good?”
“You know. So-so. It’s for sociology so I—”
She turned away to smile at someone, one of the shirtless soccer players who was jogging her way. He had thick black hair and dark stubble on his cheeks. He dropped to his knees and kissed Gianna on the forehead while resting a hand on the small of her back, just above the yellow shorts that had gotten me in trouble minutes earlier.
“Hey, Alfie, do you know Mike?” Gianna said.
“Hey, man,” Mike said, smiling. His teeth were perfect.
“Twice,” I mumbled under my breath. “Twice...Twice...”
But I had already redone this moment. There was no going back again.
“Hey, man,” I finally croaked back, a weaker version of Mike’s words, befitting a man who was obviously, to Gianna, a weaker suitor.
?
For the rest of our freshman year, I got no closer than friendship would allow. Gianna was popular with a wide swath of people who all seemed to adore her. I’d see her laughing in the student lounge with a group of Filipino classmates, or doing morning exercises with a tai chi club, or working in the cafeteria where she had a part-time job, chatting up some older kitchen staff who seemed to treat her like a peer. Whenever there were others around us, she would introduce me as “Alfie, a guy I used to ride elephants with in Africa.”
Now and then, I would see her arm in arm with Mike, whose last name was Kurtz, and who, it turns out, was a star goalie on the university’s soccer team. And a senior. This made me feel young and clumsy around them, and I found myself undoing so many moments—times I said something lame, or she caught me staring—that I must have added a semester’s worth of second tries.
One time I was playing piano in a practice room (despite my dad’s objections, I was majoring in music) and Gianna passed by the open door and saw me. I was in the middle ofsinging “Try Me” by James Brown, a wailing, plaintive ballad that my mother used to play on her old turntable.
“Try me, try me,
Darling tell me, ‘I need you.’”
“Alfie?”
I stopped playing. My face went red.
“Wow, Alfie. You’re really good.”
I shrugged. But inside, I was happy with the compliment. I’d gotten to sing those words to Gianna without having to say them. Maybe she’d take a hint.
“Do you want to hear a song?” I asked. Then I added, “Any song?”
