Page 68 of Caleb
“Um, I need you to lose the tie too.” She grins a big goofy grin that wrinkles her nose in the dorkiest way.
I look away to hold back from poking her nose as I loosen up my tie and pull it over my head.
“And a couple of these”—she undoes the top two buttons of my shirt—“because we don’t want you to look like a hipster.”
Swallowing hard, I meet her gaze. The throbbing desire to grab her by the waist and pull her against me grates against every single fiber of my being.
She seems nervous. I look away. Again.
Knowing I’ll never see her again in less than a month makes everything worse. My thoughts and wants and needs are spiraling out of control. But I need to get it together. We’re in a classroom, for crying out loud, and she would probably freak out if she could peek inside my head.
“Do you need me to take my shirt off, too?” I joke to lighten the mood. It works. She grins, and I wonder what’s going through her mind to cause her cheeks to blush like that.
Finally, it’s Red’s turn to photograph me.
She instructs me to take a seat on a stool in front of a white backdrop. A bright light hits my face, making me grimace. She adjusts the lights, and the instructor helps her with setting up the camera.
Before she starts shooting, she dashes my way, undoes another of my shirt’s buttons, and flies back to her spot to screw her camera to the tripod in front of me.
I snort, and she makes a face. This is fun. She then tells me to keep a straight face and look into her camera. Red’s female classmates have gathered behind her and are now watching her photograph me. They whisper among themselves in French, but I can’t make out a single thing they’re saying.
Red reviews the shots on her camera’s display with her instructor, and they both look pleased with the results. I stand up after she tells me we’re done. After a few final words from their instructor, everyone cleans up and packs their stuff to leave.
We both walk out of the classroom, and I put my earpiece back in place the moment I see Aaron. He’s already looking at my disheveled appearance with disapproval. And he’s right. I can’t walk around looking like this, so I place my tie around my neck and fit it into a knot as quickly as possible.
I catch Red looking at me and she mouths, “thank you.”
“You can thank me with a big birthday gift next week,” I whisper back at her with a wink. This whole “me trying to be myself” thing is not going as well as expected. I’m sure I sound like an idiot.
My phone rings. It’s Noelle.
She must’ve seen me.
After muting the call, I place the phone back inside my jacket pocket. Behind Red, I spot Noelle standing in the distance. She’s leaning against a wall, her backpack hanging from her shoulder.
I ignore her. This is not the time or place to engage with her, and she knows it. Instead, I grab Red’s backpack against her wishes and walk her to her next class.
My phone rings again as Aaron pulls into the Residence’s parking lot and puts the car in park. It’s Noelle again, but I send it to voicemail and step out of the vehicle to get Red’s door.
“Why don’t you take the call?” she says, stepping out. “It might be important.”
“Nah, it’s not.” I pretend like her prying isn’t making me nervous. The thought of Red finding out I’ve beenkeeping in touchwith Noelle bothers me. “I can call the person back later.”
My head’s spinning. I need to talk to Noelle sooner rather than later. I know how intense she can be when she wants my attention, so I’d rather get that out of the way because I can’t have her approaching me at school, and I know she will if I keep ignoring her. And I simply do not want Red to find out about Noelle. So now more than ever, I need to keep a distance between them.
My brain moves to analyze how weird it is that Annette has been hiding from me for the last four days. She greets me with a twitchy smile whenever we cross paths and quickly looks away. But I’ll get her alone one of these days so we can talk. I’m still hoping she could maybe do something to change Ambassador Murphy’s mind.
I refuse to accept my fate.
Red just said something about a teacher, I think. But I didn’t quite get what she was saying. I’m buried deep in my thoughts.
“That’s nice, Red,” I say, feeling like shit for not being attentive. But there’s so much going on inside my head that I’m trying to piece it all together and simultaneously be my usual self. It’s eating at me.
She shoves my shoulder playfully and says, “You think it’s nice that Mr. Pernot took his pants off?”
“Wait. What?” I bring my awareness back to the present after her joke. To her. She seems satisfied to have my undivided attention but suspicious of my behavior.
“What’s gotten into you?” She reaches for the door handle.
