Feed by Nicole Grotepas

way what had been bothering her when he arrived. Then, depending on what it was, he could offer comfort, his shoulder, advice, or sympathy. Instead he was glad she steered the conversation away from that topic.
    “Ready?” she asked abruptly.
    “Yes, are you?” he asked. The question baffled her. It was so unlike him, he guessed.
    She blinked rapidly, began to say something, then laughed. “I’m always ready. Aren’t I?”
    “I don’t know, are you?” he smiled. He had no idea what he was doing. Breaking out of his comfort zone? Trying to disarm her? For a moment he felt the startling sensation that he was not in his body, that he was watching from a distance.
    She put her pen down. “Ramone,” she said. “Is everything ok?”
    He wanted to explain himself. He wanted to make her understand that she could drop the professional front and surrender, be friendly like she’d been the other night at the coffee shop. That he could be whatever she thought he was. He didn’t want her to become scared just because he wasn’t doing what she expected. He wanted to grow for another person.
    But what about Sue?
    Once upon a time the two of them grew and changed for each other, adapting to what the other needed while stepping back when breathing room was necessary for some new sprouting branch of personality or alteration of opinions. For five years now they’d been treading water. Maybe it was the nanocameras and the invasion of their privacy, but maybe it wasn’t.
    He chuckled and nodded, closing his eyes, crawling back into his shell. “Yes, sorry. I was—I was just horsing around. I’m sorry. I never do that.”
    Blythe laughed. “So that’s what that was.” Ramone rubbed his forehead, stared at the ground, and wished he’d never tried to change himself, even for only a few seconds. “I liked it.”
    “What?”
    “Horsing around. I mean, maybe we need to focus on that, get you to loosen up just a bit. But I can work with that.”

 
    Chapter 5
     
     
    Marci planned to duck out of her business ethics class to watch Ramone’s meeting with Blythe. The auditorium was huge and because she sat in the back, leaving wouldn’t draw much attention. The majority of her classmates stared down at their desks, tapping notes into their slates with their fingertips, glancing up at the droning professor occasionally. He droned in Marci’s opinion. Everyone else seemed to find him entertaining. Maybe it was the subject that didn’t spark her interest.
    A large flat-screen floated behind the short, squat figure of the professor at the front of the auditorium. He wore a tiny microphone on the collar of his T-shirt and moved in front of the glowing blue screen, controlling images on it with his own slate. “So then,” he said, as Marci gathered her things—one thing really, her slate; her sunglasses she kept on her head—and shoved them into her backpack. “Who said, ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’” The quote appeared on the screen behind him along with a hand-drawn portrait.
    The hand of some over-achiever on the front row shot into the air and its owner began speaking before the professor could even call on them. “Adam Smith!”
    “Right,” the professor said, turning and pointing at the person in possession of such a brilliant mind on the front row.
    “Honestly,” Marci said quietly to the guy sitting next to her. “This class has got to be the most boring one in the entire universe.”
    He smirked and shook his head. “I don’t even know why you’re a business major, Marci.”
    “Why wouldn’t I be? Have to prepare to take over daddy’s company when he dies, right?” She laughed, zipping up her pack.
    “And who are the butcher, the brewer, and the bakers of our day?” the professor continued. A dozen other hands shot up around the auditorium. “Shout them out, no need to be