Stay: Vignettes & Outtakes by Moriah Jovan Page B

kiss her to let her know he meant it when he said he wasn’t mad at her.
    It was then he made a startling discovery.
    He was talking to a genuinely nice girl.
    And he liked it.
    After class, they started out toward “the Wilk”—
    “Student union,” Knox had told him on his tour, explaining what college life was about because Eric had no frame of reference for college whatsoever, except what happened in a frat house on the weekends.
    “Okay, so what did I say wrong?” she asked after a tense silence.
    “Well,” Eric replied, trying to make his voice as nice as possible, because she would probably cry if he used his normal level of sarcasm. “First you assumed I come from a reservation. I don’t. I come from a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks, yeah, but not a reservation.”
    She took a deep breath.
    “Second, you assumed Kansas City’s in Kansas. Which it
is
, but the Kansas City in Missouri’s four times bigger.”
    She looked at him sharply. “There’s a Kansas City in Missouri?”
    “Yeah. Third, you assumed there weren’t any American Indians east of the Rockies. And I don’t know what being from Arizona has to do with anything.”
    “Lots of Native Americans where I live. Navajo. Apache.”
    Oh. Right.
    “You’re not...all that interested in your people, are you?” she asked hesitantly.
    “No. I’m just a non-Mormon punk kid way out of my league here,” he said bluntly, more confused by the fact that that had come out of his mouth than concerned that he might have revealed more than he wanted to to this girl he didn’t know. “I didn’t even know what Mormons were until last year.”
    “Then how did you get here?”
    He shrugged. “Long story. Don’t wanna tell it. I just...need a little help.” Admitting
that
killed him for sure.
    “I’ll help you,” she said, a new brightness in her voice he liked. It wasn’t like the cheerleader/rodeo queen brightness Annie faked when she was “on.” It was sincere. Genuinely happy for no reason he could ascertain.
    “Okay,” he finally said. “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why do you want to help me?”
    She shrugged. “I think you’re nice.”
    Nice.
That was a new one. Annie would laugh her ass off. “I’m not a nice guy,” he said flatly. “Really.”
    It occurred to him he probably should’ve told Annie where he was going before he took off. He made a note to write her a nice letter. If he could remember her address.
    “I don’t believe that.”
    “Why? You don’t know what I’ve done.”
    “In Kansas City.”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “You’re here so that means you’re wanting to make a new start. Do something different, right?”
    “I’m here ’cause if I wanted to go to college, this was my only option.”
    She stopped. He stopped. “That makes no sense.” She looked up at him, awaiting an explanation, and he thought he could lose himself in those clear brown eyes of hers. He looked at her full lips and licked his lower lip. He bent and—
    —missed.
    She ducked out from under him and said, “I don’t think so.”
    Eric stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.
    “It doesn’t work that way here,” she murmured, walking backward, tugging him with nothing but the power of her potential companionship.
    “I thought you said I was nice.”
    “I believe you to be. Somewhere in there.”
    Oh, so she
did
get it. He wondered how long it would take to break down her walls. A week. Maybe two.
    “I want to be your friend.”
    He felt his face contorting in utter confusion. “My
friend
?” he echoed. “What the hell does
that
mean?”
    “Please don’t swear at me.”
    “I didn’t—”
    “You said h-e-double toothpicks.”
    His mouth dropped open.
    “We don’t swear.”
    What the fuck? Hilliard swore like a sailor and he was a Mormon. Or almost. If they hadn’t kicked him out.
    “Okay,
I
don’t swear and I don’t want to hear it.”
    Eric sucked up a deep breath, but how could he refuse this girl