Guarding The Captain

I was almost six minutes late, and I was still half a block from campus.

The bus had taken twenty extra minutes I did not have, and now I was speed-walking down the block in my only decent blazer, hoping I could make it to class before my professor started. I had a lecture at nine, a shift at the security office later in the day, and two unanswered texts from my landlord about my overdue rent.

Missing this lecture would mean another warning. I was already too close to the limit for attendance, and my professor was not the kind of person who cared why someone was late.

I picked up my pace, my feet already hurting from the walk. I cut across the plaza instead of going around it, weaving between a cluster of students with rolling suitcases and a guy filming something that was probably for a class project. I was maybe forty feet from the building when a black car swung around the corner, and a window came down.

I didn't even have time to be annoyed about the car before something hit me.

It was warm, and it splashed across my shoulder and down my sleeve before I understood what it was, and by the time I looked down at the brown stain spreading across the front of my blazer, the car had already pulled up along the curb outside the athletic building.

Coffee. Someone had thrown coffee out a car window and it had landed on me.

I stood there for a second doing nothing useful, just staring at my ruined sleeve while the smell of burnt espresso rose off my collar. Then I walked toward the car, because apparently my sense of self-preservation had taken the morning off.

The driver's door opened before I got there, and a guy stepped out backward, still talking to someone inside — a teammate, from the gym bag visible on the back seat — laughing at something. He was tall, dressed like he'd rolled out of a locker room, hair still damp, and completely unbothered by the fact that he had just launched a beverage at a stranger.

"That's on you," he said over his shoulder, still grinning, before he turned around and saw me.

He looked at my sleeve. Then at my face. Then he took his time doing it a second time, slower, like he'd decided the face was worth a longer look.

"Well," he said. "That's unfortunate for the shirt.

Fortunate for me."

"Excuse me?"

"I got coffee on the most beautiful woman on this block. Most guys have to buy a woman a coffee to get her attention. I just skipped a step."

I looked down at my ruined sleeve, then back up at him, waiting for the part where he apologized. It didn't come.

"You're not going to say sorry."

"I was getting there." He didn't sound like he was getting there. He sounded like someone who had never once finished an apology in his life. "In my defense, I didn't see you. Which, now that I have, feels like a genuine loss on my part."

"That is not a defense. That's a compliment shaped like an excuse."

"Is it working?"

"No."

"Give it a minute." He said it easily, like he had all the time in the world and every reason to believe I'd come around. He reached into the car for a stack of napkins that were never going to be enough for the stain he'd caused, held them out, and when I didn't take them right away, he used the extra few seconds to look me over again, unhurried, like he was allowed to.

Up close, I recognized him the way you recognize someone from a poster you've walked past forty times without really looking — one of the athletes whose face showed up on banners around campus and in the sports section of the student paper. I didn't follow any of it closely enough to know his name, only that people said it like it meant something, and only that he clearly knew people said it like it meant something.

"I have four minutes to get to a lecture," I said, "and now I get to do it smelling like a coffee shop floor."

"I could sign it." He nodded at the stain like it was a genuinely reasonable suggestion. "People pay for less. You'd have a story."

"I don't want your autograph on my blazer."

"Everyone says that at first."

"I'm not everyone."

That got his attention in a way the coffee hadn't. He tilted his head, and for a second the easy performance dropped just enough that I could see him actually paying attention instead of just talking.

"No,” he said, slower this time. “I don't think you are, but you can start by telling me your pretty name.”

“Why do you need my name?”

“Because I’d like to know it.”

“You can start by paying for my shirt.”

“I’ll buy you another shirt,” he said. “Just tell me your name.”

“Is that your way of apologizing?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what is it?”

“Exactly what I said. I want to know your name.”

I stared at him.

He smiled. “Come on. Give me your name. I already like the sound of you yelling at me. I have a feeling I’m going to like saying your name even more.”

I stared at him. He didn't look even slightly embarrassed. If anything, he looked delighted, like my irritation was the most entertaining thing that had happened to him all week, which was probably true.

"You're unbelievable," I said.

"I get that a lot. Usually meant as a compliment."

"It wasn't."

“I’ll take it anyway.” He grinned, unbothered, and leaned a hip against the car like we had all morning to stand there. “Come on. One name. I’ll even guess if you want. You look like a—”

I turned and hurried toward the building.

He laughed behind me. “Playing hard to get, right?”

I kept walking.

“You’re beautiful!” he called after me.

I didn't respond.

“You’ll be back,” he called, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. “You’ll come back begging like the others.”

“I won't,” I called without turning around.

“We’ll see.”

I could hear him laughing behind me as I pushed through the doors. I didn't wait to hear whatever he had to say. I had three minutes and a professor who didn't believe in exceptions.

I made it through the door with eleven seconds to spare, breathing hard, coffee-stained, and thoroughly unimpressed with how good-looking the universe had decided to make the guy who ruined my morning and clearly assumed that ruining it was, on balance, a favor to me.

I slid into the back row and pulled out my notebook. It took most of the lecture to stop thinking about him, not because he was charming, though he was, infuriatingly, but because I couldn't remember the last time anyone had been that shameless to my face and actually enjoyed it.

By the time class ended, I told myself I'd never see him again, and that whatever that half-second of almost laughing at his terrible non-apology had been, it wasn't worth thinking about twice