Born Losers

September

"It's Emmy, right?"

She looked up from the thick textbook that was covering the scuffed honey-colored wood of the library table and blinked several times to bring the figure in front of her into focus. He shifted, moving away the window that looked out over the manicured lawn, and that made it easier to realize she had absolutely no idea who he was.

And Emmy? She hadn't been Emmy since Marsalis.

"Tyler," he reminded her. "Tyler Flynn."

As soon as he said it, the face clicked into place, but she never would have gotten there on her own. They'd been classmates until sixth grade, when his entertainment lawyer mother had moved the entire family cross-country to California. The last time she'd seen him he'd been scrawny and short, with hair that was always carefully combed over and sprayed until it looked shellacked.

Now he was a foot and a half taller than she was, broad-shouldered and stocky. The hair was still short, but he'd grown into the face that had always seemed too world-weary for a kid in middle school, and he was pleasant-looking if not handsome.

She thought he was probably the kind of guy you'd look at after years of knowing him, and realize how stupid you were for not looking at him sooner; but she had only just looked at him for the first time and had no such intentions.

"Oh, sure." she said. "Tyler. Hi."

"Hi." He fidgeted, obviously not knowing what to do with his hands. Finally he shoved them both into his pockets and looked at her, abashed. "I haven't seen you in awhile."

"I moved," she explained after a brief second's pause. "Louisiana. I haven't been back up here in a couple of years."

"Yeah." The silence stretched between them, awkward, heavy, and then he offered a half-hearted smile as he reminded her. "I haven't been here either. We moved to Los Angeles. I just got back this summer. My parents got divorced and my mom stayed there with my sister, but I wanted to come back with my dad."

He seemed to realize he was rambling and trailed off, and Em took pity.

"Are you glad to be back?"

"Not in the slightest."

That made her laugh, thawed out some of the weirdness, and he eyed the chair next to her.

"Is it okay if I sit with you?" he asked. "It's really nice to see a familiar face. This place is huge."

"Yeah, totally." She shoved her books over and waved a hand at the empty chair. "It's a lot bigger than I thought, too. I figured by this point I'd know lots of people, but there's so many of them it's hard to keep track."

"Same here!" He slid into the chair, bringing with him the simple smell of clean soap. His hair was the soft brown of star anise, and his eyes reminded her of a puppy's, wide and gentle and equally brown behind thin black glasses. "I think I remember my roommate. Sometimes."

She laughed again, and he smiled at her.

"Is Victoria here too?" he asked her, and her laugh died abruptly. Thinking of Vic hurt.

"No," she said briefly. She had nothing in common with Vic anymore. It had been obvious from their first painfully awkward encounter, when they had hugged like long-lost sisters, spent ten minutes sharing updates on mutual acquaintances, and then stared at each other, realizing that it wasn't only states that had separated them the past two years.

The first time they got together was strange; the second was agony; and after that they both strung together enough feeble excuses that their friendship ended with the proverbial whimper instead of a bang.

"She was a bitch," he surprised her. "You were always so nice and I never understood why you hung out with her."

"She was great a lot of the time," she felt compelled to say in Vic's defense. "Better than a lot of the other kids we went to school with, anyway."

"That doesn't say much." He wrinkled his nose as if he'd caught a bad smell. "Did you go to a similar school in, where was it?"

"Louisiana. And no. It wasn't at all like Marsalis."

They were desperately fumbling for conversation, and she felt an undercurrent of panic, not sure she wanted to keep talking to him, equally unsure she wanted him to go.

Figuring out a social life was a lot harder than she'd thought, especially now that she didn't have the ready-made group of friends that Vic had promised.

Her roommate, Chloe, was friendly enough, but she was pre-med and apparently trying to take the entire undergrad catalogue in a single semester. She also worked two jobs to pay her tuition, so for all intents and purposes, Em had a room to herself.

It was nice when she was trying to study, but at night the silence was oppressive, crept in, smothered her tightly, held her like a vengeful lover while his voice clanged in her head like church bells, like warning bells:

Yeah, like that. Put this leg here.

And this leg over here.

and she could almost feel his sigh against her mouth, his hands against her skin.

After a month, she was starting to put a couple of faces with names, starting to exchange waves and conversation and tentative texts with people in her dorm: Halima, her suitemate, who had the most gorgeous brown eyes Em had ever seen and an endless well of stories from playing Jasmine at Disney World for three summers straight; Jalen, the Texan from down the hall who played Otis Redding at top volume starting at 8 in the morning every morning; Kanona, the ballerina Em sat next to in American Lit, who reminded her so much of Ali, with a grin you could see from space and a bawdy laugh that exploded off of walls.

They were people she liked, people she could see being friends with, but none of them invited confidence, none of them could read her mind with a single glance.

She hadn't found anyone who understood her "Camp Anawanna" shirt, hadn't found someone who would read to her because he knew that one of the sweetest remaining memories she had of her father was of him sitting next to her on the couch on his rare nights off, taking her through Tolkien and Lewis and Rowling while she propped her head against his leg and his hand stroked the hair from her face.

There was no one who had that particular grin that started slow on one side of his mouth and then slipped aside to the other like Apollo bringing the light of day.

Which, she tried her hardest to convince herself, was fine.

Really.

"Are you taking Psych with Collins?" Tyler brought her back to the present. He tapped on her textbook with a grimace. "I have her at 2. She's brutal."

"This James paper is kicking my butt," she commiserated. "Have you finished yours?"

"Haven't even started."

"Do you want to work on it with me?" she asked recklessly. "Maybe get dinner after?"

It was stupid, but Tyler reminded her not at all of August and the comfort of not thinking of him was immense.

"Yeah," he said, and the warmth of his hand so close to hers was soothing, made her cheeks flush. "Yeah, I'd really like that. Thanks, Emmy."

"Em," she told him, and when his smile widened, she smiled back. "I go by Em now."