There was a rapping knock at the apartment door, unheard over the screams of dying zombies. A few moments passed. Jeremy remained immersed in his game but because his ears were alert for pixelated enemies sneaking up behind him he knew he had heard something. Rapping again.
"Come in!" he shouted from the bunk bed but didn't bother to rise. He knew who it was. Laura, his girlfriend, only had a few friends who visited anymore and if it was her there wouldn't have been a knock. Sarah walked into the room and dropped her backpack on the floor. Hey's were exchanged but although he could feel her staring waiting for a proper greeting he didn't yet pause his game.
Sarah slumped in a heap beside him on the bunk bed with an exaggerated sigh. "We were supposed to study.", she offered in explanation.
Jeremy nodded. "She texted to say she missed a bus and decided to stay in the library a while to finish something. Said she'd be home in a couple of hours."
They both referred to Laura, Jeremy's girlfriend and Sarah's best friend. He paused and looked over at her more to finally acknowledge her presence formally than anything else. It was a familiar presence. They'd known each other for years now. Sarah was half black, half white, and a complete odd ball. It gave her skin a smooth mocha shade which was neither too dark nor too light to deny the light a playful accentuation of her curves. And she had plenty. Not too many, but just enough to be what Jeremy would have admiringly called "voluptuous". A stark contrast to Jeremy, his short black hair and skin that was the kind of pale only a shut in like himself could acquire. Her in summer shorts and a blue low dip top which Jeremy was quietly grateful for, him in his blue jeans and black t-shirt as always. Her full and voluptuous. Him more with the body of a runner.
Jeremy also thought her mix was what allowed her to have such a frivolity of character. A white girl couldn't pull off some of her jokes, and she loved to be silly. A black girl wouldn't be thought funny for making them. At least that was his take. She seemed like Alka-Seltzer to him. Always effervescent and bubbly. Whereas he was a sort of happy melancholy most times, easily switching between rolling along with the joke and changing the subject to something relevant in a heavier sense. They were both opposite and the same in many ways.
She noticed him staring thoughtfully and offered one of her big intentionally cheesy grins. He laughed and shook his head, offering the controller.
"You wanna play?"
She waved her hands and head in unison. "Oh no. I don't do that. That's you guy's thing with the zombie games."
He nodded and then felt like a bad host. "I could put in racing or something." He shrugged at her with his sideways grin.
She considered it very briefly but then defaulted also in favor of being polite. "Um no that's okay you play your game. I'm just going to get my notes and stuff out and read over the chapter, so.."
It was only a few minutes of Jeremy at his game and Sarah with her book in her lap before Jeremy began to let his mind run as always. Thinking how strange it was since he moved to the city. How people here were fine being in such close vicinity and yet acting like the other wasn't there. He was not yet comfortable with it, not because he didn't like silence. He did when alone sometimes. But because it made him think of all those people bustling about on the sidewalks close enough to bump shoulders and yet each in their own island worlds. Nearly face to face and yet still each managing to be behind metal and glass with their cellphones and coffees and Kindles. Another contrast. Jeremy had lived most his life in southern states and although he wasn't much for crowds in close proximity he was a social creature. Not in that how is the weather city superficial way, but in that how is your mom country way that seemed to make people here who didn't seem to be used to genuine inquiries over small talk uncomfortable.
Maybe it was his quietly intense stare. The way his eyes didn't need to avoid and dart around to different objects and subjects. It showed in the culture to him how people here were less comfortable with being really seen and he suspected it just as much of Sarah. That under the bubbly there would be more. Reasons to need to stay so happy all the time that were not themselves so happy. He wanted to know her. Ask her. But a question like that would either not be or could not be answered so directly by someone who wasn't ready for it. He knew that much. He knew she was capable of real conversation. They'd had plenty of less personal debates before about religion, politics, modern events. Most of the time though it naturally tended towards their common denominator, Laura, as it did that day.
"So yeah. Laura told me you picked out that new bra I liked.", he offered. As soon as he said it he wondered if his trying so hard to sound casual ever just made him sound more forced, but that was just more proof that he tended to over think things.
Sarah looked up from her book with a mischievous grin that pushed her glasses back up her nose. "You two enjoyed that one huh?"
"Mmhm." He grinned back.
"I should go shopping with her more often.", she said waving her pen with the syllables.
He turned towards her leaning against a pillow. "You should. You have good taste in bras.", he said with an over expressed wink. She shook her head and looked back to her notes.
This sort of jokative flirting was common between them. Although not when Laura was around of course. When her eyes were away he looked her over. Her crossed legs in those shorts. He always noticed her full thighs. The bit of cleavage in the round dip of that shirt, not too much but easily a nice C cup he figured, not fully checking her out in any lustful way but not looking away from that which his eyes naturally admired either. He sometimes liked to let his eyes linger on her when they could both pretend not to know he was looking. Jeremy did it because he suspected she secretly found it a little flattering. And of course she secretly did.
A moment later she looked back up at him remembering. He didn't bring his eyes to meet hers immediately. "Yeah I got this one at the same time. Look." She stuck her thumb into her shirt and moved the strap up just enough to show the color. "I love that shade of turquoise."
He bit his lip a little bit looking just as much at the dip in her shirt that led so smoothly up to her neck and shoulder as the actual strap. "I know." Though she had never expressly said he felt pretty confident he knew her favorite colors, her favorite music, her general fashion sense. He was not just observant. He was attentive. Maybe too much so.
