Like No Other

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

November 18, 2010

Daily Sagittarius Horoscope
You are very lucky this season. In fact everything
seems to be going your way Sagittarius. There is a
cynic inside you, however, that knows that
nothing good ever lasts, especially luck. Keep
your eyes peeled for a wrench in the plan.

"So you wouldn't? Ever at all?"

Dul pushed his shoulder against the window and regarded his woman from across the car steadily.

Bailey Renee pushed hair behind her ear and sat up a little to look past him at his mother's home. She glanced around her car at the dark rode surrounding them and bit her lip. She never came as far into town as Abdul lived unless he summoned her. Petersburg was only so big but Bailey had long ago accepted that her family was the type of country that made country people feel like city folk. Her parents were third generation farmers and she knew had to attend to several animals, plants, crops, and environments like an Amazon woman but no one she knew now save him knew that.

She had her own place for now, a small apartment by school in Charlottesville, but her people lived on the outskirts of Petersburg in the opposite direction of the beach with all its country finesse and splendor. They weren't ratchet and she knew that. But people were stupid and any chickens on your property meant you were some sort of trash sometimes to certain people. Her roommate moved out on her and so Bailey dropped two classes, becoming a part-time student in September  to work full time. It wasn't bad though. The nursing home paid great and she was finished every day by midnight. Her study load lightened to classes she could pass in her sleep and that indirectly allowed her a lot of free time. How she chose to fill the time turned out to be with Abdul Nelson.

Bailey was the first on either side of her family to go to school after her diploma. She was the first of her grandmothers grandchildren to not have a child by her age, 21.

She looked over his stoically straight face and sniffed. It was cold out and she'd turned off the car at his behest. She promised herself once she started shivering she was leaving.

They met taking core classes together. The fact that they were from the same city made it easy for Dul to try and pawn her Calculus work off as his own after a long weekend away or something equally as 'life or death.' She never minded people copying her though and it was something everyone knew was bound to happen with student athletes as assuredly as they made you do all the work in high school home economics. Having her work copied was her own cross to bear, not minding being used. It was only calculus. He wasn't stealing some original thought or theory. Who gave a shit? she'd thought. Bailey considered herself nobody's fool. A few assignments here and there, copied with gratitude in a hurry, never hurt anyone.

In fact she'd offered to help him on a whim. Bailey never expected he'd actually accept her offer. She told him she was a peer tutor and Dul expressed an interest in actually doing the work himself and so she jumped at the opportunity to spend more time in his company. He was distractingly beautiful and she counted her stars that she was doing good in calculus, not her strongest subject, physics, so that she could watch  him while he bit his pretty plump lip and concentrated for her. It was not every day a star college defensive  lineman asked to sit and listen to you talk about numbers when you weren't a size zero.

While he gave what they were doing, sitting close together in the student centers conference room, his undivided attention Bailey had made the most of their time to sit and admire his angular, Olympian cut face. His chin was square and his jaw was strong. He had long straight eyelashes in contrast to her curled ones, something he'd pointed out to her. His shoulders were high like he wore pads in t-shirts and his pants didn't sag exactly but they hung loosely on his tight bootie.