Fish Eyes

13

"It's not that big of a deal, Lawrence."

"Bruh, you're the one who convinced me to do this in the first place."

I sucked my teeth at him, mad that he was raining on my parade. We were in the public library, trying to do work, but I was admittedly distracting everyone.

I'd traitorously brought Wendy along because she was at my house when Lawrence came over. The time had slipped away from me but I didn't want to end our conversation. Bringing her along was great for me, but it seemed to piss Lawrence off.

"And he invited me to go bowling next weekend," I smiled at both of them.

"Woohoo," Lawrence deadpanned, scrolling away at his computer.

It was Wendy's turn to suck her teeth. "Let the girl be excited. It's her first man," she wiggled her eyebrows at Lawrence suggestively.

"She met the dude four days ago."

"And they're going on a date. Quit being like that."

"All I know is we haven't done jack shit about this competition. And time's ticking."

"I know, I know," I bit my lip at him, at which he rolled his eyes and looked back down at his computer. "And we were supposed to be working today. But..." I dragged my words out.

"But what, Dalia?" he sighed.

"I'm going to have it together next time. I promise. For now I just really want to talk about my date."

"So we're done for today?" Lawrence asked.

"I'd say so," I reached over and grasped his shoulder before looking back and Wendy and asking about what I should wear. Lawrence made his distaste clear but made no moves to leave. 

He kept a similar composure as I continued to sit and talk to Wendy about outfit choices for a while, but eventually, he huffed and put his AirPods in before grabbing a book out of his bag.

I side-eyed him a few times as he flipped through the pages, and I knew he felt me watching him. His stale ass energy made me want to say something to him, but what, I had no idea.

"You read?" I asked him, incredulously.

"I bet you don't," he responded without looking up.

"So you can hear."

"Never said I couldn't."

"You're usually so nice to me, what did I do?"

"So you don't read."

"No, I don't. I like things with pictures. What's that?"

He flipped the cover at me as Wendy stared in between the two of us incredulously.

"Love in Color?" I asked.

"It's a collection of short stories about Black love."

"That sounds neat."

He looked up at me and squinted his eyes. "Maybe it'll give you an idea of what to wear."

I sucked my teeth at him. "You know, instead of wasting time worrying about me and what I;m doing, you could be taking this free time to work on one of those independent projects you had so much to say about."

Lawrence mouthed off every chance he got about his little sketchbook of ideas. He'd shown me a page or two on a number of occasions and not only was the dude a genius photographer, he was a dope drawer too. He was just a big soft bundle of creative energy. I felt kind of bad for repressing him by procrastinating on the competition so much, but I was easily distracted.