Lee expected to recognize regulars, especially ones that visited between rushes. One thing he didn't expect, though, was to fall head over heels for one regular in particular.
It was the fifth consecutive date Lee had witnessed in the five days he worked that week. If they were all different couples it wouldn't have been odd at all—this was Starbucks, dammit, otherwise known as the epicenter of campus interactions. People were allowed to take their dates there and Lee wasn't about to judge. He took the orders of hundreds of students every day he worked, ergo, he saw weird shit once in a while.
What was odd about the five consecutive dates, though, was the fact that they were all dates with the same guy, just different partners. Lee wouldn't have thought anything of it if the guy wasn't already a regular. As if Lee wasn't already a flustered mess at the briefest glimpse of the guy.
Milo Park, better known as the university's star running back and local heartthrob. He was, without a doubt, Lee Asano's ultimate demise.
Park not only frequented Starbucks, but was also a frequent participant in frat row shenanigans. Lee wasn't one to willingly pass frat row, by any means. He'd rather swan dive off the Golden Gate than tamper with frat row during the daytime. It was one thing to go there for a weekend party, and a completely other scenario to visit during the day—it was like seeing raccoons in broad daylight: Odd, and likely infested with rabies.
However, one of the few times Lee passed during the daytime, he witnessed Milo Park shirtless and screaming at the top of his lungs from the second story balcony of a frat house before leaping into a bouncy house to the tune of every guy and girl on the lawn shouting his name.
Lee had been so alarmed, along with every other student on the sidewalk with him, that when Park's head emerged from the bouncy house ball pit, fists in the air, a breath of relief echoed from him to every passing stranger. Park was, practically, the face of their football team. If he broke a leg over a stupid Triple Dog Dare at frat parties, it'd be over for USFC's football season.
The last thing he wanted to picture was Park rolling through the Starbucks line in a brace and crutches.
Lee really had no reason to be irked as he pushed out two drinks onto the counter and called out Milo's name for the order, and a preppy, skinny guy came to get it.
He really wasn't in the place to be irked. It didn't matter to him. It wasn't his problem.
"Thanks," the lucky date said, smiling wide with that perfect blonde hair and cute round glasses.
"No problem," Lee said, frozen in place.
He stared after the kid as he went to the bar top in front of the store window where a familiar, black-haired running back sat with his feet perched on the stool spokes. His broad back, that charming, charismatic smile. None of it was fair.
It wasn't that Milo exuded straightness or anything, but coming to terms with the fact that Park was bi was enough to send Lee into a spiraling pit of despair. It was easier to convince himself that he didn't have a shot because of Park's sexuality, but now?
He just didn't have a shot because he had the social backbone of a squirrel.
Lee slumped as he returned to the cash register. As if my self-confidence wasn't already spiraling down the drain, he mused miserably.
But that was all old news, hours ago, long gone. It really should have been irrelevant by the time Lee was found slumping in one of the Organic Chemistry lecture hall seats. It was that same day Lee discovered Park's multifaceted sexuality, and his souring mood seemed to fester the air around him at the back of the auditorium. Students gave him a wide birth as he crossed his arms and radiated that brooding, eerie atmosphere.
This was precisely how his lab partner Rushil found him.
Rushil Patel started out as Lee's best friend by default. They were two of a total of ten "diverse" students in the class that weren't, in fact, international students. On the first day of fall semester, they made an unspoken pack to stick together. What started as a default situation swiftly turned out to be the best decision of their adolescent, inconsequential lives. Lee wasn't sure what he would have done without Rushil at his side, or their TA, for that matter.
There was strength in numbers when it came to tackling OChem.
Due to Lee's attitude clearing the orbit around their auditorium spot, the seats in front of him were open for the taken. He had his feet kicked up on the seat as Rushil strategically stepped over them.
"Is it that guy again?"
"The situation has progressed at an alarming rate," Lee reported, slumping even further. "And not for the better."
"Oh no. What happened?" Rushil whispered. There was a constant murmur in the auditorium, both from the echo, and also from the fact that they were in a lecture hall of approximately three hundred students. Those two factors combined made for a noisy start to the class.
Lee glared at the stairs where a familiar blonde TA was hiking up to reach them. The TAs tended to claim the back row of the lecture hall, near the back corner where Lee and Rushil sat, so they had become friendly with their lab TA, Alex Pikaart. It was because they were friendly that Alex paused a few steps away, alarmed by the murderous tendencies written all over Lee's face.
"What happened. It's not the midterm, is it?" Alex said.
"No, I did fine on that," Lee said, only to shrivel again. If just barely, he thought. No one did 'fine' in OChem.
Well, aside from Alex.
"It's the guy from Starbucks," Rushil said, facing Lee. He put an arm on the back of his chair as Alex proceeded to claim the seat behind them and lean over to listen. "I still don't know his name."
"Well, we can't help without a name," Alex said, and Rushil hummed his agreement.
Lee sneered a little. They went to a massive university—one of the largest in the state, actually, but then again California was a monster of a state anyway—so it would have been different if Park's wasn't such a prevalent character on campus. Lee wished the damn idiot was unknowable because that way, he could make a fool of himself and not have to worry about seeing the guy again. That way, he could tell Alex and Rushil, and neither of them would be able to look Park's up and say, "Hey, he's on the USFC Hunter's football team!"
"I don't know his name," Lee lied, as he always did.
"You literally work at Starbucks," Rushil insisted. "You literally write his name every day."
"He's one of those idiots that changes it every time."
"He's lying," Alex said, as they always did. "I've never heard a more obvious lie."
Lee twisted around and slapped Rushil's arm off of his chair. Rushil recoiled with a pout, rubbing at his arm as Lee flipped Alex off and said, "Call me a liar again and I'll gut you."
"Yeah, and I'll gut your grade," they threatened. They put their hands out with a shrug. "What's the big deal anyway? You really think I'm gonna know who they are?"
"Yeah, obviously. Otherwise I woulda told you a month ago," Lee said.
"As if. I know, like, three people," Alex said with a toss of their hair. It was cropped short but shaggy, so the flip sort of, kind of worked.
"You're a TA. You know three hundred people and then some," he insisted. As a matter of fact, he wasn't all that sure Alex knew who Park was. Chances were, the star football player wasn't even in a science-related major.
"Okay, fair," Alex sighed. They leant back in their seat, arms crossed. They pointed a finger at Lee and said, "Still not over it, though."
"What's the development, though? I thought he went on a date yesterday, so what happened today?" Rushil said.
Lee put a hand to his forehead and sighed. He dragged his hand over his eyes so he wouldn't have to see their faces as he said, "He was on a date with a guy this time."
"You're kidding. He's bi?" Alex shrieked. Lee's entire body seized up and before he could lunge over his seat to punch them, they threw their arms up in surrender. "Right, okay, sorry. Calming down."
Rushil's eyes were the size of Mars and then, as the knowledge sunk in, became aligned with Jupiter. "You have a shot, dude! Congrats!"
"As if Lee couldn't turn a straight man gay," Alex insisted. Lee reached over to slap them upside the head. Alex ducked out of the attack to say, "I'm just stating the facts here, all right? Case closed."
"Case not closed. I'm reopening the case. We're putting the evidence on the table," Lee said, laying his hands flat and spreading them out as if straightening a tablecloth. "For all we know, these aren't even dates. Maybe he's just... buying coffee for all his friends."
"Who buys coffee for their friends in college? Aren't we all struggling financially?" Rushil said, and Lee hated how right he was. Dammit. "Sorry to say it, dude, but those are definitely dates. But you're also right—we can't keep assuming the guy's a sleaze."
"We can and we will," Alex said.
"I thought you were supposed to be the voice of reason here," Rushil whined.
"This is the only entertainment I get outside of my Friends rerun breaks between study sessions," Alex said. "Grad school can kiss my ass."
"And Starbucks Guy? He can kiss Lee's ass," Rushil said with a wink in Lee's direction.
Lee glared at him and said, "I don't know why we're lab partners."
Rushil sighed, slumping in his seat. "You know? I don't know either. Survival? Intuition? A mixture of both, perhaps?"
Class commenced and Lee was both grateful and anxious by the distraction. For one, he wouldn't have to think about Park for another hour, but it came at the price of pure, unadulterated torture via carbon compounds and mind-numbing organic chemistry. He riddled his notebook pages with diagrams and numbers and, by the end of lecture, his hand was cramping.
When the professor called an end to the lecture, he sat back and stretched his fingers out with a barely concealed groan of contempt as he said, "I'll be forever grateful to whatever god helps me pass the final. I may even believe in a god if I pass."
"I'll believe in agnosticism and nothing else," Rushil sighed. He snapped his notebook shut and said, "That was a little contradictory, wasn't it?"
"Not enough to bother me," Lee said. He rose from his seat and stretched his arms overhead. He folded his arms over his hair and tipped his head towards Rushil. "What're your plans for the rest of the day?"
"Going to the gym."
It was the most absurd thing that ever flew out of Rushil's mouth and into Lee's ears.
"Gross. I didn't know you worked out," Lee said. Personally, he had never set foot in a gym in his entire life and had no plans on doing so.
"I don't, but my roommate does. We're meeting up to head back to the dorm for dinner," he said. Rushil's dorm was the infamous Lockhart Hall—mostly by accident. He had waited too late to assign himself a roommate and wound up with a random choice at the whim of the USFC gods. Though, it was a blessing—Lockhart had the best dining hall due to the fact that underclassmen athletes were required to live there.
The two of them waited at the stairs for Alex, but they were surpassed by a student begging for Alex's help on the homework problems. Alex glanced at them from around the student's shoulders with a look that said, "Duty calls." Lee raised a hand in silent solidarity. Alex's TA job came first to their friendship, anyway.
The chaos in the auditorium didn't die down until they were out of the building and a few paces away from the entrance. The sun was shining against the pacific's cloudy tendencies, and Lee dared call it a lovely day if his heart wasn't so heavy in his chest. He was more hopeless than usual that day, which was odd considering the sort of family life he had as a kid.
He sighed. I really should be used to this feeling.
Lee walked a ways down the sidewalk at Rushil's side. The sidewalk was flanked by a concrete ledge overlooking the river and as they went, Lee dragged his fingers across the edge of it.
Rushil cleared his throat. "Hey, you should check out our dining hall tonight. I mean, unless you've got something going on."
"Do I really look like the type of guy who has something planned?" he said.
"Tea," Rushil said. "So... Lockhart for dinner then?"
When Lee looked at him, he found Rushil beaming at him. Some days, Rushil was just too bright for him to handle, but on that day, it balanced out the dread dragging Lee's hopelessly romantic heart down. He could use a strong dose of vitamin D as long as his pale ass didn't burn.
Lee managed a soft smile as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, sure. That sounds good."
Rushil, quite literally, leapt with excitement. Lee let out a startled laugh, only to scream when Rushil threw himself at Lee before vaulting on the stone ledge beside the sidewalk. Lee staggered to the side, spinning from the weight of his backpack throwing him off-kilter. Rushil cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted at the rooftops beyond the wrought iron fence, "YAY, I'M SO EXCITED!"
Lee yanked on Rushil by the hem of his sweatshirt, hissing, "Kid! Shut up and get down from there!"
Students on the sidewalk were looking at them—some laughing, some annoyed, but Rushil didn't care. He ran down the concrete ledge with Lee at his heels and his hands dragging along the fencing. At last, he jumped down and threw an arm over Lee's shoulders. Lee wasn't all that much taller than Rushil, but the height difference was enough to make the scenario comical.
"You finally get to meet my roommate! I keep telling you—I think you two would get along swimmingly. He's probably, maybe straight, but I'm sure there's some merit to what Alex's saying."
"You're straight and I haven't turned you gay," Lee said.
"I know, and I'm grateful for that," Rushil said. "You have a heart of gold, truly. I wouldn't trade you for the world."
"Now you're just being cheesy," he said.
"You use your attractiveness for good, not evil."
"I... wouldn't say it's evil, necessarily..." Lee said to avoid acknowledging the compliment.
Granted, people did tend to give him strange looks when he insisted that his hair wasn't bleached in the slightest. His light, almost white hair got him strange looks whenever he visited family in Japan, and he blamed his misgivings about in on his brother, Sen.
As kids, Sen had a tendency to tease Lee and their younger sister over their pale hair. Sen, on the other hand, had the straight, black hair everyone expected from them. Lee and his sister were a mystery, and Lee blamed his hair for all of the attention it got them among the Asano family. For him, he gained all of the praise—unique, strong, exceptionally brilliant, different from the others. For his sister, she received the opposite—bizarre, weak, sharp, different from the others.
So no, Lee didn't think of himself as particularly attractive, but he supposed his family tainted that idea for him.