10.22

[not finished, but you deserve to read it anyway because I like the taste of lemon water]
Marco wasn't perfect. It took Catherine two months to find out.
Before that time, her assumption was that he was, in fact, perfect in every conceivable way. Apart from the heavenly gorgeous amazing incredible stunning smile that a loving God had planted on his masculine face, he had an eye for detail and a care for others that she never thought she would find in a guy. This fact she noticed very quickly indeed. Her rain boots were plaid. No one's rain boots were plaid, not in the entire school. This was a fact that made Catherine unceasingly proud.
"They're not from Walmart," she said, by way of explanation.
"Oh." Rosalyn was not impressed.
This non-support from her best friend made Catherine feel like the shade of an apple bruise. So she went around all day feeling like the shade of fruit that had been dropped from a counter and left to brown and sicken. She felt unappetizing. So when she saw Marco, she wasn't in the best possible mood. Between third period Biology and their mutual lunch break, the couple developed a pattern of meeting at the water fountain on third floor between their classrooms. She stood bruised apple shade at the fountain and waited for him. He stopped ten feet away and frowned.
"How can you look so sad in plaid?"
Catherine thought it was probably the corniest thing anyone had ever said to anyone, but it made her feel like the taste of water with lemon in it. Just right.

They sat just so in the cafeteria. On one side of the table, Catherine Rosalyn, on the other, Marco Enrique Erica. It was an odd social mixing. Three fourths of the way through nearly every lunch, Rosalyn would make an odd pronouncement and the entire table would dissolve into an argument about the relative worth of Uggs versus flip flops or Florida versus California or the Rolling Stones versus Michael Jackson. The argument never mattered, but Rosalyn continued.
"I'm sounding the depths," she explained. "They don't sound more than four fathoms yet."
She persisted until she struck on a topic that satisfied her. She found it in her God versus Pantheism argument. Marco assaulted her with the writings of an obscure Mongolian mystic, then Plato's republic, then the book of Job. She countered with Coleridge, Exodus, and Gilgamesh before turning to Catherine and nodding. She stood up, took her tray, and walked out. Marco, rounding the corner of his argument about Mesopotamian cultures, halted and swallowed, nervous.
"Did I offend her?"
Enrique and Erica continued feeding each other corn chips from a single bag.
"Seriously, though. Did I, like, attack her or something?"
He looked so small and careful that Catherine laughed to see the difference. "No, you didn't offend her. She approves of you, idiot." She threw her fork at him and laughed again. "She said she wouldn't let me date anyone who couldn't think."
"So?"
"So you can think."
"That's a good thing?"
"It's excellent." Rosalyn had never approved of anyone before. Catherine thought it wasn't quite fair, of course. Rosalyn usually rebutted that she could find a pig with wings before Catherine could find a jock with a brain. She hadn't. Catherine felt like it was a perfect day.
Two hours later, she got a text from Rosalyn. It was a picture of a pig with wings. It said "Good luck!"
Catherine didn't cry, but she felt like it would have been justified.

Marco asked her out in midOctober, when the weather and the trees and life were changing. He called her phone, which she didn't pick up because Rosalyn said it would be bad form to appear too desperate. Her mother called up the stairs "Catherine, there's someone on the phone for you!" Catherine pulled back from her textbook and stood up. Her mother yelled again. "It's a boy! What should I say to him?"
Catherine decided to start breathing again. Maybe it was him. She was completely unsure of if he would really call her house.
She grabbed her best lip balm and put it on, then changed her shirt. Her mother yelled up the stairs again. "Catherine, are you deaf or dead? There are no other options."
Catherine ran down the stairs and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" It was too-breathy, like the voice the other girls made when talking about boys they'd had sex with and the feel of their stomachs and the roughness of their hands. She took a breath and tried again. "Hello?"
"Hey."
She wished her heart would slow down. "Hey yourself." She immediately told herself to stop being a ditz and sound like a human again. She had little hope of it working.
"So, you're home."
"Obviously. And you?"
"Well, I'm calling from in front of your house. You wanna go on a walk?"

[in progress--I'll finish when I'm not at 1am]