Heart and Soul - Chapter 16: Chapter 16

"Do you want to ask him to sit with us?"
Carter's head shot back toward Mel, with a wide-eyed look of questioning confusion. She smiled slowly, directing her gaze to where Carter's own had been slipping since they'd sat down at the library.
"Do you want to invite Johnny to sit with us?" She whispered again, more clearly. "You barely paid any attention to me or Calculus since we sat down. And you did the same yesterday. If you want to ask him, it's fine. He is in the same class."
Carter's lips parted. He was a little taken aback. It's not that he thought he was being stealthy in his constant glances and longer, lingering looks at Johnny. But he also hadn't realized he was that obvious.
"It's just," he started, pausing for a while. "He's always alone." Carter shrugged. "And I think Coach worries about him a bit."
It wasn't a lie. A full lie, at least. Carter did think Coach Mason worried about his son. And Carter himself worried. Especially after his suspicions—almost turned findings—from the week before. Surely, a small unspoken kiss and a tiny meaningless dream were nothing compared to those more relevant aspects. Almost like footnotes. Not the reason why he stared.
Mel shrugged, putting her pencil down. "I think some people like to be alone. But I can still ask," she said. "And then he could say no," she added.
Carter nodded silently as Mel stood up and walked quietly to Johnny's corner of the library.
Johnny peeled his eyes away from the laptop screen when she leaned onto the table smoothly, and removed his earbuds to listen to what she was saying. There was a light electric jolt in Carter's chest when Johnny glanced his way for half a second before his shoulders jerked with a quick shrug. That little thread of electricity came back, running down Carter's back and straightening his spine, when Johnny shut his laptop and got up carrying it under his arm with his backpack perched on the opposite shoulder.
"Have you studied this last module?" Mel asked Johnny, once they were both sitting down.
"Yeah," he answered to Mel's right, across the table from Carter.
"Carter and I were just starting. He and Roy already finished the homework problems at the end of class though, so we were going to start with the extras Mr Thomas emailed. Have you done those?"
"Not yet," Johnny replied.
Mel smiled. "Okay, good."
And that seemed to be an uncontradicted statement that they would all work on those problems. Carter took out his phone to get the document from his email because, unlike Mel and Johnny, he hadn't printed the problem sheet yet.
Mr Thomas had a habit of emailing his students a tone of extra exercises at the beginning of the week, regarding the content he'd teach in the following classes. Most of those problems worked as preview of what they could expect in tests.
If he and Mel hadn't scheduled these post-practice study sessions, Carter would never have been able to cover so many materials. But they had finally caught up to the rest of the class in their revisions, and Carter had been able to work with Roy through their class work that day at an impressive pace.
During this study session though, he was having a little more trouble getting anything done. In the sense that he hadn't gone beyond picking up his pen and trying to read the enunciation of the very first problem. He kept cutting himself in the middle of the second sentence—sometimes the first—by lifting his eyes from the screen to glance at Johnny.
When Johnny had been in his corner and Carter had Mel talking him through her methodical thought process, unknowingly battling for his attention, it had been easier to focus. But when Johnny was sitting within reaching distance, Carter's gaze kept getting pulled in.
The lighting in the library was warmer than the football field's blinding bright spotlights. It made Johnny's dark hair glow a warmer tone as well. Carter couldn't see his eyes as the other boy stared down at his notebook, but he imagined them somewhere between a dark amber and a sweet honey color.
"I'm having trouble with number seven," Mel told them, looking up. "Did you get it, Carter?"
"Didn't get that far yet," he mumbled. He hadn't gotten anywhere yet.
"Let me have a look," Johnny said, leaning toward Melanie.
Carter looked down at his phone screen and scrolled down to number seven, sweeping his eyes across the instructions. Biting his bottom lip he did a few quick calculations in his head before blurting, "I got zero."
Johnny and Mel both looked up from Mel's binder at the same time to stare at him. Johnny's look was slightly more skeptical.
His lips quirked slyly at the corner. "Just like that?"
Carter felt a little heat rise to his cheeks. "I can...write it down," he muttered. "To double check."
Johnny gave him a foreign look, half-intrigued and half-amused, before he turned his attention back to Mel's materials. He looked for only a second before humming understandingly. While he explained Mel her error, which was simply a misplaced negative sign, Carter scribbled down his previous thinking on paper to check his calculations.
"If you use that result there and replace it on the second degree inequality you got here, than the final result is...zero," Johnny finished up, just as Carter underlined the result he'd now gotten for the second time.
Mel laughed quietly as the two boys exchanged silent looks.
"Like your win last Friday, looks easy when you do it like that," she teased.
Carter smiled sheepishly, nibbling on his bottom lip.
"Oh—You guys won?" Johnny asked curiously, looking at Carter.
Carter's lips parted wordlessly for a second.
Johnny snorted out a laugh. "I'm obviously kidding," he assured. "All I heard about the whole weekend was how great you and Queens were. My dad couldn't shut up about how you played 'the heck' out of Joey Ashley, and Seth's—strike?"
Carter smiled. "Blitzing," he corrected.
"That."
"It was all Joey and Seth, honestly," Carter said.
"Yeah, you just got tackled repeatedly by a giant football player. No big deal at all," Mel agreed with clear sarcasm.
"Sounds painful," Johnny mused, with a noncommittal smile and a tone to match.
"Not as painful as getting hit by Bobby Gonzalez from our team," Carter said dismissively.
Johnny's smile withered and faded. Carter didn't like it, but Mel didn't seem to notice.
"What did you do on Friday if you didn't go to the game?" She asked.
"Re-watched Game of Thrones."
Melanie cocked a dubious eyebrow. "Like, all of it?"
"All of it."
"Seasons one through seven?" Mel questioned, seeming in disbelief.
"Took me the whole weekend, not just Friday night, but yeah," Johnny confirmed.
Mel shook her head, giving Carter what he assumed aimed to be a meaningful look he should understand. "I could never do it," she stated. "Too much of an emotional roller-coaster."
"It loses its emotional impact as you move through the series," Johnny said. "Kinda feels like Dan and Dave are gradually losing interest and slowly walking up to half-assed, American-style ending."
"I refuse to believe that," Mel affirmed.
Both Mel and Johnny looked at Carter. He shrugged lamely.
Johnny tilted his head to the side, curiously. "You never watched?" He asked.
"Don't really watch a lot of TV," Carter admitted.
Johnny's eyebrows rose on his forehead, before his lips slipped into a whimsical smile. "I see. You're an all right jock. You'd rather workout and hang outside. Probably only sit down in front of a screen if it's on ESPN," he teased.
Mel laughed. "Yup. You got the gist of it," she said. "I've been trying to bring him onto the binging dark side, but he's resisted me for years."
Carter bit down on his bottom lip under the scrutiny of Johnny's bright-eyed amused look.
Mel's phone vibrated in her pocket and she took it out.
"My dad's here," she announced, looking up after typing something in. "And it's almost five. Mrs Lewis will kick us out soon, no doubt."
"Mrs Lewis will let anything slide, so long Johnny is involved," Carter joked. "He's got special librarian-charming powers."
Johnny smiled strangely, like he was fighting his own face muscles from extending to a full-on grin.
Mel closed her pink binder and her notebook, slipping both neatly into her bag. "Are you coming, Cart?" She asked, getting up.
Carter's reaction came a second or two too late.
"I can drive him," Johnny offered in the meantime.
Carter smiled. "That would work," he said, trying to sound equally casual.
"You sure?" Mel asked, grabbing her bag and sliding the strap over her shoulder.
"I think I'm closer," Johnny said.
She shrugged. "Pretty sure it's not that big of a difference, but suit yourself. See you both tomorrow," she bid them goodbye with a grin.
As soon as she was gone, Carter and Johnny were alone. Mrs Lewis, who was typing into her desktop PC at the speed of two characters per minute, was the only other person in the library aside from them.
Carter had finished a grand total of one Calc problem so far. He looked down at the disorderly scribbled page on his black-cover notebook, pondering starting up a new problem in the final minutes to keep up the pretense that he'd stayed for the opportunity of extra studying time. After all, why else would he have turned down Mel's ride?
"While you finish, I'll ask Mrs Lewis if she needs any help," Johnny murmured softly.
As he got up, Carter wanted to ask him to stay. Why? No reason. So he stayed quiet and just smiled agreeably.
He worked through a couple more problems, while Johnny helped the librarian with something on her computer. After closing his notebook, Carter chanced a look over his shoulder at the pair. He saw Johnny by Mrs Lewis's desk, one hand supported on the back of her chair and the other placed on the computer mouse. The contours of his face were smoothed down in quiet patience as he whispered a few indications regarding whatever he was doing.
Carter bit down on his lip, trailing the cut of that denim jacket around Johnny's lean shoulders. Johnny seemed to love that jacket. Carter thought, in a moment of secret reflection, that he could see the appeal. It fit him nicely.
When he lifted his eyes from Mrs Lewis's screen, Johnny zeroed in on Carter's closed notebook. He pulled back and the elderly woman looked up at him with a thankful smile.
"Do you need anything else from me?" Johnny asked helpfully.
"That'd be all, dear. Go on home, before it gets to late."
Carter stood up at that. Mrs Lewis told them goodbye at the door and they walked side by side to the parking lot.
The ride home was silent. Johnny stopped the car in front of the Santoro driveway and looked at Carter, both hands still on the wheel.
"Will you be at the library tomorrow?" He asked.
That would be a Thursday. Mel couldn't study with Carter on Thursdays.
The week before Carter needed to talk to Johnny and he went to the library because he knew he would probably find the other boy there. He didn't really have any real excuse to go there this week.
"I think so," he said, nonetheless. "Why?"
Johnny shrugged and his teeth scraped over his bottom lip. "Just curious if I should be counting on driving you."
Carter smiled inexplicably before he nodded. Johnny seemed to spot something that caught his attention outside, looking over Carter's shoulder.
"That's not a Santoro, is she?"
Carter turned around to see. A girl with jet-black hair pinned all to one side, wearing a purposely torn dark-gray top over black jeans, was sitting on the Santoro porch steps. Her black combat boots, which had a habit to rest on tabletops around school, were placed one step down, propping her knees up for her to support her elbows as she looked down at her phone.
Carter pursed his lips. "No, I think that one's Reggie."
Just as he said that, somebody else showed up around the front of the house.
"Is that Roy O'Brien coming from your back yard?"
Carter shifted in his seat to lean his head against the headrest. Sure enough, Roy had walked around the house to stand on the porch with his phone pressed against his ear, as though he was on a call.
"Yup. He's friends with Bella," Carter muttered. When Roy's eyes found Johnny's car—and probably Carter sitting inside—he waved at them energetically, with a big dopey grin, which Carter didn't quite match.
"She's the one who likes to take polaroids, right?" Johnny asked.
Carter looked back at him, eyebrows drawn in. "Who, Bella? She's the rude one."
Johnny lifted both eyebrows. "Don't know about that," he said. "In freshman year though, she made an English presentation with polaroids she took herself. It was really cool. The presentation itself was barely a C, but Mrs Corrigan gave her extra points for originality." Johnny displayed the shadow of a smile. "She always seemed nice enough to me."
"Never to me," Carter mumbled. "All she ever says to me is 'move'. And she calls me golden boy all the time."
Johnny's eyebrows furrowed, but his smile wasn't quite gone. "What an outrageous offense," he spoke sarcastically, before the half-assed frown gave way to a humorous grin.
Carter rolled his eyes, but there was a small smile cracking his lips open which he didn't quite fight off.
"It's the way she says it," he mumbled on, turning his head back to the window.
Reggie was still sitting on the porch and Roy was still talking on the phone. Behind them, the Santoro house seemed perfectly peaceful. From the outside, of course. Carter knew better about what awaited inside.
"Anything wrong?" Johnny asked, after Carter failed to move for a little too long.
"Just preparing myself to go in," he answered.
Johnny snorted. "Sounds like you're going to war."
"Feels like it a little," Carter replied. And, against his usual better judgment, he carried on, "If Reggie and Roy are here, that means Bella and Frankie both have friends over. Which means they'll probably stay for dinner and possibly the night. Which means the house will be even fuller and louder tonight."
He closed his eyes once he finished, letting the back his head hit the headrest again, a little harder now. Slowly, he opened his eyes and turned his head, shooting a tentative look at Johnny.
"Sounds stressful," he said slowly.
Carter couldn't quite hear the sarcasm in it though. This time, it sounded like it was meant to be softer. Comprehensive, maybe.
"I'm sorry," Carter apologized. "You probably want to go home."
He unfastened his seat belt, reaching for the door handle.
"See you tomorrow?"
Carter met Johnny's gaze again. There seemed to be a hint of something he didn't expect to see there. A kind of expectant hope.
Carter smiled. "Yeah, you will."
Johnny's lips curled into a matching smile. They kept grinning at each other, like idiots, until Carter was out of the car. And, even after Johnny drove off and Carter was plunging into the chaos that was the Santoro household, the smile never left.