“Anyway,” Walter continued with his story, “I wanted to work on it a little before showing it to her, so I did. I’m thinking of asking her to come over this week.” His uppity mood suddenly swayed and he looked nervous. “You think it would be too much if I order pizza or something then maybe ask if she wants to hang out and watch a movie?”

Hector stared at him, suddenly knowing all the bullshit mental lists he’d made up this whole weekend of reasons why it had been okay for him to move in on Charlee had just blown up in his face. It wasn’t okay. It would never be okay, no matter how much he tried to justify it. No matter how unlikely it was that Charlee would ever be interested in anything more than a friendship with Walter, Hector owed him that much: the decency and respect of staying away from the one girl that could make Walter this excited.

I think I’m finally gonna start liking my life.

“Too much, huh?”

Hector didn’t even realize he’d been shaking his head until Walter’s question brought him back to earth. “What?”

“Asking her to hang out and watch a movie.” Walter winced. “Maybe just the pizza?”

“Nah,” Hector finally responded with a weak smile. “The pizza’s cool, and it wouldn’t hurt to ask if she wants to hang out. Worst thing she can say is no, right?”

Hector couldn’t stand to even look at the robot anymore, so he was glad when Walter set it down in his trunk again and closed it. But he had to ask. He wasn’t sure why. He just had to. “So how come you never entered it in the national event? Sifuentes said you were a front-runner.”

Walter’s cheerful expression went flat again, and he shrugged. “I just lost interest in it. That was a real bad time for me, and I stopped caring about everything.”

Feeling like total shit because it’s what he’d suspected all along, Hector did what he said he wouldn’t do anymore. “Listen, Walter, I am so f**king sorry about—”

“Nah, nah!” Walter shook his head adamantly. “It wasn’t just what happened that day, man. There was a lot of other stuff going on. My parents were talking about getting divorced. I pretty much knew it was coming, and it was hard and all, but I still had this stupid robot to keep my mind off things. Then my uncle, the one who helped me built it,” he frowned now, looking more irritated than dejected like he had a moment ago, “he was a science teacher over at Union High. He got arrested for getting involved with one of his underage students. It was just one of those times when everything happened all at once, you know? So the day that happened at school, I just said screw everything.”

Once again, Hector felt numb. Even with the shitty hand Walter had been dealt, especially in comparison to Hector’s, here he was trying to make Hector feel better. But he’d done just the opposite. Hector didn’t think it was possible, but, unbelievably, he felt even worse now.

Chapter 13

Most days Drew and Charlee tried to carpool to school together to save on gas. So on Monday mornings, Charlee either left later, taking her own car, or she rode with Drew and hung out on campus for an hour, killing time because Drew’s first class was earlier than Charlee’s first.

Unable to sleep much again with the anticipation of seeing Hector today, Charlee was up early, so she had ridden in with Drew. She’d been trying to concentrate on the novel she started weeks ago. It was actually pretty good, but her mind kept wandering off to the usual—Hector.

Startled by the sudden body that sat down way too close next to her, she jerked away and gasped when she saw it was Ross. Since the time he’d approached her the morning she was walking through campus with Drew, she hadn’t run into him again. She’d seen him a few times from afar and made sure she steered clear from him. Now he sat here next to her, the faint smell of marijuana not as penetrating as her first few encounters with him but still there.

“Morning,” he smiled.

Instinctively Drew moved away, but she didn’t want to be too dramatic about it, so she abstained from jumping up and away from him like she really wanted to.

“Morning,” she said as calmly as she could.

“I’ve been hoping to run into you alone.” That statement from anyone else wouldn’t be so creepy, but coming from Ross, it was just that. He must’ve seen it in her questioning eyes because he added. “I mean so I can talk to you. I wanted to apologize and tell you how sorry I am that I made such a bad first impression.”

Not sure how else to respond, she nodded, gathering her things but avoided direct eye contact. “It’s okay.”

“I was also wondering if you don’t have a class anytime soon if we can go grab some coffee or something. You know a kind of peace offering.”

This time she did meet his eyes. Unlike Hector’s sexy, carefree and very bright eyes even when they got all intense, Ross’s were a bit bloodshot and glossed over as they were the last few times she’d seen him, no doubt from all the pot he smoked. But there was something more cynical about them too.

She started to shake her head, and when he reached over and touched her leg, Charlee sprung to her feet immediately. “Whoa wait!” Ross lifted his hand up in the air to show her he meant no harm. “I’ll behave. I promise. I just wanna talk to you a little more.”

“I can’t right now. I have to go.” She lied, picking up her last book from the bench.

Her heart sped up when he stood up next to her. She was only glad she was in the middle of the campus with lots of other students still around, unlike that first time.