The Freshman pt. 1

He walked into the smoky café, passed the bar and gave a nod to the man behind the counter. He was happy to be home. Kyle was sitting at their normal booth and was wearing his usual brown sweater/green scarf combination with his hair disheveled as always and his sleeves rolled up with the button up shirt sticking out under the cuffs. Kyle didn’t change at all and for that Conner was thankful. However, not everything steadfast in his life made Conner happy.

“Hey, Kiddo!” This was Kyle’s favorite way to greet Conner; he knew it made Conner feel oddly special. Although Kyle was in fact almost a full year younger than Conner, he had a lifetime of experiences that made him older in every other way. Conner looked up to his younger but taller confidante.

“So I thought that college was supposed to be this whole other thing, so much better than high school where people are smarter, girls are more intelligent and I might actually find some semblance of order to society.” Conner said as he sat down he took his cap off, ran his hand through his hair, which is unusually long for Conner, put the cap back on his head backwards and pulled the brim down to touch the back of his neck.

“Well, my friend, you were grossly misinformed. I’m sorry.” Kyle took a drag from his cigarette and quickly put it out because he knew how much Conner can’t stand smoke. “C’mon, Conner, you didn’t really think things would be that different only one year removed, did you?”

“No, not me anyway but maybe other people.” Conner said with a look in his eyes as if to say, “I know your right but I’m going to try to get out of this.”

“Yeah, I guess they could be different. But people are people and life is always going to throw you curve balls.” They got up to go order even though everyone in the place knows what they wanted by now. The two have been coming to this particular café for about five years though Conner never drinks anything but his own bottle of water and Kyle always gets a small regular coffee. The manager says that they add to the ambiance and attract a younger crowd and has never had a problem with them. Every once in a while they will order lunch or dinner but today their meeting is strictly business.

Conner and Kyle have known each other since the second grade. Kyle was a compulsive liar with a great imagination, and Conner, who feels diminutive when around normal sized people, was less shy and a lot less reserved. Not much has changed for Kyle, though now his lies become wonderful stories and his height, along with his stereotypical poet goatee, only hide his placidness and gentle nature.

“Any more clichés you want to throw at me there, buddy?” After they ordered, as if they had to, they found their way back to their booth and some time passed without conversation, its normal, being friends for so long Kyle and Conner had reached the point of knowing what the other was going to say without them saying. “But you know what really pisses me off about college dude?”

“Everything?” Kyle asked with a sarcastic and cynical grin on his face.

“No, it’s the fact that I haven’t really even learned anything. I mean they say you can find yourself; well apparently I found myself and guess what, I already knew me. I mean the same crap is happening to me in college as it did back in McCaskey, and I deal with it the same way. Nothing has changed.”

“You need a tissue?”

“Yeah I know. I’m whining. I get it.” Conner looked down at his bottle of water and fell into a retrospective state. Seeing the break in conversation Kyle stood up and made his way to the bathroom. While Kyle was otherwise occupied Conner scanned around the café. There were a handful of couples there, the youngest of which were probably in their late twenties. He started to wonder how they got together, what they may have gone through to get to this point. None of them seemed as though they are in love, or at least not the love that he knew, which probably wasn’t really any love at all. No one conveyed “I need you,” with their body language or had that “I’d die for you,” look in their eyes. They seemed mostly like opposite sex acquaintances not couples.