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Wallace’s damn lighter wouldn’t work. It was either the fault of it being wavy too old or his frostbitten fingers. Snow had already covered every surface and of course Wallace has lost his one pair of gloves. A few more flicks against the wheel and no dice. Another shit event for the shit week that he’s been having.
Finals had just started and already he isn’t sure if he’s going to make it to the end of the semester. His econ professor decided to make their final a group project. “Probably just to fuck me over,” Wallace hissed. He pocketed the busted lighter and leaned back on the outside bench. Maybe this was a sign from God that he needed to quit.
His phone was on its last legs which means now the only way he was spending his free time between classes was people watching. Sitting in the quad provided plenty of entertainment.
In the corner near the entrance to the campus was a couple clearly in a heated argument. While watching her jab a finger in the guy’s chest, Wallace weighed what they might be fighting about. Maybe the guy cheated? Maybe he insulted her choice of major? Whatever it was, it sure didn’t look like their relationship was going to survive it. “Good,” Wallace thought. “If I have to be alone, so do they.”
That was really the root of his misery right now. Wallace always forgot how much he hated being alone, which was exactly the thought he was trying to distract himself from.
Wallace went back to scanning the squad just in time to watch a guy eat shit in the grass. He was definitely close enough for the guy to notice his mocking laugh, but by dumb luck or by a dumb brain he didn’t. The guy who tripped seemed way too focused on the group of friends laughing at him from across the quad.
Now if Wallace was in that position, he would’ve been shouting insults across the way for making fun of him. This guy though, he was just laughing right back. And for some reason Wallace just couldn’t look away.
There was nothing that special about it all. It was just something about the pure unadulterated joy that came from him. Don’t get him wrong, Wallace loved his friends just as much as the next guy, but he couldn’t ever remember smiling that wide at them once.
Wallace crossed his arms. There’s no way that guy was that excited to see his friends.
After watching that guy eat shit, for some reason he was all Wallace could notice. He noticed him in the dining hall. He noticed him on transit. More glaringly though, he noticed him sitting in the eighth row of his two PM lecture. Wallace was standing there dumbly in the doorway, wondering why he’d never noticed him before when he realized the guy wasn’t smiling in the slightest. In fact he looked extremely bummed to be sitting there. Just the sight of that made Wallace bummed right along with him and isn’t that the real crime?
For some insane reason, Wallace had the urge to try and fix that. He knew that feeling like that was insane, especially given that he didn’t even know the guy’s name. Practicing his restraint, Wallace didn’t give in and instead of sitting right next to him, he merely sat down in the row right behind him.
He was always smiling every time Wallace saw him. But, then again, Wallace had never seen have to do actual college things. Every other time Wallace had happened to run into him, he was either running towards or already with his friends. Unfortunately, it seemed like none of his usual group was in this particular lecture and Wallace was left creepily looking at a sad puppy dog instead of the usual giddy one. Only when the urge to go up there and befriend him entered his brain did Wallace realize how creepily he had grown.
Wallace spent the rest of the lecture trying to listen to the guy’s breathing . It was only then didn’t it really hit that he was kind of a freak. There was something so fascinating about watching this guy live through life. It was embarrassing for Wallace given that there was practically nothing all that special about this guy’s life.
He only smiled again once the Professor dismissed the lecture. Wallace watched him walk out of the room. Seeing him smile again was like the final blow to his willpower.
Wallace smushed his head into his open notebook. “God, I really am pathetic, aren’t I?” He had to do something about this. The only two reasons he’d seen the guy smile before were because of the lecture ending and because of his friends being there. Wallace couldn’t do anything about when they all got out, but the friends part…
Now all he had to do was think of an opening line.