Breaking Point (Drew Ashley 1) (2 page)

I looked up into his brown eyes and my head swam. I gave myself a mental shake. This was Jazz's fault for swooning the minute he'd come into reception. I did
not
swoon—well not openly—no matter how fine a man was.

"Um, well, I suppose the closest one is, um—" I frowned. Come to think of it, where was the closest cash machine? It was slightly hard to think while this man was looking at me. "Oh! There's one by the student shop."

Mr Handsome observed me idly. I thought I saw his lips lift slightly in amusement, but I wasn't sure. "That one's out of order, too."

I tore my eyes away from his lips. He was definitely American. "Is it? Well, there's a Tesco just up the road. They have three cash machines. One of them should definitely be working."

"What's Tesco? And how do I get there?"

Didn't they have Tesco in America? "Tesco is like a Wal-Mart—"

"Just kidding, I know what Tesco is," Mr Handsome cut in, smiling. "I was hoping there'd be another cashpoint somewhere on campus. I'll go to Tesco. Thanks." He looked at the bouquet I was holding then gave me one last smile before he walked out, leaving the crisp tang of his aftershave behind.

Jazz immediately erupted into laughter. I spun around. "What?"

"That was hilarious. You trying to be all cool and calm, while he just looked at you like you were some kind of entertainment."

"At least I wasn't all breathless and swooning!" I retorted.

"Yes you were," Jazz said, still laughing. "You even tried to get all American, talking about Wal-Mart. Please!"

Alix started laughing too. I rolled my eyes and walked out into the blazing April heat. I took a deep breath of the fresh air, a welcome relief from the close air in the gym. Jazz burst through the doors after me. I looked around as she continued to laugh and tease me about the Wal-Mart line. Mr Handsome American was nowhere to be seen. That was good. I wouldn't want him thinking we were following him.

"So what's smart casual supposed to mean?" Jazz asked, when she decided to stop laughing about my exchange with the American guy.

"It means smart casual."

"Why can't people make up their mind and have either smart or casual? Why both?"

"You can wear that black dress you wore to church last Sunday."

Jazz considered it then nodded. "Okay. I have lectures till five tomorrow, so I'll pick you up around six."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Dress up nice," Jazz said sternly. "Don't let him see you and be glad he dumped you."

"I'll try my best," I replied dryly.

The sound of music and laughter carried on the light breeze as we neared the university sports complex. Jazz jumped the hockey court fence. I followed suit.

We entered the football complex. Hoards of students were scattered all around the football fields. The smell of hotdogs and roasted onions tickled my nose, and my stomach growled in response.

"Wow, there are lots of people here," Jazz said, shielding her eyes with a hand as she looked around.

I followed her to the hotdog van. She grabbed two paper plates and handed me one. There wasn't much food left. Jazz got the last hotdog, and I got a handful of some greasy chips. Hotdog Man squirted ketchup over them until I had more ketchup than chips.

Jazz grabbed me a drink and put it in my bag. I didn't have any free hands between Alix's flowers and my plate of chips.

"Hey, you two," Destiny Marsden said, appearing beside us.

"Where've you been?" I asked her. "I haven't seen you all week."

Destiny was still sporting the braids I'd put in her hair last week. They'd been nice when I first did them, but now wisps of her ash blond hair had come loose and the braids were pretty scraggy. She gave me a tired smile. "Been living in the library."

"Not good." I'd been living with Destiny since moving out of Travis Haywood's three-million-pound apartment in Holland Park, but I may as well be living alone for all I saw of her.

"I know," Destiny said with a grimace. "But it has to be done. By the way, you smell like you had a fight with a perfume counter and lost."

"I know. She stinks," Jazz said. "I'm at peace with my sweat, but Drew won't embrace hers."

"What are you talking about?" Destiny asked, turning her nose up. "You smell like a man, Jazz. I don't know which of you smells worse. I'm trying to eat here." She tossed the last piece of bread and sausage into her mouth and chucked her paper plate into a bin bag. "Shall I show you where the action's at?"

"Go 'head. The fence is looking good," Jazz said.

"Yeah." Destiny wiped her mouth with a serviette. "The guys are doing a great job. I wanted to help, but it's not women's work, apparently."

"Really?" I asked.

Destiny tossed me a bored look. "Don't start, Drew."

"I won't. But that is sexist, you know."

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Personally, I don't mind. It's called
man
-ual labour for a reason."

I let it go before my friends accused me of being neurotic, as they always did. I liked to challenge double standards and inequalities. That wasn't neurotic.

We followed Destiny across the field. There was a huge crowd gathered where the guys were building the fence. When we pushed through to the front, it became clear why. The guys had stripped down to their shorts in the heat, and perspiration glistened on their skin.

I noticed Kale Marshall among the fence-builders. How could Jazz not think he was a guy worth looking good around? Kale was one of the most notorious guys on campus, and it was easy to see why. Ever since he arrived to do his PhD, girls had been lining up to get a piece of him. I hadn't even known he was a Christian until I started going to Ignite three months ago and saw him there.

Rap music was blasting from a boom box but didn't quite drown out the sound of hammering or the grunts from the guys as they worked.

Maybe God had marked today as a day of testing for me, because Kale Marshall in tight black Armani shorts was the last thing I needed after that sweltering scene in the gym. I looked at Kale's shorts again. Shorts or boxers?

Jazz must have been thinking the same thing. "What on earth is Kale wearing?" she whispered, her eyes wide. "Are they boxers?"

Kale looked at us just then and winked before lifting a stack of wood and walking over to a gap in the fence. Muscles rippled beneath his dark skin, his arms taut with the strain. Girls whistled. The smile on Kale's face told me that he was loving the attention. He dropped the stack and then grabbed a hammer. Two other guys joined him and assembled the wood for him to hammer together before attaching it to the rest of the fence.

Kale removed a nail from a nearby box and dropped to his knees wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. A yellow girls' cardi flew from the crowd and landed in front of him. He looked up.

"Use that," a female voice called.

There was some laughter.

"Thanks," Kale called back. He grabbed the cardi and wiped his face, arms, and chest. More whistles filled the air.

"How is this being Salt and Light?" Jazz asked. "If Ignite is filled to capacity next week, it'll be because of Kale's body."

"There's no Ignite next week," Destiny reminded her. "It's finished for the semester."

Twenty minutes later, a bunch of guys held up the last frame for the fence while Kale and another guy hammered it into place. Everyone cheered.

Once it was finished, Russell appeared and gave a short talk about how Jesus was sent by God to build a fence from our hearts to His, to bridge the gap between us and the Father. It wasn't a perfect analogy, but it was powerful, all the same. The crowd thinned while he spoke. No more topless men; no more spectators.

Within a few minutes, no one remained but the thirty or so members of Ignite. Russell started talking about community initiatives. No more fence analogy since the unbelievers that he thought needed to hear it had moved to other parts of the field. I was ashamed to say that I didn't hear much of what he said until he called on Kale, now clothed in jeans and a black top, to talk about Missionary Football. I think that was the point at which most of the girls snapped to attention. It didn't hurt that Kale had the cutest Northern accent ever. Rumour had it that he was from Manchester.

As Kale talked about how he and some of his friends were dedicating their summer months to reaching out to young people on the streets using a football tournament, I realized that my infatuation with him was pretty hopeless. He was really focused on God. He wasn't the kind of guy who would ever be interested in me, the ex-Jezebel that I was. I might as well be harbouring feelings for Russell!

Jazz and Destiny wanted to help with clearing up afterwards. Hotdog Man had gone and the field was a mess with abandoned paper plates and drink cans. I decided to help too, although I was thinking about my thesis. It wasn't going to write itself.

I put Alix's flowers down by the fence and accepted a bin bag from Russell. I was leaning over a table trying to reach a can of 7Up when Kale walked past and started talking to some guys a few feet away. I reached for the 7Up again and tipped it over. Unfortunately, it wasn't empty and it spilled all over the table. Great!

I'd seen a pack of serviettes by where Hotdog Man had been. I went to find it.

When I returned Kale was already wiping the table clean. He looked up as I approached and grinned. "Hi, Drew."

I gave him what I hoped was a casual smile. "Hi."

Kale dropped his bunch of wet serviettes into my bin bag. "Do you work at Gym21?"

"Yes." I was wearing a Gym21 uniform, was I not? "Why?"

"I thought I saw you on Monday when I went to play football. I was going to say hi, but I wasn't sure."

"Oh. I didn't see you."

"You were talking to some guy. I think he was tickling you or something."

I felt my face growing hot as I remembered Alix's tickling assault on Monday. I'd been screaming, begging him to stop. How embarrassing that Kale saw that. "Oh, he's one of my colleagues."

Kale raised an eyebrow. I retrieved an empty crisp packet from the table before the breeze carried it away.

"Do you guys need some help?" Kale asked.

"I think we're almost finished."

Kale looked at me for a moment then winked at me. "See you later."

"Later."

I chucked a few more cans into my bin bag then went to check if Destiny was ready to leave.

"Kale just asked me if I wanted to go for pizza," she told me.

"What, just the two of you?"

"No, his friends are all going. I said I'd tag along. I don't feel like cooking tonight."

"Bring me back some pizza."

"You should come too, Drew."

"I can't, I have work to do."

Destiny glanced around. "Kale said he'll pay for all my food if I bring you," she said in a lowered voice.

"Really?"

Destiny grinned. "Yes. And I could do with a free meal."

She winked at someone behind my back. I turned in time to see Kale giving her a 'thumbs up'. I turned back to Destiny, feeling slightly embarrassed. Why didn't Kale just ask me himself? "I need to work on my thesis tonight. I can't go."

"I can't go out with them without you?"

"Why?"

"What will we talk about?" Destiny blew out a breath. "I guess I'll be cooking tonight after all."

I went to get my flowers while Destiny told Kale that we weren't coming. I couldn't believe we were doing this, acting like pathetic teenagers.

A few minutes later Destiny, Jazz, and I were on our way out of the sports complex. We walked Jazz to where she'd parked her car, then Destiny and I started the twenty-minute walk to Destiny's off-campus house.

"How are you feeling about tomorrow?" Destiny asked me. Destiny was born and raised going to church, like Jazz. But she was a much more sympathetic and easy going kind of person.

"Nervous," I admitted. I was trying not to think about the fact that I was going to see Travis tomorrow.

Suddenly, a sharp pain zipped across my temples. I blinked as my vision went slightly blurry.

"Are you okay?" Destiny asked.

"Yes." We had to get home. I knew this feeling.

"Just be yourself when you see him," Destiny advised.

I nodded, my head throbbing now. I could hear my own pulse.

"And don't let him intimidate you."

"I won't." I'd been planning to dump Travis anyway, when he'd dumped me. For weeks, he'd been convinced that I was seeing someone else, and he was really angry. I'd tried to explain, but just how did you explain that the other guy was Jesus? Travis just didn't get it. He'd thought I'd lost it.

I focused on breathing and walking, counting three seconds between each intake of air. Destiny was still giving me her pep talk about how to act when I saw Travis. Her voice registered somewhere in the background of my mind. I hoped she'd take my silence as anxiety about tomorrow.