The view from Rusty's classroom window looked wonderful. And he was stuck inside listening to his professor drone on about bacterial growth. Rusty could appreciate science—half of his mom's cases would still be unsolved without DNA and all that—but that didn't mean he wanted to learn about it. And journalists didn't need to know about this stuff, they just interviewed the people who did.
The professor moved from where he'd been leaning against the wall and Rusty jerked guiltily, pulling his notebook towards him and jotting down the last few things the professor said before releasing them from the mind-numbing class.
He had about an hour to kill before his next class started, one that he actually enjoyed—investigative writing. He found himself walking towards an empty courtyard table, but wasn't alone for long. Sara, a girl he'd had a couple of classes with, joined him. He wasn't the best at making friends, after everything that had happened in his life, but she was hard to say no to. She constantly was smiling and chattering about anything really, but if he ever had something to say, she'd listen too.
"How're you today?" she asked, slinging her bag to the ground before rifling through it for her lunch.
"I'm good," he replied, following suit and taking his own lunch out. He wasn't quite sure what was in it. Gus had made him something the night before to try out some new cooking technique he wanted to impress his boss with. "How are you?" he finally remembered to ask in return. She smiled at him before shrugging.
"Ready for this day to be over," she said with a sigh.
"I agree with that," Rusty said, already thinking of his plans after his next class. He was heading over to the station to talk to Buzz about the case. Then he was going to pick Gus up from work and stay over for the evening.
Rusty opened his paper lunch bag and peered into it curiously. It looked like some kind of baked chicken with a glaze. He opened the Tupperware, stuck his finger in it and tried a taste. He grinned. Honey maybe, but something sweet at least. Sara raised an eyebrow at him.
"Did you forget what you packed?" she asked.
"My boyfriend made it for me, I didn't know what it was," he defended himself as he dumped the rest of the bag out onto the table. Everything else seemed pretty normal, strawberries, cucumbers, and a roll. He frowned as he saw a bright pink post-it note stuck to the bottom of the strawberry container. He flipped it over and froze at the three little words scrawled across it—I love you.
Sara craned her neck to look over at the words and smiled at his reaction.
"Still in the lovey dovey phase?" she asked as she reached over and stole a strawberry from him.
"Well, um. We—well…" he stumbled over his words. "We just said it a couple days ago for the, um, first time," he explained. He could feel his ears turning red, but Sara just nodded and chomped on one of her carrots.
"That's really adorable," was all she said before bringing up a professor and how unreasonable his expectations were. He listened with one ear as he pulled his phone out and brought up Gus's name. He only hesitated for a second before typing out "I love you too" and pressing send. He knew Gus wouldn't answer, since they weren't allowed to text at the restaurant, but he hoped Gus would at least be able to look at it. That little pink slip of paper found its way into his planner, carefully tucked into one of the back pages.
