Not That Kind of Girl
The ‘Shorts’ Series
Nia Forrester
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Stiletto Press
Philadelphia PA 19109
www.niaforrester.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Not That Kind of Girl/ Nia Forrester -- 1st ed.
Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings …
Ann Patchett
About ‘Not That Kind of Girl’
“Kate won’t be back ‘til Monday.”
A roommate. Her boyfriend. An irresistible opportunity.
Terri has always been “the quiet one.” People think she’s shy, but she’s really not. She’s pretty enough, and smart enough, she just hasn’t been particularly … remarkable.
Ian on the other hand is remarkable. He’s also Terri’s roommate Kate’s boyfriend. He notices what others do not. He knows Terri’s not shy, and he’s curious about what else she might be. Kate being away for a long weekend, provides the perfect chance for him to find out.
Terri might be into it. A completely unexpected kiss she and Ian shared the week before suggests she will be. Or maybe she’s just not that kind of girl.
Chapter One
Ian is a runner.
He thinks he’s the next Usain Bolt or Kaleem Carter or something. If you asked me, I would probably say that I can’t stand him. That’s what I would say.
He comes over to the dorm late in the day about three times a week to meet up with Kate and generally gets there before her. I let him in, because I can’t very well refuse, and he collapses on her bed across the room from mine, barely even bothering to make sure his dirty runners don’t touch her comforter or anything.
Sometimes, I angle my chair a little so that I can’t see him out of the corner of my eye because Ian is not an unattractive guy. I mean, I could lie and pretend he is, but it just isn’t true. He has a classic runners’ build—lithe and graceful, but strong and powerful at the same time. And he wears body-conscious, form-fitting tanks and skinny sweatpants that taper and end just above his ankles, or just running tights with shorts over them, to conceal his package probably.
Ian has a pretty decent package. I know this because he and Kate are not always discreet. Sometimes when they think I’m asleep, they come back from a party somewhere on campus in the wee hours of the morning; and then they have giggling, semi-quiet sex, shushing each other and making soft moaning noises, like, not even twenty feet away from me.
The next morning, Ian always sneaks out before I wake up, or before he thinks I’m awake. I lie still and play along. Except a couple weeks ago, I was lying there on my back when I heard the shuffling as he extricated himself from Kate and slid off the bed, pulling his sweats on and picking his runners up from the floor to creep out.
For a few seconds, I saw his naked backside, and a flash of his dick and balls from the rear. He should have looked ridiculous in that moment, but he didn’t. And that really, really pissed me off. So, when he turned around to leave, I didn’t bother playing along like I usually did by shutting my eyes and feigning sleep. Instead I looked him right in the eye when he glanced my way.
For a fraction of a second, our eyes met and his looked something like ashamed. I just stared right back at him, unwilling to relieve him of an emotion he was absolutely right to be feeling. Like, who screws their girlfriend with someone else in the room? Ugh. I mean, even if we are in college.
Today, when I open the door to let him in, there is a musk coming from him, the scent of recent exertion. It is a salty, pungent, animalistic odor that isn’t at all unpleasant. It makes me think that this must be how in the wild, the female of a species identifies the male of the same species. Ian’s scent makes me think of how sex probably first happened between cavemen and women. It makes me admit to myself, with a startled little blip of my heart, that I am attracted to him.
That’s my problem. I am attracted to my roommate’s boyfriend and it frustrates the hell out of me. I wish with all my heart he wouldn’t come over here. That Kate would meet him someplace else entirely for their hookups, and pre-dates, or whatever.
“What’s up, Tiny Tee?” he says as he brushes past me.
“Nothing,” I mumble.
He calls me that because my name is Terri, and because I’m only five-three to his approximate six-foot-plus height. Kate is five-nine or so, and standing next to him, she looks just right. When I am standing near Ian as I am now, I look like a pipsqueak.
I go back to my desk and do what I always do lately—turn my chair so he is looking at my back.
“Hot as hell out there, ain’t it?”
Ian is from Alabama. His accent is thick and sounds almost like he’s faking it. He has a rich complexion that reminds me of red clay, a strong nose with prominent bridge and jet-black hair in tight, silky curls.
Kate, who is your basic upper-middle-class white girl, likes to talk about Ian’s heritage a lot. His father is “one-hundred percent pure Cherokee” she told me with a look of glee in her eyes. And his mother is Black. Ian is so into his Native American-ness that since he was a kid he’s gone to the Annual Gathering of Nations, a large powwow where they do traditional dances and stuff. I don’t know precisely what all goes on there, but Kate says it’s a super important part of who he is.
I think she’s right, but she doesn’t even seem to get how important. Once when she was drunk, she asked him to do a “tribal dance” for her. Ian’s face darkened and for a split second I thought he was going to cuss her out but then he just deflected, and they were laughing again.
“It is hot,” I say back to him now without turning around.
“Let’s go swim,” he says. “I know a place.”
At that, I swivel in my chair and look at him. “Don’t you want to wait for Kate? And see whether she wants to go swim with you?”
“Kate won’t be here for another couple of hours,” he said, looking me in the eye.
I open my mouth to ask why, if he knows that, he even came over in the first place.
Then I see that he is still looking me in the eye. And pointedly, like he’s waiting for something important to happen.
No one ever asks me to things. I mean, no one. Not just guys. When I got here, I think I just got stuck with this image of the scholarly girl, the bookworm. It’s probably because every single day I look like someone who’s just pulled an all-nighter. I only ever wear baggy sweatshirts and leggings and sneakers, and my glasses up in my hair which is springy and wiry and natural. Not because I don’t care about hair but because no one ever really taught me how to do it since my dad raised me alone.
I got braids once, and it was basically a traumatic experience because they did them too tight and I could see my scalp puckered and painful when they were done. I had a headache for a week until I got them taken out and even then, my head was tender, my scalp inflamed.
Anyway … I’m not the girl people ask places.
“Just a swim, Tiny Tee,” Ian says. “To break up the monotony. And this doggone heat.”
He says ‘doggone’ like an old man would say it, emphasizing the word as if it is a shocking breach of etiquette. It makes the corners of my lips twitch with a smile. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ian use a cussword. I don’t think he does. In another sett
ing, I might consider him a nice, well-mannered Southern boy.
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “Where?”
Ian walks me to a house on the edge of campus. I am at his side, carrying a canvas tote with a towel in it, and I’m wearing my swimsuit with a pair of denim shorts. He didn’t leave the room while I changed but turned to face the wall. I could see by the way he held his neck and back that it was a strain for him not to look over his shoulder at me.
Why would Ian Everett want to see me unclothed? When he has Kate.
I am still pondering that question when he shoves open a wooden gate and we are in someone’s backyard. There is an in-ground pool. Those are rare around here, because of the winters. I think it’s stupid and impractical. But today, it looks like an oasis in a desert and I smile.
When I look at Ian, he is smiling back at me.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
Then he immediately starts stripping down. He peels off his top and sweats. He leaves on only his boxer briefs which are as form-fitting as the tights he sometimes wears, except they stop mid-thigh.
Seeing him like this, I involuntarily swallow hard and my breath quickens.
“C’mon, let’s do this,” he says, nodding in the direction of the pool.
“Who lives here anyway?” I ask, looking toward the house. “I mean …”
Ian doesn’t wait for me. He does a running dive into the pool and when he surfaces, the sun and water on his skin make him look like an exquisitely beautiful alien being.
“Coming?” he asks.
I hesitate a moment, then unfasten and take off my shorts. I feel self-conscious because though I am not overweight, I have short legs, thick thighs, a figure that looks blockish if I wear the wrong kind of thing.
I am a little more hesitant getting in the water. I don’t dive, but jump in, feet first. When I surface, Ian is surprisingly close. He smiles at me.
“I thought for sure you’d say you didn’t want to get your hair wet,” he says.
“Why wouldn’t I want to get my hair wet?”
He stares at me for a few moments like he can’t decide whether I’m serious or not. Then he shakes his head.
“No reason,” he says.
And then I get it.
“Oh. You mean …” I shrug. My shoulders are just visible as I am submerged almost to my neck while the water laps around Ian low on his sternum. “I don’t … do much hair stuff.”
He nods. “One of the many reasons I like you.”
“You like me?” I say, before I can stop myself.
Before this moment, I would have sworn he barely noticed I was alive. And … many reasons?
“Yeah,” Ian says. He moves closer. “That’s why I wanted to get you out of that dorm room.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it. Why did you need to get me out of the dorms?”
“Because when you see me there, you think of Kate. When you see me there, you think of me and Kate. I wanted to take you someplace where there’s just, y’know … you and me.”
I’m not a bad person. I’m really not. But for a girl like me, you don’t understand what this moment feels like.
And I’m not stupid. So, when Ian leans in to kiss me, I know there is a fifty-fifty chance he will turn out to be a bastard. Still I let him kiss me. I let him kiss me, and I kiss him back.
Because, fifty-fifty? Those were odds I was willing to take. Things like this, they just don’t happen. Not to a girl like me.
Chapter Two
After the kiss in the pool, I don’t see Ian for a week. Well … after the kissing in the pool. Because we didn’t stop at one kiss. For a long time, there was more of that than swimming. After a while the hot sun was searing my shoulders and the back of my neck. I pulled away from Ian for that reason alone, to get relief from the unrelenting heat, and submerge my entire body in the cool water.
The weird thing was, we didn’t talk about it, or much at all. I guess to talk about it would make us focus on how wrong it was. But it didn’t feel wrong. We were in a bubble, insulated from abstract concepts like right and wrong. I couldn’t even think, just feel Ian’s soft full lips on mine, the gentle exploratory sweep of his tongue, and his unfamiliar taste. He tasted a little like chai tea—spicy and sweet and earthy all at once.
I guess even we thought all the making out was excessive at some point. When I pulled back, my chest was heaving a little. Ian smiled at me, and then we swam laps, racing each other from one end of the pool to the other. We laughed at nothing in particular and roughhoused and ducked around each other like baby seals. I didn’t notice the passage of time until Ian became a little less playful and I realized he might be worried about getting back, and about Kate.
“We’d better go,” I said, swimming over to the edge of the pool and climbing out.
I didn’t want him to have to tell me it was time to leave.
We walked to campus side by side, the back of his hand brushing against my forearm so lightly, it made me tingle. It felt deliberate, those brief brushes of his hand.
I paused to let us into the room, my heart beating hard as I wondered what would happen once we were alone inside. But just then, Kate came bounding up.
“Did you go swimming without me?” she asked, looking us over, arms folded.
She didn’t sound angry about it though. Not even threatened. Because why would she be?
“Yeah. It was mad hot,” Ian said.
His voice sounded perfectly even, perfectly normal. And I hated him for it.
I shoved open the door to Kate’s and my room and went inside, immediately grabbing another towel and my shower caddy full of toiletries to go wash off the chlorine from the pool. I didn’t look at Ian as I left, and when I came back to the room after my shower, he and Kate were gone.
I sat on the edge of my bed, fingers to my lips, remembering.
That following Thursday afternoon, after my last lecture of the day, I come outside and see Ian sitting on a window ledge directly across from the exit of the lecture hall. A shard of sunlight falls across his face, so he is squinting. For a moment, I don’t think he sees me. Everyone is noisy and energetic because Thursdays may as well be Friday around here. People shy away from Friday classes and begin partying sometime around three o’ clock Thursday afternoon, playing frisbee and lying out wherever there’s a patch of grass, listening to music and smoking, drinking from water bottles that they pass around, and that everyone knows don’t contain water.
I generally go back to the dorm and read—for pleasure mostly, but sometimes I read ahead for the next week of class. I don’t need to because I’m on the Dean’s List and don’t have a whole lot to worry about grades-wise.
Ian jumps off the wall when he spots me, gracefully athletic even with that careless motion. Though he’s looking directly at me, right up until the moment he speaks, I consider that he may not even be here to see me, but someone else just over my shoulder.
“Hey Tiny Tee,” he says.
For the first time ever, I want to tell him not to call me that, but instead I just say ‘hi.’
He follows alongside me down the hall, and only when we’re outside does he speak again.
“So, about what happened at the pool …” he begins.
I’m impressed that he gets down to it right away. I look up at him and stop walking, genuinely curious about how he’s going to do this—absolve us both, but probably mostly himself, of wrongdoing.
It just happened.
I didn’t mean it to, but …
There are tons of tried and true options.
As I look at him, I notice that he has a new haircut. The hair on top remains but now in a curly ‘fro-hawk and faded at the sides. It’s kind of disgusting how attracted to him I still am. Even in this moment when I know he is about to downplay everything that happened between us and prove himself the asshole I suspect he is.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
This, I was not expecti
ng. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” My voice hitches a little.
He says nothing.
“It’s not like you … assaulted me,” I lower my voice at the last two words. “I mean, did you think I felt like you …?”
He still doesn’t speak and so I sigh and shake my head. Suddenly, it feels like I’m the one with all the power. And Ian does look like a nice, Southern boy, uncertain about whether he’s offended my virtue.
“You kissed me. I kissed you back. I liked it.” I shrug after I say the words.
Ian looks almost impressed. I know it’s because he’s misread me, like most people do. He thinks I’m shy because I’m quiet. He thinks I’m a shrinking violet, just because I’m not noisy and brash and vocally confident. Like Kate.
“You liked it,” he repeats.
“Well, you were there,” I say, laughing a little. “Didn’t it seem like I liked it?”
Ian narrows his eyes, and then he smiles. It slowly spreads across his face, parting his lips, exposing his teeth.
“Yeah,” he says. “But …”
“There’s no ‘buts’. It was fine. You don’t have to worry about whether I’m alright,” I say. “And don’t worry. I’m not going to tell Kate. It was just … a moment, and I’m sure it won’t happen again.”
Ian’s smile dissolves.
“But thanks,” I say, “for checking on me. You didn’t have to do that. It’s all good.”
Then I turn and walk away from him, proud of myself that I was able to say what I said, and that I sounded like I believed it.
Kate is throwing some things into a bag when I get back to our room. Haphazardly, like she’s in a hurry.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I’m going home for the weekend,” she says over her shoulder. “Got a ride last-minute.”
Since I kissed her boyfriend, my attitude toward Kate has been surprisingly unchanged. I didn’t act weird, standoffish, or guilty or anything. I didn’t even feel differently about her. Which makes me kind of shocked at myself. Maybe I’m not as good a person as I think I am. But is anyone? As good a person as they think they are?
Not That Kind of Girl Page 1
