Still, it wasn’t like it was going to happen again. In a matter of weeks, I would probably be wondering whether I’d imagined the entire thing.
“You’re leaving?” I ask Kate now. “Did you tell …?” I stop myself before asking her if she told Ian.
What Kate does or doesn’t communicate to her boyfriend is none of my business. But I’m a little curious now about whether he already knew she was going out of town when he stopped by my lecture. I’m more than a little curious about how he even knew which class I was in.
“If things work out the way I want them to, I’ll miss Monday classes probably,” she says. “I’m gonna try to get my dad to let me bring my car back.”
Kate is from a small, leafy upper-middle-class town where kids get really nice cars when they turn sixteen. But not so affluent that the cars are brand-new. Mostly they get something like their parents’ four-year-old Beemer, and the parents buy a new one, or an Audi or Mercedes.
I gleaned all this from tidbits of Kate talking on the phone to her high school best friend who’s a junior at Vassar. They both griped about not how stupid it was that their parents let them have cars but balked at them having their cars on campus.
My father bought me a new bike before college, and we transported it on a rack atop his car when he moved me in. It’s a very decent bike and I actually thought it was a big deal until I listened to Kate and her friend complaining about being separated from their luxury vehicles.
“Having a car on campus would be cool,” I tell her. “Would make those grocery store trips a lot more convenient.”
“Right?”
Kate is zipping up her bag now. When that’s done, she stands upright and spins in a circle trying to see whether she’s forgotten anything.
I like Kate. We’re not friends, exactly, but she’s okay. I know she feels the same way about me. We’ve been roommates since freshman year and realized early on that as roomies go, we have a pretty good deal with each other.
We don’t get on each other’s nerves about things like keeping the room neat, or coming in late, or having friends over. Instead, we easily accommodate each other and adjust, and neither of us takes undue advantage. Like, even Ian sleeping over. That happens far less than some other folks endure.
Across the hall from us, there’s a girl named Lauren who has a face like a horse and the braying laugh to match. Lauren imposes on her roommate, Missy, practically every weekend when her insecure boyfriend, who has a drinking problem comes to stay. He gets drunk then he and Lauren have loud fights where he accuses her at the top of his voice of flirting, or cheating. Sometimes the fights go on so long that Missy winds up sleeping on the couch in the lounge downstairs. Kate and I occasionally let her sleep on our floor when the lounge is too loud or otherwise occupied.
“Room’s all yours,” Kate says when she’s satisfied that she has everything.
It’s nice of her to say. But we both know I don’t exactly need the privacy.
I’ve only had one boyfriend since I’ve been here. His name is Kamal and we met in a sociology class. He was probably smartest person in the lecture, certainly the one who participated the most. He asked the questions and made the comments that everyone else wished they had. He and the professor had debates about things, which you could tell Professor Russell enjoyed. Sometimes after class, he and Kamal walked out together, still arguing their respective points like they were colleagues and equals, rather than professor and student.
One afternoon when I was eating lunch alone, Kamal came over and asked if he could sit with me. He knew my name and that we were in the same class. I was sort of flattered by that, since I was quiet all semester. In addition to being smart, Kamal is handsome in a quirky way and looks like a Bollywood star. Not the obvious heartthrob, but the quietly good-looking one, the guy the heroine is in love with all along without knowing it until she discovers that love in the dramatic final scene. Anyway, it didn’t suck that Kamal noticed me. We started hanging out after class and then on weekends, and finally one night wound up back in his room where we had polite sex.
I mean, it was also good sex, but he kept asking if things he did were okay. Is this okay? Is that okay? I wanted to scream at him, ‘Yes, it’s okay! It’s all okay! Just get on with it!’
It felt good, I just wanted to feel it though, not freaking assess it. And that basically was the problem with Kamal in general. He’s just too analytical, too much in his head. And that’s too much like me. I don’t want to date myself. I mean, it was interesting at first, but as time went on, I started feeling my mind wander when he was talking to me.
There was no huge breakup. We kind of drifted away from each other and never drifted back after summer break at the start of junior year. Sometimes we see each other on campus and wave a little sheepishly, both of us embarrassed that we don’t even care enough to have The Conversation.
I miss being with someone. I miss being noticed by someone. I don’t particularly enjoy walking across campus as invisible as a ghost.
Kate has been gone for a few hours, and I am lying in bed reading with my sneakers on, feet hanging over the edge when someone knocks rhythmically, almost cheerfully on the door. I’m reading a book by the South Korean crime novelist You-Jeong Jeong and finding it fascinating enough that the interruption annoys me. But I get up anyway, knowing before I answer that it will be someone for Kate, asking her to come out and play.
But I don’t anticipate that it will be this someone.
Ian is standing there.
He is wearing the same clothes he was in when I saw him earlier. The same black skinny sweats, white t-shirt. This time he has a fitted cap on, grey and crimson, with a wild boar on the front and a Nike swoosh on the side.
I open my mouth to tell him that Kate isn’t around, but he speaks first.
“Wanna go eat?” He inclines his head to the left, toward the elevators.
I hesitate, but only for a moment. “Okay,” I say.
As we’re leaving the building, I almost expect someone to confront us, to remind me that he belongs to someone else. But of course, no one does any such thing. We’re only going to grab a bite.
At the Hub, we both get our food, and I look down at Ian’s choices—burger, fries, a piece of chocolate cake so huge that it is most accurately described as a slab.
He laughs when he sees my expression.
“I burn a lot of calories,” he says.
“I bet,” I say drily.
We are sitting across from each other, and he bites into his burger, shaking his head as if it is impossibly delicious. I look down at my chicken salad and begin to doubt the wisdom of my choice. Ian is still chewing, and I have just swallowed when I realize he’s been watching me.
After a moment, he extends his hand across the table, offering me a bite of his burger. His mouth is full, but his eyes are smiling, like he knows the salad isn’t living up to my expectations.
I don’t hesitate. I lean in, open wide, and take a bite.
I don’t think I realize how it might look until I catch the eye of someone across the room. Maggie is one of Kate’s best friends. She eyes me and Ian with a deceptively impassive look. I know she is storing details about what she’s seen to tell Kate later.
I sit back, still chewing and Ian laughs when he sees how much of his burger I’ve bitten off.
“Dang,” he says. “Why don’t I just let you have this and get another one?”
“No,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I think I’ve had all I need.”
His smile fades a little as our gazes lock. I wonder if he thinks what I’ve said is some sexy double entendre. But really, I’m literally just talking about his burger.
Chapter Three
“What’re you doin’ later?” Ian asks me as we head back toward my dorm.
“Nothing. Reading. Studying.”
“Or we could go swim again,” he suggests.
I look at him and shake my head. “What’s the deal with t
hat pool anyway? Do you break in, or …?”
He laughs. “Nah. Couple of my friends live there. It’s a share. They rent it with one other dude.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling foolish. And why did I have to say ‘break’ in? As if he’s a likely criminal or something.
“Thursdays and Fridays, they fire up the grill, and a bunch of folks stop through. There’s music, you know, the usual. And I thought you might wanna get in the water again. This heat just ain’t lettin’ up.”
He still hasn’t mentioned Kate. It’s weird. Like she doesn’t even exist and we’re in an alternate universe where a guy like Ian Everett is asking me out. And … is he asking me out? Is that what this is?
“I dunno,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“How ‘bout I stop through before I head over there? See whether you changed your mind. ‘Cause this weather, man.”
I shrug and then nod.
“Gimme your phone.” He holds out a hand and I fish my phone from my back pocket and give it to him. “It’ll be like around seven or something like that,” he says as he taps on my phone screen.
While he’s looking down, I see how long his lashes are and how dark. His hair is dark, too, and so shiny. I already know how soft it is because I put my hands in it when we were kissing. It feels like goose down, like he has a head full of baby hair.
Kate’s hands are always in it. Whenever he is over, he kicks back on her bed, head against the wall, her pillows behind his back while he reads from a textbook. Next to him, Kate reads as well, one hand idly reaching up, her elbow resting on his shoulder and fingers threading through his hair.
I used to think bitterly that she stroked him as absently as one strokes their puppy. But now I get it. If I had the right, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself either.
He gives me back the phone and I shove it into my pocket. We are in front of the dorm now, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to say ‘goodbye’. Like, hug him or something? Kiss him on the cheek? I opt for a quick ‘later’ and go in without looking back. I sense, without knowing for sure, that Ian is watching me as I go in.
I finish all my reading and get started outlining two papers that aren’t due for another couple of weeks while I watch the clock. Mostly I pretend I’m not waiting for seven to roll around, and try not to feel like a loser for being the girl doing homework on a sunny almost-weekend afternoon.
At six-fifty-ish when I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin, I decide. I shouldn’t go to this pool thing. Kate isn’t a close friend, but going anywhere with her boyfriend while she’s away, even if we’re acting like it’s totally innocent, isn’t cool.
I look at my phone, and Ian hasn’t texted. I grab my backpack and decide that I’m going spend the evening in the library with my phone off so I can stop looking at it. Now that my outlines are almost done, maybe I can make decent headway with the papers. In the back of my mind though, I’ve started worrying that he isn’t going to text. Even if I plan to refuse his invitation, I still want him to want me to go with him.
I have just opened the door and turned to head down the hall, and Ian is there at the other end. He stops walking for a moment when he sees me. I just manage to catch myself before I smile.
Then he glances at the backpack, slung over my shoulder and continues walking toward me.
“You’re not comin’?”
I shake my head and try to look regretful. “I don’t think so. I have these …”
“Dang,” Ian says. “You sure?”
I nod.
He sighs. “Okay. But if you change your mind, you remember where the house is at, right? We’ll be there real late. Doesn’t usually break up till after midnight.”
Scratching the nape of his neck and returning my nod, Ian turns to leave again. I exhale, silent and deep. I can’t do it. I can’t let him walk away. I feel the same surge of what-the-hell that I felt at the pool a week ago. What if I do go with him? What if I just this one time …?
“Ian.”
As soon as I say his name, he turns like he was expecting it.
“If you don’t mind waiting a couple minutes, I’ll change,” I say.
He smiles. “Yeah. Cool.” He starts in my direction again, but I shake my head.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” I say. “In the lounge.”
I change into jeans. My washed-out, severely distressed ones, the ones that my dad says look like they’ve been through a shredder. With that I wear a lacy cropped tank top that’s both casual and dressy. When I bought it last summer, it was because I had been planning to come back to school and “be more social.” I imagined myself standing at a keg party in this cute lacy top, casually sipping beer from a red Dixie cup and making small talk with my classmates and some cute guy who can’t keep his eyes off me.
That never happened. It’s always easier to slip back into a familiar groove, even an uncomfortable one, even one that you’re not satisfied with. And that’s what I did. I came back to school and from the first day on campus when saw everyone greeting their friends with screams and squeals and excited catching-up chatter, I just naturally fell back into being the “quiet one” all over again.
But maybe, I don’t know, just for this weekend I can be someone different. It’s not even about Ian, really. Or not just about him anyway. With Kate gone, I don’t have to suffer through an awkward moment when she would look me over in an outfit like this one and say something embarrassing like, “Wow! Look at you! This is … different.”
This weekend, I can just be whoever I want, with no one to remind me that this girl isn’t who I usually am.
Ian is sitting on the edge of one of the sofas and has the television remote in his hand, switching channels before he even gives the prior one a five-second chance to capture his interest. No one else is there because everyone is out las gasps of summer.
When I say his name, Ian pops up off his seat and looks at me, and for a moment his eyes change just the tiniest bit.
I’d forgotten that not only Kate isn’t used to seeing me like this. He isn’t either. After all, he’s in our room enough to have seen me dozens of times, but always in my standard uniform of frumpy sweats and hair pulled into a messy puffball atop my head. I’ve even let my hair out this time and sprayed some product in it, so it looks curlier and less frizzy.
“Ready?” I ask. And when he doesn’t respond right away, I look down at my outfit. “Am I too …?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. You’re good.”
He is just in cargo shorts and a white t-shirt, bright white sneakers with no socks. I notice his solid, well-muscled calves, smooth and copper toned. On the university’s athletics website, there is a picture of him running, his head back, like he is looking to heaven. The cords on his neck are stretched and prominent, his eyes so narrowed they almost look shut.
“So, who’re these guys again?” I ask as we walk. “Whose house we’re going to?”
“Just a couple of ‘bamas,” Ian says, and there’s affection in his voice. “Dudes I know from back home.”
“Home in …”
“Alabama,” he says, and so I get that he didn’t mean ‘bamas’ in the general sense but was being literal. “Two of ‘em went to my high school.”
“Oh, okay.”
We walk in silence for a few minutes then he asks if I’ve brought a swimsuit.
“Yeah. Right here.” I indicate my back pocket where I’ve folded and stuffed the same royal blue one I wore the week before. And then I add, “I was actually on the swim team in high school.”
“You were?” Ian looks over at me.
I laugh. “No. I just wanted to challenge your stereotypes, that’s all.”
“What stereotypes?” he asks, sounding playfully offended.
“You know, how you acted like I literally walked on water, instead of swam in it. Just because I wasn’t afraid to get my hair wet.”
“That ain’t a stereotype and you know it.”
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“Maybe you’ve been with Kate too long,” I say before I can remember to censor myself. I am about to say something to temper the comment but Ian laughs.
“Kate doesn’t like to swim,” he says. “At least not in the pool. Says it ‘strips’ her hair.”
“Yeah, that’s a thing,” I agree. The easy way he talks about her makes me bold. “So, how’d you two get together anyway?”
“Me and Kate?” He looks at me.
We are about three blocks from where I remember the house being. I slow my pace a little, wanting to make sure he has time to get out the story before we’re at a loud party and there’s a bunch of people around making it difficult for us to talk.
“In the gym,” Ian says. “She got on the treadmill next to mine.”
“And then?” I press. “You thought she was cute and …?”
“Nah. Not exactly. I was runnin’, and payin’ attention to my heart rate. When I’m runnin’ I don’t really see anything, or anyone. I just run.”
I nod as if I understand this perfectly. I don’t. Because I don’t have anything that preoccupies me so completely. I wish I did. I wish I had something I could call my passion.
“And …” I press.
He grins at me. “Why you so nosey?”
“I’m not. I just … I see you two together and …”
“You wonder how we fit.”
“Yeah,” I say. But that isn’t completely true. I don’t wonder how they fit. I wonder if they fit.
“It wasn’t anything dramatic. Just that she wouldn’t shut up. I was tryna keep track of my vitals and she was just talkin’ my head off. Eventually I just gave up and started talking to her.”
“You can talk while you run?” I ask.
“Easily.”
I smile, and he grins back at me, a show of cockiness that’s kind of sexy.
Not That Kind of Girl Page 2
