Not That Kind of Girl

by Nia Forrester

  Ian gets in and starts the engine. But then he just sits there. Inside the shop, Claudette has begun to sweep and clean up. She switches off the television, then goes to the back, returning with a garbage bag and a dustpan.

  “I feel bad,” I say to Ian. “I think I should pay her. I know she said she wanted to do this for free, but …”

  “You ready to talk now?” he interrupts me.

  I turn to look at him. His head is leaning back against the headrest and he is staring straight ahead rather than at me.

  “Yeah. I mean … right this second?”

  Ian shrugs. “Why not?”

  “I mean … I think we should give this a minute, don’t you? Before we blow this girl’s whole entire mind?”

  “You think her mind’s gon’ to be less blown if we give her a week, Terri, then let’s give it a week.”

  “Don’t be like that. And I didn’t say a w…”

  “More than a week?”

  “Ian, I don’t know. Why’re you pressing me like this? Like I could have even imagined four days ago that we were going to be …”

  “I imagined,” he says. “I could, and I did imagine.

  “Well then maybe you should have clued me in. Maybe you should have broken up with her from jump instead of hedging your bets in case I didn’t turn out to be … I don’t know … good enough, or …”

  “In case what?” He turns in his seat, and I can literally see that he’s turned redder beneath the already reddish-brown of his skin. “What did you just say to me? In case you were good enough at what exactly?”

  “Stop cutting me off! Could you just let me speak?”

  He exhales. “Okay, so speak.”

  I lean back in my seat. This time I’m the one staring ahead, not looking at him anymore. Having him behave this way, be angry at me, affects me worse than it should. My lower lip trembles a little bit, and to my horror, my voice does as well when I finally speak.

  “Y’know, when you don’t get your way, you’re … a real asshole,” I say. “It’s good to find that out now, I guess.”

  Neither of us says anything for what feels like a long time then Ian exhales again, this time longer and deeper.

  “You hungry, we can pick something up on the way,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. He puts the van in gear and pulls out.

  We’ve gone a few blocks when I reach out to touch him on his leg. He doesn’t react.

  “Ian. We only have a few more hours before … It’s not like we have … I don’t want to fight with you. Not tonight. Could we just have this conversation when …”

  “Nah. We ain’ got no more time to have this conversation. Kate got back already. She texted me like an hour ago.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’d been successful at it for a streak of three days—getting to the room, grabbing my books and heading back out to study late in the library. I timed it so that I would be there and gone before the customary hour when Ian stopped by to wait for Kate. And it had the added benefit of helping me avoid Kate as well. I’d been so good at it that I had not seen Kate since the evening she returned, hadn’t seen her and Ian together, nor Ian on his own.

  He didn’t call or text me either. After I got my hair done that Sunday night, he returned the Green Bean to Wayne and Patrick’s house and we walked together back toward campus. He said nothing at all and for the entire the walk, I tried to think of something to say.

  I wanted to say: ‘Screw it. Let’s do it. Let’s just go back and tell her right now.’ Or maybe, ‘I’m just not into confrontations, Ian. But it isn’t about me and you. I definitely want there to be a me and you.’

  None of what I came up with sounded good enough. None of it felt like it would penetrate the wall of anger he’d built up. Once we were on campus, and standing right outside my dorm, I decided I might just say that last part, ‘I definitely want there to be a me and you’ but before I could muster up the words, he told me he was taking off, going for a run.

  “Go inside, first,” he said. “So I’ll know you got in okay.”

  “I’m literally right outside the door,” I said, stubbornly. “Can we just …”

  “Terri. Just … could you please just go inside?”

  I didn’t want to go in, of course. Because he was outside and I wanted to stay there with him until I could find the magic thing to say that would both keep him, and not have to face the dilemma with Kate. And staying outside would also delay my having to face Kate herself, at least for another few minutes.

  He watched me go in. When I turned around, he lifted a hand in a wave, like we were next-door neighbors spotting each other in the driveway. Then he took off jogging in the opposite direction.

  Upstairs, Kate was buoyant and oblivious, brimming with faux complaints about her exasperating parents, full of gratitude that I’d scanned and emailed her insurance card, full of compliments for my new hair.

  I hadn’t seen Ian since because I’d been pretty good with my timing and was almost proud of that three-day streak.

  But today, I open the door and he is there. And Kate is with him.

  I hesitate for a split second that Kate doesn’t notice, but Ian does, then I give them both a brief smile, averting my eyes and beginning to unload my backpack of some books, reload it with others.

  “Where’re you off to?” Kate whines. “Like every day now I get in and you’re gone. It’s like living with a ghost.”

  She’s the ghost as far as I’m concerned, because even though she’s the one speaking, it’s like she isn’t even there at all. All I can feel is Ian’s presence though he says nothing. I think I can even smell him.

  “Lots of work to catch up on, that’s all,” I mumble.

  “Catch up on?” Kate scoffs. “You’re always way ahead of everybody else, Terri. I bet I know what this is …”

  I’m barely even listening to her. My heart is pounding, and I think I feel a headache coming on as well. Not just because of how jarring it is to see him at all, but because the little I did see basically shattered me.

  It isn’t that Ian looks good. He always looks good. It’s that he’s sitting on Kate’s bed, legs extended, back against the wall, her pillows behind him. Kate is next to him, her legs extended as well. They’re watching something on her tablet. Her elbow rests on his shoulder. And jus like always, her fingers thread lazily through his hair.

  I think about Emily at the pool party. Jesus, it was less than a week ago and it feels like an eternity. What was it she said about Wayne, and seeing him with someone else?

  “I will tear a bitch’s eyes out of her fucking head.”

  At the time, I thought she was nuts, but boy do I ever relate to those feelings right now.

  “Terri’s what my mother would call a dark horse,” Kate continues. “She looks all straight and narrow, and most of the time she is, but once in a while she just out of nowhere busts out with something completely, like … Like the time you hooked up with that hot hippy Asian TA, whatshisname.”

  I have all my books in my backpack. It’s zipped up. I was almost home free.

  I could have gotten out of this room with no one emotionally wounded, except for me. And I deserve it. But now, because of Kate’s big fat mouth, there is going to be another casualty.

  “What’s his name again, Terri?” she prattles on. “That guy you messed around with before you found out he was gonna be grading your work?”

  My shoulders sag. I turn.

  I look at Kate. I look at Ian, who is now staring at me, a mixture of three emotions—hurt, betrayal, and anger—in his eyes, and his jaw rigid.

  “Derek,” I say.

  I can feel Ian’s eyes as though they’re burning holes into me. We stare at each other for a long while, one of our now legendary staring matches in which there is usually no victor. This time, I win.

  He scratches the back of his neck, looks down at the tablet, and swipes at something on the screen.

  Kate smiles, and for
a moment, she looks almost satisfied.

  “Yeah, that one,” she says musingly. “He’s pretty hot. That’s the one. Derek.”

  Private study rooms are hard to come by in the library, and most of the time, they don’t allow people to study solo in them unless they’re waiting for the other members of a study group. I managed to make that excuse all evening long whenever someone stuck their head in to check. I was being selfish, taking up that much room for myself but I didn’t give a shit.

  The presence of other humans anywhere near me feels like an irritant. I don’t want to see them if I don’t have to. I don’t want to hear them, even if they’re speaking in hushed whispers, and I definitely don’t want any of them speaking to me. I work on two of my classes and get a lot done, then stumble when I get to my Concepts of Real Analysis class. Working on proofs is not where my head is at tonight.

  I’m just about to throw in the towel and go find a cup of coffee somewhere when there’s a knock and then the door to the study room swings open. I’m not even surprised it’s him.

  Ian shuts the door behind him and leans on it.

  The study rooms don’t lock because, well, college students are unpredictable. One never knows what might be happening behind a locked door. Predictive analytics would tell them the chances for each feared behavior. The administration probably thinks the worst thing that is likely to happen behind the door is suicide. My guess is that the more likely one is sex.

  I don’t bother asking Ian how he found me. It wouldn’t have taken a genius, and he knows a little more about me now. But he had to have walked a lot of floors though and opened a lot of unlocked doors.

  “So, you used to mess with Derek,” he says. He’s doing that squinting thing that happens when he’s mad. “Why you ain’ tell me? That night when we were there, why …”

  “Are you serious right now?” I laugh. “Did you just seriously leave your girlfriend’s room to come interrogate me about whether I screwed some guy before I even really knew you?”

  “So you did. You fucked him.”

  I’m starting to think that Ian cusses a lot more than I ever realized.

  “Who did you screw, before I knew you?” I ask.

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Oh wow. Really? How come?”

  “I didn’t walk you into some chick’s house knowing that I used to mess with her, and make you look like …”

  “I don’t know what you looked like that night, Ian but I know what you were. You were Kate’s boyfriend. You were that then, and you’re that right now. So, honestly, I don’t even know what this conversation is about.”

  “I’m not doin’ this,” Ian says shaking his head.

  “Doing what?”

  “You know what it’s like hearing something like that and not even havin’ the right to react? That you …”

  “You know what it’s like walking into a room and seeing her all over you like she fucking owns you?”

  “So, let’s tell her!” he almost yells.

  I jump anyway. That would have been an absolute first. Ian, yelling.

  I wait for a moment, half expecting a librarian to come bustling in to remind us to keep our voices down. But no one comes.

  “Let’s tell her,” Ian says again, lowering his voice.

  He advances toward me. I’ve been sitting all this time, but I get up. I walk backward until I’m against the wall, which honestly, is like three steps because the space is small. I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of me, and of what I’ll do and promise if he touches me.

  “Why can’t we just tell her?” he asks again. “I mean, what? You like her more than me?”

  I give him a look.

  “Then … what? Because I’m just … I don’t know what you’re scared of, so I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “It’s not something to … fix,” I say. “It’s just …”

  He leans in a little and exhale when his lips touch my jaw. “It’s just what?” His voice is whisper soft. “You think we were a mistake?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “‘Cause I don’t think that. I would never think that. Everything about you and me …” He doesn’t finish because I turn my head a little and we are kissing. I disappear into it for a while, and am floating away, reveling in tasting him again. We find our rhythm easily, quickly, because we just click in that way. No awkwardness, no stumbles, just easy, smooth desire.

  When we kiss, just like when he enters me, I open up as though I am a lock and Ian is the key.

  But it’s different now. He just left Kate in the room I share with her. Her fucking hands were in his hair, like mine are now …

  I drag my mouth away from his and Ian braces himself, palms on the wall behind me. Now that seduction has failed as a tactic, he’s frustrated again.

  “Terri …”

  “I told you, I’m not doing the sneaking around thing,” I say.

  “Cool. Good. When’re we tellin’ her?”

  “Ian, I …”

  He pushes away from the wall and looks at me. He gives me one firm nod, his lips are pursed.

  “Okay,” he says, “fine.”

  He turns, walks across the room, opens the unlocked door, and he leaves me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’m not sure if my timing gets perfected, but the rest of the week goes off without a hitch. I don’t see Ian, and I don’t see Kate until I get home late and collapse into bed. By Tuesday of the following week, things seem to have leveled off. I’ve hit a stride and might literally never see Ian again if this keeps up. The thought of that gives me two feelings at once—a sense of accomplishment that always comes at having solved a conundrum, and a sense of loss that he has probably given up on me.

  At odd times, I think about him. Like when I really needed to pee in the middle of a lecture. And when I eschewed the burger and fries that I really wanted in the Hub and instead got the salad. And when the temperature hits an unseasonably hot ninety-three degrees making me think of Wayne and Patrick’s pool and of the first kiss that happened there.

  I think about the feeling of adventure and possibility and being outside myself as I danced, perspiring around a bonfire with people I didn’t know, and who didn’t know me. And of course, I think about Ian on top of me, inside me, holding me and kissing me at the nape of my neck in the middle of the night.

  I think about his godawful rendition of Nina Simone, how he doesn’t like hip hop and the way he tastes like chai latte. I even think wistfully about our fight, the first one where I learned that he can fight dirty when he really wants something, even if the person he’s fighting with is me. Even if what he wants, is me.

  Kate is sprawled on the bed when I get back to the room, and I take a second to confirm that she’s alone. She sees me look around and sits up.

  “Just me,” she says, “because, in today’s news, I just got dumped.”

  And my heart leaps. It leaps. I don’t know how I manage to control my face, but I do. I drop my backpack on the floor and look at her.

  “What happened?” I ask. I sit on the edge of my bed.

  This feigned sympathy feels almost more treacherous than the underlying betrayal.

  Kate shrugs. “He says he likes me a lot, but that we’re better as friends. Didn’t want to waste my time … blah, blah, blah.”

  I process that for a moment.

  I knew, from the way she announced being dumped that Ian hadn’t mentioned me. But I feel strangely let down. Like I wanted him to mention me. To declare me, or something. Acknowledge what happened between us and validate it.

  Kate would have been infuriated, and when I opened the door to our room, she might have thrown something at me, come charging across the room with a sharp object, smacked me across my face, yanked some braids out of my head. She would have called me nasty names, demanded that I find another room, or she would have found another room and moved out. She would have told people what a snake I was, and that I was
n’t to be trusted.

  And then it would be over.

  She would disappear into her friend group, and maybe we would occasionally avert our eyes upon running into each other. I would feel ashamed that I crossed a boundary, and I would regret how things with Ian started. But I wouldn’t regret Ian.

  I don’t regret him now. I just miss him.

  “If I was a different kind of person, I would have told him to spare me the stupid speech. It’s not like I was trying to marry the guy and have his babies. It was fun. But I just hate being … discarded, y’know?”

  “And you have a boyfriend back home anyway, right?” I try.

  Kate looks confused for a moment then her eyes brighten with understanding.

  “Oh. Liam. You saw the picture in my desk drawer, huh?” She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. We’ve been together forever and it’s one of those things, y’know. Like you never actually break up. But I’m pretty sure he’s doing his don’t-ask-don’t-tell thing …

  “And who knows what’ll happen in the future. Maybe I’ll marry Liam and have his babies. Or maybe he’ll dump me too. Whatever.” Kate laughs.

  I look at her for a long moment and almost want to dive across the room and punch her in the throat.

  To be sure, this doesn’t make what I did any better, but knowing that Ian was so … disposable to her, that even Liam sounds semi-disposal makes me feel ridiculous. I was assigning all this agony and angst to the decision about whether to hurt her feelings or choose Ian and here she is, with all the emotional depth of a Paris Hilton monologue.

  But I won’t punch Kate in the throat. Maybe I should figure out a way to do it to myself. Her feelings weren’t the only reason. My pride was the other. I’m just not that kind of girl. I’m the quiet, studious almost noble one. I don’t party hard, get drunk, get out of control. I hold it together. I do the right thing. Derek was my only slip-up. And it only happened because I didn’t know he was a TA.