by Nella Tyler
“I had it in my calendar, so it’s no virtue of mine,” he said. “How are you feeling about it?”
“Nervous, a little,” I said. I had decided that I was never going to tell anyone about the first practice test unless I absolutely had to. As far as I was concerned, it would be between me and the practice test company. “I mostly just want to know where I’m weak still, and what I can kind of relax about.”
“Makes sense,” Dad said, and I could picture him nodding. “In fact, it’s a great idea for you to do that before break—though I’m hoping if you don’t blow it out of the water that’s not going to make you go crazy trying to cram all break long.” I chuckled.
“Well, I can’t promise anything,” I told him. “If I get a really shit score I probably will lock myself up and make myself do flash cards and problems all hours of the day and night.” Dad laughed again.
“Don’t do that,” he told me after a moment. “If you get a low score, we’ll go over the areas you performed poorly in, and we’ll come up with a solid strategy to build you up.”
“Have you got any words of advice for me going into the practice test? I liked those articles and strategy guides you sent.” I sat down on the couch and grabbed one of my notebooks to take notes.
“Auditing tends to shake people up a lot more than they expect,” Dad said slowly. “Another thing to keep in mind is that the test itself is a marathon; don’t feel like you have to rush through everything as quickly as possible. Give yourself time to think through the questions.”
He paused for a moment and then added, “Diligence is more important than intelligence. You need to make sure you fully understand the question, and you completely get the answer right in your own mind before you commit to it.”
I wrote down what he said in shorthand, nodding my head even though I knew Dad couldn’t see me over the phone. “Anything else?” I grinned to myself.
“Get a good night’s sleep tonight,” he said, his voice serious. “Stop studying at least an hour before bedtime—preferably two hours before. If you don’t have it by then you’re not going to get it in those two hours. Stop two hours before bed and watch TV or just relax however you need to do.”
“Two hours?” I raised an eyebrow at that.
“Two hours,” Dad repeated, speaking firmly. “And no caffeine after eight tonight. Get a good breakfast in the morning, and if you can get some decent fish for dinner tonight have that. You want to be at the top of your game when you sit down to take the practice test—and that stands for the real exams, too. But go into this as prepared as possible, and you’ll get an honest score.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, setting my notebook aside. I felt a little bit better about the practice test—and about the real exam that would follow in a few months. “How have you been?”
“Great,” he replied. “Ready to have you home. What are you up to over there in school other than studying? You mentioned a girl a while back, I think.”
“Nicole,” I said, smiling. “Yeah, I’m still seeing her.”
“Tell me about her.” I considered.
“She’s great,” I told my dad. “She’s a smart girl, a freshman. Working hard to adjust to the harder workload here, but she’s keeping her head above water.” I grinned to myself again. “She and I have actually been studying together a lot lately—both of us getting ready for finals and all that.”
“Studying?” Dad’s voice was full of disbelief. “College kids are way different from what they were when I was in school.” I laughed out loud.
“Well we do that too,” I said, skirting the accusation. “But she’s really working hard to find her area of study, and to get the best grades she possibly can. We actually do study together, and she’s been really good about helping me stay focused.”
“She sounds like a good influence then,” Dad said.
“I think we’re both good influences on each other,” I told him.
“I’d love to meet her, if you think there’s really something there. She sounds about as different as a person could possibly be from Kelsey.”
“No argument there,” I said. I shook my head; Kelsey had continued to try and text me for days after I’d driven her home, until I’d finally had to block her on my phone. I couldn’t get her to understand that things just wouldn’t ever work between the two of us.
“I’m sure your Mom would love to meet her too, then,” Dad said. “Why don’t you see if she’d like to go out to dinner with us during break sometime, if she doesn’t live too far away.”
I was relieved. If Dad wanted to meet a girlfriend and he thought that Mom would want to meet her, she was already halfway to having their approval.
“I’ll see what she’s got going on during break,” I told him. “I don’t think she lives crazy far away from us. We were talking about getting together at some point anyway, so that would be a good reason for it.”
“If she’s willing and able,” Dad agreed. “I’m glad you’re getting some fun into your life; I was starting to get worried that you do nothing but study or go to class.”
“Alex makes sure I leave the dorms occasionally, and Nicole and I go out once or twice a week—dinner, or a movie, something like that,” I said. “So no, I’m not keeping my nose to the grindstone all the time.”
“A balanced life is a good life,” Dad said. “I’ll let you get back to prep work for the practice test tomorrow. Remember: a good night’s sleep, a good dinner, and a good breakfast.”
“I will keep those all in mind.” I told my dad goodbye and hung up, plugging my phone back in. I decided to take a quick study break—even though technically my chat with Dad had already been a break—and watch a little bit of the TV show I’d put on.
He was right about not letting myself get too stressed out about a low score; I couldn’t help but believe that just by having taken a practice test before, I was already a little more prepared. I would—I thought—almost certainly score better the second time, and that would give me a good idea of how to prepare during spring semester, so that I’d be 100% ready for the real test after I graduated.
I thought about Nicole; I could tell that she was even more stressed out about finals than I was about the exam. She wouldn’t admit it, but I had seen the panic in her big, dark eyes from time to time when she talked about the tests she had coming up, and her state of readiness for each of the tests.
I had told her over and over again that in the worst case scenario, even if she went on academic probation for a semester, she would be fine; I had a few friends in my major who had nearly flunked their freshman years, but who had come back sophomore year to retake a few classes, regroup, and get their GPA up; most of them had managed to stay on track to graduate in four years.
It was worse for Nicki because she was struggling to figure out which area she wanted to major in, and I knew that—she had admitted it to me while we were in bed together, after we’d finished having sex for the night, when she was at her most relaxed. She felt like she was years behind everyone we went to school with.
“I don’t even really know what I’m good at,” she’d told me the night before, cradled in my arms, curled up against my body. “I came in here without any real plan and now I feel like I’m not going to be able to put a plan together in time.”
“You’re fine,” I had told her, kissing all over her face slowly, letting my hands wander over her body. “You have plenty of time to figure it out, and you have lots of friends and people who think you’re awesome to help you. It’s going to be all right, Nicki-babe.”
The fact that she was so worried about her academic future—even if I hated the fact that it was causing her stress—was actually something that made me love Nicole even more. I hadn’t told her yet; I hadn’t said those three magic words, not really. But I knew it in my heart: I was in love with her. I loved her.
Things with Nicole were as different as they could possibly be from my relationship with Kelsey; I respected her de
termination to do well, I admired her, I felt like I was a better person when I was around her. I wanted her to know all of those things, and whenever I could, I tried to show them to her. I wanted Nicole to never—ever—doubt me.
As I turned back to my books, checking the time and telling myself that I would make a coffee run at six-thirty so that I could get that last caffeine rush in while still obeying Dad’s suggestion, I thought that maybe, if she wanted to meet my parents, that would be a good time to actually admit to her how much she meant to me, and how much I hoped we would find a way to still be together after I graduated.
See if there’s money in the budget for a piece of jewelry, I told myself. Maybe if Dad likes her enough he can loan you some cash to buy her a necklace or something. I grinned to myself and dove back into my test prep feeling more confident than I had in weeks.
Chapter Three
The dining hall was more crowded than I could ever remember seeing it in the early morning; but it was also, weirdly, quieter. I had agreed to meet with Ty for breakfast before my first final exam of the semester, and in spite of how groggy I felt from going to bed earlier than usual, I was glad to see him waiting for me at the entrance. “You make sleep-deprived look like a fashion choice,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on the lips as soon as I arrived. I laughed as quietly as I could.
“My brain feels weird. I don’t think I’ve gone to bed earlier than midnight in like, six months. Maybe a year.” In spite of going to bed early, I didn’t feel like I’d gotten very much sleep; I probably should have followed Ashley’s advice and tried going to bed a little bit earlier each night for a few nights leading up to my exams, and waking up earlier each morning.
I had very nearly decided to get out of bed at ten when I had wasted maybe thirty minutes waiting to fall asleep; but after that the Benadryl she’d given me as a sleep aid finally began to kick in.
From the looks on the faces in the dining hall line, most of the people who were off to exams that morning had taken the opposite tactic; more than a few of them were slurping down coffee, and some of them had the look in their eyes of people who were tweaking—I’d seen it a few times in high school.
They had probably taken at least one dose of Ritalin or Adderall the day before, or maybe even the night before, and they would go in, take their exam, and probably go straight to their rooms after and crash, only to repeat the process several times over the next few days.
One of the upperclassmen repeating American History had told me that her roommate planned to stay awake for 72 hours—to just keep her system going with Adderall and caffeine the whole time, knock all of her exams out, and then finally let herself crash at the end of it, sleep a few days and go home for break.
“I think I would have been better off going up to your dorm,” I told Ty as I scooped eggs and grits onto my plate. My stomach churned and twisted and lurched inside of my body; I had my Psych final first, as if I needed the worst possible exam to set the tone for everything else I was going to have to go through that week.
On the other hand, the rest of the tests can’t possibly be any worse than that one, I thought, trying for a little optimism. So really you should be glad you have to get this done first. Everything else will be a cakewalk after it.
“I don’t know about that,” Ty said, shooting me a wicked grin. “Do you really think we could have finished up by ten? I’m pretty sure if we’d really gotten going we’d still be having sex by three in the morning.” I blushed, grinning in spite of myself.
“If we’d started at, like, seven or something, I’d at least have gone to sleep by midnight. And slept really well,” I pointed out. “And so would you. You keep telling me you sleep best when we screw each other’s brains out and then fall asleep together.”
“That is true,” Ty said, nodding. “So the night before your next final, let me know when you want to come over.”
I finished up loading my plate with some whole-wheat toast and some fruit, and Ty and I went into the dining area to find somewhere to sit. It was eerie as hell, walking past everyone else; there was a kind of unspoken rule that if someone had a book in front of them, the seats on either side and across from them should remain empty.
For a nearly overcrowded dining room it was almost as quiet as the grave, and everyone was either getting in last-minute studying, or they were focused intently on their plates, barely talking to anyone around them.
Ty and I found a two-person table off to the side in the dining hall, and we sat down at it together, looking around us; we weren’t as likely to disturb anyone where we had chosen to sit, which made me feel a little more comfortable—even if I was still on the verge of a panic attack about the exam I was going to take in an hour.
I looked down at my plate for a moment and wondered if it had really been that smart to load it up so much; my stomach was already unsteady as it had ever been in my life—even worse than when I had ridden the most intense and thrilling rollercoaster that the State Fair boasted on a dare. But every test-taking guide I had ever looked at had said that a hearty breakfast with lots of carbs and protein was a great strategy for doing well on a test. Ty had gone a similar route with his own plate, and he was without a doubt one of the smartest people I knew, so I had to believe there was some kind of merit in the advice.
“How nervous are you?” Ty kept his voice low even though the closest table was a few yards away from us. I shrugged.
“I’m on the verge of a panic attack,” I admitted. “But at least after this first test is done, I have easier ones ahead of me.” Not all of them would be exactly easy—in fact, I didn’t think any of them would be like the tests I had taken in high school—but at least they wouldn’t be quite so torturous as the Psych one, except maybe for my Math class.
“It’s best to get your worst subject out of the way right off the bat,” Ty told me with a nod.
For a few moments we ate in silence, and I tried to convince my stomach that what I was feeding it really was a good idea. It slowly—slowly—began to calm down a little bit, and by the time I’d had a few bites of everything on my plate, I at least thought that I wasn’t going to throw it all up right there at the table. “I have a great idea,” Ty said, his voice cutting through my thoughts.
“Huh?” I looked up from my plate, confused.
“The best way to settle nerves before a test,” he said, grinning slowly. “Normally I’d say that it’s getting yourself off…but considering we’re both free for the next twenty minutes…”
“You want to have sex with me right before an exam?” I stared at him in shock, not quite sure of what I was feeling. “You—do we even have twenty minutes?” I checked my phone; I’d gotten up early for the exam, and Ty was right. If we left the dining hall right away, we’d have fifteen minutes to have sex before we both absolutely had to leave to be in our exam classrooms on time.
“Only if you want to,” Ty said, holding up his hands. “But I’m telling you, Nic—it’s great for the nerves.” I giggled, unable to help myself. In spite of how much Ty’s idea surprised me, I had to admit that once my shock started to wear off, I actually felt a little excited at the idea.
“Okay,” I said quickly. “Let’s do it.”
We gathered up our plates and cups on our trays, and hurried to the tray return at the opposite end of the dining hall. Ty’s hand slid along my back, coming to rest just above my ass, and he steered me out of the dining hall as I blushed and tried to act natural.
Ty’s building was closer to the dining hall than mine; without even saying anything, we both walked toward it, and my heart started beating faster and faster in my chest in a way that had nothing at all to do with nerves.
Ty swiped his card and opened the door for me, and we made for the stairs at the same time. I tingled all over, already starting to get turned on at the thought of a quickie with the guy I loved right before my exam; there was something so forbidden, so naughty about it, though I couldn’t really think of why.
In minutes we were stepping into Ty’s part of the dorm room, and as he closed the door behind us he pushed me up against the wall, his mouth descending on mine, his lips pressing against my lips. His hands started moving over my body in fast, devastating caresses as I began to kiss back, exploring his long, lean body with my own hands at the same time.
I squirmed against him, able to feel the hardening ridge of his erection pressing against my hip, and all I wanted was to get him naked, to feel him inside of me. Ty’s hands slipped up underneath my sweater, barely grazing my breasts through the fabric of my bra, teasing my nipples to firm little nubs. He broke away from my lips and began kissing along the column of my throat, nipping and nibbling playfully as I moaned.
I tugged his hoodie off, barely taking the time to unzip the zipper before I pulled it along the length of his body and along his arms. I pressed myself against his body, writhing, pushing my hips down against his, as I fumbled with the hem of his t-shirt. Ty broke away from my neck and pulled my sweater off, bringing my t-shirt underneath with it. He buried his face against the tops of my breasts, nuzzling against me, reaching around to my back to find the clasp of my bra. “Do me a favor and look at the alarm clock,” Ty murmured against my skin, his hands dropping down to the fly of my jeans.
I looked around the room until I finally spotted the digital alarm clock on Ty’s desk; it showed the time was nine-thirty. We had another fifteen minutes before we needed to leave the dorms to get across campus for our exams. “Fifteen minutes,” I told him, gasping and shivering as Ty slid one hand down the front of my jeans, underneath my panties.
I was shocked but somehow not surprised to discover that I was already soaking wet, my fluids already gathering along my slick folds. Ty found my clit with his fingertips in an instant, rubbing against the bead of nerves, and I cried out, grabbing at his shoulders, at his head.
Ty tugged my jeans and my panties down quickly, pulling them down to my knees. “This would have been so much easier if you had worn a skirt today,” Ty told me, his hand slipping between my legs again, his fingers sliding between my drenched labia.
