No more empowered divas filling me up with fake who-runs-the-world-girl-power.
Living on my own, going to school on my own…. well, mostly on my own, standing up for myself, it was all going to take work. And I was prepared to work.
I ate a quick breakfast of cheap white bread and cheese and then faced my closet. Getting dressed suddenly felt like a crucial decision. I wasn’t super trendy, and I really wasn’t adventurous, but until yesterday I felt like I could put a decent outfit together.
Now everything seemed dowdy and plain.
Grrr, Fin Hunter, I was not a missionary!
I rifled through the clothes, going back and forth, from shirt to jeans and back, hoping something cute and flirty would just magically appear.
No such luck.
Eventually I settled on a pair of extra slim skinny jeans that I bought a year ago and hadn’t worn yet, a yellow silky cami and a navy blue cardigan. Granted, I looked like I belonged on my dad’s sailboat and not in a romantic comedy, but I hadn’t really been going for the fall-in-love look anyway. And thiswasdifferent than what I usually wore.
My entire neck was exposed. That was something new.
Oh no, Ididdress like a missionary!
I was twenty years old and had the wardrobe of a spinster.
I face palmed and then felt ridiculous because I was starting to have conversations with myself. I ran a hand through my somewhere between wavy and curly chestnut hair and growled audibly.
It didn’t matter what I wore, as long as I was happy with it. As long as I was happy with how I looked, nothing else mattered.
Fin Hunter spent twenty minutes with me and already managed to get inside my head. Gah! That was so frustrating.
Still, I resisted the urge to grab a scarf on the way out the door. I grabbed my backpack, shoved the correct books into it and made my way down the three flights of stairs and across the street to the University of La Crosse’s campus.
UW-LA sprawled out before me- a series of tall red, brick buildings nestled into spring green grass and budding trees. The landscape was surprisingly flat considering the town itself laid beneath tall, rocky cliffs. The bluffs rose up from the banks of the Mississippi river and tumbled high and rough for miles. In the winter they would ice over with thick, human-sized icicles. Now in the spring, they were taking their time melting since the weather wasn’t quite considered warm yet. They dripped from the bottoms of the cliffs in huge streams of water, leaving the side of the interstate perpetually soggy and slick.
Not that I ever walked along the side of the interstate, but I was kind of captivated by them whenever I drove by.
The early March wind whipped at my face, and I glanced back at my moderately priced apartment building with longing. Abruptly I forgot every reason for leaving my scarf at home and exactly who I was trying to impress.
Which was no one. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone.
I shivered against the wind and pulled my sweater tight around my waist. This day was not starting off well.
I ducked my head, my hair getting tangled and messy the longer I stood here doing nothing. So I marched forward, crossed the street and entered campus.
The hustle and bustle of morning classes buzzed around me, students moving from building to building, talking, laughing, doing whatever it was that students do in the cold in between space of winter changing to spring. There was some ultimate Frisbee- I mean, this was a college campus after all- happening on a square of muddy, barely green grass, but the players were still in scarves and gloves, their noses red from the biting wind.
I watched them in a kind of disgusted awe and pulled my sweater even tighter around me. And then I saw him across the courtyard. Fin Hunter was surrounded by four of his friends, tall, equally built seniors, equally intimidating men, while they lingered near a bench. The guys around him were actively checking out the female population while he laughed and joked in the middle of it all. I didn’t think he saw me, not from way over here, but I picked up my pace anyway.
No need to run into him before I absolutely had to.
Funny how he was only a myth before last night, rumors attached to a name I heard every once in a while. Now that there was a body and face attached to the urban legends I supposed I was going to have to start seeing him everywhere I went.
Annoying.
I tumbled through the student union doorway, anxious to get out of the cold and away from any remnant of the notorious Fin Hunter. A shudder slithered over my shoulders down to my wrists, and I wondered for the hundredth time in the last eight hours, what I had gotten myself into?
“Hey, you’re late!”
“Sorry, B,” I smiled apologetically at my best friend. “I’m in a war with my wardrobe.”
“Looks like you won,” her overly large mouth twisted into a grin and I felt some pride. Britte was artistically trendy and never approved of my clothing choices. Her and Fin could probably start a club. “You look hot!”
