Markham provides brief summaries of the assignments, but I barely process them, too preoccupied with my own panic. When he plugs in his computer and drags a slideshow up on the giant screen, I follow the lead of the people in front of me and pull my laptop out to take notes. Not that it really matters. The moment I leave this room, I’m vowing to never return.
“Hey,” whispers a voice to my right, and my senses go immediately on high alert.
Pleasetell me he’s talking to someone else.
“Hey,” he tries again, this time a bit louder. The eyes are back, burning like a brand on the side of my neck, and my palmsbegin to sweat. I rub them against my thighs and turn my head toward the disrupter. “Hey, I’m Wes.”
My eyes meet his for the briefest of moments, before dropping down to his mouth, which is turned up in a friendly-sort-of grin. Charming. My heart jumps in my throat, my pulse pounding out of control, because this is the moment where I’m supposed to sayhi, I’m Ivy,like a normal fucking human being.But, of course, my tongue twists up and my teeth clank together and my name gets stuck behind my larynx, popping like a trapped air bubble before it can make it anywhere near my lips, let alone past them, and I fuck everything up.
I have no idea if Wes notices, though, because I’m too busy staring at his hands, the long, blunt fingers fiddling with a leather-bound notebook on his desk. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pencil, would you?” he asks. “I will be forever in your debt.”
I frown at the request.
He wants a…pencil? Who uses pencils anymore?
As if reading my mind, he adds, “A pen would work, too. Or a highlighter, even. I’m not picky. Just desperate.” He tilts his head at the door, his smile turning a little bit embarrassed. “I left in a rush, as I’m sure you noticed.”
I hesitate for a moment, and then I wordlessly twist away from him and reach for my backpack, which is slung over the back of my chair. The quicker I give him what he needs, the sooner he’ll leave me be.
Unzipping the front pocket, I rifle through old receipts and mints and tampons, until my hand closes around an old mechanical pencil. I hastily pull it out and pass it across the space between our desks, careful not to accidentally graze his fingertips as he takes my offering. I watch with a mixture of horror and fascination as his big hand practically swallows it whole.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and our eyes meet for a split second before my gaze drops down to his grateful smile. I narrow in on a set of straight, white teeth. “I guess I owe you my firstborn in exchange for your kindness. Congratulations. Or…maybe I should offer you condolences instead? Kind of a shit deal to be saddled with a kid you don’t want, but hey, I don’t make the rules.”
His grin stretches wider, and I quickly face forward, my cheeks growing hot at the prolonged attention from someone so…him.As a student athlete, he’s clearly used to getting what he wants. Probably even more so with a flash of those dimples.
Warning bells ring in my head because he’s everything I don’t need in my life.
Slumping a little in my seat, I refocus on Markham’s lecture. I don’t look at Wes for the remainder of the class, and though I feel his eyes on me occasionally, he doesn’t try to talk to me again. I concentrate on taking detailed notes on my computer, ignoring the sporadicclick click clickof the mechanical pencil to my right. I try to keep my dread in check as we touch on topics such as audience appeal, ethics, and overcoming our public speaking reservations.
Reservations. Right. More like overwhelming, nightmarish terror.
By the time the hour-and-a-half is up, I’m no less panicked about this course (maybe more so, actually), and I book it out of the room before I’m forced into any more unwanted exchanges with my too-friendly neighbor.
He can keep the damn pencil for all I care.
More students clog the halls and sidewalks now that the sun’s up, but I keep my head down and my feet moving. I make it back to my apartment-style dorm within minutes.
Since Public Speaking is my only Thursday class, I spend the rest of my day lying in bed with my laptop open on my stomach,toggling between my Art History assignment and the add/drop page on the school website.
It would be so easy to drop. Just one little click.
Sure. Of course it would. But all the other courses I need for my major are full, which brings me back to my initial dilemma. Take a required class…or take a class that’s not and incur my parents’ wrath for wasting their money.
My finger shifts on the track pad, hovering over the button to remove Public Speaking once and for all. I’m about to say fuck itand press when voices in the kitchen draw my attention. My hand pulls back. I move the computer away. I drop down off the bed and press my ear to the door, eavesdropping on my dormmates instead of working up the nerve to join them.
“Shots already?” I hear Kinsley ask. Of the three girls I live with, she’s my least favorite. The girl is cold and judgmental, with a resting bitch face to end all others, which wouldn’t be a huge deal if she didn’t live up to the name. “It’s barely seven. And it’s Thursday.”
“Which means it’s almost Friday and we nearly survived the first week back,” Ava replies, and I picture her filling two shot glasses with the rotgut tequila they drink like fish. “We should have started drinking at four, in my opinion.”
“Isshehere?” Kinsley asks, and my chest tightens.
I know that thesheKinsley’s referring to isme.She hasn’t liked me from the first moment she met me, even before I turned down her invitations to go out first semester.
I just wasn’t comfortable. I’m still not, but they took my refusal to party and my disinterest in rushing a sorority and my aversion to guys altogether as personal affronts, even though my decisions had nothing to do with them.
IwishI could drink and let loose. I wish I could be alone with the opposite sex without an anxiety spike. I wish I had the confidence to put myself out there like they do, but evenI’ll admit that I’m nowhere near an ideal freshman roommate. I don’t get drunk. I don’t hang out. I don’t hook up. I don’t…connect. Not the way I used to. Not the way I did before?—
No.
