Read Again for Free Online Page B

very little correspondence
going forward, I headed to the student center to grab some lunch before my next
class.
    I heard the words she’d said
to me when I told her about my decision to enter the Peace Corps.
    Your biological clock does
not stop ticking on the other side of the world.
    Considering my life was in the
crapper, I guess at least she hoped for a grandchild she could be proud of.
    It was amazing the lengths I
was willing to go not to tell my mother she’d been right about me. Admit that what
she said when I flunked out of college the first time had finally come true.
    You will regret your
failure.
    If standing in the student
center of Hudson University, reaching for a cheese sandwich and trying my
hardest to be any other lost freshman wasn’t enough proof.
    I stepped away from the
sandwich station. I needed a glass of…water. Yeah, water . Between Carter
and Dr. Parker, I had my proverbial hands full and I hadn’t even made it
through day one yet.
    I guess I’d forgotten how
much sexual energy existed on a college campus. It bubbled under everything
like a shaken beer waiting to blow. Maybe I should have made “no guys” rule
number twelve because then at least I wouldn’t have to feel so bad about
breaking it.
    It seemed fairly inevitable I
was going to.
    Mentally it was already
pinned to the mat. I shook the image of Professor Parker emerging from a hot
tub and Carter walking down our dorm hallway freshly showered on GIF repeat
from my head. I needed to stay strong.
    I glanced around the table
area for somewhere quiet to sit. Somewhere I wouldn’t have another man or guy
who was, in every way that counted, a man fighting to get into my GIF loop. Yet
another person I had to keep myself from trying not to picture with his shirt
off.
    Who was I kidding—with his
pants off.
    Luckily, Dawn was sitting at
a table alone sketching into a black leather notebook. I could have sat alone
too, but sitting with Dawn was safer. Her Halloween wardrobe and bitchy
attitude would scare even the most eager boy, man, or man-boy away.
    It wasn’t like I was
super-hot shit or anything, but every encounter in college had the tinge of an
invitation to it. At least with Dawn around I wouldn’t have to keep avoiding
RSVP-ing.
    I headed to her table and
pulled out a chair.
    “Don’t you have somewhere
better to sit?” she asked, focused on her sketch—a very accurately rendered
rotting skull, complete with moldy brains and goo dripping eye sockets.
    Blond roots shone out from
her tar-black hair in the overhead lights. She colored her hair . She was
playing a role just like me. Not that her custom fit vampire fangs didn’t
indicate a flair toward the dramatic.
    “Is there anyone better
who’s going to sit with you?” I replied. I was starting to understand dealing
with Dawn was about meeting her on her level. I could handle that. I mean I had
eleven years on her. I had more sarcasm and angst in my pinky nail than she had
in her whole black heart.
    “I don’t want anyone to sit
with me.”
    “Then you should have drawn
a KEEP OUT sign.” I dove into the chair across from her amid the hum of
students talking around me. “Instead of your self-portrait,” I added.
    “It’s supposed to be you,”
she retorted.
    We sat in silence, her
sketching, the sound like the scratch of a rodent, me chewing on my sandwich, a
moist insistent chomp.
    “How was your first day?” I
asked, regretting it immediately. This was not on her level. I should have kept
my mouth shut and eaten my sandwich, or maybe hurled more insults at her so she
could toss similar ones back, but what the hell? We were roommates. We had
three more months together. We could spend them in contemptuous silence or we
could try and make the best of it.
    “It’s not my first day,” she
said, her mouth puckered.
    “Right,” I said, pulling the
crust off my sandwich. She had already been here for a semester.
    She went back to her sketch.
She didn’t bother