I
tightened my legs together in my seat and giggled nervously. “Cool. Um . . .
you can go take your shower now, you know. I don’t want to be the reason you
catch a cold.”
His brows
narrowed. “You gonna be okay here?”
I took a
sip of my tea and forced a slight smile. “I’m not going to off myself if that’s
what you’re asking. Really, I’m okay.”
“I’m
asking about your comfort.” His expression became serious and a quick glance at
his crotch revealed the bulge had disappeared as mysteriously as it came. “We
both just had a near-death experience. It’s normal to be shaken up. Hell, even
I’m still a bit affected. It might help if we kept each other company, that’s
all.”
His words
sent a shiver down my spine, as if he had caressed me with his hands. He was
too concerned about me, too caring. I pictured everything that could happen.
The whirlwind romance, the heartbreak that would come afterwards. Guys as hot
and flirty as him were always dangerous, and in my current state, getting my
heart broken would shatter me. What I needed was a normal and boring return to
campus, and Tattoos and Muscles was clearly going to be none of those things.
I put on a
more convincing smile. “I’m more than comfortable. Thanks for saving me. Thanks
for everything.”
His
expression relaxed and he nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“Go take
your shower, we’ll have plenty of time to chat afterwards,” I lied. “Can I
watch TV?”
“Sure, the
remote is on the coffee table.” He nodded slowly to himself, before seeming to
make up his mind. Finally he got up and headed to the bathroom.
He got up
and it took an extraordinary amount of effort on my part not to check out his
butt as he strolled to the bathroom. I was sure it was divine anyway. After
being so close to him, I felt like I needed another shower—a cold one.
Shaking my
head from a stupor, I realized I definitely needed to get out of here.
After
hearing him close the door, I turned on the TV, straining my ears to listen to
what he was doing in the bathroom. The TV was on ESPN. I flipped a few channels
until I reached one of those juicy daytime talk shows, waiting to hear him turn
on the shower. As soon I heard the showerhead running, I stood up and placed
the mug on his coffee table.
Then I
went over to the kitchen counter and gathered my wet clothes. I tried to be
silent, but when I slipped my feet into my wet boots, they squelched loudly on
the carpet. Fortunately, the woman on TV screaming at her boyfriend about how
he cheated on her with her own mother was loud enough to drown out the noise.
I was
about to rush out the door when I realized that I’d be stealing his clothes.
Frantically thinking of some quick way to repay him, I spotted his kitchen
trash can and decided to take his trash out as a way of thanking him. It wasn’t
a fair payback—he’d saved my life after all—but at least it was better than nothing.
To appease my guilty conscience, I ended up taking his recyclables as well.
“I
couldn’t help myself. Your mom’s a MILF,” the TV blared.
It was the
last thing I heard before I opened the front door and stepped outside.
I planned
on looking for the dumpster around his apartment but when I reached the bottom
of the stairs, I heard his door open. Panicking that he’d catch me, I slung the
garbage bags over my shoulder and sprinted in the direction of my dorm. Running
across campus in an oversized shirt and jeans, wet, dirty clothes in hand, and
two black trash bags jangling over my shoulder, I probably looked like a
deranged homeless person. A homeless person who saw imaginary cats.
After a fifteen minute dash
that had my heart pumping, I arrived back at my dorm. Large, golden letters
across the entrance read “Floyd Hall”. I threw the garbage bags into the
dumpster and took the four flights of stairs up to my floor. I opened the door
to my suite and promptly went into my room.
Reaching
into the pocket of my still dripping jacket, I pulled out Dad’s letter. The ink
was starting to run a little and the room was turning blurry.
Stupid.
Stupid. Stupid. I should have been more careful. I gently placed the letter on
the window ledge next to the radiator. Hopefully it would dry off and still be
mostly intact.
I rummaged
in my closet for a while before changing into my pajamas. Tears started falling
down my face as I curled up in my bed. Why was I crying now when I couldn’t
before? I grabbed my pillow and held it against me. I thought I couldn’t feel
anything anymore, but I was wrong. I knew it was stupid, but I had felt a lot
of strong conflicting emotions from just being around Tattoos and Muscles—or
Tim or whatever his actual name was.
Worst
thing though, it was probably the most normal thing I had felt in a long time.
SLOBBERING DOG
Plagued by dreams and
daydreams of Tim and his naked torso, I was still recovering from the entire
episode several days later as I was sitting in class. It was an 8:30 AM session
of Psychology 102. I hated morning classes, especially classes in a lecture
hall with a hundred-plus students. We were in the very back row. The only
reason I had signed up for the course was to be in the same class as my
suitemate Daniela.
We had met
freshman year before everything happened. She was the only person who had
consistently stayed in touch with me after I took time off. Now that I was
back, she was my main connection to the school and my best friend.
She also
had more than a passing interest in psychology, unlike me. I thought it would
be a good class to take to get some social science credits, but the only thing
I was taking this semester that I was passionate about was my drawing class.
This class was an exercise in staying awake.
Totally
sleep-deprived after staying up too late again watching
Grey’s Anatomy
,
I started doodling. It was something I did a lot. My therapist back in
Indiana—Dr. Alice Schwartz—had recommended that I find a creative outlet to
express myself, and for once that was advice I had no problem taking. I loved
to draw. Zoned out, I dragged my pen across the top of my page, waving it up
and down to make a little river.
It was
still hard to believe the whole episode with the lake had happened. The look on
the guy’s face after he saved me was burned into my memory. He had asked me if
I had tried to kill myself. Even though he didn’t know my family history, the
question stung. After everything I’d been through, I still would never take the
cowardly way out. There were people who cared about me.
Thinking
about putting myself in that much danger turned my stomach into a pit. I looked
to my left and watched Daniela soaking in the lecture. What if I hadn’t been
saved out there? She’d be devastated. Thank god T&M had come and saved me.
He was
causing his own problems, though. I’d spent most of my time since that fateful
morning thinking about his strong hands and reserved personality. When I first
saw him, I thought he was just your average incredibly hot college student, but
the more I thought about him, the more curious I became. Who was this guy who
had tattoos and muscles like a gang member but kept his apartment as clean as a
soldier’s?
It would
still be best if I didn’t run into him again, though. I’d come back to school
just trying to get through the semester with as even a keel as possible. The
last thing I needed was a bad boy who thought he had something up on me trying
to get into my pants. Especially if I started letting him. My emotional state
was fragile enough as it was.
Returning
my attention to the important work of doodling on my page of what should have
been notes, I began to sketch a big warhammer modeled after a tattoo I had seen
on Tim’s arm just before he went into the shower. It reminded me of the hammer
Thor used in
The Avengers
. Even if I didn’t want to see Tim again, it
was a cool tattoo. Not something I would get myself, but cool nonetheless.
“I’ll just
pick a name from this list,” I heard the professor say from the front of the
class. I perked up. “Ms. Burnham, please.”
I looked
around, horrified. What was the question he’d asked? I had been totally zoned
out. Squinting, I saw that the Powerpoint slide had something to do with a guy
named Ivan Pavlov.
“The
question is: what is Pavlov most famous for, Ms. Burnham.” He was balding with
gray hair at the sides and silver wire-framed glasses, and he sounded foreign.
German, maybe. What he didn’t sound was amused.
I looked
to my left at Daniela. Her eyes flicked down to my notes, apparently saw I hadn’t
been even kind of paying attention, then turned to the front of the class. “The
Dog Slobber Principle,” she called.
Several
people in the class laughed. The professor tried to keep a straight face for a
moment, but he smiled too. “I was looking for ‘conditioned reflex,’ but dog
salivation was an important part of the experiment Pavlov used to discover it.
Thank you, Ms. Burnham.”
I smiled
at Daniela. That was the second time I’d been saved in the space of a few days.
I really needed to start paying closer attention in class. It was my first
semester back, and getting off to a bad start wouldn’t help me in my goal of
making it through the whole semester.
The rest
of class went by without incident. I did my best to actually take some notes,
leaving my sketch of Thor’s hammer unfinished, but I would need to copy
Daniela’s for all the stuff I missed. Having a class with my best friend was
already beginning to pay off.
After
class had ended and everyone was packing up, Daniela poked me in the ribs.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you have something on your
mind.”
I shook my
head. “I’m fine. Just have to get back into the swing of school is all.” I
finished packing up and slung my bag over my shoulder. “Thanks for saving me on
that question. How did you know the answer?”
She
laughed. “For one, I was paying attention. Two, Pavlov comes up in a lot of
books about psychology. He’s kind of one of the founders, I guess.”
“So that
was a pretty easy question?”
“If you
were paying attention, I guess. It doesn’t really matter. I doubt Professor
Muller is going to remember what Ms. Burnham looks like.”
“That’s
true. It’s a big class.”
“Yeah.
Want to hit up Starbucks and get some coffee? I need to kill an hour before
geology.”
I didn’t
have anything until the afternoon, but I didn’t feel like going back to the
dorm to sit and do nothing, so I agreed. We walked the ten minutes to the
Starbucks in the student union. Daniela got a mocha and I got a venti black
coffee. Caffeine was the only way I was really going to operate in the morning
for the foreseeable future.
The
Starbucks was crowded, but we found a small table with two chairs by a window
and took our seat. Daniela took a sip from her steaming drink and eyed me
carefully.
“So what
was that badass hammer you were drawing when Muller called on you?” she asked.
My face
grew hot. I hadn’t told her—or anyone else—about the incident with the lake. It
was too embarrassing, and I was afraid that people would think I had fallen in
on purpose no matter what I told them. A lot of people, Daniela included, knew
about my family tragedies. My mom’s murder had been major news. After such a
sensational story, my dad’s suicide made a juicy follow-up. The coverage of the
whole thing made me sick, as did thinking about people’s opinions on it.
I could
just imagine their thought process: maybe I had inherited the temperament to go
through with killing myself. If my dad could do it, why couldn’t I? I clenched
my jaw. If anything, the way my dad had passed made me certain I would never do
the same. I knew how it affected the people left behind.
“Whoa,
hey, I was just asking. There’s no need to get mad,” Daniela said.
I blinked
and snapped back into reality. “Sorry, what? I’m not mad.”
“You have
a nasty scowl on your face for a girl who’s not mad.”
I smiled.
“Sorry, it wasn’t you. The hammer’s something I saw on a tattoo recently,
that’s all.”
Her
eyebrows shot up. “Are you thinking about getting a tattoo?”
“No, I
just thought it looked cool.”
“Where did
you see it?”
“On this
guy a few days ago.”
She
squinted. “Where? What did he look like?”
My chest
tightened. Did she somehow know the guy who had rescued me from the lake. “Why?
Have you seen it before too?”
“It sounds
familiar. Where did you see him?”
“He was
out jogging,” I said. That was true, at least.
“It’s
January. He was out jogging and you saw his tattoo? Was it on his leg? His
face?”
Shit. I
was a terrible liar. “No, I was sitting inside and he came in. Here, actually.
He rolled his sleeves up and that’s when I saw it.”
She stared
at me for a second and said nothing. Did she realize I was lying? My guess was
she probably did. Daniela was very perceptive; it was part of the reason she
liked psychology so much. She’d taken several other more advanced psychology
classes that only required Psych 101 and was just now circling back to take
Psych 102.
She
shrugged. “Fair enough. Was he hot?”
“I guess.
I don’t know, I feel like me and guys is still kind of weird. Like I’m just
trying to get myself right, you know? I don’t need to complicate that by trying
to keep someone else happy too.”
“That
makes sense.” She hummed in contemplation. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this hammer
guy is ringing a bell but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Hoping to
change the subject, I asked, “Speaking of getting myself right, can I copy your
notes for class? I have like nothing from the first half.”
She
laughed. “I saw. Yeah, that’s no problem.”
“Who is
this Pavlov guy, anyway? You said he was important.”
“He is.
Basically, he did studies on how everyone has reflexes to certain things. The
first was a study on how people reacted to overwhelming stress or pain.
Everyone shuts down eventually. They go in shock, become numb and stop doing
things. The difference between people is when they shut down and how long it
takes them to get out of it.”
“Sounds
depressing.” And disturbingly familiar.
“Yeah,
kind of. Basically, more sensitive people shut down sooner and have a harder
time getting out of it. Anyway, he did that, but he also did this thing with
dogs where he would give them food at the same time as he rang a bell. He
measured how much they slobbered every time. Eventually, he would ring the bell
without any food present, and the dogs would slobber the same amount.”
“And
that’s called conditioning?”
She nodded.
“Exactly. See, this class will be no big deal for you!”
I
scrunched my nose. “I still want to copy your notes.”
“Of
course. By the way, what time is it?”
I looked
at my phone. “Ten-forty.”
“Ah, I
need to get to class. Listen, I know you don’t want to get too involved with
any guys, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, right? If I can find us
dates, do you want to come out Friday?”
“I don’t
know, Daniela, I might just stay in.”
“Come on,
it’s first week of classes. There will be free drinks and a little flirting.
Worst case, we ditch them and go back to the dorm to watch bad TV with a little
buzz on. At least we won’t feel lame for not going out.”
It
had
been a long time since I’d been out for a fun night. Living with my aunt and
uncle hadn’t really allowed that. Going out with Daniela would probably be a
good time, and she was right: worst case, we could come back home. If I stayed
in on the first Friday night of the semester, I would probably feel lame
because everyone else was out drinking.
“Okay, if
you can find us dates that aren’t total creeps, I’ll go.”
She
smiled. “Good! I’ll let you know. Anyway, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you later.”
After she
left, I stared into space for a few minutes. Maybe going out would be fun,
maybe not, but it would definitely help get me back into the swing of normal
college life. I still didn’t feel like going back to the dorm. It was too
quiet. Instead, I took out my notebook and continued working on my hammer
sketch, filling in more details than even the tattoo had.
It was
beginning to look pretty good.