Chapter Six

A few nights later I’m standing in line at the snack bar debating whether to get a taco or a quesadilla when someone says my name. I turn around and see Brian, the guy who carried my groceries up the hill.

He smiles like he’s thrilled to see me. “Hey! How’s it going?”

“Good. Just making a life-or-death decision about what I’ll have for dinner tonight.”

“Are you eating down here?”

“I was planning to eat in my room.”

His smile fades, and I realize I’m an idiot. He gave me the easiest opening, and I fumbled it.

“Actually, tacos are way too messy to eat in my room,” I say, recovering. “I think I’ll eat here.”

The smile comes back.

We get a table toward the back of the room, where it’s slightly more private. If we’d planned to meet, I would have been crazy nervous and worried about what we’d talk about, but this is perfect. It’s not like I imagined it would be when a guy was finally into me. I’m not nervous or super self-conscious. It’s comfortable and easy, and I forget to worry about what he thinks of me, even though my hair is in braids that make me look like I’m in second grade, and I’m not wearing any makeup.

He asks me what I’m studying and seems genuinely interested when I tell him I’m majoring in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.

“Let me guess. You’re premed.”

“Yeah. The deadline for med school applications is coming up, so I’m up to my neck in my essay these days.”

“That’s pretty hard-core. I definitely couldn’t handle that on top of my classes right now. I’ve got my hands full with my senior project.”

He goes on to tell me about the project, which is based on a research trip to Bangladesh to treat wastewater, and he kind of geeks out on me and goes into a lot of detail. It’s not that I’m uninterested, but he’s a lousy storyteller. He keeps going off on tangents and losing track of what he was saying, and he explains every little detail instead of giving me the big picture.

Which is why I yawn before I can catch myself.

He stops mid-sentence. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you to death.”

“You didn’t! I’m really tired. I was up all night writing a paper,” I lie.

He looks uncertain, so I give him a big smile and ask him what he’s planning to do after graduation. That keeps us going for a while longer, but the conversation never completely recovers. I’ve ruined the vibe, and I don’t know how to fix it. Acting extra enthusiastic is not cutting it.

“I guess I’d better go finish my paper,” I finally say, gathering my trash.

He leaps to his feet. “Right. I’d better get back, too.”

His dorm is right across the way, so I walk with him to the door that leads onto the quad and hold my breath, waiting to see if he asks for my number.

“I’ll see you,” he says, giving me a faint smile.

“Yeah, see you.”

I watch him go and then head back to my room, defeated. Did I sink the entire enterprise by yawning? Is his ego that fragile, or is he just not that into me? Maybe I misread him, and he was only being friendly.

I open my med school essay on my computer, but all that I can think about is that yawn. It gets longer and louder each time I remember it, my mouth a huge black gaping void where relationships go to die.

A knock on the door interrupts my mortifying reverie. If it’s someone asking me to join a card game, I won’t even pretend I don’t want to.

I open the door to find Casey smiling like he’s just won the lottery. For a second all I can do is stare, my mouth not quite closed. Seeing him at my door is sort of like seeing a rainbow appear where moments ago there was only gray sky. It’s not exactly magical, but it might as well be.

“You’ll never guess what’s on,” he says.

“Um…”

“Vitameatavegamin.”

“No way.” I follow him down the hall and into the TV room.

The TV’s already on and sure enough, Lucy is trying to convince Ricky to cast her in a commercial. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but this episode is a classic.

I sit down next to Casey on the couch without saying a word, my eyes glued to the screen.

“You kind of have to ignore how Ricky patronizes her,” Casey says during the commercial.

“Yeah, and the way he demands breakfast.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Casey asks, all wide-eyed innocence. “I make every woman I’m with cook me breakfast.”

“As if you’d let a woman stay the whole night.”

His eyes widen in surprise, and he actually looks kind of hurt. “Ouch.”

“Sorry, that was a bit harsh. I’m sure you don’t kick girls out of your bed.”

“Of course not,” he says, suddenly entranced by the vacuum commercial.

“You probably let them know you have to get up early for class and they leave on their own.”

He slides me a look out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t reply. The show comes on again, and now Lucy is doing take after take and eating spoonful after spoonful of the Vitameatavegamin, getting slowly plastered. It’s pure comedy genius, and Casey and I both laugh so hard the couch shakes.

“I wonder if she realized what a trailblazer she was,” I say when it’s over.

“That’s what you want to be, isn’t it?”

“Of course not. I’d be a horrible comedian.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m talking about in medicine.”

“I guess that would be cool. I mean, doesn’t everyone?”

He laughs. “No, plenty of people don’t want that kind of pressure. Or maybe they fantasize about being the first at something, but they’d never actually attempt it.”

“But you think I would.”

“It’s pretty obvious.”

“You barely know me!”

“Hey, it’s a compliment.” He switches to a baseball game and settles back into the cushions. “This is what I was looking for when I saw that episode.”

“I have to work on my essay anyway.” But instead of moving I pull my feet up until they’re tucked under me. “Who’s playing?”

“Oakland and Seattle.”

“So you’re an Oakland fan?”

“Yup.”

We watch a Seattle player take two strikes and then hit a fly ball to center field.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What about me?”

“Do you want to be a trailblazer?”

Just like that, he closes up. I can almost see the walls go up, like on the first day when I asked him what he was doing after graduation.

“My dad already did that.”

“But if you could, what would it be for?”

He doesn’t say anything for so long, I assume he’s going to ignore the question. When he does answer, he still won’t look at me. “Buildings I designed.” His jaw is clenched, his back rigid, like it’s costing him something to even discuss this.

The A’s are at bat so I stop talking. Besides, I’m clearly making him uncomfortable, which wasn’t at all what I was trying to do.

“I should probably get back to work,” I say, testing the waters. I don’t actually move.

“Nah, stay here and relax.”

“I’m not bothering you?”

“Only when you probe my deepest, darkest desires. Otherwise, it’s all good.”

One of the A’s gets a base hit, and Casey’s attention is pulled back to the TV. Then the next batter hits into a double play and it goes to commercial. I have his attention again, and I decide to pick his brain on a different subject.

“What would you do if a girl yawned in front of you? Would you be offended and avoid her for all time?”

“That depends. Am I making sweet love to her when she does it?”

I can’t hold back my laugh. “No. You’re sitting at a table eating tacos. But maybe you’re going on a little too long about your senior project, and she’s been studying for hours.”

He laughs, but that soft look I saw the night of the party is back, and instead of teasing me, he sounds kind. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Most guys aren’t scared off that easily. He probably realized he has to up his game.”

“I suppose. I guess I won’t know until I see him again. If I see him again.”

“All you did was yawn. Trust me, that’s nothing. Everyone has embarrassing things happen to them. It goes with the territory.”

“What was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?”

“Seriously? I’m not revealing something humiliating just to make you feel better.”

“Please?”

He sighs like the weight of the world is upon him and turns so he’s fully facing me. The game comes back on, but he’s not paying attention now. “Fine, but only if you swear never to mention it again, not to me or to anyone.”

I wiggle in my seat with anticipation. “I swear.”

“Okay. Well, I had a girlfriend my whole first year here, but we broke up right before leaving campus for the summer.”

“Meaning you dumped her.”

He sighs. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

“My apologies. Please continue.”

“So I fly back to Berkeley at the end of the year, and about a week later I plan to meet a friend after work at this bar—”

“You had a fake ID?”

“Yes. Anyway, I notice this totally hot woman on the other side of the bar. She looks like she’s in her early thirties, but I’m kind of into the idea of an older woman, especially after being with only Tori for a year.”

I can’t help myself. “So you walk over to her like the young stud that you are…”

“And I say hi and offer to buy her another glass of wine. She smiles and says why not, her friend’s running late. We introduce ourselves and start talking, and I mention I’m on break from college. She looks surprised and says she thought I was older. I was rocking a beard then, and I was wearing a button-down shirt and tie.”

“So what happened?”

“I say something about working with my dad and she gets this funny look on her face and asks me my name again. This time I tell her my last name, too, and she looks at me like I’m a serial killer. She’s like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’ She asks me if I know who she is, and I say no, totally confused. And she says, ‘You slept with my daughter, you horny little shit.’”

My hands fly to my mouth, and my whole body cringes. “No way.”

“As soon as she says that, I realize she’s Amanda Gray’s mother. She’s younger than the rest of our mothers because she had Amanda her senior year of high school. So I say, ‘You look terrific, Caroline.’ Then I throw down twenty dollars for the wine and get the hell out of there.”

I stare at him, speechless.

He turns back to the TV and raises the volume. “Now can I watch the game, please?”

I give his arm a squeeze. “Thank you for that.”

…

Reassured by our little talk, I heed Casey’s advice and stop worrying about whether I offended Brian. I’m rewarded for my blasé attitude by a text from him the very next day.

Got your number from the directory. Hope you don’t mind. Want to grab a bite sometime this week?

I do a little dance alone in my room as I contemplate how to reply. This is the first time anyone’s asked me out, and it’s a lot to process. I want to celebrate, but I also need someone to talk me through this. I text Audrey and a second later my phone rings.

“What did you write back?” she asks without preamble.

“Nothing yet. I wasn’t sure how long I should wait.”

“You don’t need to wait when you get a text. That’s really more for phone calls.”

“Huh. I thought it was more complicated than that.”

“It’ll get complicated soon enough, grasshopper. No need to rush it.”

I’m composing my text back to him when I realize I’m in trouble. If we like each other, eventually there’ll be kissing, and maybe more. Probably more. What if it’s terrible again? What if he can tell I don’t know what I’m doing?

Things just got more complicated.

I sit on my bed and try to think clearly. If I don’t go out with any guys, I’ll never experience anything, but the thought of trying fills me with dread. I can’t leave myself open to the kind of humiliation I experienced with Eric. I don’t think Brian would be cruel, but he’d definitely wonder what was wrong with me.

I could avoid the entire problem by not dating anyone, but then I’ll graduate and be out in the real world, and it’ll be even worse. And I’m tired of feeling this way. I want to be normal.

Not to mention the fact that sometimes I feel like I might actually die if no one touches me.

I try to slow my brain down and puzzle out the problem, like I do in the lab. But only one solution presents itself. The only way to get good at something is to practice. Which means I need someone to practice on.

And only one person comes to mind.

I text Brian to say I’m free for lunch tomorrow. That’s safe and will buy me time to work out the details of my insane plan.