Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (178 page)

Chapter
Five

  
I
parked in the student parking lot on the last day of winter break, my stomach in
knots even though my parents had told me at least five times that whatever my
grades were, they knew I was working hard, and if I needed to retake anything
to get a higher grade, we’d work that out when the time came. I hadn’t exactly
admitted just how much doubt I had about my grades; I had just told them that I
was nervous.

  
“Nicki-baby,”
Mom had said, cuddling with me on the couch while we watched
It’s a Wonderful Life
, “your dad and I
both know college is tough. Sometimes you have to retake classes—it’s normal.”
I didn’t think Ty had ever had to retake a single class.

  
I
had at least managed to see Ty a couple of times during break; two days before
Christmas, we’d met to exchange presents—I’d made him some DIY shave cream and
face lotion, along with a leather bracelet I’d braided myself, and my mom had
knitted him a scarf that I gave him.

  
He
had gotten me a necklace and at first I’d felt terrible about how much more he
had to have spent, but he’d sent me a picture of his wrist with the bracelet on
it, and his face after he used the products I’d made for him—clean-shaven
without a single dab of blood on it—and I felt a little better. I’d sent him a
picture of me wearing the necklace and nothing else, and he’d begged me to find
a way to sneak over to his parents’ house while they were out at a party.

  
Classes
for spring semester were supposed to start in three days; I’d registered during
break, picking two more Literature classes, another History class—world history
instead of American history—the second parts of my required freshman classes,
and one called Art in East Asia, just because it had seemed interesting, and it
would—according to my advisor—fulfill an art credit requirement.

  
The
day before classes started, the previous semester’s grades would appear in the
system, and I was as nervous about that as I’d ever been about anything. Ty’s
quickie idea had at least made me feel less nervous about my Psych exam, but I
had no idea how well I had done on it—or on any of the others.

  
When
his mother had gotten a round of champagne at the dinner when I’d met Ty’s
parents, I had hesitated to celebrate my “successful semester,” mostly because
I didn’t know if I could actually call it successful. I didn’t even know how
many of my classes I might have managed to pass. But I’d drunk the champagne
anyway, not wanting to admit to Ty’s parents that I wasn’t sure I’d even manage
to finish the year in good standing.

  
Once
I had my bags unpacked, I headed to the dining hall; Ashley had told me that
she was headed that way when I arrived on campus. I could only hope that
she—and maybe Ty—were still there. I made sure that I had my ID, my phone and
my keys, and half-ran down the stairs to get to the lobby of the building. I
smiled as I walked across campus, in spite of how nervous I felt, the anxiety
bubbling up inside of me at the thought of my possible grades.

  
I
peeked into the dining hall and spotted Ashley sitting with some of our other
friends—Magda, Elise, and Julie—but no sign of Ty.
Catch up with him later,
I told myself. I wasn’t all that hungry,
since I’d eaten just before I’d left the house to come back to campus, but I
figured an afternoon snack wouldn’t hurt. I grabbed an apple, and a packet of
sliced cheese and crackers, and a cup of coffee and headed out into the dining
area.

  
“Hey!
Nik! Move over, Elise.” I smiled at my friends and brought my snacks to the
table where they were sitting.

  
“How
was everyone’s break?” I opened the packet of cheese and crackers and started
eating, looking around at each of my friends.

  
“I
went to like, five holiday parties,” Magda said, shaking her head with a grin.
“It was kind of insane.”

  
“I
mostly just slept,” Julie said with a shrug. “And ate all the freaking food in
the world. My mom’s taking cooking classes—some Asian-fusion thing—and oh man.”

  
“What
about you, Nicki?” Ashley raised an eyebrow, grinning at me. “I know you and Ty
were supposed to meet up during break at least once.” I blushed and lifted the
necklace Ty had given me free of my shirt collar.

  
“Some
Christmas present!” The other four girls examined the pendant on it one by one.
“What did you get him?”

  
“I
made some stuff—shaving lotion, moisturizer, a bracelet. Mom made him a scarf.”
I giggled and rolled my eyes. “But he liked it a lot, so I guess there’s that.”

  
“Didn’t
you mention something about meeting his parents right before break?” I nodded.

  
“We
went to dinner with them the night before break started,” I said. “They seem
pretty nice.” Julie grinned.

  
“I’m
sure they liked you better than the last one,” Julie said.

  
“What
do you mean?” I frowned in confusion, thinking of the girl that I’d seen
grinding up against Ty when we’d gone out together weeks before. I had almost
completely put her out of my mind. I could still—vaguely—remember Ty saying
that she was an ex, that she had been kind of a mess. But I couldn’t think of
anything else that we’d said about it, except that I hadn’t really felt
completely satisfied by the explanation.

  
“His
last ex, Kelsey,” Julie said. She shrugged. “Word has it she was a complete
train wreck, but he stayed with her for three years. He gave her all kinds of
gifts, took her out all the time, spoiled her. They only just broke up last
year at the end of the year—I think it was even at the formal. His parents must
be glad that you at least have something more going on for you than drinking
and partying.”

  
I
forced myself to smile, even as the words hit me. Ty had been with that girl
for
three years
? It didn’t make any
sense. If Kelsey had been such a hot mess, why would he have stayed with her?

  
And
then the other side of that issue popped into my head. He’d been with her for
three years, and they’d only broken up months ago—less than a year, anyway.
What if I was just a rebound? He was going to be graduating in a few months, going
back to his hometown. How could I have been so stupid?

  
I
managed to finish eating my food mostly because I knew the girls would notice
if I suddenly lost my appetite, and somehow I also kept up my end of the
conversation, even though my mind was spinning. Ty was sweet, and he was
kind—and he had given me the best sex I’d had in my life, not that I had much
to compare it to—but it was clear to me that he probably wasn’t thinking about
me as a long-term girlfriend. I kept my mouth shut about it, but I was full of
doubts, questions spinning around in my head. I didn’t know what I could—what I
should—do about it.

Chapter
Six

  
About
a week after classes started for spring semester, I sat in my room, waiting to
hear back from Nicole about going out to dinner together. I’d barely had time
to see her once classes started up, and with the weekend coming I wanted to
make up for it. I’d planned a nice dinner off campus, and a little bit of
dancing, and then we’d spend the night at a hotel. Dad had given me a gift
certificate from one of his clients during break, saying that since he and mom
had the house to themselves, they didn’t need to go away for privacy.

  
My
phone buzzed, and I grinned to myself, thinking of how surprised Nicole would
be by the date. I just knew that she would love it. I unlocked my screen and
opened up my message app; just as I thought, the message was from Nicole. I
opened it and started to read. It was longer than I would have expected for a
message sent to confirm she was free that night. As I started to read it,
really read it though, it became clear to me why.

  
Hey, Ty. I’ve been giving it a lot of
thought, and I feel like…considering how much I struggled last semester, and
how much harder this semester is going to be, we should probably just take a
break. For a little bit. Back off of going out and hanging out and stuff like
that. I hate that I have to say this when you’re asking me to go out with you
tonight.
The words hit my stomach like a lead pipe.

  
I
wrote her back quickly.
Is something
wrong? You seemed okay the other day when we hung out. Whatever’s going on, we
can get through it together.
I closed my eyes and hit send, thinking of all
of the things I had put together for us for that night. I could probably
postpone or cancel them—but the thought of losing Nicole altogether was worse
even than the feeling of disappointment at losing our dinner reservation, or
not getting the value of the hotel certificate. It was a much bigger thing. My
phone vibrated in my hand.

  
It’s nothing wrong. I just feel like I need
to focus a lot more on studying and trying to get ahead. I didn’t do that great
last semester, and if I want to keep my GPA up, I need to really keep my nose
to the grindstone.

  
I
half-smiled, understanding but still absolutely baffled as to why Nicole would
pick that moment to back off of our relationship. Hadn’t I done everything I
could to support her—just as she’d done everything she could to support me?
Hadn’t I helped her out the previous semester, giving her tips and tricks and
study time? How could I possibly be a liability to her?

  
If you feel like you need to focus on
schoolwork, we can do that without having to take a break,
I wrote back.
I really feel like we can
probably balance it. I mean I’ve been at this a long time. I can still help you
with making the grades. We can work this out, Nicki-babe.

  
My
eyes stung and I took a deep breath. It had to just be stress making her make
this decision; I would give her some space, and she would realize she was going
overboard in a couple of weeks, and then we could start talking about what was
really going on in our relationship.

  
I know you can balance it, but right now I
just can’t. I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, but I need to figure out
how to do well on my own. Please, please, please understand where I’m coming
from, Ty.

  
I
closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. I did understand where she was coming
from; I couldn’t even pretend like it was something terrible she was trying to
do. She wanted some space to figure out how to navigate her classes, and I knew
that she’d been stressing out at the end of last semester. I cared about her—I
owed it to her to give her what she wanted, didn’t I? And if she did figure out
that she was overcorrecting, I needed to leave things on good terms so she
could feel comfortable coming back to me.

  
If that’s what you feel like you need to do
right now,
I replied, typing as fast as my fingers could go on
the little keyboard,
then I’m not going
to try and make you feel bad for putting classes first. But just remember my
door is open, okay? If you want to talk about anything. Let’s at least be
friends while we give each other space.

  
I
felt like I’d gone out on a limb, right where it started to go thin, far away
from the trunk, and handed two hundred-pound weights.

  
I’ll try and keep you in the loop,
Nicole wrote back.
I do love you a lot,
Ty. You know that, right?
I smiled to myself sadly, trying to remember if
either of us had actually worked up the gumption to tell the other one in
person, to their face, that we loved them.

  
At
least, I thought, it was good to know that she wasn’t trying to ditch me
because she didn’t have feelings for me, or because she found someone else. I
wrote to her that I loved her back, and that I would be around if she changed
her mind or wanted to talk. It was all that I could do.

  
I
told myself over and over again that it was just stress making her do it, and
that as soon as she got into the rhythm of the semester, she would come back to
me, shaking her head at her own silliness, and we would be back together.

  
I
felt for her in a way that I’d never felt about Kelsey or any of the girls I’d
dated in high school. I really and truly wanted to be with Nicole for—if not
the rest of my life, then for as long as I could plan into the future. I wanted
to know that when I graduated, I would still have her there.

  
I
wanted to be able to keep seeing her even once I became a CPA, and to start
working on a future for us together. I wanted to get a little apartment in my
hometown, and have Nicole there with me during summer and winter break, at
least for a little while. I wanted to have her in my bed with me every night.

  
All
of those thoughts—all of the things I really wanted—I didn’t even really
realize in a solid way until Nicole had sent me the texts asking for space. I
had known that I cared about her, that when she was stressed out I ached for
her, but I hadn’t really realized just how much I wanted her in my life, and
how much I cared about her, until she cut things off between us.

  
I
told myself before I went to bed that night, and every day that followed, that
it was a temporary thing. A person couldn’t be that much in love with another
person without there being something more to it than just random feelings.
Nicole would catch on, she would feel the loss of me just as I felt the lack of
her in my life, and then everything would be fine again.

  
But
days stretched into a week, and I noticed that somehow I wasn’t running into
her on campus the way that I used to. Somehow, no matter which of my normal
paths I took to class, or when I ended up visiting the dining hall, I never
encountered Nicole on the way. I never saw her anywhere; it was as if she had
completely and totally disappeared, or withdrew from the school. I was tempted
to even ask her friend Ashley—who had made very good friends with my roommate
Alex—if she knew anything about it, if Nicole had gotten sick or had some kind
of family emergency.

  
But
I realized before I even asked around that it was a way simpler explanation
than that: Nicole was avoiding me. I hated that she felt like she had to do
that. It made me actually cry over her for the first time—and it was the first
time I had cried over any woman since I’d forced myself to break things off
with Kelsey, long before the actual breakup itself happened.

  
I
did ask Ashley in passing if Nicole was okay; and she answered that Nicole was
spending almost all of her time either in classes, in the dorms, or haunting
the library. At least I had the relief of knowing that she’d told me the
truth—that it wasn’t a cover story for something else. I had even started to
suspect that she
had
found someone
else, and was just too ashamed to admit it; but I believed Ashley.

  
As
much as it hurt me, I knew that if I let myself dwell on the way things had
fallen apart between Nicole and I, I was just going to end up screwing up my
last semester—and why would I work so hard for three and a half years just to
have to retake my last few classes? I decided to follow Nicole’s example and
just bury myself in work, although I had to avoid going to the library too
often—I would either see her, or it would look like I was trying to stalk her.

  
Instead,
I spent a lot of time in the computer lab running through simulations on the
CPA exam prep software there, and doing research that would help me to
cross-train later on. If things weren’t going to work out magically between
Nicole and me, I would just have to keep looking forward, and keep doing what
I’d come to college to do. As heartbroken as I was, I had to just focus on
becoming a CPA, passing my exams and getting the job my dad was trying to hold
onto for me at the firm he worked at. It was what I had left, and I couldn’t let
even heartbreak screw that up for me.