Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (62 page)

  
“It’s
not just me who needs to go somewhere else,” Ashley said. She reached out and
tweaked a loose strand of hair hanging down from my ponytail. “If you don’t get
out of this room and get some oxygen, your brain is going to suffocate.”

  
“Brains
can’t suffocate,” I told her. “At least not like this.” I looked down at my
Introduction to Psychology textbook and frowned. There had been a chapter about
structures in the brain only a couple of weeks before; had I really forgotten
what I’d learned already?

  
“You
know what I mean, and I’m serious,” Ashley said. She put her hands over the
textbook in my lap, keeping me from being able to read it. “Didn’t Dr. Fletcher
get around to telling you that staring at a book for three hours isn’t going to
actually make you learn anything?” Ashley had taken AP Psychology in her junior
year of high school; she had started with almost a full year’s worth of credits
at West Central College.

  
“We
haven’t covered learning yet,” I said. I sighed. “Maybe they should cover that
first so that all of us idiots in the class can keep up.” Ashley laughed.

  
“You’re
not an idiot,” she told me firmly. “This is just not your wheelhouse.” She
grabbed the book and closed it, throwing it onto the coffee table. “Now come
on. Res Life is doing a game night at the Student Union and that is exactly the
kind of thing you need to refresh your tired brains.”

  
“Right,”
I said, laughing and shaking my head. “Because if I can’t wrap my mind around
the stages of childhood development, not even looking at it at all is going to
totally help me.”

  
“Actually,”
Ashley said, sitting up and beginning to look excited, “it might. You’ve read
over the material probably five or six times, right?” I nodded, frowning.
        
“I’m going to give you some spoilers
for the learning and memory chapter. The best thing to do sometimes is to read
through something a few times and then put it down, distract yourself with
something else, sleep on it and then get back on it.”

  
“How
does that work?” I frowned more deeply. Ashley shrugged.

  
“Your
brain never really stops working,” she explained. “So when you’re doing other
stuff, it’s filing away the readings and the classroom discussion and the
lecture, and when you dream, it creates the actual memories. So by going to
Game Night with me, you will actually be making it easier for you to remember
the stuff in the textbook.” I stared at her for a moment before shaking my
head.

  
“That
doesn’t sound right,” I said, taking a deep breath and sighing. I had been
working hard ever since the semester started, but I seemed to barely be able to
keep up with any of my classes, no matter how hard I tried to get ahead. I
rubbed at my eyes; it felt like I had sandpaper on the insides of my eyelids
after staring at the book for so long.

  
“It’s
totally right, and anyway, how are you supposed to learn something if you don’t
even understand it? Let’s go to game night, and then tomorrow morning, if you
still aren’t getting the material, I’ll go over it with you between classes.”

  
“I
guess that could work,” I said, pressing my lips together. Part of me felt
guilty at even the idea of knocking off on my homework before I’d finished it.
All of my classes cost so much money and the thought that I might not even do
well in them—or that I might have to re-take them after all the money I’d spent
and all the work I’d put in already—filled me with dread.

  
“You
definitely need to get out of this room,” Ashley told me, nodding firmly.
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you don’t give yourself at least a
little time to relax and unwind every now and then.” I laughed, scrubbing at my
face again and then standing.

  
“Okay,
okay,” I said, stretching against the muscles that had started to go stiff in
my neck and back. “I’ll go to the stupid game night with you. But if it’s super
boring then you agree to come back whenever I feel like it, right? Or at least
let me go.”

  
“If
it’s super boring and lame, then we’ll both come back and find something better
to do,” Ashley agreed. I went into my side of the dorm and looked at myself in
the mirror; my hair was a mess, but I didn’t think that anyone would care that
much. I smoothed it a little bit, took the ponytail elastic out and then put it
back in a little tighter. I decided I wasn’t even going to bother with putting
any makeup on. I would just go the way I was.
I should probably put a bra on, at least,
I thought, glancing down
at the sight of myself in my
 
t-shirt; it
was obvious I wasn’t wearing one. I slipped my
 
t-shirt off and found a bra in my drawer, and then in a matter of a
couple of minutes I was as fully dressed as I thought I needed to be.

  
“How
are the rest of your classes going?”

  
I
shrugged off Ashley’s question as I gathered up my keys and purse. I checked to
make sure that I had my ID card, since I’d need it both to get into the Student
Union and to get back into the dorms.

  
“I
still don’t have a clue what I’m going to major in,” I told her. My ID was
right where I had left it: in a pocket sewed into the lining. One of my friends
from high school had made the purse for me from a bunch of old neckties she’d
found at thrift stores, and I had never found a single bag that I liked better.
I slung the purse over my shoulder and exhaled, looking up at Ashley.

  
“I
still say you should go into International Affairs like me,” Ashley said,
gathering up her own stuff and moving toward the door.

  
“Right—I
can’t even manage to get through regular Freshman classes and I’m supposed to
go into the major where you have to take all kinds of sociology and economics
and statistics,” I said sarcastically, shaking my head. “No thank you.”

  
“I
think you’d be really good at it,” Ashley said. “It’s really intuitive, once
you start getting into it.”

  
“You
said that about Math for Liberal Arts, too, and it took me halfway through the
first class to realize that Professor Blue was talking about real numbers.”
Ashley snorted.

  
“It’s
more intuitive than that,” she insisted. “I mean it’s just understanding how
people interact—how countries interact with each other. It’s really cool—and it
has the best study abroad chances, after Anthropology.”

  
We
stepped out of our room and started down the hall toward the elevators. I hated
taking the elevators if I didn’t have to. We were on one end of the floor, and
the stairs were in between the elevators and us, so it took longer to go that
way. The elevators for the ancient dorm building creaked and groaned every time
I’d ever been on them, and I’d heard horror stories about people getting stuck
between floors when the elevator broke down, especially on weekends when the
maintenance crew wasn’t on-campus and they had to wait for more than an hour
for someone to come and get it running again. But Ashley had bad knees, so
whenever we went somewhere together I ended up taking the elevator down with
her.

  
“If
I can’t keep a 3.0 GPA, I wouldn’t qualify for any study abroad chances
anyway,” I pointed out. It wasn’t even midterms and was already fairly certain
that I would be struggling the rest of the semester to make a C average.

  
“Well,
you’re going to have to choose something to major in by the end of the year,”
Ashley said. “Are you doing really well in any of your classes?” I shrugged as
the elevator chimed, letting us know it was about to open. Fortunately no one
else was on it, so we stepped on and pressed the button for the first floor.

  
“I’m
doing all right in my English Literature survey class,” I said, thinking about
it for a moment. I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to get the first
paper for that class done the right way, but Dr. Bell had said that she would
make herself available as much as she possibly could the week before the papers
were due, and that if we were worried about it, we should schedule a meeting to
discuss our paper topics.

  
“Literature
isn’t a bad idea,” Ashley said. “I mean if you like it, at least you can
eventually become a teacher.” I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure that I had the
patience to be a good teacher; and if I couldn’t do that I didn’t think there
were a lot of options open to me for a career once I graduated.

  
I
held my breath as the elevator moved down through the floors of the dorm
building, and luckily it didn’t get stuck. Ashley and I made our way over to
the Student Union, walking across campus and talking about some of our
professors.

  
The
farther away from the dorms I got, the more relaxed I felt, and by the time
we’d arrived at the building that held the Student Union—along with the
administration and a few of the upper level classes—I had put all the stress of
trying to teach myself about childhood brain development behind me.

  
The
Student Union was packed with people, all spread out in different corners. I
looked around and saw that one cluster of people were playing games like
Connect Four, rummy, and even poker, while another group was playing board
games, and a third cluster of people on the floor were laughing their way
through Twister. Off to one side of the room, far enough away to not be
disturbed, I spotted a big sign proclaiming that Bingo games for prizes would
start in ten minutes. “That’s what we’re doing,” I told Ashley, pointing at it.
“Bingo.”

  
“Okay,”
she said. “But if it turns out to be super lame…”

  
“Then
we’ll play Twister and go home,” I said with a shrug.

  
I
pulled her in the direction of the Bingo tables, looking around to see if I
spotted anyone I knew from our building or from my classes. Everyone in the
area seemed to be people I didn’t know—some of them upperclassmen, some of them
just from different buildings—but I was more than happy to sit down at the
table and show my ID to get my first five Bingo cards.

  
Ashley
and I compared cards, trying to come up with a strategy to make the most of our
chances; out of the corner of my eye I spotted a really cute guy I’d never seen
on campus before. He was tall—probably at least a foot taller than me—and
skinny, with messy brown hair in floppy curls around his face and bright eyes.
He was wearing a Frank Turner
 
t-shirt
and a pair of khakis, and I blushed when he glanced in my direction. Then
someone up at the calling station began rattling the Ping-Pong balls, and I put
all of my attention on the game.

Chapter
Two

  
I
didn’t want to go to Game Night at the Student Union, but I’d lost a bet with
one of my friends over lunch. “Ty, it’s going to be great,” Alex told me as we
walked across campus to get there; he’d been bothering me for the past hour to
get off of my computer and go with him.

  
“A
bunch of college kids playing stupid games,” I said, rolling my eyes at the
idea of it. Most of the events that Residential Life put on were exactly the
kind that journalists wrote articles about where they talked about “the dumbing-down
of America” or how college student’s couldn’t handle real life: “Stress Buster
Night” with kittens and puppies from the local shelter, or Disney movie nights
where they had fifty kinds of cookies and cakes and never any alcohol—because
it was open to everyone, and they didn’t want to seem like they were
encouraging underage students to drink.

  
“There
are prizes,” Alex pointed out. “Besides, there’s bound to be some cute girls
there to chat up.” I laughed at that. Alex was hopeless when it came to girls;
no matter how many he tried to chat up, he always seemed to make friends with
them instead of getting anyone to go out with him.

  
He
wasn’t one of those assholes who bitched about being “put in the Friend Zone,”
but the thought of him endlessly chatting women up at a game night event, only
to end up making plans to go in a group with a bunch of girls to some gallery
opening, was too much.

  
“Maybe
you’ll finally find a girl you want to actually ask out to dinner,” I said,
nudging Alex.

  
“Maybe
you’ll find a girl who’s worth doing something other than studying with,” Alex
countered, smirking at me. “Seriously dude, your life has gotten so sad this
year.”

  
“I’m
getting ready to graduate,” I pointed out. “I need to be serious. I need to
pass that exam in the spring.”

  
“The
exam is months away,” Alex said, as we got closer to the Student Union
building. “You don’t have to be ready to pass it tomorrow or anything like
that.”

  
“Fine,
fine, fine,” I said, throwing my hands up. “I’m coming with you to this. I will
be social and meet people.”

  
“Good,
because I’m starting to pity you,” Alex said, opening the door to the building.
We walked through to the Student Union and I looked around; Alex was right that
there were some cute girls at the different tables, but the games were every
bit as stupid as I’d thought they’d be: Twister, with people giggling and
tumbling all over each other, Connect Four and board games, a poker table.

  
“You
know, our odds of winning anything at any of these games are pretty low,” I pointed
out to Alex.

  
“Don’t
start on it,” Alex said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “I don’t want
to hear it, man.”

  
“Well
look at the Connect Four game,” I told him, pointing at that table. “Assuming
you take second turn, you’re just about guaranteed to lose, unless you’re
playing against a total idiot.”

  
“Ty,”
Alex said, groaning but smiling at the same time. “Is there anything you’re
capable of doing without analyzing the math behind it?”

  
“Math
is what I do,” I said, laughing at him. “You didn’t have a problem with my math
skills when I helped you with Fantasy Football last year.”

  
“Just
grab a drink, pick a game, and let’s get started. Don’t get your math all over
my good time, dude.” I looked around the room again and spotted the
refreshments table off to one side. I wandered over and grabbed a soda and some
chips, trying to decide which of the games would be the least annoying to be a
part of. I was definitely not interested in Twister. I thought about playing
poker for a few rounds—especially since one of the tables was Black Jack, and I
knew I could rack up the chips in it, even if the chips didn’t mean anything.

  
As
I was looking around, I caught sight of a girl moving over to the Bingo table,
dragging her friend in her wake. She was short—probably about a foot shorter
than me, with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, away from her face.
She was curvy—even in a
 
t-shirt and
jeans, I could make out the hourglass shape of her—with big, dark eyes that
flashed in the fluorescent light of the Student Union. I watched her sit down
and get her Bingo cards, chatting excitedly with her friend, and almost
immediately I made up my mind about what game I wanted to play.

  
“Alex,”
I said, walking up to where my friend stood, watching a game of checkers in
progress. “Let’s play Bingo, man.”

  
“What?”
Alex looked over at the Bingo table. “You pick probably the lamest game in the
entire room to play?” I shrugged.

  
“Hey,
it has prizes,” I pointed out. I wasn’t about to tell Alex that I wanted to
play so I had an excuse to watch the cute girl—she looked like a freshman—for a
little while. “And anyway, with enough cards you have pretty good odds of
covering the board and getting a win.” Alex rolled his eyes at my mathematical
reasoning, but he gave into the inevitable.

  
We
walked over to the Bingo section and took seats; I picked a spot where I could
watch the girl I’d seen before, but where I wouldn’t look like I was just
staring at her the whole time. We got our game cards and blotters and Alex
grabbed some more snacks for us, joking that I was clearly trying to live up to
becoming an old man accountant. “Next thing you know, I’ll come in after dinner
to find you watching
Wheel of Fortune
or something,” he said, shaking his head.

  
“It’s
not a bad game,” I pointed out. “It’s mostly skill. Not like something like
Deal or No Deal
.”

  
“Hey—you
said the other day that if you went on that show, you’d clean up,” Alex said.

  
“And
I would—but only because I know how to play it right. I’m sure as fuck never
going to watch it again.” I shook my head.
 
The game started up and I divided my attention between actually playing,
talking to Alex, and watching the girl who’d brought me to the Bingo tables in
the first place. She was way more excited about the game than I was, though she
and her friend still talked and laughed like everyone else playing the game.
The first round ended, and I considered getting up to leave, maybe to go to
another one of the tables; but the girl was too interesting, too cute for me to
want to walk away from and forget about.

  
I
heard her friend call her “Nic” more than once as round two of the game
started. I filed that way in my mind and decided that sometime in the night, I
would find a way to introduce myself—maybe just see if I could “run into” her
somewhere along the way. I wondered where her dorm was, which building she was
in, and why I’d never seen her before. She looked like a freshman, which
explained it a little bit—but I’d met a lot of the freshmen either in classes
or at the different mixers the school hosted.

  
I
watched her play almost more than I watched my own cards; fortunately Alex got
so involved in the game that he didn’t even notice I wasn’t really paying
attention, or he would have immediately gone over to talk to the two girls I
kept looking at. I smiled to myself as the girl I was interested in started to
get more and more excited with every number that got called.

  
“Oh
my god, I have almost-Bingo on three different cards,” she told her friend,
just loud enough for me to hear from where I was sitting. I saw that in spite
of how distracted I was, I was in almost the same shape—I was one number away
from a bingo on two of my cards, with another card two numbers away from
winning.
If you get a bingo, don’t say
anything,
I thought; I didn’t want to ruin her fun by snatching away her
win at the last moment. I watched the two girls get even more excited as the
last few numbers of the round were called, both of them checking and
re-checking their cards, groaning whenever it was a number that didn’t line up
with their existing ones.

  
Finally,
the person calling numbers called out “B-32!” and the girl almost jumped up out
of her seat, dancing in place. “Bingo! Bingo—Bingo—I got Bingo!” I covered my
face so she wouldn’t see me laughing if she happened to look my way; I didn’t
want her to think I was laughing at her.

  
She
was absolutely adorable, dancing in place like a little girl as one of the RAs
came over to verify that she had actually won. I sipped by Coke as the RA
called out the numbers on the girl’s card, checking them against the master
list.

  
The
girl let out an excited almost-squeal when the RAs running the game confirmed
that she won; I looked over to see that the prize she’d gotten was actually
pretty decent for a Res Life event: it was a basket with a few gift cards to
the campus coffee shop, a book of coupons to the pizza place across the street,
and a voucher for two free orders of ice cream at the parlor ten minutes away
from campus.

  
I
played one or two more rounds, winning a prize of my own—which I agreed to
split with Alex, since he’d been the one to force me to come to the stupid
event—and then I saw the girl and her friend standing up, gathering their
things to walk away from the table. They were still chatting excitedly about
“Nic’s” win, giggling between the two of them.

  
At
first I thought I’d missed my chance—that they were going to leave the Student
Union and I wouldn’t have an opportunity to talk to the girl at all—but they
began to wander around the game tables.

  
“I
think I’m about done,” I told Alex. “Why don’t you see if you can’t scam some
more snacks out of them and then we can go?”

  
“You
don’t want to see if you can beat the odds and win twice?”

  
“Nah.
I’ve had enough fun for the night,” I said, glancing quickly to make sure that
the girl was still wandering around. “I’m going to say hello to some folks and
then goodbye and then it’s back to studying.”

  
Alex
shrugged and stood, giving up his cards to one of the other students coming to
try their luck at the game. I got up as well and started to move around the
room, lingering at each of the tables, working my way over to where the girl
and her friend had paused.

  
My
heart beat faster in my chest as I got closer and closer to her, and I tried to
decide whether to just introduce myself straight off, or to be sneakier. At the
last minute, I decided to go for something a little sneakier. I continued
walking as I got closer to the girl and her friend and then turned just a
little bit right before when I would have collided with them, just barely
brushing against the girl. “Oh—sorry,” I said when she turned to see who was
behind her. “I got distracted.” I smiled down at her and saw her blush
slightly, answering my smile with a grin of her own.

  
“It’s
okay,” she said, shrugging off the collision. “No harm, no foul.” I looked down
to see the prize in her hands.

  
“Oh
that’s right, you were the one who won a few rounds ago. At the Bingo table,
right?” The blush on her face deepened a little bit and I saw the doubt in her
eyes.

  
“Yes,”
she said hesitantly.

  
“It
looked really exciting. I actually ended up winning two rounds later.” I showed
her my half of the prize that I’d split with Alex. “I had to split mine with my
friend, since he was the one to convince me to come out tonight.”

  
“I
should have made you split with me,” the girl’s friend said, shaking her head
with mock disgust. I laughed.

  
“What’s
your name? I’m Ty—Tyler,” I told the girl.

  
“Nicole,”
she replied, smiling again.

  
“I
haven’t seen you around before,” I said. “I’d remember if I had.” I saw
Nicole’s friend grinning and saw her nudge Nicole.

  
“I
spend a lot of time studying,” Nicole said, blushing again. “And I’m a
freshman, so…”

  
“Getting
used to everything here?” Nicole nodded. “Which building are you in?” Nicole
glanced at her friend quickly; the other girl shrugged.

  
“I’m
in the Marchman building,” Nicole told me. I grinned down at her.

  
“I’m
right next door,” I said. “I’m over in Hill. Were you and your friend…”

  
“Ashley,”
the other girl said.

  
“Were
you and Ashley planning on heading back soon? I could walk with you.” I glanced
over at the snack table; Alex was busy talking to someone, his quest forgotten.

  
“I
could head back,” Nicole said. She looked up at me for a moment, and then
glanced at her friend. “What do you think, Ash? Should we let him walk us back
to the dorms?”