Getting to Third Date (2 page)

Oops. Apparently, that came out a tad too serious to be funny. I brushed my hair behind my ear and felt my cheeks flushing red. Tyler stared at me. “You have to fix this. You're
ruining
me.”

“You? Not the paper?” Which was a joke, of course.

The
Campus Times
was in no risk of ruin. In fact, it had been in constant circulation since 1906. How do I know such a thing? It was my misfortune to be drafted to search the microfiche archives to find fun or scandalous facts about the newspaper for its hundredth anniversary. (What can I say? He needed it quickly, and like I said, a girl can't help who turns her to semi-mindless mush.)

My jab hit home because Tyler turned white. But he regrouped quickly. “I meant the paper, of course, but I am the paper—I'm the editor.” I guess that was a good sign for his future ambitions—he could give anything a positive spin and polish.

Sookie broke the tension between us by laughing. “The seventy-fifth editor, to be precise. And the paper has survived seventy-four editors, some of them worse than you.” Lois Lane to the rescue.

Only not. Because Tyler said, without looking at me, “I thought we agreed to make this paper great? We were just starting to get taken seriously.” Read, the paper was getting some decent ad money from the beer companies and local liquor stores. “I think Katelyn may have found a way to destroy the paper and our good work…or at least the integrity and longevity of Mother Hubbard.”

Whoa. That was a bit harsh. We were just talking about a silly advice column—no one took it seriously, did they? Even the burning was probably what the TV news said—students blowing off steam for a little attention. Wasn't it? It was my turn to regroup. Fortunately, I'm as good (maybe better) at it than Tyler. “Well, that's what they fail to pay you the big bucks for. You're the editor. Sookie's right: You figure out how to take advantage of the controversy. Let her do an investigative piece. Leave me out of it. I stand by my advice.”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe we should run your face instead of Mother Hubbard's tomorrow. Maybe then you wouldn't have such an easy time telling people they're wasting their time.”

“What's so wrong with telling people to use common sense instead of wishful thinking? Facts are facts. The guy—or girl—who is borrowing notes is not Prince or Princess Charming. They just want to pass the class, not make a pass.”

Sookie sighed. “Spoken like an engineering major. What other kind of advice besides practical did you expect her to give, Tyler?”

“Good advice.” He frowned at Sookie and me.

As for me, I didn't like the way Sookie made “engineering” sound like a four-letter word. But before I could say anything, Tyler's rampage continued.

“How would you like everyone knowing you were the one giving the twisted conservative advice that didn't even work back in the fifties?”

I'd hate it. Fortunately, so would he. We both knew it was an empty threat, and I didn't give him the satisfaction of a direct answer. I held out my JumpDrive stiffly. “Can you just download my column so I can go home and go to bed?”

“Fine.” He plugged in the drive and downloaded my column. I held my breath while he handed me back my JumpDrive. I was almost out of the office before he read the column I'd just written. The one where I'd suggested that Miss Treated should swear off guys until the semester was over and she'd passed all her subjects.

His wolf howl stopped me cold. “You have to do the column over, Katelyn. I can't put this one out. We'll get bombed!”

I countered, almost hoping he'd fire me from the job I hadn't wanted in the first place. But not quite. “I'm right.
That's
what they don't like.”

“You're telling this girl that the guys she's going out with are just using her.”

“Aren't they?” I ticked off the reasons Miss Treated had sent in her letter. “One, they borrow her notes and don't return them. Two, they say they'll call and they never do until right before a test. Three, when she stalks them down, they run in the opposite direction to avoid her.”

He couldn't really argue. Miss Treated was really Miss Doormat. He shrugged and mumbled, “Well, girls do the same thing.”

Oops. I had stepped too hard on Tyler's weakness. Sophia. My roommate. His unfortunate crush. Not that he hid it well.

He was smitten with her, from her sassy black hair to her cute Italian accent. I knew about Tyler's crush because I knew all about how people who are dying to hide their crush find ways to be with the person without letting the secret slip. For example, Tyler usually collected my column directly from my room—when he knew Sophia would be around. I really hate talking to a guy who is sneaking glances at someone else.

I think we all knew (well, except for Tyler, maybe) he could “discuss” journalism with Sophia forever and it wasn't going to go further than that…. But somehow he thought she would eventually succumb to his editorial wiles. Yeah, right.

So while he was right, in principle, that many girls treated guys just as badly as guys treated girls, I thought it best to head off that conversation. “I don't. I let the guy know if it isn't working for me. I have zero game-playing tolerance.”

“That's right. You always turn down guys for a third date if they don't rate high by the second date.
So
nineteen-fifties.” He shook his head at me, as if I were a two-year-old who had just stuck my finger in a light socket. “I'm more real than that. I don't need a stupid rating system, I listen to what's in here.” He thumped his chest.

I was a little surprised he had remembered. I'd rambled about it one night when I'd had too much coffee and too many letters from students who seemed to cling to people whom I wouldn't have given one date, never mind a third.

Stupid rating system? For a guy who thought he was so different, Tyler certainly seemed to think like everyone else on campus. “Whatever. I don't know how I'll survive with my four-point GPA.”

Sookie laughed. “Give me a hot story over a hot guy—or an A—any day.”

“Whatever.” Tyler ran his hands through his hair. He looked like the Thinker with ADD. Apparently, having his hair stand on end helped his process. “Never mind. I'll rewrite it.”

“Whatever.” I pretended I didn't care. I didn't want to care. The column was stupid. The questions were stupid. But I was used to succeeding at what I did. At least at assignments and tasks. I never failed. Especially not in such a spectacularly public (if anonymous) fashion.

And I knew too, firsthand, that just because Tyler might hang around Sophia it didn't mean he'd ever speak to me again if I didn't come through for him with this column. I was only a good
friend,
after all. Love really sucks sometimes.

Tyler probably would have rewritten my column, complete with advice to keep the student body trapped in relationships that would only make them miserable, if not for one little thing. More precisely, my little black book (okay, it was pink), which fell out of my purse as I opened it to jam in the JumpDrive. The little pink book in question, the one that held my thoughts on all the guys I'd ever gone out with. Or had considered going out with in the future.

I didn't even have a second to scoop it safely back inside my purse before Tyler snatched it up. “Let me just see this little rating system of yours, then, if it's so great.”

“Hey. You won't understand it. It's in code. Give it back.”

He carried my book over to Sookie's desk, and the two of them bent over it, murmuring, “Numbers…Just like an engineer…Oooh, who's this?…Milk Dud Breath?” while I threw erasers at them (the office had a ton, left over from the precomputer era) and demanded they return my private property. I wasn't too worried that they'd crack my code. But still. The book contained nicknames, stats, bits of information, and columns to check whether or not the guy was…

Tyler caught one of the erasers and threw it back. It bounced off my desk and landed in the trash. “What does TDW mean?”

“Third-Date Worthy.” I could have (should have) refused to explain.

“Not just date worthy?” Sookie seemed nonplussed at the idea that I'd judge a man in the same way she rated the newsworthiness of the story leads she chased down in the police blotter every week.

Not for me, though. “If they're not even date worthy, I don't list them.”

“Then how do you remember who you've already ruled out?”

Just how many guys did she think I knew? Forget that, I don't want to know.

“I have a good memory.” I wasn't going to put my record of one date a week up against the record of someone like Sophia's of one date for breakfast, one for lunch, and one for dinner.

“This is the key to Katelyn—to Mother Hubbard.” Tyler held the book up like it was the Holy Grail, or a Pulitzer, which, after one beer too many and a brokenhearted night with Sophia's paying zippo attention to him, he'd confessed he coveted winning one day. He hadn't seemed to make the connection that scandal didn't usually win prizes. Except maybe Deep Throat and Watergate. But that was before celebrity sex videos hit the Internet and changed the scandal scales big-time.

He thumbed through the book. “What do the codes mean? RTG1-2.”

“Nothing.”

Sookie whistled low in her throat—approvingly, I think. “Wow. You've got the blog address, and the online dating profile?” She looked up and grinned at me. “I'm surprised you don't have the blood type.”

“That would come later,” I snapped. “Can I have that back, please?”

Tyler grabbed it. “Man, you have more research on guys than Uncle Sam.” His happiness was unsettling. And then a shadow crossed his face. “Anything on me?”

That was
all
I needed him to see. “No. Only guys I might date. Could you give it back, please? You two have work to do, and we don't want anyone to notice how long I've been in here, do we?”

For a moment Tyler held on to the book as if he wanted to go through it to make sure I was telling the truth. Not a good idea. I considered whether my six weeks of karate back in sixth grade would be enough to take him down. Maybe. If he was unconscious.

Fortunately, in typical clueless guy fashion, he only seemed relieved that I didn't consider him in the slightest bit date worthy.

He handed me the book. “This rating system of yours would make a great column.”

“No, thank you!”

“Why not?” He seemed surprised that I wouldn't immediately agree. “It works for you, right?”

“Of course.” Sure, if you want a catalog of losers, but I wasn't going to go there. Especially not with Tyler.

“Maybe if the readers know why you're so sure that giving up early is a good thing, they'll stop sending you trash mail, right?”

“Yes.” I wasn't sure I liked where this was going. After all, my rating system was for my eyes only. Top secret. Hush-hush. Not to mention highly embarrassing.

He got that ADD Thinker look again. “Let me get the paper to bed and then I'll figure out where to go from here.”

“You could always just fire me.”

“That would be the traditional response.” He grinned at me and my auto no turned into a definite maybe. Serious guys with a surprise sense of humor. I'm just a sucker for that combination. “And I'm anything but traditional. I'll think of something.”

“Great.” I didn't even bother to fake enthusiasm as I escaped from the office (after Tyler checked to make sure no one suspicious was loitering outside). I was going to be doing some thinking too. About how to stop my hormones from dancing a little salsa whenever Tyler was in sight.

 

There are times when I resent that college kids—especially freshmen—often get stuck in classes of hundreds. Like cattle. What do they think? So many of us will fail that it isn't worth wasting a few more teachers on us? Maybe that we'll be so happy for the new freedom of college life, we'll be impressed by a teacher who is so far away she's teaching from another zip code? Oh, well. What is, is.

Look for the silver lining—which is, I guess, besides the fact that my school has a great mic system in the auditoriums, that I can sit very far away from Tyler and not have to hear whatever insane plans he's come up with during his all-nighter putting the paper to bed, aided no doubt by a gallon of Starbucks' finest.

I took a seat far away from my usual row in the auditorium and crouched down low so that Tyler wouldn't see me in a casual scan of the room. I don't know what it is about me. But I really don't know how to give up hope with a guy. Anything else, sure. But that a guy might suddenly notice me as more than a friend? Nope. I can crush it, burn it, starve it, and stomp it, but the hope always sneaks up when I least expect it.

Like when Tyler came into the room just then in jeans that were a little too tight and a green sweatshirt that made the green flecks in his hazel eyes stand out. He stopped, noticed that I was not in our usual row. I hoped he'd just take his seat, but no such luck. He wandered around long enough to spot me, and then slid into the seat next to me. So why was I glad he was there, when I purposely tried to avoid him? Please, don't try to force me to make sense of something that human beings haven't figured out in many millennia.

He didn't even know he'd insulted me the night before—or that I knew he was really taking advantage of my crush on him. Although, maybe he
didn't
know how I felt. Maybe he's just thick and self-absorbed. Oops, there goes that little note of hope growing again. Because if he were just self-absorbed, there would still be the possibility that he might notice me as more than good old Katelyn. Then maybe his hormones would want to dance with my hormones…. What can I say, I'm hopeless.

Almost as if he knew what I was thinking, Tyler said, “So—ready to learn how to French-kiss?” Which was a funny commentary on the syllabus entry for today, or a cruel torture meme, depending on whether or not he had a clue how I feel.

“I know how to French-kiss.” At least, I've never had any complaints, but I didn't need to add that aloud.

“Yeah, I hope Golding plans to explain why she thinks she needs to spend a whole class on kissing. Unless she's going to have us practice.”

I bet half the class took Human Sexuality, not just because it fulfilled a general credit to graduate and was thought—erroneously—to be an easy-A class, but because we were naive enough to think it might be a shortcut to solving the mysteries of attraction, love, and heartbreak. Maybe give us an academic defense to guard against broken hearts, against loving someone who wouldn't love us back. Or, at the least, a way to weed out the duds before we did something stupid, like lend them our last twenty bucks.

Class was full to the brim with plenty of young, confused, dating-eligible students—not all freshmen, I might point out. There were some upperclassmen, like Tyler and Sophia, who often have better things to do than go to class, if you know what I mean. Although, I think Sophia just liked to have her expertise in the subject confirmed. If that sounds a little bitchy, it isn't. Sophia's totally cool and doesn't even seem to mind, too much, that she got stuck with a tomboyishly cute freshman for a roommate.