“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.
Chapter Three
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.