I shook my head and frowned. “I’m not going to change who I am to suck up to some Cambridge girl. Fuck that.”
“You’re not fooling anybody, JB. It’s obvious that you’re smitten.”
“Smitten? What?” I scoffed, looking around at my fellow patrons, as if they were going to laugh at the thought of me being hung up over some random girl.
But the only person whose eye I caught was an aging drunk at the end of the bar.
He grinned at me toothlessly. “Nothing like biting the dog that bit you the night before,”
he chuckled, then downed whatever was in his shot glass.
“You need to set things right with this girl,” Taryn said. “You need to show her that you care. Show her with class.”
“You think?”
“I don’t think it, JB. I know it.” She turned and left me to my own thoughts.
LINDSAY
Here is how I spent my day:
1. Procuring my I.D. card, which I didn’t have time to do yesterday, and which takes about three hours, since apparently no one else had time to do it yesterday either.
2. Attending a biology seminar, with a guest speaker who talked about medical ethics. It was extremely interesting and exciting, and made me realize I might want to take an ethics class this semester. I’d just have to see if there was one open.
3. Trying not to freak out about the fact that I had been on campus for one day, and had already gotten written up by my R.A.
4. Wondering when and if Justin was going to appear again.
At five o’clock, I headed for the dining hall and ate a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. I thought about having a coffee, but I didn’t think it would be good for my nerves.
The dining hall was pretty much deserted. The upperclassmen were arriving today, but most of them were occupied with moving into their dorms, and it was a little too early for dinner, anyway. So I sat alone, eating my sandwich and chips, and browsing through the course catalog.
When I was done, I walked back across campus, the buds of my iPhone in my ears. There was a tap on my shoulder.
Justin.
But it wasn’t.
It was Adam.
“Hey,” he said, grinning. “How’s it going?”
“Good!” Something told me that being written up on your first day didn’t really qualify as “good” but I didn’t want to get into it.
“I see you got your I.D. card.” He reached out and flicked it.
“Oh. Yeah.” I was wearing it on a lanyard around my neck, but I suddenly realized people probably didn’t do that. So I reached up and pulled it off. “How’s your leg?”
“Fine.” He shrugged, like it was no big deal, and he hadn’t just been freaking out about it twenty-four hours before. “So, listen, a bunch of us are going to listen to this band tomorrow night, at this place called Frog. It should be a good time. Any interest?”
“I’d love to,” I said honestly. My deepest fear was that I would end up spending every night alone in my dorm room, with no friends and nothing to do. A bar with a loud band wasn’t exactly my scene, but now that I was at school, I was determined to push out of my comfort zone.
“Adam!” a girl’s voice called across the quad. A pretty girl with long dark hair and a smattering of freckles ran up to us.
“Oh, hey, Michelle,” Adam said. It could have been my imagination, but I thought I saw a look of annoyance play across his face.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just walking.” He didn’t make any effort to introduce me.
“Hey,” Michelle said warmly. “I’m Michelle.”
“Lindsay.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
The three of us stood there awkwardly for a moment. “Well, we were just going back to the dorms,” Adam said pointedly.
“Oh, me too,” Michelle said. “I’ll walk with you.”
“Lindsay!” someone called. I turned around.
Justin.
Only this time it really was him. He was loping across the grass, his shoulders back, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a pair of crisp khaki pants and a navy blue button-up shirt. His hair was wet, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. He looked gorgeous and my heart sped up.
“I’ll, um, I’ll catch up with you later?” I said to Adam.
“Isn’t that the guy from the hospital?” Adam asked incredulously. “The one who was getting stitched up at the same time as me?”
“Stitched up?” Michelle asked, sounding panicked. “Why were you getting stitched up?”
“See you later,” I said, leaving them behind as I rushed over to Justin. For a moment, I was afraid Adam was going to try to follow me, but he didn’t.
“Hey,” Justin said.
“Hey.”
“I came to make it up to you.” He held out a dandelion. I grinned and took it, inhaling its sweet scent. His hand brushed against mine, and I wondered what it would feel like to have his hands all over my body. The thought shocked and excited me.
“You don’t have to make it up to me.” I said, still holding the dandelion.
“Just let me take you to dinner.”
“Right now?” I’d just eaten, but there was no way I was going to tell him that.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Yeah. Just, um, let me go change real quick.” I hesitated. Obviously I couldn’t bring him back to my dorm. “You’ll wait here?”