Just be. Just be here. Just go to class and take my exams and focus on getting out of here.
“Now,” the professor spoke, a middle-aged man who looked like he’d started to bald once he turned eighteen, spoke, pushing his glasses further up his nose, “if you’ll turn to page two in your workbooks, you’ll find a short quiz—” The class erupted in sighs, because it was the first day, and who the hell wanted to take a quiz on day one, but he went on, “It’s an easy one, and there are no wrong answers. You’ll all get one hundred percent, as long as you turn it in before you leave. You’ll be taking the same test at the end of the semester—just a bit longer, to compare what you’ve learned.”
The class flipped to the second page in their workbooks, and I watched Kelsey’s fingers run along her pen as she read the first question. Her nails were free of polish, and her face held no makeup, other than the gloss on her lips.
I had the strangest thought then, a thought I didn’t expect to have: did that gloss have a taste? Would her lips taste like strawberries or some other fruit?
Not something I should be thinking about while in class, because it might lead my mind to think of other, more intimate things next.
We weren’t allowed to talk while taking the practice quiz, and after we were done with it, we had to tear it out of the workbook from its perforated edges and hand it in. It was the only time this entire semester the professor said he’d let us out early, which caused quite a few more groans in the classroom.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I watched Kelsey whip through the quiz. I had no idea if she really knew the answers, if questions of biology and genetics and life itself came easy to her, or she just wanted to get out of here. Probably the latter, since the professor had said as long as we turned it in with every question answered we’d get a hundred percent on it.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want her to run off. I wanted to talk to her more, so I started circling random answers on the multiple-choice part and jotting down quick, mostly nonsensical answers to the open-ended questions. Kelsey got up to turn hers in, and I was but a minute behind her, grabbing my bag from the table before jogging out into the hall after her.
The science labs were held in their own buildings, no lecture halls at all around. Just small classrooms with different science equipment. It reminded me of high school, of the science classes I had to take then. Seemed fucking stupid now, having to take biology yet again. Why the hell did we have to take it in high school when we’d have to play repeat in college?
Kelsey had made it down the hall, about to head to the stairwell on the north side of the building. I caught up with her, saying, “You know, if you’re bored, you could come to the quad with me.”
I didn’t know why I wanted to spend more time with her, but I did. I did, and I didn’t know how that made me feel.
Kelsey stopped, turning to face me. We stood less than two feet apart, and I was able to see the way her lips parted slightly. “And why would I want to do that?” she asked, cocking her head, giving me an attitude. That attitude seemed to be a permanent state for her—maybe that’s what I liked about her.
She wasn’t meek and quiet. She didn’t laugh or smile. She said what was on her mind, and she wasn’t ashamed of being a jerk.
“Why not?” I said, shrugging. “Unless you have another class to go to.”
“You know, I don’t actually, but it’s bad enough I have to be your partner for the rest of the semester,” she spoke plainly, giving me an unimpressed look. Her cheeks were a little flushed though, so I knew she had to be attracted to me. It wasn’t so crazy, so out of the ordinary. I knew I had a face that girls liked, a body they loved.
The thing that got me, the part of me that set me back, was my insides. On paper, I was great, but when you got to know me, that’s when things got messy and complicated. I didn’t want to label myself as a bad boy, the annoying stereotypical jerk who did and said whatever he wanted when he wanted, but…eh, it was as good a description as any.
It was the only way to adequately describe what happened last year.
“Why would I want to spend more time with you than I have to?” Kelsey asked, blinking those wide, brown eyes at me. Big eyes set in her face, they made her look more innocent than she was. A girl with an attitude like her, I knew she couldn’t be innocent.
Maybe that’s what I liked about her. Her bluntness, her feistiness, and her lack of innocence.
If I was a bad boy, wouldn’t a bad girl suit me better than some innocent virgin?
Hell. Or maybe it was something more cliched than that. Maybe it was because she wanted nothing to do with me that I wanted to keep trying. The challenge of the chase. I’d never fallen prey to it before, mostly because I knew that no matter what happened in this place, it’d all be in my rearview mirror once I got out of here. I didn’t plan on looking back. I wasn’t here to make friends or get girlfriends.
That’s what I told myself,
