I pursed my lips, looking up at her hopefully. “You think so?”
“Definitely. It happens to some people when they start dating. Like, my sister used to be like that. When she got her first boyfriend, I couldn’t stand being around the two of them, even though I didn’t hate the guy. They’d be sneaking into the house when our parents didn’t know or were out. What was worse was that we shared a room. I got fed up of it, so I spent too much time in the living room. I even slept there at times…”
“And things changed?” I asked, thinking about how similar it was to my current situation.
“They mellowed out. I can even talk to the guy now without feeling awkward. Even when I go home, I still see him and well, he’s a nice guy.”
I thought that there was some hope, until I heard the last part. Logan and I would never get on. Before he started seeing Dana, if I saw him, I would insult him because he’s a jerk who treats women like shit. Fucks them and the leaves them, if they’re lucky or they just find out from the next victim that he just happens to be fucking at the same time. Why should I respect him? When the only person he cares about is himself.
“Anyway, you shouldn’t stress so much about it now. If you’re that worried about Dana, I could try talking to her for you?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to do that.”
I tried talking to her myself, and it led to disaster. If someone else went to talk to her, and she thought I sent them, then that would make things even worse. She would get mad thinking that I’m gossiping about her.
“I should go,” I said, moving to get up. “I’d like to go have something to eat. Were you going somewhere? Or do you want to join me?”
“Sorry, I need to go. I forgot where I was going before when I saw you,” she laughed, tapping her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Let me go ahead; I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay,” I said lightly, waving back at her.
The moment her back was turned to me, I lost the smile. Jennifer and I weren’t close. Besides Dana, I wasn’t close with anyone else in the dorms, or I would have been going to someone else’s place to spend time when Dana was busy with Logan because I hated sitting in the dorm’s lounge room. It was always full of people. I wasn’t all that great at keeping up small talk and felt awkward in social interactions.
There was one hockey player, Elijah, a close friend of Logan’s and a total bastard. I’d come across him a few times, and that was one too many times.
He was the kind of guy that most innocent girls fell for. Tall, blond, blue-eyed and good-looking. Just because of that, he was so fucking full of himself it made me sick. Even if I could sort of agree that he was attractive, the fact that he was all up in himself made him appear unattractive to me.
Lately, it seemed everything that went wrong with my life was somehow attached to him.
I remembered running out of the room the moment Logan walked in. They hadn't even waited for me to be outside before he fell on Dana’s bed, and I could hear ambiguous sounds from behind my back that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
My face and neck warmed up in a blush. I knew the kinds of things men and women got up to when they locked themselves up in a room together, I wasn’t exactly innocent. I didn’t get too close to guys, but after the mistake I’d done in high school that included a certain sports player and me losing my virginity in a very painful, very humiliating way, I was way smarter.
What the hell do I do now? I wondered to myself, looking around.
I lied to Jennifer about getting something to eat, I just wanted her to go. I didn’t want her to talk to Dana and talking wasn’t exactly my forte. There was no reason for me to stay in the lounge. I felt my jeans pockets and pulled out my meal card, feeling relieved when my stomach growled at the same time.
“Might as well go and eat,” I muttered and headed for the cafeteria.
There were a few people with the same mind as me that were already getting their food, so there was a bit of a wait, and I used it to look over the menu. I couldn’t remember how much I had left on my meal card. I did everything on a budget, and I could access all this information on my computer, or on my cell. Sadly, I’d left both in the room, which just left me with more reasons to curse Logan. I figured I could treat myself just this one time, though, what with my bad mood and all, so I picked a few dishes that were priced a bit high, and went to look for a place to sit down. I found a table that was empty, with its surrounding tables also empty, and it was perfect.
I sat down and ate with my head down. I ate slowly, and I was still done in about half an hour.
Are they don’t yet?
I was getting impatient, but I knew better than to go up there so soon. It could take hours before those two were done. The last time they did this to me, I’d gone to the library until closing time, and when I got back, they were still at it in Dana’s bed. They left the fucking door unlocked, so I saw something I never wanted to see, at least they’d been under the covers. I couldn’t bare looking at Dana in the face after that incident.
What else was there to do to kill time in the cafeteria?
Besides eating, or watching people eat, there wasn’t anything. I picked up my tray, grumbling to myself, as I went to dump it in the trash, then went back to my seat. I folded my arms and laid my chin on top of them, looking around the room. It was still less than half full, but it should be around the time people started coming for dinner, so I didn’t doubt it would get full soon.
I could see people I knew, but as I wasn’t close to them, I just watched. It made me sigh, feeling a little wistful, seeing how everyone seemed to have someone they were close with, when I didn’t have that. I caught sight of a clock on the wall and tried to figure out what time I’d left my room, and how long it would take for Logan and Dana to be done, then for Logan to leave our room.
Those two idiots better not do anything on my side of the room, I thought, feeling a bit queasy just imagining it. I wasn’t there so I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Then I frowned, thinking back.
My computer was on my desk. I didn’t shut it down before running out of the room; I didn’t even close the lid down. I sat up slowly, wondering if it was going to bring me trouble later on. But then I shrugged it off.
So what if I left my computer on? The screen would go black after a while of no one using it. I had a screen saver on, but as long as they didn’t look too closely it would look like it was off, right? I had some important shit on my computer, so if they did touch it, I would be screwed, and I would kill the both of them. All my notes and assignments were in there, after all.
I didn’t think Dana would be malicious that she would try to attack me that way, though.
It didn’t matter, I thought to myself, laying my head back down. They’ll be too busy getting it on, and it’ll go to sleep on its own a while afterward.
Chapter Three
Elijah
“Did you find anything yet?” Logan asked.
I could tell by his snappy tone that he was starting to grow impatient. He probably wanted me to leave so he could get on with what had initially brought him over here. I had my back to them, and I could occasionally hear their muffled breaths and the sheets rustling as the two of them made out on the bed, probably wanting to do more. I’d here a breathy moan and a hissed curse; then Logan would ask if I was done.
We’d been like this for half an hour already, and even I was getting tired of it.
“Do you think it’s easy to find anything in here?” I complained. “This girl is too fucking clean, okay? There are no strange files on her computer. It’s all movies, music and school work, and not even any good movies. What the fuck is X-Men?”
“You don’t know X-Men?” Logan said from behind me, sounding shocked. “Dude, how could you not! I’ve loved that shit since I was a kid. It’s a big franchise with a bunch of comics, cartoons, and movies.”
“You know I only watch suspense thr
illers and action movies.”
“Well, it is an action movie, duh,” he snorted.
I frowned at him over my shoulder. “I mean, action movies, as in normal people engaging in fights with guns and cars and explosions.”
“This movie has all of that,” he pointed out.
I paused for a moment, then turned around, muttering, “That’s not the point.”
None of what was in Sophia’s computer was anything I would even bother to look at because it would bore me to tears. Actually, besides hockey, there wasn’t much that interested me, but back home Dad and I used to have a movie night. He only watched action movies and sometimes suspense thrillers, so that was what I was used to watching. Anything else, and I hated it.
This made dating a pain since most dates wanted to watch some romance story or a bad horror for the sake of cuddling. The latter was okay, but I couldn’t stand romance movies. At least Sophia didn’t have those on her computer, which kinda surprised me.