Kimmy gives me a get real! look and continues flipping through the remaining pictures. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I looked so gross on Halloween?”
My turn: “You could never look anything but drop-dead gorgeous.”
Through the window, I watch Layla wheel her bag. She catches me staring and does her wave, only this time it’s with windshield-wiper high-speed intensity.
I think I’m in love.
russ blasts beer
Thursday, November 6, 8:40 p.m.
I hope Kimmy’s not here. I hand my beer-bash ticket to the student guarding the door, and peruse the makeshift bar. Forty students are milling around, plastic cups in hand. There’s something odd about drinking beer under the glaring halogen lights of a school cafeteria.
I pour myself a cup and make my way over to an already hammered Nick.
“Russ, dude,” he says to me. “What took you so long? You only have twenty more minutes to get plastered.”
I look around the room for Kimmy, and I feel both relief and disappointment at her absence. I’ve been doing my best to avoid her since the spin-the-bottle fiasco. Seeing her reminds me of what a jackass I am. Ignoring her reminds me of what a jackass I am.
What should I do? Tell Sharon? Tell her I met someone else? Tell her I hooked up with someone else but it doesn’t mean anything? Either way, she’ll never speak to me again. Maybe I should talk to Kimmy. Tell her it was a mistake, a one-time blunder.
Why can’t I get the taste of her mouth out of my head?
At least I didn’t sleep with her. We didn’t even take off our clothes. We just kissed. Don’t I get credit for that? I feel a small pimple under my chin and play with it.
Nick empties his cup and burps. “Kimmy was just looking for you, but she took off.”
Must be obvious that I’m thinking about her, if even the drunk guy can tell.
kimmy goes to bat
Sunday, November 9, 9:30 p.m.
“So assets equals liabilities plus stockholder equity.”
I wonder what Russ is doing right now. Is he thinking about me? I bet he’s thinking about me.
“The stockholders’ equity is therefore the difference between a firm’s assets and the firm’s liabilities, right?”
He is the best kisser ever. Not too rough, not too soft, a little bit of tongue, but I didn’t feel like I was playing in a hockey match. His lips were round, plump and warm.
Layla taps me on the head with her course pack. “Kimmy, you’re not listening to me. What are you daydreaming about?”
Oops. “Nothing.”
“Liar. Tell me.”
Can’t tell, can’t tell, can’t tell. “I can’t.” How has she not figured it out?
It’s Sunday night and we’re lying on our stomachs on Layla’s floor, teacups, textbook and calculators beside us. “Sounds juicy,” she says.
Can’t tell, can’t tell, can’t…what the hell. I’ve held it in since my birthday and that was almost a month ago. That must be a world record. I swing my feet in front of me and sit up. “Okay. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I’m exploding.”
“What happened?”
“Russ.” Even his name sounds sexy and wonderful.
“Russ happened? Is that like an earthquake?”
I give her my best knowing look.
“Did he cheat on his girlfriend with you?”
Yikes. Does she have to put it like that? What about, did you finally physically express your feelings? I shrug, suddenly uncomfortable. “Kind of.”
“Kind of? How does one kind of cheat?”
I wish she’d stop using the C-word. It makes me feel whorish. “We didn’t sleep together. We just fooled around. Kissed. Some non-friend appropriate touching, but no sex.”
She picks up her teacup and, pinky out, takes a long sip. Is she avoiding looking at me? “So what does this mean?”
An excellent question. “I don’t know, Layla.”
She takes another slow sip, pinky still out. “What about his girlfriend?”
“Don’t know.”
“Do you think he told her?”
I snort. “Not likely. Men never come clean unless they’re leaving.” My mother realized my father had cheated only after she heard the message he’d left on her answering machine, telling her he’d moved his belongings to his ho-bag mistress’s apartment. But Russ seems more decent. He’s probably not the sort to walk out on someone that way. What if he’s planning to break up with her but he doesn’t want to do it over the phone? Maybe he fell in love with me after we made out, and the reason it hasn’t happened again is that he wants to be split up with her before we hook up again. “Do you think he’ll break up with her?”
She balances her tea on her Accounting textbook and looks me in the eye. “Kimmy, I don’t think what you did was right.”
I shouldn’t have said anything. Now Layla thinks I’m a big slut. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture, thanks.”
She sighs. “What do you expect to get out of this?”
What kind of question is that? What does she think? A record deal? “I want him to break up with her and start dating me.”
“But…if he cheated on her, don’t you think he’ll cheat on you?” she asks, her voice rising.
They all cheat anyway, so what’s the difference? “He might. But I would keep a better eye on him.”
“That’s your long-term strategy? Buy him a leash?”
Can it have rhinestones? “No. Maybe. But giving in to temptation wasn’t entirely his fault. I kind of pushed it.”
She shakes her head. “There will always be someone like you, pushing it. To be entirely safe, you’d have to keep him under house arrest.”
I’m not going to show her my Steal Russ project plan, but she should understand what he was up against. “I got him drunk and orchestrated a game of spin the bottle. Please don’t repeat that we played spin the bottle. Or about Russ.” Truth is, I want Layla to tell. If everyone knows, he’ll have to break up with Sharon. I roll a Hi-Liter between my fingers.
“Who played spin the bottle?”
“My work group.”
“Your group has more fun than mine does,” she says, sighing.
I don’t doubt that. Her group looks like their idea of a fun night is getting together and watching Star Trek reruns. (I shouldn’t jest. Russ has a Mr. Spock pencil case.) “Anyway, Russ and I kissed during the game. And then when everyone left, we kissed again. And again. We made out for like an hour. And then he left.”
She sighs, louder this time. “Has anything happened since then?”
“No. And we haven’t even talked about it, either. He’s acting totally weird. Sometimes I think he’s avoiding me, but then other times he flirts. Like at the Halloween party. We were both drinking, and he would stand a little too close to me, so I thought, for sure we’re going home together. But then he left with Nick. So what do you think I should do?”
Layla downs the rest of her tea. “Honesty is usually the best policy. Talk to him. He owes you an explanation. And he certainly owes Sharon an explanation.” She puts down her cup. “But now we have to get back to work.”
Work, shmurk. “Talking about Russ is much more fun.”
“Balance sheets are fun.”
I worry about her sometimes.
“I think we should talk about the midterm Economics assignment, which I bet you haven’t started yet,” she snaps. “It’s worth sixty percent of our final grade.”
Despite the attitude, she really is a godsend.