Getting to Third Date (4 page)

“Just tell him to forget it.”

Sophia doled out her ruthless advice between applying hot pink lipstick and dabbing concealer on the slightly bluish semicircles under her eyes. Otherwise, of course, she looked fabulous for someone who'd been up until 4 a.m.

“Easy for you to say. You pass up one good thing and you know another will be coming along. Like tonight. Is it Jake or Tom?”

“Jake.” She smiled. “We're going to the private room at his club.” Jake was not a student, he was a twentysomething who'd decided his future lay in selling drinks and booking hot new bands to entice students to his club. He liked to say (in fact, it was on his marquee) that he'd earned his degree in success one tequila at a time. “Want to come along?”

“No, thanks. I'm not into the club scene.” At least, I didn't think I would be, so I'd avoided it.

“One day you're going to have to take a chance or two, Katelyn.” I'd noticed life was unfair in high school, but living with Sophia underscored that nasty little truth big-time. She was beautiful, sexy, smart, and a good roommate, too. I'd kept waiting for the big nasty secret about this seemingly perfect person to surface. No dice.

Along with all her other stellar traits, Sophia was a very good listener. Maybe too good, since she had just blasted through all my pretense about why I was writing the column in the first place. I had added her to the list of those select few who knew my secret identity early on. I needed someone to vent to. Unfortunately, she was apparently of the same mind as all the other students on campus.

I know, it was risky of me to confess my secret to Sophia when I barely knew her. But in my defense, I think a little of Tyler's paranoid caution had rubbed off, because I didn't tell her until she had pinky sworn not to tell anyone (including Tyler), after I explained the concept of pinky swearing to her and she'd gotten her amusement at the idea out of her system.

“What about how I took a chance on being Mother Hubbard?” I defended myself, while wondering how the gold-brown eye shadow she was brushing on her eyelids would look on me. Which was another annoyingly perfect thing about Sophia. She was generous to a fault. Instead of revealing some secret ugly side, she'd helped me straighten out my eyebrows so that I wasn't unibrow city, and my makeup so that I added some flattering colors to my previously blue and green high school palette.

“An anonymous old crab who tells other people what to do about their lives because she doesn't have the desire to put her own heart on the line?” She shook her mascara wand at me in mock reproof. “You are too young for that.”

“I—”

She stopped my weak protest with one final wave of the wand before stowing it away in its leather case. I had yet to discover where she bought her makeup. Maybe in Italy.

She looked at me seriously. “Sometimes I wonder if you only chose to write this column because you want to get closer to Tyler.”

“Don't be silly. He's not interested in me.”

I waited for her to protest (hope springs eternal—and painful) but she just nodded. “His interest in you has nothing to do with your interest in him. And I am worried that you have found no one interesting since you have been on campus.”

That was unfair. “It's only been six weeks! I've gone out with the frat guy and the guy I met in the student loan line at the bursar's office too.”

“One boy here, one boy there. And always some reason why you don't want to go out with them after the second time. Are you sure it is not because you are waiting for Tyler to notice you?” She looked hard at me.

I shook my head. I'm not great at lying, but she would have needed more than a hot curling iron to get that particular truth from me.

“Good.” She nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief that she had believed me. Until she stood up, shook out her hair, and said, “Because if you decide you want him, you shouldn't waste one more minute writing this silly column, you should ask him out directly.”

“Mother Hubbard doesn't believe in girls asking boys out.”

“Mother Hubbard is a cranky hundred-year-old. You're eighteen. Wouldn't you like to take a chance and go after what you want?”

I wasn't so sure. “Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to go back to the way they used to do it. Like on TV sitcoms. You know. The guy rings the doorbell, the father scares him silly, and the couple goes out on a real, official ‘date.'”

“What a waste of time.”

“I wouldn't call a clear signal of interest a waste. I'm tired of wasting time trying to figure out if someone likes me or just doesn't have anything better to do than hang out or ‘grab coffee' with me. I think Mother Hubbard is right to advocate a little old-fashioned practicality.”

Sophia made a
tch
noise with her tongue and teeth. “Mother Hubbard needs to find a good man. And you need to stop wasting time writing this silly column just so you can hang out with Tyler. Why don't you tell Tyler you quit? Then ask him if he wants to hang out. You'll know whether he's interested quick enough without Mother Hubbard to confuse things.”

Clearly, however, she had not fully grasped the point of all my previous whining if she was going to suggest I quit. So I tried to explain it to her. “But I agreed to do the stupid column. I'm a person of my word.”

She looked at me skeptically.

“I'm a woman of my word.” I continued to defend my utterly foolish refusal to quit. “Besides, I'm right.”

Sophia wrinkled her nose at me, a gesture I had come to accept as her European sign language for
don't be an idiot.
“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”

Well, to be honest, I wanted to take that fabulous Italian concealer peeking up out of her makeup case and rub it all over her beautiful face. I hate that question, which has been adopted by everyone on campus.

“Don't worry. Be happy.” Pop psychology at its most mindless. It helps sum up Professor Golding's simplistic philosophy about love and relationships—and it explains why everyone hates Mother Hubbard's plainspoken (and correct) advice. Not that I'm biased or anything.

“I'd rather someone notice I'm right. That would make me happy.”

“You always think with your brain, Katelyn, that's your problem.” Quintessential Sophia. She shrugged, dabbed a bit of lipstick off her teeth, and smiled at herself in her mirror.

Perhaps I should have been more polite to the someone who knew I was the power behind the hated keyboard of Mother Hubbard. But I was still steaming from class. “Thanks. I guess I should be like you and think with something south of the border.”

“South of the border?” It took her a minute to translate the idiom, but she'd been on campus for three years now, so she eventually got it. She shook her head. “You Americans are so provincial.”

“Tell that to Candy. She was born in Iowa and never left the state until she came here to college.” If Sophia was the gourmet taster of all things guy, Candy could be considered the poster child for the less-than-choosy girl. There was a pool going in the dorm for the date when Candy would leave school because (a) she was pregnant, or (b) she had a communicable disease so horrible she needed to be quarantined.

Sophia shuddered very delicately. If there'd been a guy in the room, he'd have reached for his jacket without thinking about it. “There are Candys in Italy, too, Katelyn. There are Candys everywhere. But just because someone stuffs herself with bad food does not mean others who are more sensible shouldn't enjoy a fine meal. Just so with sex.”

She had a point. But I didn't have to let her know that. “Most guys can't tell the difference when it comes to sex.”

Sophia tinkled, a bell-like laugh that was highly irritating unless you happened to have testosterone to spare. For just a minute I considered changing roommates at Christmas break. “Ah well, some guys
are
less than particular when it comes to sex. It is up to women to teach them better.”

“Well, Candy isn't getting much of a chance to teach anyone anything with the revolving door she's got going. Besides, I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about relationships. What makes two people click, and stay clicked?” It occurred to me that I had lived with Sophia for six weeks already. I should know better than to think the conversation would not, somehow, get steered back to sex.

“Why be so serious so soon?” Sophia seemed truly perplexed. “We are young. It is our time to have fun.”

Yeah. Right. Some people had claimed that about high school, too. But after being in a high school class of eighty—most of us had been together since kindergarten—I had looked forward to the chance to find a wider guy pool in college.

Although the pool was definitely bigger here, so far the guys weren't much different from those in high school. In fact, to me, it seemed like a bigger pool just meant more confusion. I couldn't help longing for the good old days when a date wasn't called “hanging out.” When words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” had established rules and didn't just pop out by surprise after some unspecified time when hanging out turned into habit.

There weren't many people on campus who shared my antiquated opinion, though—including Sophia, obviously. Was Tyler insane? To think that Mother Hubbard's espousing the Third-Date Theory would turn the readership from rage to worship? Or was he setting me up for more controversy, to get the paper a little more notice?

Speak of the devil. The triple rap on the door was distinctive. Tyler. No doubt he was going to make sure I'd do the column. After all, I'd left class as soon as it ended, without another word to him.

On the other hand, he could just be after his daily Sophia fix, since she'd missed class.

We were on the third floor, but I still reflexively looked out the window. Jumping was not an option. “Don't answer it. Maybe he'll—”

The door opened. Sophia never locked it; she didn't believe in locks, not even after my laptop got jacked. I didn't know if it was a European thing, a feminist thing, or just a Sophia thing. Whatever it was, I was stuck with it as long as we were roommates, and I'd seen other girls have much worse roommate problems, so I wasn't complaining.

Tyler walked in with his eyes closed. “Are you girls decent?”

Sophia's laugh tinkled. “No, but we
women
are dressed. Sorry to disappoint you, Tyler.”

In the time I'd known her, I'd seen her put two dozen guys in their place, but always with that sexy smile that kept them from taking offense. Her papers in her gender studies classes could blister the paint off a men's only club (I proofread them for her since she still had a few English-as-a-second-language grammar blips). I guess the guys she dated didn't ask to read them.

Tyler was as full of himself as he had been in class. He practically strutted in the door, ignoring Sophia's delicate frown of displeasure. “So, have you figured out who your guinea pig will be?” He glanced at Sophia and I knew we were in for a covert ops verbal exchange while he tried to communicate about the column with me while keeping Sophia in the dark.

It would have been easier if he would just ask me to walk out in the quad with him—but that would mean leaving Sophia behind. Too bad for him I was just not up to secret agent subterfuge right then.

Sophia said nothing, but she looked at me with expectation. She believes women should regularly snap men on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, as if they were errant puppies. Me? I've never been able to snap a puppy on the nose, even when said puppy has just filled a favorite shoe with a little treat.

However, it occurred to me I could irritate if not snap. So I said the one thing meant to drive Tyler over the edge of paranoia. “You don't need to be coy. Sophia knows.”

“You just tell him that?” Sophia looked shocked. “Why did you make me pinky swear, then?” She looked at her finger for a moment, as if it were damaged from our pinky-swearing moment. But then she shrugged, and I thought I saw a glimmer of approval in her dark eyes.

“Knows what?” He was going to pretend he didn't know what I meant. Probably because he wasn't one hundred percent sure and he didn't want to let slip anything until he knew for sure I had spilled the beans.

So I said explicitly, “I told Sophia I write the column.”

Not even a hint of throbbing vein. He glanced at her with puppy dog eyes—
blecch.
“Cool. She won't tell anyone. I know the secret's safe with her.”

Sophia smiled at him. “Yes. Would you like me to pinky swear with you, too, Tyler?”

For a minute I thought he'd suggest they use tongues instead, since his was hanging out. But no, he wasn't that far gone. Although, he held on to her pinky with his just a big longer than was necessary.

I'd been hoping for a scene. To be fired on the spot. But all I got was another one of those smiles (damn him and his Sophia-pinky-swearing-induced smile!) “So, when can I expect the column?”

Perversely, after protesting to Sophia that I didn't want to go back on my word, I worked up my courage to quit. To tell him I'd had enough. I didn't want to write the column—I didn't want to be Mother Hubbard anymore. It helped that he was trying hard not to steal too many glances at Sophia, who was watching us both with great amusement. “Tyler, I just don't think this is a good idea.”

He shook his head, and I suddenly wished I had a rolled-up newspaper in my hand. “Of course it is.”

“I—” I started to protest.

But then he turned his attention completely on me. His eyes were golden with sincerity. Or at least, that's my interpretation. “Katelyn, I've just been looking at this all wrong. Do you know, ever since you started the column, the papers have disappeared faster and we've had more hits on the Web site, as well? Mother Hubbard is huge.”

“Are you insane? People are burning the paper on the library steps and nailing my column to the door with red paint on it!”

He ignored my well-thought-out objection. “I don't know why I didn't see it before. You just need to keep it going.”

“By dating a loser and writing a column about it? I'm an advice columnist—think Dear Abby, not Singles Seen.”

“I thought you might have trouble with the approach, that's why I dropped by.” He said this while glancing nonchalantly (not) at Sophia. I think he liked that Sophia knew. How sweet—he shared a secret with his crush.

Blecch.
Tyler had seen the way Sophia goes through guys like a movie critic slices through the cheesy summer movies. But he still wanted her to look at him. Notice him. No doubt much more than that. Eww. I don't like where that thought takes me.

Not that I didn't understand the helpless compulsion he was under, though.

I shrugged, trying one more time to wiggle out of making the worst mistake of my life. “I just don't know what you want from me…or from Mother Hubbard, I should say.”

“Never fear. Super Editor is here to rescue you, my dear.” Tyler flipped open the laptop he'd carried under his arm, turned to Sophia, and handed her a twenty. “Can you get us some coffee? We're going to need it.”

I had a flash of hope that Sophia would put him in his place and then cram the twenty into her bra. But she just nodded and headed off. It was anybody's guess whether she'd come back with coffee or not.

I had to feel sorry for Sophia—though, being the man magnet she was, not too sorry. I mean, I hate it when someone likes me more than I like them. Not that it has happened often. Twice that I know of, back in high school. One was a girl in my math class—definitely going nowhere, and she took it well, even though she did sit next to me in math class all senior year.

The other awkward moment was a boy, which is more on target, at least. He was sweet, good natured, funny…but there was no spark. I felt for him, really I did. At least once a month all four years of high school, he came close to asking me out, and then lost his nerve. It was an interesting and awkward little high school dance, watching him get his courage up to ask, and then change his mind.

I confess I helped discourage him as much as possible. I could always tell when he'd worked up enough nerve—his left eyebrow twitched. At the moment when he was about to ask, I'd come up with an insta-excuse about being unavailable. It got to be automatic with us—I didn't want to hurt him. Or alienate him either. I liked having him as a lab partner. He was smart with test tubes and Bunsen burners. No, I wasn't using him. I took great notes that usually got us extra points.

I have to say, there were times I was weak and tempted. He was such a nice guy. But when I say there was no spark, I mean none, zippo, nada. If we'd been the last couple standing on
Survivor
, we'd never have gotten a fire started. But we'd have shared our raw fish and coconuts well enough.

Richie was his name. And thinking of my ear as sexy was his fame. And I confess, when I heard he was going to my university, I was a bit worried that I'd still have to come up with the monthly excuse to keep him from asking me out.

But no. I'd seen him rarely. We didn't share any classes together, and our eating schedule was such that I saw him—to wave to across the crowded dining hall—only once or twice so far in a month. I guess it was because he was a theater major.

I'd seen his name listed in the paper for the fall production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. I'd been glad for him. He'd always had a flair for acting in our school productions, and he'd given me tickets to every performance. I'd gone, with my best friend, Claire. I thought that was sending a clear message—friends, no more than friends.

I was big on sending clear signals. It was a key part of my common-sense approach to dating. Now I just had to convince the campus I was right.

Tyler insisted I get started by laying the special editor's computer in my lap. Which meant he was really serious about this new column idea. “If you do a good job, we could have people not only burning our papers, but reading them too, by next week.”

Maybe I would have refused. Maybe. But he smiled, and I started to type.

“Satisfied?” I handed the laptop back over to Tyler.

He read the column quickly. “It's a little long, but I think I can make the space for it, since it's important.”

“Yeah. Important. The students on campus won't sleep until they read my column.” I couldn't help sounding a little snarky. We'd just spent some dedicated time huddled over Tyler's laptop, without Sophia or the coffee Tyler had asked her to get. And he was still grinning at me like I was his best bud. His little sister. It was me and David Morse all over again.

“Wouldn't that be great?” He grinned and nodded as he safely closed the file and turned off his laptop. “People looking forward to the next issue?”

“And if it doesn't work? Will I have to videotape my next date, after carefully disguising myself with a paper bag over my head?”

“I know this will do it. I can feel it—and you know what they say about editorial instinct.”

“No, I don't know. But I could guess—it isn't infallible?” Any more snarky and he could have cut himself on my commentary. Not that he noticed. Did that mean he really liked me, so he could ignore it, like he ignored the fact that Sophia had absconded with his twenty bucks? Or did it just mean he didn't care?

Who can tell? He just grinned again, like he knew something I didn't. “Everyone will be looking forward to next week's column when you have to eat your words.”

“Says you.” I had no intention of eating my words. I was right and I wasn't going to be meek about sharing that information after what would no doubt be an absolutely disastrous date. After all, I knew who the lucky date-winner was going to be. I'd chosen a guy who couldn't deliver a good date if he had an instruction manual handy. Not that I was going to share that secret with anyone, pinky swear or not.