Getting to Third Date (7 page)

“What sounds like calculus?”

“Sigma Alpha Gamma.”

He looked at the sign, looked at me smiling at him, feeling absolutely comfortable. Then he dropped his arm from my shoulder and stalked away without another word. I'd heard guys could be funny about their frats. But still.

The warm feeling had frozen over in the blink of an eye. I knew enough about guys to know I was supposed to run after him and beg for forgiveness. But I didn't want to. Okay, I did want to, but since he'd turned the charm off, my common sense exerted itself with a statement along the lines of
What a jerk to be upset about three stupid Greek letters—that
are
used in calculus.

I didn't know what else to do, so I went into the frat house and took the beer that some guy with a hose shoved in my hand. It was loud and dark. I saw Blaine once and waved. It wasn't an apology wave, just an
I
see you
wave. He was not amused and let me know it by ignoring me all evening…or at least for the half an hour I stayed before walking home alone.

So you can understand why I looked at Tyler, sitting there with my little pink book in his hand, and I crossed my arms and said, “No. Absolutely not.”

Apparently, my Buddha statue refusal was like waving a red cape at a bull. Because he crossed his arms too. “It's Hands-On Guy, or I'll put a column in the paper about how Mother Hubbard hasn't ever been on a third date. Maybe I'll even tell them who she is.”

Guys. They didn't even need a gym teacher to tell them the secret of a good defense was a good offense.

But I wasn't biting. He was bluffing. He had to be. Outing Mother Hubbard would cost him more than it would me. I hoped.

“No.”

Annoyingly, he continued his bluff. “Hands-On Guy or you're a campus-wide unsecret.”

I wasn't going to go out with Blaine. So I called his bluff. I gave him my column, with Mother Hubbard's explanation for why the experiment was over. No more third dates. It was a great column, and I kind of hoped it would make Tyler smile at me again.

Too bad for me, he called mine, too.

 

Tyler didn't run my column. He ran his own. He called it “Mother Hubbard Checks Out” and told everything about how I'd chickened out. He came just short of revealing the secret identity of Mother Hubbard, which he apparently had too much sense to do. No, he just told everyone that Mother Hubbard refused to go out with Hands-On Guy.

My favorite line of the whole infuriating column was this one:

Maybe I wouldn't have cared. Maybe I would have simply moved on with my life without Mother Hubbard and Tyler. Maybe. If he hadn't forwarded me the responses from other students on campus. I call them responses, but they were more like taunts—or threats.

Even the few relatively nice responses didn't take my side. The girls thought I needed to give Hands-On Guy a chance. One advised me if I ever wanted to find “the one,” I needed to date guys who were so different from me they made my head spin. The “opposites attract until you puke” philosophy at work, I guess.

But the guys—the guys thought I was a man hater. Ironically, they then proceeded to give me lots of reasons to become a man hater. But still, a few guys made one compelling point that got me to throw myself on the mercy of the campus. Especially since I wasn't about to get any mercy from Tyler.

I sat back and looked at the column I was going to try to get Tyler to run. He hadn't backed down from his Hands-On-Guy-or-further-public-humiliation threat. But maybe he'd let the campus decide—especially since he was the one who had whipped them up into a frenzy.

I didn't miss that my decision to try to break the stalemate was pure irony. In one way, this should have been great—my best chance to break for freedom, quit the column. Heck, maybe even quit classes. It was too late to drop out and get my money back (never mind explain to Mom and Dad why I was home midsemester with nothing to show for what was really their money), but I still had time to withdraw without an F on my permanent record…. Do they have permanent records in college? I haven't even been here long enough to find out, and I'm already thinking of running away.

I thought maybe I could change roommates, or universities…take a semester—or four years—abroad. Far away from all this, surely I could get my life back to normal…. I could quit the column. And maybe I should quit the column. But I didn't want to. Not for any good, or even logical reason. All I knew was there was something stubborn inside me that refused to believe I would be better off transferring out of the university. Something that made me think maybe Tyler was a guy who could get me. If I could figure out this whole messy life thing. And not run away.

My thoughts of escape came to a grinding, screeching halt. Too much work. It would be easier to go on the date with Blaine than try to quit this job. I still had a point to make. And besides, quitting meant never seeing Tyler again. Irony that Shakespeare would envy, no doubt.

 

I'd thought college would be so very different—clarity after the murky life of high school, where all the fun things were forbidden and everyone who thought they knew the secret to life disagreed with one another. Some kids had the take-it-easy philosophy, some had the nose-to-the-grindstone mentality. And some, like me, just wanted to get out of high school and into college, where there would be no parents or teachers prying into our private lives every minute of the day.

I majored in mechanical engineering because it seemed so much more defined than my role in high school as the girl who liked math and hated gym. And the engineering and math classes were more clearly defined too. So much easier than all the eclectic general studies stuff they threw at us in high school. Read this, do these problem sets, learn this equation, and one day you will be an engineer. Crystal clear.

But college is about more than your major. There's still all the messy social stuff. There are just fewer rules to help navigate it all.

And therein lies the paradox. It is both the greatest and worst thing about college life. There are no adults to offer unsolicited advice about what you're wearing (or not wearing), whether you missed a class, or even if you stayed out past curfew. In fact, there is no curfew. However, the lack of rules or guidance doesn't make anything any clearer. There are still a million paths to take to “success.”

And furthermore, what is success? A 4.0 GPA? A guy who gets you and likes you as much as you like him? Just managing to survive the four years and earn a piece of paper that might get you a job in the “real” world? Was the real world any better than high school or college? Do you ever in your life end up in a place where you have more answers than questions?

At least I had one answer to the column dilemma. I did not want to go out with Blaine for a third time. So I'd have to see if Tyler would go for my idea. As soon as he slid into the seat next to me in class, I slipped him the column, folded so no one sitting behind us could see it, of course. “Maybe we just let a third party arbitrate?”

He read the column surreptitiously and then ripped it into confetti and stuffed it in his pocket. I wasn't sure whether that was paranoia or commentary until he said, “Maybe. But not in the column. We need to take this real time if we want to get it done by the end of the semester.”

“Real time?”

“Yeah. I'm going to set up a blog on the paper's Web site. I'll put this in it and set up a vote for the campus.”

“You will?” I wanted to protest this whole blogging in real time business, but I still hoped the campus would let me off. Wouldn't it be better to be let off the hook sooner rather than later? Spare myself these silly dates and get back to normal? “Okay.”

“Great!” He looked at the sparse class turnout. “What's the topic for today?”

“AIDS.” Sometimes I wondered if I was the only one who cared about good grades enough to actually study depressing subjects like AIDS, because the class was only full when the subject was something more stimulating, like kissing, birth control, and the factors of attraction.

“Good. I can take a miss, then, and get the blog up sooner. I'll catch your notes later.”

He left. Which I suppose was better than Sophia, who had once again not shown up. That little shred of hope inside me woke up and whispered that Tyler hadn't even seemed to notice she wasn't there. So I ignored the louder whisper, which said he'd already confessed he'd thought about asking her out.

I had twenty-four blissful hours of hoping that I would not have to go on a third date with Hands-On Guy. After six hours the hope was a little bit against the odds. But still, I held out for a win for the home team until the bitter end.

Of course the campus voted overwhelmingly for me to go on the third date with Hands-On Guy. I compulsively checked the Web site for a while, but it never got better than two to one against me. The final tally was a whopping four to one against me. Or for the date, whichever way you choose to look at it. I preferred not to look at it.

Tyler seemed almost sympathetic when he delivered the bad news in person. He didn't even seem too disappointed that Sophia wasn't around. Although, I didn't miss that he checked out the closet, maybe thinking she might be hiding in there.

“Great. I give up. I'll go on the date with Hands-On Guy. Are you happy? I'll even pay for the stupid thing. And ask him out. And break all my usual rules for good dating.”

“Ah! Rules for dating? You definitely should write a column about that.”

“Okay. Should I also write about how much trouble I'm having in calculus and about how the freshman fifteen makes me feel like a pig?”

One more time he looked at me, really looked at me. “This is really hard for you, isn't it?”

“Well, duh! How would you like going out with girls you'd already written off?”

For a minute I thought he wasn't going to answer. But then, with a little laugh as if I shouldn't take him too seriously, he said, “Actually, after all this, I thought I might give it a try.”

“What?” Shock doubled the buzz in my ears. “You're going to try it? For the column?” Did he mean he was going to write my column? And who cared about that. He was going to try dating a girl he hadn't given a chance before? Who?

“No.” He shrugged. “For my life. Who knows. Maybe I just shot somebody down for some lame reason like I didn't like her hobby.”

Now, on the one hand, I couldn't help hoping that I might be first on the list of girls he'd give a chance. On the other, I was a lot insulted. “What do you mean, lame excuse? Hobbies are something you have to put up with if you're going to be in a relationship. Even if you're going to be spending an evening together. I volunteered once for the torture of watching a stupid train movie for Todd, and I hated it. A lifetime of train movies would send me over the edge.”

He held up his hands to calm me down. “Okay, okay. I'm not saying I'm looking for a girl who loves knitting so much I have to wear funny-looking sweaters and socks for the rest of my life. There's definitely a line. But maybe I'm crossing it too soon. That's all I'm saying.”

I nodded, as if my ears weren't buzzing like there were flies trapped in them.
Don't, Katelyn,
I told myself silently, as my mouth disobeyed my brain. “Have you already decided on the first girl you'll ask?”

He squirmed in his seat. Was that a good sign or a bad one? “I don't want to say.”

“Oh, come on, you know you're safe telling me.” Well. He would be if he said it was me he wanted to take a chance on dating.

It only took that weak bit of reassurance to pry the name from his lips, which meant he was dying to tell someone. “Sophia.”

For a minute the buzzing in my ears got so loud I hoped I'd heard wrong. But my eyes had been focused on his lips and the name was clear to even a bad lip-reader like me. Sophia. Of course.

I smiled widely. So widely it hurt. “Good luck.” Not that I really wished him good luck. But I had to put on the best-friend front and pretend I did. Maybe I even would, after I got finished dealing with the disappointment that was flickering up and down my spine like a broken neon sign. Maybe I'd even be old maid of honor at their wedding.

What is it about me, anyway? Maybe every guy in the world only likes me as a best friend. Yep. That's it. I'm just better as a girl friend than a girlfriend. So why does that hurt so much? Why do I wish that—just once—I could find a boy who thought of me in the same way I thought of him?

I know that kind of relationship exists. I saw it every day in the high school hallways. I see it in college—in the dorms, on the benches outside the library. Not the classroom so much, although you can tell a couple like that when they walk in, just the way they are with each other, like they're restraining themselves from going at it out of respect for their professor (or fear of a failing grade).

Sometimes I think that guy doesn't exist for me. Even if my mother tells me I'll never find him if I don't give guys a chance. Which, I guess, is what Tyler and the others are trying to tell me too. Give a guy a chance, for crying out loud.

But the question I have for them is—how much of a chance? When is enough enough? How many hearts should I break to find the guy who gets me as much as I get him? Because I've had a broken heart, and, honestly, it ain't pretty.

Long story, short. The news was Tyler 1, me 0. Or maybe less than zero. Because Tyler changed the subject on me as I sat there reeling from the thought of Sophia and Tyler on a date.

“Katelyn. I just thought of something brilliant.”

“What?” I didn't want to hear what Tyler thought was brilliant. The way college life has been going for me, it could be something off the wall, like that he'd decided to skip the dating stage altogether and just ask Sophia to marry him. And she'd agree. Bleh.