Unfamiliar (4 page)

“Maybe.” I shrugged, but I don't think she really heard me anyway.

“How did you get unpacked so quickly? I would’ve been here earlier, but I went out to dinner with some girls on the floor. I feel bad that you had to bring all your boxes up by yourself. I would’ve helped.” Tessa talked fast; really fast, like she was worried that if she didn't say everything she wanted to say right this minute, the opportunity would slide right through her fingertips.

“My boyfriend helped carry the boxes, but he left a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh! A boyfriend! Tell me all about him.”

“Um, okay? Can I get dressed first?”

“Sure, go ahead! I’m not shy.”

Apparently, it didn’t matter that I was. I considered investing in a room divider just to have some semblance of privacy.

“Well, um, his name is Braxton.” I turned away so my back was to her. I pulled on my pajama pants before taking my robe off. Then I quickly shrugged into the matching cami before turning back around. “We’ve been together for, um, I guess almost five years now.”

“Say what?!” She was in the middle of taking a drink of the Mountain Dew in her hand and spewed it everywhere. Charming.

I grabbed the Clorox wipes from the top shelf of my closet and handed her a few, then started wiping up the mess myself before it got all sticky and attracted ants.

Half-heartedly dabbing at the puddles she asked, “You’ve seriously been together since you were fourteen? Seriously?”

“Seriously.” I knew that Braxton and I had a unique relationship, but back home everyone was used to it so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Clearly, Tessa thought otherwise.

“Wow. That’s amazing. Didn’t you ever want to date anyone else?”

“Not really.” I shrugged.

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“But you must know everything about him!”

“I do know everything about him.” And I was pretty proud of that fact.

“I just think that would be so boring. Do you miss the butterflies? The beautiful kind of jittery feeling you get when you know you are about to see him?”

I wasn’t really sure what butterflies she was talking about. I had read about girls getting all giddy over a boy, but I always thought that was just in books and fairy tales—at least I had never experienced it. I was pretty sure stuff like that didn’t happen in real life. It didn’t seem at all realistic or beautiful for that matter—it kind of seemed like it would be a little unpleasant to tell the truth. Who wanted flying insects fluttering around in their stomach?
 

“I guess not. But that’s why I like it. It’s comfortable.”

She just looked at me disbelievingly at first, but then there was a noticeable shift and she said, “He must be pretty great.”

“He is.”

“That must be nice.” She shoved everything off of her bed and flopped down. She lay unmoving for several minutes and I kept thinking that at any second she was going to hop up and start unpacking her things, but when it looked like she might actually fall asleep despite her generous consumption of caffeinated beverage I decided I needed to intervene. For my own sanity.

“Do you want me to help you unpack?” I finally asked because I wasn't sure how much longer I could stand the chaos.

She eyed me carefully and then shifted her gaze between my neat and tidy side of the room and back at the mess that was hers.

“Is the mess bothering you?” She seemed mildly amused by this.

“A little bit.” I admitted sheepishly.

“OCD?” she asked, and for some reason it didn’t offend me—it actually caused me to crack a smile. Apparently, Tessa didn’t have much of a filter.

“Unofficially diagnosed.”

“Well then, yes,
please
, by all means, help me unpack and organize the chaos that is my life.” She walked over to the only thing of hers that was unpacked—her laptop—and after a moment of clicking, music started blaring out of the speakers. She must have been rocking out earlier. She turned it down to background level and I recognized the song. It was one I had recently stumbled across by an indie band from the West Coast. Nobody I knew had ever heard of them—nobody except for me and my new roommate anyway.

Tessa started singing along and it made me smile.

“You know this song?”

“Hmm?” She turned to look at me. “Oh, yeah. I spent my summer in Oregon visiting family and discovered the band. They're great, right?”

She continued hanging up her clothes in her closet and though I had to suppress the urge to color coordinate them, I couldn't help but think that maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Chase

So I was sitting in my Music Composition class feeling kind of content.

It was the only class I’d been looking forward to because, well, I was majoring in Music and it was kind of my life.

There was something about music that gave me a sense of freedom. There were no limits to what I could create. There was nothing holding me back. Music let me be who I really wanted to be. I just wished my parents could understand that.

As I took in the surroundings of the room, my eyes fell on a girl who had just walked into the class. Was that our teacher? She was definitely dressed as the part, even though she looked way too young.

I studied her in disbelief as it hit me that she was a student. She had on a sweater and a collared shirt on underneath it. She was wearing a knee-length pleated skirt that looked like it’d been
ironed
. Like with an actual iron.

Dude, who the fuck bothered to iron anymore?

The entire outfit was finished off with black leggings and brown Mary Jane’s that were almost the exact same color as the pleated skirt. Way too much effort had gone into coordinating that outfit. Seriously, who had the time to worry about that crap?

And it wasn’t even attractive. I mean, to be fair the girl wasn’t bad to look at. She was tall, had long brown hair, a pretty face, and as she turned to take a seat at the front of the room, I could tell that she was curvaceous and had booty.

Damn. She was completely my type. Too bad she dressed like a librarian.

My attention shifted to the front as the professor walked in. She was one of the younger faculty and I’d seen her around before. From what I’d heard she wasn’t a hard ass, so this was going to be a pretty easy class to pass.

Professor Thomas—that was her name—began by describing the project  we would be working on this semester. At first, I was stoked to learn it was a songwriting assignment, but when she announced that we would need to find a partner to work with, my enthusiasm disappeared quickly.

Great. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I hated doing assignments with someone else or in a group. You never knew who you were going to end up with and how much effort they would put in. Especially when it came to a class like this that was actually important to me.

As I glanced around the room, I saw that everyone was already pairing up. A couple of the other students shot me looks of apprehension, like they didn’t know what to make of the big, tatted up guy sitting in the back of the room.

My eyes fell on Librarian Girl—her head was bowed, but I could see that she was chewing on her bottom lip and looking completely uncomfortable. That was the universal sign for “I don’t want to be partnered with anyone”.

A smile crept onto my face as I realized that she was probably hoping that she wouldn’t have to pair up with anyone if she was the only one left without a partner. That’d kind of been my plan, too. I wanted to do this on my own and I didn’t need anyone holding me back.

My smile quickly disappeared when it hit me that everyone had paired up and that Librarian Girl and me were the only two left unmatched.

Professor Thomas walked over to Librarian Girl and pointed toward me. The girl glanced back at me and nodded reluctantly at the professor before grabbing her things and heading my way.

Shit.

She stopped at the desk next to mine and seemed nervous as she made eye contact with me. “Professor Thomas said that we should pair up since there’s no one else left in the class.”

“Sure, whatever.”

I hadn’t meant to sound so brash, but I could tell from the way her eyes grew wide for a second that I’d come across as a jerk. Great. Just what I needed for the rest of the semester—to be stuck with a girl who was sensitive as hell.

“I’m Chase,” I said, in an effort to redeem myself.

Librarian Girl bit down on her bottom lip again and that’s when I noticed how green her eyes were. I’d never seen a girl with eyes so green before, and I took a moment to admire them. This girl had a lot going for her.

“I’m Hailey.”

“Cool,” I said with a nod.

Hailey gave me a tight smile and began arranging her things on the desk. I watched in amusement as she placed red, blue, and black pens on one corner of the desk and then proceeded to set her notebook on the opposite corner. Finally, she pulled out a planner, uncapped the blue pen, and began scribbling away furiously in it.

What the hell? Who had time to keep a planner these days? Was this chick Amish or something? Didn’t she know that an iPad organized shit way better?

Maybe Hailey was anal retentive. No one organized stuff like that except for my parents. And they were fifty. Things like that really pissed me off. Why did some people have to have a goddamn plan for everything? Why couldn’t they just let life come to them?

I could already tell that this Hailey girl and I weren’t going to get along, but somehow I had to make it work if I wanted to do well in this class.

I leaned in toward her. “Uh, so what kind of music are you into?”

Hailey jerked away from me and slammed her planner shut as though she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to be. This girl was seriously weird.

Her cheeks were starting to flush a little. “I, um, I like indie-stuff— ”

“You mean that artsy-fartsy shit?” I interrupted her.

“Yeah, I guess someone like you would think that.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I don't know, I guess I like just about everything— ”

“Even country?” I interrupted her again.

“If the lyrics are good.” She shrugged defensively before continuing, “I'll listen to pretty much anything except that screaming crap that tries to masquerade itself as music.” She eyed me up and down. “I can only imagine what kind of
music
you listen to.”

“I like rock, punk rock, heavy metal, stuff like that.”

Hailey made a face like I’d told her that I liked to skin puppies. “Why am I not surprised? How can you like that stuff? It just sounds like noise to me.”

My eyebrows shot up. “It sounds like noise to you? Well, clearly you know nothing about music.”

Hailey’s nostrils flared a little and she shot me a deathly glare. “I know enough about music to know when something is good, and the loud, banging drums and banshee screeching is
not
good.”

Holy shit. Had she seriously just referred to my favorite genre of music as
screeching
? Yep, this was definitely not going to work out. Hell no. This stuck-up girl—attractive or not—was not going to be my partner.

“You know what else isn’t good?” I stared her down. “People who are pretentious.”

Hailey’s cheeks flushed and she narrowed her eyes at me before dropping her head and continuing to write furiously in that planner of hers.

Jesus. Of course I had to get stuck with the weird, anal retentive girl.

Hailey

When I walked out of my Music Composition class, I was fuming. What a jackass! I generally thought I was the kind of person who was able to get along with most people—but I had zero tolerance for rude people and slackers, and Chase was obviously both.

I couldn't believe that he had the nerve to show up to class wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off and holey jeans. He must be pretty proud of his massively huge tattoo covered arms to show them off like that. I had never seen arms that big before—they didn't even look real. He probably did a lot of steroids. I bet if he wanted to, he could crush me with those suckers—not that I would ever let him close enough to touch me.

He was probably expecting me to do all the work on this project while he sat back and relaxed. Well, if this punk thought that I was some sort of push over that would allow that to happen, he was about to be sorely disappointed.

This pairing was a disaster waiting to happen. I couldn't believe I was going to be stuck writing a song with the likes of him. I mean, seriously? How could he honestly think that that screeching crap was music? You couldn't even hear a damn word they were singing— if you could even call it singing. It was more like screaming into a microphone if you asked me.

I knew that some people thought that just the actual music alone was powerful enough to convey emotion, but my favorite part had always been the lyrics. It was always the words in the songs that reached out to me and made me feel like I wasn't alone.