With a sigh, I relent, “Fine. A party it is.” What can go wrong?
She flashes me a set of perfect pearly whites. “Great. What’s your plan for the rest of the day?”
“After I shower, I think I’m going to go to campus and walk my schedule,” I say, totally aware of how lame it sounds. It’s something I like doing before classes start. Make sure I can get to my destinations, especially when the classes are back-to-back. If you have one class on one side of campus and the next class on the other, sometimes the fifteen minutes they give you between is barely enough.
And, besides all that, I like knowing where to go. I like being prepared. Sue me.
“Then I might grab some lunch from the union,” I add. “You want me to bring home anything for you and Elias?”
“Nah, thanks though.”
As I stare at my roomie from across the island, I can’t help but think back to a comment she made in the past. People didn’t want her and Elias to be together. All this time later, and she still hasn’t told me why so many people supposedly don’t want them to be a couple. Granted, I also haven’t asked, but I do wonder if she’d tell me if I did.
Sloane picks up her cup and takes it upstairs, leaving me to finish eating my cereal in peace. Our talk lingers in my head. I’m not looking forward to any parties, but as long as I don’tsee Logan there, I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll even force myself to have some fun.
I can do that, can’t I? I can have fun. I’m a fun person sometimes, right?
Eh, it’s going to be like pulling teeth, but whatever. It’s a new year, new semester, and I am ready to leave all the pain and angst in the past.
Once I’m finished with my cereal, I clean up and take a shower. I do a very light blow-dry of my hair only so it’s not soaking wet when I venture out. I throw on some thick leggings, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and make sure my new schedule is loaded onto my phone before I grab my thick coat and head out.
I cross the main street and head to campus. It snowed a few days ago, so the streets and sidewalks are clear, but anywhere that might’ve had grassy patches or landscaping is either covered in the white stuff or piled high with it.
Snow is pretty enough, I suppose, but only right after it falls, before it gets tainted and dirtied up. I don’t like the ice that often comes with it, nor do I particularly enjoy the bitter cold wind that sweeps across campus. The cold I could take or leave; it just means more pack-up time when it comes to classes, because there’s no way in heck you can sit there for either fifty minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes, depending on the day, in your winter garb without sweating your butt off.
I’m a hoodie girl through and through. If the temperature warms to forty degrees? That’s hoodie weather. Thirty and under? That’s thick coat territory. The weather around here is strange sometimes. Monday you’ll have twenty-degree temps with wind chills in the single digits, and by Thursday it’ll be forty-five degrees and a wet mess with all the melting snow and ice.
The good thing about campus before the semester actually begins is how dead it is. The sidewalks are empty, save for aperson here and there. It’s a whole different world than it is when the semester is in full swing. It’s quiet. You can actually hear yourself think.
I run my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday route first. The buildings are unlocked because professors are coming and going, so I can go right inside and find the actual rooms my classes will be held in.
I’m totally aware it’s a nerdy thing to do, but it makes me feel better come the actual start of classes. I like knowing where to go. It quiets the anxieties inside of me.
It’s… not very fun being me.
As I push out of the first building and time myself walking to my next class across campus, I can’t help but feel a strange sense of loneliness sweep over me. Seriously, if I didn’t have Sloane, I wouldn’t have anyone, and it’s by pure happenstance that she saw my post online and reached out to me with an offer of a place to stay. If she hadn’t… I would’ve been forced to live with my ex-best friend. That would’ve sucked spectacularly.
Still, as grateful as I am for Sloane and her timely intervention last semester, I can’t fight the feeling that I’m alone and it sucks. When I was with Mike, I was all-in. That was four years of my life right there. I always had him to talk to, could always hang out with him. Someone was always there.
Granted, the jerk was cheating on me for just over two years of that relationship, but at the time, I didn’t feel nearly as alone as I feel right now. It’s not a good feeling. I’d give anything for that loneliness in my soul to disappear.
I make it to my next class with more than five minutes to spare, telling me once the sidewalks are busy it’s going to be a close call. I wish I could’ve known where the classes were being held when I signed up for them, but they don’t give you that information at that time, unfortunately. Hence why I feel the need to do this.
The last class is easy to get to within the fifteen minutes; it’s in the building right next door to my previous class.
With my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule practiced, it’s time for me to start my Tuesday/Thursday route. I get the building and class number off the list from my phone, and head towards it. My first class those days is in a building facing the cemetery in the center of campus, and I hate that every time I pass that darn cemetery I’m going to think about Logan.
I still remember it like it was yesterday: coming upon someone playing a familiar song with an acoustic guitar. That low yet controlled voice that could haunt you if you weren’t careful. The shock in my heart when I rounded the tall tombstone and saw it was Logan.
Fate had a way of throwing us together last semester. With any luck, this semester I won’t see hide nor hair of him. If I do see him… I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to forget about him. Logan’s not the kind of guy you can ignore when he’s around.
The building is mostly windows, one of the newer-built structures on campus. Our tuition money hard at work. I’ve never been inside this particular building before, so it takes me a while to find the correct room. There are a lot of winding halls and multiple staircases on its three levels. I hope the narrow halls don’t get clogged up between classes, but I’d find out in a few days.
I time myself and start briskly walking to my next class. I take the nearest stairwell and exit, pushing out into the cold air. This next building I know exactly where it is; it’s near the student union. It’ll make swinging by and grabbing lunch there easy.
My eyes are down, my head bent as I round the sidewalk. I’m too busy looking at the class number on the screen to pay attention to where I’m walking, apparently, because rightas I round that corner I run into someone hard—so hard I momentarily flinch and stumble back, just barely catching myself before I fall to the ground.
“Oh, so sorry, I—” I start to apologize the same moment the person I walked into apologizes as well, “Are you all right? I didn’t see you.”