“My father’s an asshole.” She took another sip of her coffee. “It looks like they’re starting again. I guess we have to go back to our seat.”
“Yeah…” I nodded.
I think I can check her off the list of potential friends I’m going to make during orientation.
For some reason, Bianca seemed to think that we were going to be friends—or maybe I was just the only person in the room that didn’t annoy her too much. When we took a break for lunch, she asked if I wanted to ride with her to get some real food as she put it instead of what the university was providing for our orientation luncheon. I was about to decline until she said that she was buying, and while I wasn’t sure if I would ever be friends with her, that did sound a lot better than cold deli sandwiches and a bag of potato chips. Bianca was crude, foul-mouthed, and had a general disdain for life itself. She drove like she was angry that there were other cars on the road and chain-vaped the whole way to the restaurant—without even offering to roll down the window. It smelled better than smoke, but the car was so cloudy we exited the vehicle like we were walking out of a fog machine—a fog machine filled with strawberries and cream.
“Hopefully this place has good food.” She started walking towards a restaurant called Salads & More and didn’t ask if it was okay with me.
I guess I can’t complain—she is buying after all.
Later that day
“Thank god this is over.” Bianca let out the loudest ugh she seemed to be able to muster.
“Yeah, all done.” I forced a smile.
“Do you want to hang out tonight? I have like literally no friends in Arizona.” She looked at me inquisitively. “We could get a drink or something…”
“A drink?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve got a fake ID; it’ll be fine.” She must have noticed my concern, but she waved it off.
“Sorry, I already have plans…” I tilted my head and winced.
“Figures—you’re the only person at this place that I think I can tolerate.” She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder.
“At least we have some classes together.” I shrugged. “Maybe we can hang out some other time?”
Or you’ll make some friends, and I’ll dodge that bullet.
“Sure.” She nodded and abruptly stormed off.
My encounter with Bianca—really, the whole day with her, was just strange. I wasn’t sure if we were ever going to be friends. She reminded me of the popular girls in high school that was generally awful to everyone around them, so I had no idea why I had been singled out as the only person she liked at orientation. Either way, I was glad to be done with the formalities at the university and on my way back to Everette’s hotel room. We had been talking about having our first real date for a couple of days, and it was finally going to happen. I didn’t know what he had planned for us, but I had a beautiful dress waiting at the hotel that he wanted me to wear, so I assumed that it was going to be something a little fancier than usual.
“I’m back!” I pushed my key card into the door and opened it.
“How did it go?” Everette met me at the door and pulled me into an embrace. “Did you make any new friends?”
“I’m—not sure.” I leaned my head against his shoulder and smiled when I felt his arms around me. “I’ll have to tell you about it over dinner.”
“Sounds good.” Everette leaned back from our embrace. “We do need to get a m
ove on it—our reservation is in an hour.”
We went to the bedroom and started getting ready for our date, but it was hard for either of us to focus on the task at hand because we kept teasing each other. Everette put his hand on my lower back and traced the edge of my panties while I was trying to put on my dress. I returned the favor by accidentally brushing against him several times when I had the opportunity. We ended up on the bed before either of us were fully dressed—tangled up in an embrace and making out when we really should have already been on the way to the restaurant. We managed to quell our passion long enough to finish getting ready—but that didn’t stop us from casually teasing each other a few more times before we finally made it to the car.
“I’ll call the restaurant and let them know that we’re running a few minutes late.” Everette pulled out his phone and hit the button to dial them.
“Tell them we were too busy making out.” I nudged Everette and grinned.
Thankfully, despite doing everything we could to be late, the restaurant was willing to hold our table. We got there about twenty minutes late, but it didn’t seem to be that busy. Once we ordered our food, I told Everette about my day, and he couldn’t help but laugh when I told him about Bianca. The discussion took a serious turn after that, and we finally addressed the elephant in the room—it was our last night together. Everette had already booked his flight back to Los Angeles, and we were finally at the point where we had to count our time together down in hours instead of days. We were both about to be plunged headfirst into our individual lives, and we weren’t going to see each other until Thanksgiving.
“We can talk on the phone—we can even use Skype so that we can see each other while we talk.” I forced a smile and tried to keep some enthusiasm in my voice.
“Definitely.” Everette nodded. “We’ll figure it out. Just make sure that you keep up with all of your assignments—I don’t want to distract you from that.”
“You won’t.” I shook my head back and forth. “I’ll make sure that they’re done.”