Thrown for a Curve: Chapter One
We should have known from the very beginning that our relationship had an expiration date. If my mother—the one who named me after a constellation—could have given me advice, she probably would have told me to let the Universe decide our fate. But I thought I had it all worked out.
I was wrong.
“Dammit!” I tapped the student center’s ATM screen several times in frustration.
“Sometimes it freezes,” a voice spoke from behind me. I turned to explain that the reason for the error message was actually due to the fact that the money in my account wasn’t even enough to cover the withdrawal fee and not because the machine was frozen. But just as I opened my mouth, I caught sight of him across the room. “Crap!” came out of my mouth instead.
“Everything okay?” the good Samaritan behind me asked.
I shook my head as I hit the END button on the ATM. As soon as the machine spit my card out, I dashed behind a ficus tree in the corner. Jed the Jerk always had a way of appearing just when I thought my sense of self-worth had suitably recovered, as if he possessed a sixth-sense for when my psyche needed a kick in the crotch. He was currently standing in the cafeteria line, contemplating the menu. As I watched, he extended his hand out to the petite blonde beside him, who grasped it and then looked up at him adoringly. I curled my lip and looked for an escape route. The only way to get out of the building was to walk right in front of them. I crouched lower and waited until they’d moved on to the condiment bar before I fled the scene.
“I saw Jed the Jerk. Again.” I announced to my roommate as I tossed my backpack on the bed.
Estelle looked up from painting her nails. “What’d he have to say?”
I shrugged. “Luckily, he didn’t see me.”
I could feel Estelle’s eyes on me as I flopped into my desk chair and sighed.
“Don’t start again, Addy. He’s not worth your time.”
“I know.” Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I opened my shark classification book. Estelle soon appeared at my side. With wet nails, she reached out and shut my book. “It’s Friday night, Addy.”
“I need to study.” I contemplated opening the book again, but Estelle’s hand still sat firmly on top of it.
“There’s a fraternity party tonight.”
“So?”
“So come with me.”
“No.”
“C’mon, Addy. You can’t study every night.”
“Actually, I can.” I pulled the book out from underneath her hand and reopened it. She wasn’t the one who spent her junior year trying to memorize all twenty amino acids and the scientific classification of a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Instead, Estelle had flittered her way through introductory psych classes and an entire semester on what happened during Gettysburg.
“It’s your senior year of college. Live a little.”
“You know I have to keep a 4.0 to even be considered for an internship at Boca Ciega.” My heart had been set for ages on being a shark intern at the prestigious Boca Ciega Harbor Marine Institute in Tampa, Florida after graduation.
She planted her feet and crossed her arms across her chest, wet nails be damned. “One night. If you don’t go, I won’t go.” Which translated to, “If you don’t go, I will spend the rest of the night hounding you.”
“Okay, okay. But this is the last time. It’s already September, and I need to start applying soon.” I reluctantly went to my tiny dorm closet and pulled out a pair of semi-clean jeans and a cap-sleeved top, low-cut to show off what Jed the Jerk had once called my greatest assets. Estelle didn’t bother to change, although she did take off the white tank she sported underneath the black mesh T-shirt she’d been wearing all day.
“Are you going like that?” I asked her, casually regarding her black bra—of which I could now see every detail—through the sheer shirt. After three years of living with Estelle, it was probably too much to hope that she would don a jacket over her bra/T-shirt combo.
“Yep,” she said breezily, sliding off her Doc Martens and reaching for my leopard print platforms. Estelle had a relatively small shoe size for her five-foot ten-inch frame and was able to squeeze into most of my size seven shoes.
I grabbed my brand-new shoes back from her, giving her the evil eye as I stepped into them. She settled on my black kitten heels instead.
Upon arriving at the frat party, Estelle immediately engaged in a game of Beer Pong, leaving me alone to scrutinize my new surroundings, which consisted of a dingy living room with dirty carpet and banged-up furniture. I’d forgotten how much I hated these scenes. I’m incurably claustrophobic and can’t stand the feeling of people closing in on me. To top it off, years of scuba diving had resulted in a slight hearing loss (although I can never remember in which ear until someone shouts in one) so I can’t distinguish conversation above blaring music. These two slight defects meant I was hopeless at fitting in at the crowded party where I found myself deserted.
To my right, a guy with a long 70’s-style blowout with ends that curled up a little too perfectly was cradling a plastic cup under the keg hose. To my left, a group of lanky, perfectly-coiffed girls was gathered around a bar full of colorful liquor bottles. Sorority sisters, I sighed to myself, glancing at the letters stretched across their tight t-shirts. Just what my ego doesn’t need. I pulled my own top down lower and tucked a stray piece of reddish-blonde hair behind my ear.
A red cup, full enough to spill foamy beer onto the carpet, appeared in my periphery. Luke Skywalker was holding the cup out to me while simultaneously checking out the coven in the corner.
“No thanks,” I shouted.
He gave me a dirty look. “What are you, the DD?”
“The what?”
“The designated driver?”
“No, I just don’t drink that crap. I drink good beer, the kind where the alcohol-to-water ratio is much higher.”
“Whatever,” he said, leaving a trail of foam on the rug as he walked away.
I flopped down on a sagging orange couch and pretended to be engaged in watching Estelle’s rousing game of Beer Pong, feeling alone and slightly sorry for myself. Having never joined a sorority, it wasn’t my style to belong to a gaggle of girls. Or to be around the boys that ogled them. Unless you counted Jed the Jerk, as the girl hanging off him at the student center had been wearing a Tri-Delt baby tee. Estelle, however, could chug with the best of them, and always ignored any other girls on the horizon, like she was doing now.
Including me.
“Are you a friend of Estelle’s?” another guy sidled up beside my bad ear. This one was a little shorter than Keg Boy with much more tousled hair.
“Yep,” I said, not taking my eyes off the game.
He mumbled something incoherent.
I turned to toward him. “What?”
“I said, so am I!” he shouted.
I shrugged.
He said something else in a much lower volume. I tilted my good ear toward him to better discern what he was saying.
“Sometimes.” He gave me an evil grin and flexed his eyebrows up and down. “If you know what I mean.”
“Well, I’m her roommate, and I’ve never seen you before,” I told him indignantly.
His eyebrows raised even higher. “Roommate? Do you guys ever—”
“No,” I said, turning away. These guys were no different than the baseball players that occupied the bottom floor of our freshmen year dorm. Only one thing on their mind. I struggled to get away from the clutches of the couch while trying to get Estelle’s attention. I knew she would play badly until she could convince them to wager money on the game. Although she usually got tipsy after a few beers at the bar, Estelle could somehow conjure the alcohol tolerance of Marion Ravenwood (a la the Indiana Jones movies) when there was money involved.
I was motioning to her that I was taking off when a confident voice behind me declared, “Hey, I forgot my phone number. Can I borrow yours?”
Not another one. “Ummm … yeah … no. I’m leaving,” I said without turning around.
“Hey, you don’t have to go so soon.” Hesitatingly, I glanced backward. The voice belonged to a sandy-haired guy, medium height, glasses.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got better things to do.” I turned again and started to make my way through the throngs of sorority girls dancing, sorority girls draped over guys, sorority girls passing out. “Why don’t you try your line on one of them?” I asked, nodding toward some of the drunker ones on the makeshift dance floor/ dingy hallway.
“You seem a lot more interesting. Let me drive you home. I have a new car—it’s an orange Saturn.” He followed me as I shoved my way through the crowd to the front door.
“Again, not falling for it. Besides, I like to walk.” If there is one non-baseball notion that my father instilled in me, it was that getting into cars with strange men from frat parties is never a good idea.
“Okay, let me help you to the door.” He placed his hand on my elbow and steered me away from the sorority traffic. Do these guys ever give up?
“Listen, thanks, for the tour and everything,” I was about to yank my elbow back, but faltered and ended up merely stepping out of his grasp. Now that I had a good look at him, he didn’t appear to be a typical asshole frat guy. He was wearing broken-in jeans and his T-shirt was devoid of Greek letters—that is unless he belonged to the Gap fraternity. The eyes behind his trendy wire frames were a soft chocolate, like a mocha latte with more milk than coffee. There was something familiar about him, and I found myself hoping he wasn’t one of Estelle’s many hook-ups. “Do I know you?”
He seemed slightly taken aback by the question. “ATM. This morning,”
“Oh, right, you were the guy behind me.”
“And you were the girl who—”
“It wasn’t one of my finer moments.” I grimaced at the memory of hiding behind plastic shrubbery. “It was nice meeting you …”
“Ryan,” he said as I turned to leave. “Can I at least get your name?”
“It’s Addy,” I conceded as I flung the door open. Damn. It was pouring outside.
“What’s that stand for?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you about it on the ride home.”
“Oh, so now you want me to give you a ride?” He had one of those contagious grins that make you want to grin back at him. So I did.
I glanced down at my new shoes and pictured them soaked with rain. “I’ve decided that Nature can wait. And I’ve never seen an orange Saturn.” Besides, I was always a sucker for guys in glasses.
“So,” he said once we were ensconced in his orange car.
“So?” I was half afraid he would propose something other than the promised ride home.
“What does Addy stand for?”
“Pleiade,” I told him, relieved that, for the time being, he had no ulterior motives.
“As in the Pleiades constellation? The seven sisters?”
I nodded, shocked. Nobody ever knew what my full name referred to, especially not frat boys with low-slung cars.
Ryan continued. “You know the story behind the Pleiades and Orion, right?”
“Of course. Orion, the hunter, is said to chase the seven sisters across the sky.”
“‘And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
and plunge into the misty deep
and all the gusty winds are raging …’”
I turned to stare at him. “How do you know that poem?”
He shrugged and started the car. “I know stuff.”
Even though the ride home was less than five minutes, it was enough for me to discern that Ryan was different from the other college boys I knew. It turned out we were both biology majors; I was studying marine biology whereas he was studying botany, or, as my brother Cameron would say: You, Fish; He, Plants.
As we arrived at my dorm, Ryan turned to me. “So, can I get your number now?”
I hesitated. He really is cute. And funny. But, I reminded myself, this is my senior year, my last chance to prove myself and keep up my GPA. “I don’t have time for a relationship right now.”
“It’s strictly for educational purposes,” Ryan replied. “If I need to know what the Linnean classification hierarchy is for a Great White Shark, I could call you. You never know when that might come in handy.”
“You mean Carcharodon carcharias, order Chondrichthyes, family Lamnidae.”
“Bison bison. Gorilla gorilla.”
“What?”
“Those are the only Latin names I have memorized. I just wanted you to know we speak the same language. Besides, given my name and your name, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least try to pursue you a little bit.”
“Oh, Ryan …” I started, trying to think of another way to brush him off.
“Exactly.”
I giggled, thinking as I did that it had been a long time since a guy had made me laugh. I dug through my purse, finding a pen and an old receipt. I scribbled down my phone number and handed him the slip of paper.
“Thanks,” he said, pocketing it.
“You’re welcome,” I told him, wondering if this was my cue to get out of the car. As much as I had wanted to get away from him an hour earlier, I was now reluctant to leave. “Do you want to come in?”
He sighed. “No, I should probably get back to the party. Plus, I have to make sure your friend hasn’t confiscated all of my frat’s dues for the next six months.”
“Yeah,” I said, twirling the pen back and forth in my fingertips. I spun it a little too rapidly and it flew out of my hand. I reached down to try to locate it underneath the seat. When my fingers finally grasped it and I sat upright again, Ryan was leaning toward me at an unnatural angle. I scooted a few inches forward, although achieving the proximity needed to kiss him was slightly hampered by the Saturn’s parking brake looming between us. Our lips finally met for the briefest of seconds before he sat back. His lips were very soft, very kissable.
After a beat, I realized I was still leaning forward with my hand gripping the armrest and my eyes closed, so I too sat back. I tucked the pen into my purse and slung the strap over my shoulder. “Well, thanks for the ride.” I said, fiddling with the door handle. Why won’t this thing open?
Ryan got out and came around to the other side. I finally realized that the door was locked. As soon as I had it unlocked, Ryan opened it. “Good night, Addy.”
“Good night, Ryan,” I said, trying to get out of the low car with as much dignity as I could muster in platform heels. Halfway to the door, I stumbled slightly over a crack in the sidewalk, as if drunk with the high of a first kiss. I glanced backward, hoping he hadn’t noticed me trip. His car was still parked in the circle drive, and he gave me a little wave, which I returned. It wasn’t until I was safely in the lobby that he drove away.
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