Chapter Four
Iris
The clunk of Bailey’s boots followed by the door slamming open jolted me from a deep sleep. I groaned in irritation, not willing to look at my phone to see what time it was. It had to be mid-morning since Bailey had texted me the night before that she’d be back around 9:00 a.m. or so.
It was too early on our last week of break to be up.
I wrapped myself back up into the blankets with a desperate hope that Bailey would just go into her room.
“Iris!”
The door to my room was pushed open followed by a gust of freezing air. I tugged the blankets closer about me to glare up at the uppity brunette now at my bedside.
“Don’t bring in the cold weather in with you,” I snapped out.
She rolled her eyes. “I told you that I was coming back today,” she said, cheerful voice filling my entire room up. “I’m surprised to even see you in bed still. I thought you’d be up, early bird.”
“It’s break. I’m allowed to sleep in.”
“Right,” Bailey said. “Get up and come talk to me. We haven’t seen each other in a while.”
She tugged at my blankets insistently when I didn’t budge right away. I kicked them away with a grumble, slipping my feet into a pair of Ugg boots to follow Bailey reluctantly out into the living room. Her luggage was scattered everywhere as she closed the apartment door before turning to smile widely at me.
“So,” she said. “How was Christmas break?”
I slipped into a sweater to warm up. “Fine,” I replied, shrugging indifferently. “Same as usual. Nothing different.”
“Your mom still drinking?”
“You have to ask that question?”
“I guess your bitterness answers my question,” she said. “What did you get for Christmas from your dad?”
“A MacBook Air” I said.
“Nice,” she said. “I got a MacBook Pro and the brand-new iPhone 7 and…”
I tuned out the rest of her prattling about all the fancy things her parents had bought her for Christmas. She didn’t even bother asking where the tablet was. She knew well by now that all the gifts my father sent were left behind at my mother’s house or given to someone else. I never wanted them. It was a poor attempt to win my affections over away from my mother.
In a strange way, I had a suspicion that my father was jealous of all the time I spent with my mother instead of visiting him. It made him even more of a dick.
This year, we hadn’t even bothered trying to catch up for Christmas. He sent my Christmas gift to the house, and I left it for my mother to use. I doubted she would, though. She didn’t even know how to work a computer, besides turn it on and read emails.
“Cool,” I said, distantly when Bailey finished talking. “What else did you do for Christmas break?”
“Not much.” She wheeled one of her bags into her room. “We just did our usual thing. Went up to our farmhouse in Upstate New York and went to a football game. Oh.” She turned to grin at me mischievously. “I met some guy in New York through my parents. He’s a musician at Julliard. Not my type, really, but he’s cute.”
I barely suppressed an eye roll.
“Really? Did you go out on a date with him?”
“One time,” she said, sighing dramatically. “I didn’t know how to break it to him that I didn’t think we had a lot of things in common. He insisted on taking me out to lunch the entire time I was in New York.”
“Because he thinks you’re beautiful,” I replied, grabbing my bag from the couch.
Bailey was a very beautiful woman. I didn’t blame the dude for wanting to get underneath her sweater. At 5’4” with tanned long legs and a trim body that screamed sex underneath all her nice clothes, men were rendered stupid in her presence. I never blamed them for falling for it. She knew how to work her charms when she wanted.
“Right. I know that,” she said, shrugging casually. “So, how does your last semester look class wise?”
I pulled out my class schedule to glance down at it with a sigh. “To be honest,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m not thrilled about this semester, at all.”
“Why?”
“I have to retake a class.”
“Which one?”
“Freshman English,” I said, reluctantly and glared when Bailey burst out laughing. “It’s not funny! That professor hated me the second I walked into his classroom. It didn’t help that I had to drive to my mom’s house all the time to help her.”
“That sucks for you,” she said, still laughing. “I can’t even imagine being in a classroom full of freshman students right out of high school. Maybe you can do something else instead of it? Will the department let you do something like that?”
“I have no other choice. If I want to graduate this May, I have to take it,” I said. “I can’t afford to pay another semester’s worth of tuition.”
“Well, you’ll get through it,” Bailey said, grabbing a hold of her own class list. “You’re smart when it comes to English.”
I detected a trace of jealousy in her voice, but I turned my attention downwards to my class list, as well.
“I’m not that smart if I failed it the first time,” I replied. “What is your schedule like?”
She seized the topic change with a grin. “Easy,” she said, excitedly. “I only have three classes and advising. That’s it. This semester will be a breeze all the way up until graduation. Are you excited to be getting out of Utah?”
“You have no idea.”
The thought of leaving behind Utah and all my mother’s drinking problems filled me with mixed emotions. I longed to get away from it, to have a fresh start, to live my own life without others complicating it at every turn. I just had to get through this English class with a professor had never heard of before.
“Hello? Anyone there?” Bailey waved a hand in front of my face with a frown. “Did you hear what I said?”
“No,” I admitted, and forced an apologetic smile on my face. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I asked who the professor was for your English class.”
I glanced down at the name. “Noah Webber.”
“New professor?” she asked, frowning. “I’ve never heard of him before.”
“He must be,” I said, chewing on the pad of my thumb. “I can’t find any information on him being a teacher. The only thing I can find is that he used to be a famous rugby player in New Zealand.”
“That sounds like he’s hot to me,” she said, a grin tugging at her lips. “A rugby player as a professor is a little strange, though. I’ll admit that. Maybe he’ll be cute to look at, and it’ll get you through class.”
I tucked my class list back into the front folder of my binder. The last thing I wanted to think about was an attractive professor. It wasn’t a secret what would happen if professors and students intermingled romantically. A few professors had been fired. Students were expelled for it. It happened more than the dean liked to admit.
“Doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t,” I said, shortly. “I have to pass this class to get out of Utah.”
“If he’s cute, you should go for it. I’m serious,” she said, twirling a finger through her hair with that same mischievous smile that meant trouble. “I think it might do you some good to have a flirty relationship with someone. In the four years that we’ve been fri-roommates, I mean, you’ve never once gone out on a date. Let alone, express any sort of interest in a guy.”
I stared at Bailey in mild irritation. Despite her rather ditzy manner at times, the woman was far too observant about things in my life. I never spoke of personal things. She just figured them out from putting pieces together.
“I’m not interested in being with someone right now,” I said. That was one hundred percent the truth. I had no interest in having my heart broken by some guy during college before going out into the real world. I refused to be like a few other girls in school who cried their eyes out over their boyfriend breaking up with them or cheating on them.
“You can’t protect yourself forever,” Bailey said then, looking at me closely. “I suspect you don’t want to get involved because you don’t want your heart broken, but it has to be much deeper than that.”
Done with the conversation, I grabbed my binder and rose from where we had been seated on the couch.
“I don’t know why you’re taking such an interest in my love life,” I said, heading directly toward my bedroom. “Everything’s fine with me. I just want to get through this last semester of college without any distractions.”
“Life is full of distractions,” Bailey called out. “You can’t run from them.”
I closed the door behind me. Sinking down to the carpeted floor, I stared distantly at my unmade bed.
“I’ve been running for a long time, and it’s been fine,” I whispered to myself. “I can keep running as long as I need to.”