My stomach growled. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I grabbed my laptop and headed to the dining hall to get something to eat and read my lecture notes. My friend Taylor worked in the dining hall. But she'd gotten the weekend off to spend it with her dad. Her dining-hall crush guy was working the burrito line.
I wasn't in the mood for a burrito so I went to the sandwich shop and ordered a grilled cheese. Reading the note from Jason had made me so inexplicably happy that I flirted with the guy who waited on me in hopes of scoring a heart-shaped grilled cheese, even though he wasn't all that attractive. It was a game Taylor, Nicole, Bre, and I played. If the dining hall guys thought you were hot, or if they were just in a generous mood, they flipped the two cut halves of your sandwich on the plate so it made a heart. Given the ups and downs of my day, I could have used a heart.
I had to wait while he grilled it. When he handed my sandwich to me, he was smiling flirtatiously. He'd cut and flipped it to make a heart. Yes! Success. I wanted to do a happy dance. Scoring a heart-shaped sandwich was so rare it was a treasure.
"No dad here, either, huh?" he asked.
Little did he know I had a dad here every day.
"Yeah." I glanced at my plate and back at him, beaming. "You just made my day." I gave him an air kiss as thanks, and went through the line to pay for my sandwich and pop. I found a quiet booth and settled in to study so I didn't make an even bigger liar of myself.
But I was easily distracted, and as I munched my heart-shaped sandwich, I found myself on the university website staring at pictures and bios of the regents. There was Amber, smiling and gorgeous, looking like she should have been in a fashion magazine, not a university webpage. Amber Ranklin, to be exact. Her bio said she was an executive in a Seattle-based financial management firm. Yes, well, of course she was, wasn't she? Probably had family money to begin with. And now on top of beauty, she had the Midas touch with money.
I had not missed my guess. She was, indeed, a Double Deltsie. In fact, she'd been chapter president of Delta Delta Psi during her time as a student. Other than that, there was nothing incriminating in her bio. But there was something between her and Logan. I knew there was. And I didn't like it. Not one bit.
Which got me thinking about Thanksgiving again—what was Logan hiding from me? Was he having second thoughts about us? I tried to tell myself I was just being paranoid. He was probably right—he'd been dazed.
Then, just for fun, I looked up the staff of the university college of computer science and scoped out all the profs, trying to determine which one was Lyssa's former fiancé. None of them were as handsome as Jason. Most of them were either old or nerdy, which made me wonder about Lyssa's tastes, particularly in men. Though I played the guessing game with myself for a good twenty minutes, reading about and doing a little more snooping on each one, I couldn't make up my mind. Lyssa was pretty, funny, and smart. Maybe I was missing something, like one of these guys had a great personality, but I couldn't see her with any of them.
Bored with that, I browsed the Facebook university missed-connections page, looking for something sweet and romantic. Maybe a mention of me or one of my friends. Hey, I was on a roll. I'd gotten a heart-shaped grilled cheese, hadn't I? Maybe I'd get the prestige and thrill of being mentioned on missed connections, too.
Among all the typical kinds of messages, like the girl looking to meet the hot guy she sees every Friday studying at the corner table at the SUB cafeteria, I found this:
Gorgeous chem student—you come to me for chem help every Tuesday and bring me cookies. You're sweet and nice. I'm really into you. But outside of chem lab, I don't think you know I exist. Now that the threat is over, will you still come?
Oh, I thought. And felt like the world's biggest jerk. Every Tuesday since the start of the semester I'd gone to Byron, my chem TA, for help with the evil Dr. Rogers' class. Now that she'd been arrested, would I need to go? Would I forget Byron and all the help he'd given me?
I baked him cookies and even spent the semester bringing him my failures as I tried to replicate the dining hall's prized cobblestone bars. At first, I was bribing him with baked goods in exchange for preferential chemistry help. But eventually I had seen him as a friend. Just a friend. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this missed connection wasn't about me. Or maybe I was simply fooling myself. Again.
I was studying in my room when the comedy show got out and the bars closed and the girls in my dorm came stumbling home with their dads, disrupting the normal late-night din. My room was directly above the front door. I heard all the fights and lovers' quarrels, all the passion, all the gossip. Anything that was spoken loudly enough to get past the single-pane glass in my window.
After a few minutes, I became immune to the sounds of the dorm front door opening and closing. Then I heard yelling.
"You drunken bastard! I hate you! Hate, hate, hate you! Why did you come here? Just to embarrass me in front of my friends?"
I froze, recognizing the voice as Kay's, the girl from across the hall.
"You little bitch! I'm paying for your college. Shut up! Shut the fuck up." Her dad's voice was deep and slurred from too much imbibing.
"I will not shut up. I do hate you! You were hitting on my sorority sister. You cheated on Mom. I hate you."
I didn't like Kay, but in that moment I sympathized with her. Until she hurled the next stream of insults at her dad. Then I felt kind of sorry for him, too. They were both hammered.
Their voices were muffled as they came inside. A moment later they echoed up the stairwell toward the second floor. And then they were on my floor in the hall right in front of my room, screaming and lobbing accusations and insults like they were waging nuclear war—nuclear family war.
"Say that one more time and I'm not paying another dime for your schooling. Not one. You can go to your bitch of a mother and make her pay."
"I hate you!" Kay strung the last word out for emphasis.
A door slammed. I heard a lock turn. And then pounding.
"That's it. I'm cutting you off. I'm done. Hear me? Done."
The pounding went on for another few minutes, sounding like he was going to break the door down. Just as I was about to call the RA or security or something because I was actually worried about Kay's safety if he decided to kick the door down, he cursed and quieted down. I closed my laptop and got ready for bed. I had a sink in my room. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, but I had to go down the hall to use the bathroom.
When I opened my door, Kay's dad was passed out in front of her door. As I stared at him, my RA came down the hall.
"Not another one," she said, shaking her head like she was the parent. "I'll be glad when this weekend is over. It's madness. Dads gone wild." Still shaking her head, she called campus security.
In that moment, I was glad for the secret dad I had. Things could be a lot worse.
When I got up on Sunday, Kay's dad was gone and the hall smelled like stale beer and male sweat. Like they'd coordinated it, at noon the dads got up. They hogged the showers and clogged the halls. I trundled downstairs to the dining hall, which was filled to capacity with brunching dads who looked hung over and were drinking coffee by the gallon. Tay was working, overworking. She looked stressed and tired. Her face was pink from the heat behind the counter where she worked as a barista, making coffee drinks and handing out pastries.
I shot her a sympathetic look as I came through her line. "Is your dad gone?"
"I had to work so he left early. He pulled out of town around eight."
"Smart man."
"I heard rumors of Logan and a fight. I want to hear everything."
That was a faint hope. I couldn't tell her much. "We'll catch up later. My usual?"
"Extra whip?" she asked, and made my drink.
By two the dads drove out of town in a steady stream like a trail of ants leaving a picnic. I needed to talk to Logan. I kept waiting for him to text me. Finally, insecure, I texted him Has your dad left?
 
; Yeah. Finally.
I felt a sense of relief—Harlan was gone. I almost swore he left town in a puff of smoke. I thought I could still smell the sulfur.
Want to get together? I really needed, wanted, to see him. We had a lot to talk about.
My phone rang with the ringtone I'd set up for Logan. "Hi."
"Hey, El," he said. He sounded sleepy, hung over. "I never noticed before. Say 'hey, El' fast and you get 'hell.'" He laughed. "Ouch."
"Real funny. Thanks for that."
"Thought you'd appreciate it," Logan said. "My eye and my head feel like shit."
"That bad?"
"Worse."
I could hear the wince in his voice. "So—want me to come over and nurse you back to health? I'll find Nic and ask her to drop me by. I'll bring coffee." I put an enticing singsong in my voice, like coffee was simply irresistible.
There was a pause on his end. "Sorry, El. I want to, but I'm wasted. Dead tired. I need to get some sleep, get rid of this damn headache, and then hit the homework. I'm up to my black eyeball in homework and projects. I didn't get a thing done while my old man was here. A word to the wise: getting hammered on top of getting smacked in the head—not wise."
"Oh." I swallowed hard. I tried to cover my disappointment. "I see how it goes. The weekend's over so now you drop your fake girlfriend just like that?" I tried to sound teasing, hoping my hurt feelings didn't show through.
"Yeah, I'm dropping the fake girlfriend for the real thing. Come on, El. You know I wouldn't turn down the chance to spend time with you unless I absolutely had to."
My heart skipped a beat—was I now really his girlfriend?
"I'd never pick homework or headaches over anything, especially you."
Even though I found myself smiling, I was still feeling insecure, too. Leave it to me to be self-doubting and happy at the same time. "Okay, you're off the hook. Put some ice on that eye."
"The eye doesn't look that bad," he said. "Your friend doesn't pack as much power as that vicious pool ball did."
I laughed, slightly mollified and relieved. "Good. No offense, but you're hotter without the black eye. Less dangerous looking, but hotter."
"I'm hot, am I?"
"Don't get too full of yourself. Go get some sleep."
"I'll see you tomorrow, El. Dinner after work?"
"Sure." We worked the same shift for Jason in the IT department on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It had become our habit to grab a bite to eat together afterward at the SUB when we had the opportunity. Logan was a field tech, so he was often out of the office and it didn't always work out.
Bre was still out with her dad. He must have been the last dad to leave town. Nic was like Logan, needing sleep after partying with her dad. Taylor was on shift at the dining hall until after dinner. Payback for having the rest of the weekend off. I had no one to talk to and nothing to do but homework.
I headed to the science library just for a change of scenery. On the way there, I had to wind through a game of Zombies. Particularly since Halloween, you'd be walking around campus and suddenly you'd see someone sprinting, trying to get away from a crowd of people who were trying to tag and zombify them. In this case, a stocky guy was running up the hill from the library with half a dozen other guys after him. A couple of them looked like they'd been on the track team in high school. They were gaining on him fast. Zombies do have superhuman strength. I felt sorry for the guy who was being pursued.
"Go! Go!" I yelled at the runner, who was quite possibly the last human standing in his dorm. I tried to protect the human race and play defense by blocking some of the zombies.
As the crowd of zombies parted to go around me, one of them paused and catcalled at me. "Hey, you're cute. Can I have your number?"
"Sorry. I don't date the undead."
"I won't be undead forever." He winked at me.
He wasn't bad looking. If not for Logan, I might have been tempted. I turned and yelled at the stocky guy. "I have your back. Run!"
I was smiling as I walked down the hill to the library and ran into my friend and chem study buddy and lab partner, Dex.
"Dex!" I jogged to catch up to him at the door to the library.
He waited and held it open for me. "Nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than study?" He was smiling.
"Me? What are you talking about? Just now I was saving humanity from the zombie apocalypse."
Dex rolled his eyes. "That game has gotten out of hand. You can't go anywhere without running into a horde of zombies."
"Says the man who's his dorm champion." I paused to catch my breath. "One of them asked for my number."
"That doesn't surprise me. The undead are amazingly horny."
I shook my head. "What about you? Why aren't you sleeping off a hangover after partying with your dad like practically everyone else on this campus? You'd think the campus was full of undead." I slid in the door out of the cold November air and into the foyer area in between the next set of double doors.
Dex grinned. "Some people know how to party responsibly." He winked. "Hey, Dad really liked you. That's high praise. Dad's very discriminating."
"Did he?" I smiled, pleased. Dex had one of the good dads. "I thought he was awesome, too." Dex's dad had helped bring down our evil chem prof. "How come you never told me you have such a cool dad?"
"You never asked."
I grinned back and followed him into the library. "I owe him."
"We all owe him." Dex led the way up to the second floor where the study tables were.
"The question is—will we even need to study for chem now that the witch is in jail?" I couldn't help smiling.
"Don't get cocky, kid." Dex dropped his backpack onto a prime study table. "We don't know what a new prof will do about the test grades and scores we already have. The semester's more than half over. We may still have to work like hell to bring those grades up."
The whole class was basically failing because of the way Dr. Rogers taught and graded.
I shrugged. "Maybe. But not if we get a cool replacement like Professor Kim. He was awesome when he filled in for Dr. Rogers—funny. Easy to understand. He actually made chemistry seem almost easy. I know he'd be fair. He all but told us how unjust he thought Dr. Rogers was being and how she was a horrible teacher."
I set my backpack on the table across from Dex and pulled out my laptop. "Speaking of chemistry, I need your opinion." I brought up the missed-connections page. "I hope I'm wrong, but I think Byron has a crush on me."
Dex shook his head and gave me a "well duh" look. "Of course he has a crush on you, Ellie. That was the whole point of buttering him up and flirting with him. That was why we got all the extra help from him."
I made a face at Dex, feeling guilty again. "You're supposed to make me feel better, not worse. It was your plan that got me into this mess." I quickly brought up the post I'd read earlier, the one written by the guy who'd been helping a secret crush with her chem. I swung my laptop around so Dex could read it, watching as he did.
"Definitely Byron." He shrugged again, like What can you do? "Sorry. Want me to tag you? Or Byron? Or both?"
"Do and I'll kill you."
He laughed.
"I'm serious. Don't you dare." I stared him down. "What do I do now?"
"Continue stringing him along until the semester is over and final grades are posted. Shouldn't be too tough."
"Shut up. I'm not going to keep giving him false hope."
"It's just another month and a half."
"No."
Dex pursed his lips, then shrugged. "What's the alternative? Stop going to your standing Tuesday chem help session? I'm warning you, if you don't go, you're taking a chance with our grades."
"Am not. Byron isn't vindictive."
Dex looked skeptical and shook his head. "You have no idea how the male mind works. You know what they say about a nerd scorned."
"No. I don't. You're just making that up."
Dex glanced back at my la
ptop screen and frowned as he read something. "Logan has a black eye again, doesn't he?"
"Yeah," I said, unconcerned. Of course Dex would be careful about bringing that subject up. I couldn't understand, though, why he wasn't teasing me about it. "Why? How do you know? I didn't see you at that little pregame bash. I thought you and your dad would be there."
Dex was still frowning slightly. "We stopped by after the action." Dex paused. "Dad hates those kinds of events. He really hates making small talk. It was purely a duty call. I will say Logan's antics spiced things up and made the party worth the stop and the small talk easy. They were still cleaning up the mess when we left. Nice that you have a boyfriend to play white knight for you. I heard what that Schwartz guy said was pretty vile."
I blushed. "Yeah." I bit my lip. "And true—my ex did sleep with my mom."
"Shit, that's awful. I'm sorry." Dex looked really uncomfortable.
I shrugged. "Everyone's sorry but her. And she's the only one who should be. Even the ex apologized." I took a deep breath and stared at my hands on the table. "Let's not talk about it again, okay?"
"Sounds good to me." Dex paused. "Ellie, take a look at this." He spun my laptop around to face me.
I looked at him, puzzled.
"Someone else has a thing for Logan." Dex grinned like he was trying to joke and take the sting away. But he didn't fool me. He was still uncomfortable. "The downsides of being a hunk."
I frowned just slightly. "Do you want me to write a missed connection about you to up your prestige around campus? Cute, slightly nerdy guy studying on the second floor of the sci library at the table in the corner. Smart guys turn me on. HMU, the admiring brunette sitting across from you."
"Shut up and read." But he was trying not to laugh at my antics.
Hot guy at The College Grind, a black eye again? I like fighters. I see you everywhere I go like we were meant to be. But you never notice me. I was the blonde sitting by the window with a navy pea coat slung over my chair when you arrived just after three. You got coffee with an attractive woman who looked like she was almost thirty. I can be more fun than she is. Promise. HMU—a blonde who's worshipping you from afar.