Page 63 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
Actually, my parents aren’t paying at all. I’m at Fordham University on a full ride scholarship (academic, not cheerleading. Told you I was a good girl.), and even my housing is paid for. My parents are paying for my books, but everything else is on me, and my twice-a-week stint as office monkey in the president’s office is barely getting me by.
But I am getting by.
And I am grateful for my parents.
I’ll just be way more grateful after I get off this phone call . . .
“Danny’s mom asked about you on Sunday. Says he’s seeing another girl, but she thinks it’s only to make you jealous.”
I tuck the phone under my chin and pull my blond hair into a messy knot at the top of my head and try not to scream. Danny Arnstadt and I’d had exactly two dates.
Prom. Mine, and his.
But if you listen to my mother, we were the greatest love since Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The book. Not the movie. Because that, apparently, had been a “sham.”
Danny is a perfectly nice guy, and I’m grateful that he took me to prom, because, when you attend an all-girls high school, coming by prom dates is harder than one might imagine.
But we have about as much romantic chemistry as a vegan and a rib eye.
“Well, I’m glad to hear Danny’s doing well,” I say. See what I mean? Nice girl.
Out of nowhere, there’s a pair of flailing arms in my face as my roommate tries to get my attention with her typical overenthusiasm.
I put my finger over the voice piece of my phone. “Parents.”
“Oh right, sorry,” Corrie whispers.
Then: “ANNIE! You’re late for study group!”
I roll my eyes, but my mother is all over it. “Was that Corrie?”
“Yup.” Not for the first time, I’m grateful that Corrie had been relatively conservative when my parents met her on move-in day back in August. If my mom could see Corrie now, in her low-slung sweat pants with “SASSY” across the ass, and a tank top that did nothing to disguise C cups, she’d probably start resending the e-mails for local churches she’d sent at the beginning of the year.
“Study group, honey? You should go.”
Corrie plays my mother like a fiddle, but I’ll happily take the out. Plus I don’t know for sure that there’s no study group. And it’s not lying if you can’t say one way or the other, right?
“Okay, Mom. Good talking to you. Tell Dad I’m sorry I missed him and I’ll catch him next week . . . Mmm-hmm. Love you too.”
“Finally,” Corrie says, where she’s been rocking back and forth on her flip-flops for the entire end of my conversation. Then her hands are in my hair and she’s yanking out the rubber band and fluffing my hair around my shoulders. Only my hair doesn’t really fluff, so it’s more just like rearranging really straight, really boring shoulder-length hair.
“Zach’s up there,” she says, taking a step back to look at me, smacking her gum as she does so. “He’s asking about you.”
My footsteps falter. Be cool, Annie.
“For our study group?” I ask, following her up the stairs toward our shared room
“Please. Nobody has study groups this early in the trimester.”
I’m not sure how she knows this, seeing as we’re both freshmen, and our experience is limited to the fall trimester that just ended, but she’s got a point. I’m a very—okay, really—diligent student, and even I don’t have much to work on this early.
Corrie, on the other hand, is not so much in the diligent student category. There’s no Greek life at Fordham, but if there were, Corrie and her identical twin, Haley, would be the poster girls for it. They’re both five feet, eight inches of toned legs, big boobs, and long, Victoria’s Secret–model brown hair.
“Cor,” I ask suddenly. “Do I look okay?”
She gives me one of those aww-honey looks. “Of course. You look adorable.”
Adorable. A word I’ve gotten a lot of over the years. Cute. Adorable. Sometimes pretty. Never gorgeous, beautiful, or hot, but adorable is better than “But you’re so smart!” so I guess I’ll take it. I’m a five-foot-four blonde, with blue eyes that I’d been told looked like “doll eyes” (awesome, not), and adding to the cutesy image? Dimples.
