Damn it. I had been awake for exactly 23 minutes and already a hottie in a Penn State hoodie had caught me gnawing at my fingernails like a dog on a bone. I removed my hand from my mouth as discreetly as possible and shoved the offending appendage under the table. With a sigh I turned the page in my American History text and made the decision that I was the most disgusting human being on the face of the planet. What guy would want a twenty-one year old who had never been able to break the habit she had picked up over ten years ago? Apparently not Penn State boy. He’d already moved on to an orange skinned girl with a high pitched voice. If that’s what guys needed in a girl, then I would never be the one.
I’m a medium height at 5 feet 5 inches, not short enough to be cute and petite and not tall enough to be model sexy. My hair is blonde and my eyes are green, which is cool even though everyone thinks they’re blue anyway. Light eyes are all blue, apparently. I’m an average weight, contributing to my more than ample almost D cup chest, which gets me mostly only the kind of attention I don’t want to get. My experiences with men up to that point had led me to the decision that they wanted their women unnatural in as many ways as possible: skin tanned by lightbulbs, hair from a bleach bottle, and breasts that defied gravity. I had none of these things, and had therefore decided that the guys at Harper College were all moronic jocks with marble sized brains. Not even the shooter marbles, just the small ones.
My jaded outlook on the dating scene stemmed mostly from the fact that the said ‘scene’ at my college was severly warped. Dating didn’t occur in the typically defined sense. It was either hook-up and get together or be friends first and then get together. No awkward first dates, no beginning stages of relationships. At Harper, it was one or the other, something people really didn’t understand unless they went here. My parents certainly didn’t believe me. I think they thought I was some cave creature who only left my apartment for class and then hurried back, thus eliminating any chances of meeting a suitable young pre-med or -law boy. What they didn’t know was that I’d actually had both kind of relationships while here, but neither was lucrative enough to tell them about, thus the hiding and subsequent negative attitude. Unfortunately, things just sucked here. Now, all of my guy friends were taken and the only other male I hung out with on a regular basis was my roommate’s boyfriend.
Gwen and I had roomed together since our sophomore year. We were both Psych majors and had met in our Intro class during our freshman year. Gwen is very tomboyish and fun and her boyfriend is jock-ish, but very hot and funny. She’s my best friend and is really the only person who knows all of my secrets. I’ve always told her when she’s being insensitive and she’s told me when I’m being a drama queen, and it all balances out in the wash. We would have been lost without each other at the High School #2 of Harper College, as we affectionly called it.
Since we were seniors, we lived in an apartment close to campus. It was within walking distance, which was nice, and the rent was really reasonable for a two-bedroom place. My room was decorated to my own taste with lots of bookshelves, Picasso on my walls, and a big green comforter topping my bed. I took my laptop with me everywhere I went, but there was still a little place for it on my cluttered desk. Organization was and is still not my thing. I always knew where everything was in my room, but to a casual observer, I must have looked like a complete basketcase–stacks of papers, magazines, and old mail adorning my desk. I considered them homey; Gwen considered it a mess. She would frequently come into my room, look around, shake her head and then leave. I told her it could be worse, that it could be all over my room instead of just my desk. She’d just sigh and walk out with a smile, loving me in spite of my clutter.
But I severly digress. Back to Penn State boy. He was around in the library a lot when I was studying. I say ‘around’ because he never really got anything done. He’d meticulously get out his books and a notebook and an array of pens and highlighters, and then get into conversations with a number of friends and the materials would go untouched for hours. We were both in this corner of the third floor so much that we had become slight acquaintances over the course of the semester. We’d smile at each other when we passed, but that was pretty much where it ended. Even though I was loud and liked to have a good time, I turned into a selective mute around strange guys I had crushes on, which turned me into an undesirable thing, thus making true my self-fulfilling prophecy. I knew all of this, but I couldn’t seem to get my foot, or my fingernails, out of my mouth long enough to make any sort of move that was anything other than awkward.
His name was Zac Hanson. I’d gathered that much from hearing bits of his conversations when I was pretending to be interested in my reading. He must not really have needed to be studying, because he was the one everyone came to with questions. I wished I knew him better because he seemed to know a lot about history and I had a severe mental block for memorizing dates at length. But that wasn’t the only reason I wished I knew him. He was incredibly attractive and larger built, letting me know that there were muscles hiding behind his usually baggy clothes, sending my brain into a wide variety of explicit and highly inappropriate day dreams. He was funny, or at least his comments made me laugh quietly behind my books, and he seemed to be a good friend, helping people out whenever they came to him. I had been quite the stalker, watching him for weeks now. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed him around campus before. Gwen kept pestering me to do something, anything to meet him. Ask to borrow a pencil, she told me. I asked her how that was supposed to be sexy, and she told me that it wasn’t, it was just to put me on his radar.
This day, this nail-biting-catching day, I made the decision to talk to him. I had purposely removed all of the extra lead from my mechanical pencil before I had left my apartment, knowing from watching that he always had a case of extra lead out on the table. After the orange girl had left his presence and he had finally decided to open the large book in front of him, I counted to ten and then picked up my mechanical pencil. With quick and hopefully realistic-looking motions, I clicked the end of the pencil a few times, looked at the tip to see that there was no lead, removed the eraser to check, and then sighed. I looked around the room, my eyes landing on him. As casually as possible, I stood, pushed my chair back and started to walk towards him. I was only a few steps away. He had noticed my presence and had looked up when it happened. The toe of my Converse sneaker caught the edge of a floor electrical outlet, sending me stumbling towards him. I righted myself quickly, grabbing onto the edge of his table, shaking it a bit. I watched him bite back a laugh as I felt all of the blood from my body rush to my face.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sincerely enough, but still trying not to laugh. I guess I probably would have wanted to laugh at me, too.
“What? Oh that? Yeah, I’m fine. I was just wondering if you had any extra lead. I’m fresh out.” Fresh out? What the hell was I saying?! I could practically feel my foot creeping past my teeth into my mouth.
“Of course. And there’s plenty more if you need it. Just be careful on your way over,” he smiled, taking out a few pieces and placing them into my now outstretched hand.
“Thanks,” I replied, returning his smile before walking away, avoiding the outlet. I knew that I should have said something else, anything else, but instead I just went back to my seat, put the lead in my pencil and started to take notes. I didn’t even like taking notes in pencil.
I knew that though Gwen’s idea had been a good one, that I had just botched it. Yeah, I was on his radar all right, as nail-biting-can’t-walk-right girl. Damn it.